The Muckrakers The Progressive Era - 2009)

Defining Moments
The Muckrakers
and the
Progressive Era
Laurie Collier Hillstrom

Defining Moments
The muckrakers
and the
progressive era
Defining Moments
The muckrakers
and the
progressive era
Laurie Collier Hillstrom
P.O. Box 31-1640

Detroit, MI 48231
Omnigraphics, Inc.
Kevin Hillstrom, Series Editor

Cherie D. Abbey, Managing Editor
Peter E. Ruffner, Publisher

Matthew P. Barbour, Senior Vice President
Elizabeth Collins, Research and Allison A. Beckett and Mary Butler, Research Staff
Permissions Coordinator Cherry Stockdale, Permissions Assistant
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Administrative Staff
Copyright © 2010 Omnigraphics, Inc.

ISBN 978-0-7808-1093-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hillstrom, Laurie Collier, 1965-

The muckrakers and the Progressive Era / by Laurie Collier Hillstrom.
p. cm. -- (Defining moments)
Summary: "Provides a detailed account of the muckraking movement in early twentieth-century Amer-
ican journalism and its contribution to progressive reforms. Explores how the muckraking tradition and
progressive political ideas have continued through the modern era. Features include a narrative
overview, biographies, primary sources, chronology, glossary, bibliography, and index"--Provided by
publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7808-1093-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Journalism—Social aspects--United States--His-
tory--20th century. 2. Social problems—Press coverage--United States. 3. Progressivism (United States
politics)--History--20th century. 4. United States--Social conditions--20th century. I. Title.
PN4888.S6H55 2009
302.230973'09042--dc22
2009026396
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writing from the publisher.
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possible effort has been made to ensure reliability, the publisher will not assume liability for damages caused by inaccura-
cies in the data, and makes no warranty, express or implied, on the accuracy of the information contained herein.
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the ANSI Z39.48 Standard. The infinity symbol that appears above indi-
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Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
How to Use This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Research Topics for The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
NARRATIVE OVERVIEW
Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Chapter One: Events Leading Up to the Progressive Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Chapter Two: The Role of Journalism in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
Chapter Three: Addressing Social Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Chapter Four: Battling the Titans of Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Chapter Five: Exposing Government Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Chapter Six: The Muckraking Tradition Continues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
Chapter Seven: Legacy of the Progressive Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
BIOGRAPHIES
Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115
Journalist and Author of Following the Color Line
S.S. McClure (1857-1949) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119
Progressive Owner and Editor of McClure’s Magazine
David Graham Phillips (1867-1911) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .124
Journalist Who Wrote the “Treason of the Senate” Series
v
Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era
Jacob Riis (1849-1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

Photographer and Author of How the Other Half Lives
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132
Industrial Tycoon, Philanthropist, and Major Target of the
Muckrakers
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
President of the United States, 1901-1909
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142
Journalist, Political Leader, and Author of The Jungle
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148
Journalist and Author of The Shame of the Cities
Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152
Journalist and Author of The History of the Standard Oil
Company
PRIMARY SOURCES
President Theodore Roosevelt Promises Progressive Reform . . . . . . . . . . .159
Jacob Riis Chronicles the Struggles of the Urban Poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
John Spargo Describes the Tragedy of Child Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .170
Ida Tarbell Investigates the Standard Oil Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Upton Sinclair Exposes Problems in the Meatpacking Industry . . . . . . . .178
Lincoln Steffens Reveals the Shame of the Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .182
David Graham Phillips Blasts Corrupt U.S. Senators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188
Roosevelt Calls Crusading Journalists “Muckrakers” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192
The Washington Post Gives Wounded Veterans a Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197
Pete Hamill Explains the Importance of Investigative Journalism . . . . . . .206
Modern-Day Muckrakers Face Major Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .212
vi
Table of Contents
Important People, Places, and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219

Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225
Sources for Further Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
Photo and Illustration Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241
vii
Preface
T hroughout the course of America’s existence, its people, culture, and

institutions have been periodically challenged—and in many cases
transformed—by profound historical events. Some of these momen-
tous events, such as women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and U.S.
involvement in World War II, invigorated the nation and strengthened Amer-
ican confidence and capabilities. Others, such as the McCarthy era, the Viet-
nam War, and Watergate, have prompted troubled assessments and heated
debates about the country’s core beliefs and character.
Some of these defining moments in American history were years or even
decades in the making. The Harlem Renaissance and the New Deal, for exam-
ple, unfurled over the span of several years, while the American labor move-
ment and the Cold War evolved over the course of decades. Other defining
moments, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the terrorist attacks of Sep-
tember 11, 2001, transpired over a matter of days or weeks.
But although significant differences exist among these events in terms of
their duration and their place in the timeline of American history, all share
the same basic characteristic: they transformed the United States’ political,
cultural, and social landscape for future generations of Americans.
Taking heed of this fundamental reality, American citizens, schools, and
other institutions are increasingly emphasizing the importance of under-
standing our nation’s history. Omnigraphics’ Defining Moments series was cre-
ated for the express purpose of meeting this growing appetite for authorita-
tive, useful historical resources. This series will be of enduring value to any-
one interested in learning more about America’s past—and in understanding
how those historical events continue to reverberate in the 21st century.
Each individual volume of Defining Moments provides a valuable
resource for readers interested in learning about the most profound events in
ix
our nation’s history. Each volume is organized into three distinct sections—
Narrative Overview, Biographies, and Primary Sources.
• The Narrative Overview provides readers with a detailed, factual
account of the origins and progression of the “defining moment” being
examined. It also explores the event’s lasting impact on America’s
political and cultural landscape.
• The Biographies section provides valuable biographical background
on leading figures associated with the event in question. Each biogra-
phy concludes with a list of sources for further information on the pro-
filed individual.
• The Primary Sources section collects a wide variety of pertinent pri-
mary source materials from the era under discussion, including official
documents, papers and resolutions, letters, oral histories, memoirs,
editorials, and other important works.
Individually, each of these sections is a rich resource for users. Together,
they comprise an authoritative, balanced, and absorbing examination of some
of the most significant events in U.S. history.
Other notable features contained within each volume in the series
include a glossary of important individuals, places, and terms; a detailed
chronology featuring page references to relevant sections of the narrative; an
annotated bibliography of sources for further study; an extensive general bib-
liography that reflects the wide range of historical sources consulted by the
author; and a subject index.
New Feature
Each volume in the Defining Moments series now includes a list of
research topics, detailing some of the important topics that recur throughout
the volume and providing a valuable starting point for research. Students
working on essays and reports will find this feature especially useful as they
try to narrow down their research interests.
These research topics are covered throughout the different sections of
the book: the narrative overview, the biographies, the primary sources, the
chronology, and the important people, places, and terms section. This wide
coverage allows readers to view the topic through a variety of different
approaches.
x
Preface
Students using Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era
will find information on a wide range of topics suitable for conducting histor-
ical research and writing reports:
• History of American journalism from colonial era to modern times
• Economic, social, and political developments that informed the rise of
the Progressive Era
• Chief areas of interest of the muckrakers, including political corrup-
tion, mistreatment of workers, the plight of immigrants, and urban
misery and decay
• Various ways in which the Muckraking Era and the Progressive Era
intersected—and proved mutually beneficial to one another
• Landmarks of muckraking journalism, including Ida Tarbell’s exposé
of Standard Oil, Upton Sinclair’s investigation of the meatpacking
industry, and Lincoln Steffens’s “Shame of the Cities” series
• Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and his complicated relationship
with the muckrakers
• Factors leading to the close of the Muckraking Era
• Challenges facing the current generation of “muckraking” journalists
• Legacy of the muckrakers on contemporary journalists
Acknowledgements
This series was developed in consultation with a distinguished Advisory
Board comprised of public librarians, school librarians, and educators. They
evaluated the series as it developed, and their comments and suggestions
were invaluable throughout the production process. Any errors in this and
other volumes in the series are ours alone. Following is a list of board mem-
bers who contributed to the Defining Moments series:
Gail Beaver, M.A., M.A.L.S.
Adjunct Lecturer, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
Melissa C. Bergin, L.M.S., N.B.C.T.
Library Media Specialist
Niskayuna High School
Niskayuna, NY
xi
Rose Davenport, M.S.L.S., Ed.Specialist

Pershing High School Library
Detroit, MI
Karen Imarisio, A.M.L.S.
Assistant Head of Adult Services
Bloomfield Twp. Public Library
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Nancy Larsen, M.L.S., M.S. Ed.
Clarkston High School
Clarkston, MI
Marilyn Mast, M.I.L.S.
Kingswood Campus Librarian
Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Rosemary Orlando, M.L.I.S.
Library Director
St. Clair Shores Public Library
St. Clair Shores, MI
Comments and Suggestions

We welcome your comments on Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and
the Progressive Era and suggestions for other events in U.S. history that war-
rant treatment in the Defining Moments series. Correspondence should be
addressed to:
Editor, Defining Moments
Omnigraphics, Inc.
P.O. Box 31-1640
Detroit, MI 48231
E-mail: [email protected]
xii
how to use this book
D
efining Moments: The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era provides
users with a detailed and authoritative overview of the journalistic
movement that exposed social and political problems in the United
States and generated public support for major reforms during the first decade
of the twentieth century. The preparation and arrangement of this volume—
and all other books in the Defining Moments series—reflect an emphasis on
providing a thorough and objective account of events that shaped our nation,
presented in an easy-to-use reference work.
Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era is divided into
three primary sections. The first of these sections, the Narrative Overview,
provides a detailed, factual account of the muckraking movement in Ameri-
can journalism and its contribution to turn-of-the-century progressive
reforms. It explains the transformation that occurred in the United States as a
result of industrialization and traces the origins of the Progressive Era. This
section also covers the development of investigative journalism in America
and the rise of influential muckraking magazines like McClure’s. It goes on to
offer an in-depth look at major muckraking investigations of social problems,
government corruption, and corporate influence. Finally, this section
explores how the muckraking tradition and progressive political ideas have
continued through the modern era.
The second section, Biographies, provides valuable biographical back-

ground on leading figures involved in muckraking journalism or the progres-
sive politics of the era. Examples include S.S. McClure, the publisher who
turned his namesake magazine into the nation’s leading muckraking journal;
Upton Sinclair, the writer who exposed horrific problems in the meatpacking
industry in his classic book The Jungle; Ida M. Tarbell, the journalist who
investigated the ruthless business practices of John D. Rockefeller and his
xiii
Standard Oil Company; and Theodore Roosevelt, the president who used
muckraking revelations to advance a slate of progressive policies. Each biog-
raphy concludes with a list of sources for further information on the profiled
individual.
The third section, Primary Sources, collects essential and illuminating
documents related to muckraking journalism in the Progressive Era and
beyond. This diverse collection includes excerpts from How the Other Half
Lives, Jacob Riis’s groundbreaking 1890 book about the struggles of the urban
poor; “The Treason of the Senate,” David Graham Phillips’s hard-hitting 1906
series on political corruption in the federal government; “The Man with the
Muck-Rake,” President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech that coined a
term for crusading journalists; and “Walter Reed and Beyond,” the Washing-
ton Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2007 report on the mistreatment of wounded
veterans at U.S. military hospitals.
Other valuable features in Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and the
Progressive Era include the following:
• A Research Topics list that provides a starting point for student
research.
• Attribution and referencing of primary sources and other quoted mate-
rial to help guide users to other valuable historical research resources.
• Glossary of Important People, Places, and Terms.
• Detailed Chronology of events with a see reference feature. Under this
arrangement, events listed in the chronology include a reference to
page numbers within the Narrative Overview wherein users can find
additional information on the event in question.
• Photographs of the leading figures and major events associated with
the Progressive Era and muckraking journalism.
• Sources for Further Study, an annotated list of noteworthy works about
the muckraking era.
• Extensive bibliography of works consulted in the creation of this book,
including books, periodicals, and Internet sites.
• A Subject Index.
xiv
Research Topics for
The Muckrakers and
the Progressive Era
S tarting a research paper can be a challenge, as students struggle to

decide what area to study. Now, each book in the Defining Moments
series includes a list of research topics, detailing some of the important
topics that recur throughout the volume and providing a valuable starting
point for research. Students working on essays and reports will find this fea-
ture especially useful as they try to narrow down their research interests.
These research topics are covered throughout the different sections of
the book: the narrative overview, the biographies, the primary sources, the
chronology, and the important people, places and terms section. This wide
coverage allows readers to view the topic through a variety of different
approaches.
Students using Defining Moments: The Muckrakers and the Progressive Era
will find information on a wide range of topics suitable for conducting histor-
ical research and writing reports:
• History of American journalism from the colonial era to modern times.
• Economic, social, and political developments that informed the rise of
the Progressive Era.
• Chief areas of interest of the muckrakers, including political corrup-
tion, mistreatment of workers, the plight of immigrants, and urban
misery and decay.
• Various ways in which the Muckraking Era and the Progressive Era
intersected—and proved mutually beneficial to one another.
• Landmarks of muckraking journalism, including Ida Tarbell’s exposé
of Standard Oil, Upton Sinclair’s investigation of the meatpacking
industry, and Lincoln Steffens’s “Shame of the Cities” series.
xv
• Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and his complicated relationship

with the muckrakers.
• Factors leading to the close of the Muckraking Era.
• Challenges facing the current generation of “muckraking” journalists.
• Legacy of the muckrakers on contemporary journalism.
• Legacy of the Progressive Era in American politics.
xvi
Narrative Overview
Prologue
5
T hey “strode like a young giant into the arena of public service,”
declared Progressive political leader Robert La Follette, and “assailed
social and political evils in high places and low.” He was describing the
influential magazines that sprung up around the turn of the twentieth centu-
ry and became home to a generation of investigative journalists known as the
muckrakers. Although these crusading writers were mainly active during the
early 1900s, their words had a profound and lasting impact on American life.
In fact, many of the changes they sparked remained in effect a century later.
Writing primarily for monthly magazines, the muckrakers conducted
investigations, raised public awareness of social and political problems, and
generated calls for reform. They examined poverty and squalor in America’s
cities, as well as the long hours, low wages, and hazardous conditions faced
by workers in the nation’s bustling mills, factories, and mines. They revealed
ruthless business practices and abuses of the public trust by large corpora-
tions and wealthy industrialists. They also exposed fraud, bribery, and cor-
ruption at all levels of government.
By bringing such issues to light, these watchdog journalists helped pro-
tect the American people—and U.S. democracy—from abuse at the hands of
powerful interests. “In a mass democratic society such as ours, in which there
are strong tendencies toward the concentration of power in political and eco-
nomic institutions, the abuse of power has deep public consequences,” noted
one scholar. “It is especially important, therefore, for a vital and vigilant press
to hold the leaders of such institutions accountable to preserve a dynamic
and participatory democratic society.”1
“Muckraker” may seem like an unusual name for a reporter. President
Theodore Roosevelt coined the term in a famous 1906 speech. Up to that
3
point in time, Roosevelt and the top journalists of the day had worked hand-
in-hand to enact a series of progressive policies. The muckrakers brought
issues to the American people’s attention, and the president used the strength
of public opinion to pressure Congress to pass important reforms. Together
they expanded the role of the federal government in regulating business
activities and addressing social problems, ushering in the Progressive Era in
American history.
In 1906, however, Roosevelt grew frustrated with what he viewed as an
excessively negative tone in American magazines and newspapers. He
claimed that many reporters were so focused on exposing problems and scan-
dals—or “raking through the muck”—that they ignored positive, uplifting
stories. Some journalists took offense when the president called them “muck-
rakers,” but others wore the title proudly. The word is still used today in ref-
erence to American journalists who uncover evidence of corporate greed,
government corruption, and other lawlessness.
Among the many people who recognized the contributions of the muck-
rakers was Robert La Follette. One of the most outspoken leaders of the Pro-
gressive Era, he served as governor of Wisconsin (1901-1906), U.S. Senator
from Wisconsin (1906-1924), and presidential candidate of the Progressive
Party (1924). In a 1912 speech before the Periodical Publishers’ Association,
La Follette reflected on the accomplishments of the muckraking magazines
and emphasized the vital role of a free press in American society.
A decade ago young men trained in journalism came to see this

[growing corporate] control of the newspapers of the country.
They saw also an unoccupied field. And they went out and
built up great periodicals and magazines. They were free.
Their pages were open to publicists and scholars and liberty,
and justice and equal rights found a free press beyond the
reach of the corrupt influence of consolidated business and
machine politics. We entered upon a new era.
The periodical, reduced in price, attractive and artistic in dress,
strode like a young giant into the arena of public service. Filled
with this spirit, quickened with human interest, it assailed
social and political evils in high places and low. It found the
power of the public service corporation and the evil influences
4
Prologue
of money in the municipal government of every large city. It

found franchises worth millions of dollars secured by bribery;
police in partnership with thieves and crooks and prostitutes. It
found juries “fixed” and an established business plying its trade
between litigants and the back door of blinking justice.
It found Philadelphia giving away franchises [contracts], fran-

chises not supposedly or estimated to be worth $2,500,000,
but for which she had been openly offered and refused
$2,500,000. Milwaukee they found giving away street-car fran-
chises worth $8,000,000 against the protests of her indignant
citizens. It found Chicago robbed in tax-payments of immense
value by corporate owners of property through fraud and
forgery on a gigantic scale; it found the aldermen of St. Louis,
organized to boodle the city with a criminal compact, on file in
the dark corner of a safety deposit vault.
The free and independent periodical turned her searchlight on

state legislatures, and made plain as the sun at noonday the
absolute control of the corrupt lobby. She opened the closed
doors of the secret caucus, the secret committee, the secret
conference, behind which United States Senators and Mem-
bers of Congress betrayed the public interest into the hands of
railroads, the trusts, the tariff mongers, and the centralized
banking power of the country. She revealed the same influ-
ences back of judicial and other appointments. She took the
public through the great steel plants and into the homes of the
men who toil twelve hours a day and seven days in the week.
And the public heard their cry of despair. She turned her cam-
era into the mills and shops where little children are robbed of
every chance of life that nourishes vigorous bodies and sound
minds, and the pinched faces and dwarfed figures told their
pathetic story on her clean white pages....
No men ever faced graver responsibilities. None have ever

been called to a more unselfish, patriotic service. I believe that
when the final test comes, you will not be found wanting; you
will not desert and leave the people to depend upon the public
5
platform alone, but you will hold aloft the lamp of Truth,
lighting the way for the preservation of representative govern-
ment and the liberty of the American people.2
Notes
1 Weinberg, Lila Shaffer. The Muckrakers. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. xv.
2 La Follette, Robert M. “Speech Delivered at the Annual Banquet of the Periodical Publishers’ Asso-
ciation,” February 2, 1912. In La Follette’s Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experi-
ences. Madison, WI: Robert M. La Follette Co., 1913, pp. 793-797.
6
Chapter One
Events Leading Up to
the Progressive Era
5
Machines of steel and copper and wood and stone, and
bookkeeping and managerial talent, were creating a new
order. It looked glamorous. It seemed permanent; yet ... dis-
content rose in the hearts of the people.
—William Allen White
T he Progressive Era developed in response to rapid changes that had

taken place in American society over the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury. When the Industrial Revolution swept across the United States
during the 1800s, it brought remarkable advances in technology, communica-
tion, transportation, energy, and commerce. Within the space of a few
decades, these innovations transformed the basic character of the nation from
one of farms and rural communities to one of factories and bustling cities.
Although industrialization helped lift the United States to new heights of
prosperity and power, not all citizens shared in its benefits. A few talented,
ambitious, and lucky individuals built vast business empires and amassed
huge fortunes during this time. But their success came at the expense of mil-
lions of American workers who toiled long hours under dangerous condi-
tions in the nation’s mines, factories, slaughterhouses, and railroad yards.
While the rich enjoyed lives of luxury, these workers struggled to raise fami-
lies in crowded, dirty cities full of poverty, crime, and disease. By the turn of
the twentieth century, a growing number of Americans insisted that this situ-
ation needed to change. They demanded that the U.S. government take action
to curtail the power of big business and raise the standard of living for work-
ers and their families.
7
The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution started in England in the 1700s, when inven-
tors came up with a series of new machines that dramatically reduced the time
and effort required to produce clothing, rugs, and other textile goods. Before
this time, textiles had been produced in limited quantities by individuals and
families working at home or in small shops. Each worker performed all of the
various steps involved in making textiles, including spinning wool or cotton
into threads, weaving the threads into cloth, and sewing the cloth to create
clothing. The new machines made these jobs faster and easier, but they were
too big and expensive for individual families to afford. As a result, most textile
production moved to large, centralized mills and factories. In these facilities,
each worker performed a single, specialized task in the production process
over and over again. Since textile workers had to live near the factories in
which they worked, cities quickly sprouted around these industrial facilities.
The advances in English textile manufacturing were followed by a num-
ber of innovations in other industries. Many of these new developments, such
as the invention of the steam engine in 1769, allowed motor-powered
machines to replace the muscle power of men or animals. By the early 1800s,
the Industrial Revolution spread beyond the borders of England to other
parts of the world. In many ways, the newly formed United States provided a
perfect environment for the innovations in business and technology to take
root and grow.
The United States had a number of advantages that made rapid industri-
alization possible. The nation possessed abundant natural resources, includ-
ing fertile farmland, vast tracts of timber, a network of rivers and lakes navi-
gable by boat, and valuable reserves of coal, iron, copper, and other minerals.
The country also had a large, ambitious labor force that welcomed technolog-
ical advances as an opportunity to improve their lives. Finally, the U.S. gov-
ernment pursued policies that promoted industrial development. Leaders of
the ruling Republican Party provided tariffs to protect manufacturers and
subsidies for building railroad lines and telegraph networks.
The Industrial Revolution quickly spread through the American econo-
my, with progress in one area leading to additional innovations in another.
Advances in iron mining and steel production, for example, provided the
materials needed to build railroads, factories, and skyscrapers. The develop-
ment of steam shipping and railways, meanwhile, allowed for the movement
8
Chapter One: Events Leading Up to the Progressive Era
When the Industrial Revolution swept across the United States in the 1800s, millions of
Americans went to work in large mills and factories.
of food and manufactured goods to population centers. These transportation

networks also facilitated the process of westward expansion, which opened
new territory for settlement and development.
The American economy truly took off in the years following the Civil
War (1861-65). By 1870 the United States trailed only England in world com-
merce. Dramatic improvements in manufacturing, agriculture, transporta-
tion, communication, and other industries continued over the next few
decades. The United States stood as the world’s leading manufacturer at the
turn of the twentieth century, and the total value of all products made in the
country increased by more than 200 percent between 1900 and 1920.
9
Impacts on American Society

The rapid industrialization of the United States had striking impacts on
American life and culture. For some people, the results were overwhelmingly
positive. A generation of successful businessmen emerged to take full advan-
tage of the economic opportunities that became available during that era. Such
giants of American industry and finance as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller,
Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie built huge business empires and
amassed great personal fortunes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. However, critics of these men called them “robber barons” who
used ruthless business tactics and exploited workers for their own gain.
These business titans controlled large corporations or
Not all American trusts of related companies that dominated banking, rail-
citizens enjoyed the roads, oil, mining, iron and steel production, and a variety
of other industries. They used their extraordinary wealth,
fruits of power, and influence to manipulate government officials,
industrialization. eliminate competition, command high prices, and collect
While the upper and huge profits. These businesses exerted a remarkable degree
of control over the U.S. economy. By 1909, the top 1 per-
middle classes enjoyed cent of American business firms produced nearly half of all
lives of luxury and manufactured goods.
comfort, millions of The leading industrialists and their families formed a
working-class rich and powerful upper class in American society. At the
Americans faced a turn of the twentieth century, a few thousand millionaires
controlled an amazing 90 percent of the nation’s resources.
daily struggle
They displayed their extreme wealth by building huge
for survival. mansions and ornate offices, spending tens of thousands of
dollars on lavish dinner parties, and sailing fancy yachts.
At the same time, industrialization created a sizeable middle class of
business managers and other professionals. The emerging middle class built
comfortable homes in safe, pleasant communities. They could afford new
products and conveniences that industrialization made available, such as
indoor plumbing, electric lights, telephones, preserved foods, and ready-
made clothing. New department stores and retail catalogs—including Macy’s,
Woolworth’s, and Sears & Roebuck—emerged around this time to meet their
needs. Middle-class families also created a market for new leisure and recre-
ational activities, such as sporting events, musical theater, and circuses.
10
Not all American citizens enjoyed

the fruits of industrialization, however.
While the upper and middle classes
enjoyed lives of luxury and comfort,
millions of working-class Americans
faced a daily struggle for survival (see
sidebar “Social Darwinism,” p. 16).
Many people in this situation were
recently arrived immigrants. Earlier
waves of immigrants to the United
States had hailed mostly from western
Europe. After 1880, however, the vast
majority of immigrants came from
countries in eastern and southern
Europe, including Italy, Poland, and
Russia. Facing food shortages and
political instability in their homelands,
they saw the United States as a land of
opportunity. They flocked to America’s
shores in hopes of acquiring land for
farming or finding jobs in booming fac-
tories. An incredible 14.5 million immi-
grants arrived in the United States
between 1900 and 1915 alone.
Problems in Cities and Factories Andrew Carnegie (front) was one of the
Immigrants and other members of powerful business titans who became known
as “robber barons.”
the working class were most vulnerable
to a number of problems that arose in
the nation’s cities and factories during the age of industrialization. This era saw
a marked shift in American life from a rural, farming culture to an urban,
industrial culture. The promise of factory jobs lured millions of people to big
cities. The nation’s cities grew rapidly and often haphazardly in an effort to
accommodate the sudden influx of people and increase in industrial capacity.
Chicago, for instance, underwent a complete transformation over a fifty-year
period. “[In 1840] Chicago had been a village of log huts around Fort Dearborn
holding scarcely 5,000 residents,” one historian noted. “By 1890, it was a city of
11
In the early twentieth century, industrial workers like these Pennsylvania coal miners toiled
long hours in difficult jobs for low wages.
165 square miles with one million residents, increasing by some 50,000 each
year, transforming pastures seemingly overnight into swarming tenements.”1
In many cities, the population explosions simply overwhelmed the
resources of local governments. They were unable to plan effectively for such
12
rapid growth and provide services for so many new residents. As a result,
most large American cities were full of poverty, hopelessness, crime, and
decay. Poor city dwellers often lived in crowded, dirty tenement houses and
slums. Sometimes older homes that had once housed a single family were
converted into tenements, with an entire family crammed into each room.
The overcrowding and lack of indoor plumbing led to the spread of diseases
like typhoid, cholera, and tuberculosis. Dangerous fires often swept through
whole neighborhoods, and many desperate city residents became involved in
prostitution and other criminal activities. The rapid growth of cities was
reflected in a 300 percent increase in the nation’s murder rate over the last
two decades of the nineteenth century.
Going to work offered no relief for most poor residents of American
cities. The sheer number of workers available to fill positions in the nation’s
mines and factories gave employers a great deal of power to exploit workers.
Many companies demanded that their employees work long hours—com-
monly seventy hours per week—for very low wages. Most factory jobs
required workers to perform repetitive tasks all day long in hot, dirty, and
often dangerous conditions. Few laws existed to protect workers on the job,
so large corporations frequently ignored safety concerns. As a result, job-
related injuries and death were common. From 1880 to 1900, for example, an
average of 35,000 industrial workers were killed on the job each year, and
around 500,000 more were injured.
Despite the terrible working conditions, many poor Americans consid-
ered themselves lucky to have jobs because employment was so uncertain. As
much as 30 percent of the urban work force was unemployed at least part of
each year due to shortages of raw materials, breakdowns of machinery, sea-
sonal changes in demand, or other reasons. In many poor families, women
and children had to join the workforce in order to earn enough money to sur-
vive. By 1900 as many as three million American children were toiling at full-
time jobs in mines and factories.
Early Reform Efforts

By the late 1800s, an increasing number of people recognized the negative
impacts of industrialization on American society. Growth and change had
occurred so rapidly that there was little time to address the difficult economic and
political problems that arose. Many people noticed the enormous contrast
13
between the wealthy industrialists who controlled the powerful corporations and
trusts, and the millions of industrial workers who lived in poverty and despair in
the nation’s cities and mining communities. Some critics blamed greed and cor-
ruption on the part of big business for the problems that had developed.
A few groups demanded that the U.S. government step in and reform the
unfair practices of big business. One of the earliest organized reform efforts
came from American farmers. As farming became increasingly mechanized in
the 1800s, farmers experienced higher costs of production and lower prices
for crops. Their problems were compounded by the high
“There are real and rates charged by the big railroad companies for shipping
freight to and from rural areas. Many farmers went so far
great evils [in into debt that they lost their land to powerful banking
American business],” interests. A farmers’ organization called the Grange arose in
declared President direct response to these events. It pressured state govern-
ments to regulate railroad shipping rates and overhaul
Theodore Roosevelt, bank lending practices.
“and a resolute and Another group that mounted a major reform effort
practical effort must be was organized labor. Anger about long hours, low wages,
made to correct and harsh work environments led some industrial workers
to form unions. Labor unions gave workers a much
these evils.” stronger position from which to negotiate with corporate
employers. Union leaders bargained for shorter work
hours, better wages and benefits, and safer working conditions. If manage-
ment refused to listen to their demands, the unions could fight back with
work stoppages and strikes.
One of the most famous labor-management disputes of the late nine-
teenth century took place in Chicago in 1894. Employees of the Pullman
Palace Car Company went on strike when the company’s owners sharply
reduced wages—but refused to reduce rents on the company-owned homes
in which the workers lived or the price of goods at company-owned stores.
The strike soon spread to American Railway Union members across the coun-
try. Responding to concerns from wealthy railroad owners and community
leaders about the financial impact of a railroad strike, President Grover
Cleveland ordered federal troops to Illinois to break up the strike and arrest
union leaders. Many people saw Cleveland’s response to the Pullman strike as
clear evidence that the federal government favored the interests of large cor-
porations over those of American workers.
14
This 1906 political cartoon suggests that wealthy business owners gained their luxurious
lifestyle at the expense of the working class.
15
Social Darwinism
B efore the start of the Progressive Era, many influential thinkers used a
theory called Social Darwinism to justify the huge gulf that existed
between the richest and poorest Americans. This theory was based on the
work of Charles Darwin, an English naturalist who wrote the 1859 book On
the Origin of Species. Darwin’s book said that all animal species evolved or
changed over time to adapt to the conditions in which they lived. Under
Darwin’s theory of evolution, the animals that adapted most readily were
the ones that survived to pass on their superior genetic characteristics to
future generations. This idea became known as “survival of the fittest,”
and over time it led to improvement of the entire species.
Some people claimed that Darwin’s theory explained some of the
changes that took place in American society during the Industrial Revolu-
tion. The American sociologist William Graham Sumner and the English
philosopher Herbert Spencer, for example, said that survival of the fittest
applied to the wealth and social status acquired by human beings. Under
their theory, which became known as Social Darwinism, rich people suc-
ceeded because they were genetically superior to ordinary people. Poor
In most cases, the powerful corporations and trusts of this era paid little
attention to the demands of workers. Determined to maximize profits, they
ruthlessly resisted unionization efforts and crushed strikes. Some skilled
craftsmen managed to negotiate some improvements to their wages and
working conditions, but unskilled workers generally met with less success.
As a result, only one out of every ten American workers held union member-
ship by the turn of the twentieth century.
Populists Demand Change

Although farmers and factory workers made little progress in fighting
the corporate trusts, their efforts did get the attention of U.S. lawmakers. The
public’s growing unhappiness with the overwhelming power of big business
convinced the federal government to make a few significant changes in the
16
people, on the other hand, lacked the intelligence, drive, or other quali-
ties necessary to thrive in the industrialized world.
Social Darwinism held a great deal of appeal for America’s wealthy
business owners. It made them feel as if they deserved to earn great for-
tunes and live luxurious lives, and it gave them an excuse to ignore the
poverty and hardships suffered by others. “It is the leaders who do the
new things that count,” declared Andrew Carnegie, who controlled the
American steel industry. “All these have been Individualistic to a degree
beyond ordinary men and worked in perfect freedom; each and every one
a character unlike anybody else; an original; gifted beyond most others of
his kind, hence his leadership.”
The Progressive Movement of the early twentieth century rejected
the theory of Social Darwinism. Progressives argued that the rich gained
their wealth and power not through superior genetic traits, but through
greed, ruthless business practices, and exploitation of the working class.
They declared that their intention was to change this situation and ensure
fairness and opportunity for all Americans.
Source: Carnegie, Andrew. The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays. Edited
by Edward C. Kirkland. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1962, p. 18.
late 1800s. In 1887, for instance, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce
Act. This law created the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Com-
merce Commission (ICC), to oversee the operations of the nation’s railroads.
The ICC could not curb the abuses of the giant railroad corporations, howev-
er, because it had limited power to enforce its rules.
In 1890 the federal government made another attempt to reduce the
power of big business by passing the Sherman Antitrust Act. This law was
intended to prevent trusts from gaining monopoly control over an entire
industry. It failed to accomplish this aim, however, because the U.S. Supreme
Court interpreted the law in ways that were favorable to big business.
In 1891 members of farm organizations, labor unions, and other disaffect-
ed groups formed a national political party to represent their common interests.
17
President Theodore Roosevelt, who took office in 1901, pursued a wide range of progressive
reforms.
Known as the People’s Party or Populists, they wanted to limit the power of cor-
porations, attack government corruption, and arrange for federal ownership of
the nation’s railroad, telegraph, and telephone industries. They also favored the
passage of new tax laws and restrictions on immigration to the United States.
After claiming six seats in the U.S. Senate during the 1894 elections, the
Populists endorsed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in the
1896 presidential race. When Bryan lost to Republican William McKinley,
however, the party’s fragile coalition of interest groups fell apart. Still, the
basic ideas behind the Populist Party—instituting reforms to limit the influ-
ence of big business and give the people more power in government—formed
the heart of the Progressive Movement.
18
The Progressive Movement

Although many people recognized the need for reform in the late 1800s, it
was difficult to bring diverse interest groups together to demand change. At the
turn of the century, however, an increasing number of educated, middle-class
Americans came to share the discontent of these groups. They recognized that
the nation had reached the point where it needed to address the problems that
arose out of industrialization. They believed that the problems presented impor-
tant opportunities to reform American institutions and improve society for the
benefit of all. When these middle-class Americans joined the fight to cure the ills
affecting American society, it marked the start of the Progressive Era.
Progressives had a long list of concerns, including poverty, child labor,
dangerous working conditions, government corruption, and lack of regula-
tion of big business. They encouraged federal and state governments to take a
more active role in solving these problems and spreading the benefits of eco-
nomic growth more widely. Many of these goals were shared by Theodore
Roosevelt (see Roosevelt biography, p. 137), who became president in Sep-
tember 1901, after Republican president William McKinley was shot and
killed in Buffalo, New York.
At first, many people expected Roosevelt to continue the conservative poli-
cies of his predecessor. But his speeches and actions soon proved that his philos-
ophy of governance would be dramatically different. Roosevelt recognized that
the powerful corporations and trusts wielded too much power and influence in
the country. He believed that the government had a responsibility to protect and
serve the public interest against excessive influence from big business. “The cap-
tains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this continent, who
have built up our commerce, who have developed our manufactures, have on
the whole done great good to our people,” Roosevelt acknowledged. “Yet it is
also true that there are real and great evils [in American business] and a resolute
and practical effort must be made to correct these evils”2 (see “President
Theodore Roosevelt Promises Progressive Reform,” p. 159).
Notes
1 Lukas, Anthony. Big Trouble. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 305.
2 Roosevelt, Theodore. “Theodore Roosevelt: First Annual Message,” December 3, 1901. In Woolley,
John T., and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project. Available online at http://www
.presidency.ucsb.edu/?pid=29542.
19
Chapter Two
The Role of
Journalism in America
5
If we can let in light and air, if the people understand ... they
will at least proceed forward.
—S.S. McClure
A fter taking office in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt asked the

American people to support a long list of progressive reforms. He felt
that the U.S. government had an obligation to rein in the abuses of big
corporations and make society more fair and democratic for all its members.
Public support for these policies was strong, in part because of the work of a
generation of investigative journalists who came to prominence at this time.
Known as “muckrakers,” these crusading journalists wrote long, factual-
ly detailed articles that exposed government corruption, poverty, hazardous
working conditions, child labor, wasteful use of natural resources, and other
problems facing American society. Historians Arthur and Lila Weinberg
described the muckrakers as “the press agents for the Progressive movement.
To these writers and to the fast-growing muckraking magazines goes the
credit for arousing a lethargic public to righteous indignation. They spotlight-
ed Progressivism, and gave this political movement the impetus that aided it
in the passage of social and economic legislation.”1
The Early History of American Journalism

When German printer Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type
and the mechanical printing press in the 1400s, people in positions of power
recognized that the printed word had the potential to influence public opin-
21
ion. From their first appearance in America, newspapers and magazines

upheld the journalistic tradition of alerting readers to problems in govern-
ment and society. During the colonial period, though, British authorities
often responded to critical stories about the English crown by limiting or
censoring the press.
A British printer named Benjamin Harris started the first newspaper in
the American colonies in Boston in 1690. Entitled Publick Occurrences Both
Forreign and Domestick, it was originally intended to be a
The muckrakers were monthly journal. The first edition—printed on four sheets
the size of notebook paper—featured articles about a small-
“the press agents for pox epidemic, an Indian attack, a house that caught on fire,
the Progressive and a local person who committed suicide. But Harris
movement,” according never got the chance to publish a second edition. His news-
paper was immediately shut down by the governor of
to historians Arthur
Massachusetts Bay Colony for publishing “doubtful and
and Lila Weinberg. uncertain Reports.”2
“They spotlighted The first ongoing newspaper in the colonies was the
Progressivism, and Boston News-Letter, launched in 1704 by John Campbell.
Campbell’s paper took a serious approach to the news and
gave this political
often relied on reports from ships arriving in the city’s harbor.
movement the impetus Beginning in 1721, the News-Letter faced stiff competition
that aided it in the from the New England Courant, which was published by
brothers James and Benjamin Franklin. The Courant provided
passage of social and
readers with a lighthearted look at current events, as a note in
economic legislation.” the first edition explained: “The main Design of the Weekly
Paper will be to entertain the Town with the most comical
and diverting Incidents of Humane Life.”3 But the Franklins also published edi-
torials that criticized the Massachusetts governor. One of these pieces landed
James Franklin in jail.
Despite such conflicts with British authorities, the number of newspa-
pers in the American colonies increased steadily, especially after they started
accepting paid advertising around 1750. American newspapers became much
more interested in political affairs in 1765, following England’s passage of the
Stamp Act. This law required all legal documents, books, and newspapers
printed in the colonies to appear on specially stamped paper. The only way to
obtain a stamp was to pay a high tax. Since the tax hit printers the hardest,
they led a furious colonial resistance to the Stamp Act.
22
Chapter Two: The Role of Journalism in America
By the turn of the twentieth century, young boys known as “newsies” could be found selling
newspapers on street corners in cities across the United States.
Some American newspapers continued publishing on illegal paper after

the law took effect, while others announced that they would suspend publi-
cation rather than purchase stamped paper. The day before the law took
effect, William Bradford III’s Pennsylvania Journal famously laid out its front
page to look like a tombstone. No American newspapers obeyed the Stamp
Act, and British lawmakers were forced to repeal it a short time later. “Such a
triumph not only emboldened the newspapers to defy English authority, but
also taught the political organizers and the manipulators of public opinion
how useful newspapers could be to them,” Frank Luther Mott wrote in his
history of American journalism. “From this time forward the press was recog-
nized as a strong arm of the Patriot movement.”4
23
Colonial newspapers played an important role in shaping public opinion

in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Such figures as John
Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and others published politically
charged essays that encouraged the colonists to rebel against English rule and
fight for independence. Once the war began, newspapers helped to raise peo-
ple’s spirits. Thomas Paine’s inspirational essay “American Crisis” first
appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal in December 1776.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Paine wrote.
“We are a democracy,” “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
declared publisher consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more
glorious the triumph.”5
Joseph Pulitzer, “and
In 1787, when the Founding Fathers gathered to cre-
there is only one way ate a Constitution for the victorious United States, they
to get a democracy on were quick to recognize the role newspapers had played in
its feet in the matter of the fight for independence. The First Amendment to the
Constitution guaranteed that, in America, the press would
its individual, its
always be free to operate without government control or
social, its municipal, interference.
its state, its national
conduct, and that is by The Development of Modern Newspapers
Even with freedom of the press established, American
keeping the public
newspapers suffered a decline in quality and objectivity
informed about what after the war. Printing was so expensive and time-consum-
is going on.” ing that most newspapers did not earn much money. Some
papers tried to attract readers by publishing sensational
stories. Others were taken over by political parties or can-
didates and printed more propaganda than news. Still, newspapers did serve
the valuable purpose of transmitting information to people in far-flung areas
of the rapidly expanding United States.
The advances of the Industrial Revolution hit newspaper publishing in the
1830s. The invention of the cylinder press allowed printers to produce 1,500
newspapers per hour—a tremendous improvement over the few hundred copies
per night that could be printed before. The price of newspapers dropped accord-
ingly, from an annual subscription price of eight to ten dollars per year to just
pennies per day. Combined with the movement of millions of Americans from
rural areas to cities, these developments made newspapers accessible to a much
larger segment of the population. Around the same time, a new generation of
24
editors came on the scene. They empha-

sized news stories that held interest for
the masses, such as local events, gossip,
and scandals. Such changes resulted in a
surge in the number of ongoing newspa-
pers from around 1,000 in 1830 to 3,000
by 1860. About 10 percent of these
papers were published daily, while the
remainder appeared weekly.
Several influential modern news-
papers got their starts around this time.
The New York Sun published its first
edition on September 3, 1833. Editor
Benjamin H. Day explained that the
Sun, with the motto “It Shines for All,”
intended “to lay before the public, at a
price within the means of everyone,
ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY.”6 With-
in a short time the Sun was selling
8,000 copies per day, more than double
William Randolph Hearst, pictured in 1904,
the circulation of its nearest competitor. played an important role in the development
One historian noted that it launched “a of American newspapers during the
revolution in American newspapers. muckraking era.
The Sun could be bought from hawkers
on the street for a penny a copy. It stressed local news, crime reporting, and
human interest; it was highly readable and full of things the readers talked to
each other about.... Day created a new class of newspaper readers.”7
The New York Herald published its first issue in 1835. It provided solid
coverage of financial news and was also the first American paper to maintain
full-time overseas news bureaus. But the Herald was probably most famous for
the fiery editorials penned by its editor, James Gordon Bennett. Although his
opinions helped increase circulation of the paper, they also incited angry read-
ers to beat him up on many occasions. Another crusading editor was Horace
Greeley, who launched the New York Tribune in 1841. Greeley used the pages
of his paper to argue for the abolition of slavery, purer milk for children, and
cleaner city streets. He influenced other newspapers to move beyond news
reporting and worked to shape public opinion about the issues of the day.
25
Another famous New York paper was the New York Times. Launched in
1851, it provided readers with balanced, objective reporting of complicated
news stories. During the 1870s, the paper conducted a lengthy investigation
of political corruption in New York City. After combing through municipal
financial records and contracts, Times reporters published details of how city
leaders dispensed jobs and contracts in exchange for political support and
bribes. Their exposure of these underhanded dealings helped put the infa-
mous politician William “Boss” Tweed in jail.
Pulitzer and Hearst

When Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883, he
promised to “expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses
[and] battle for the people with earnest sincerity.”8 Under his leadership, the
World was the first paper to post full-time reporters in Washington, D.C., to
follow the president’s activities and cover news from the Capitol. Pulitzer also
attracted readers with undercover reports from the daring correspondent Nel-
lie Bly, who pretended to be insane in order to expose the terrible treatment of
patients at New York City’s mental hospitals.
After publisher William Randolph Hearst purchased the New York Morn-
ing Journal in 1892, it became known for its attention-grabbing, sensational,
and often exaggerated news stories. This emphasis on shocking and scandalous
news—which resembled the content of modern supermarket tabloids—became
known as yellow journalism. The name came from a popular comic strip that
appeared in many such newspapers, “The Yellow Kid” by Richard F. Outcault.
The main character was a goofy-looking child with a bald head, big ears, a gap-
toothed smile, and a yellow nightshirt. He was pictured in many situations con-
nected with news events of the day.
The technology of newspapers continued to improve in the late 1800s.

The introduction of a new printing technology called halftone reproduction
allowed papers to publish clearer photographs. Many publications also
increased their use of color in supplements and comic strips around this time.
These changes contributed to an increase in the number of ongoing newspa-
pers from 7,000 in 1880 to over 12,000 in 1890. Although nearly every major
city in the United States was served by one or more daily newspapers, New
York City remained the center of the newspaper world during this time.
26
The Rise of Magazines

Newspapers were not the only
sources of printed information available
to Americans. The first magazines
appeared in the 1740s, and more than
forty ongoing publications got started
over the next fifty years. The nation
experienced a surge in new magazine
introductions during the early 1800s,
including such famous titles as the Sat-
urday Evening Post, Godey’s Lady’s Book,
Harper’s Weekly, and the Atlantic Month-
ly. Historians attribute the jump in mag-
azine publishing to technological break-
throughs like the invention of the cylin-
der press, along with the growth of an
educated, urban population with a thirst
for news and entertainment. Magazines
could generally present a more in-depth
look at the nation’s social and political
life than newspapers. “American maga-
zines were offering readers a compre- McClure’s, founded in 1893, was part of the
hensive view of national life in the new generation of general-interest monthly
1850s—a mirror held up to an expand- magazines that sold for ten cents per issue.
ing, struggling, chaotic country that was
on the verge of postwar greatness.”9
Improvements in printing technology, paper manufacturing, and photo
reproduction contributed to an explosion of magazine publishing in the three
decades following the end of the Civil War. The number of different maga-
zines in publication in the United States grew from around 700 in 1865 to
exceed 3,000 in 1885 and 5,000 by 1895. Many special-interest publications
were launched during this period to represent every possible hobby and
leisure activity in American life.
The end of the century saw the rise of high-quality, general-interest mag-
azines that achieved national distribution. Cosmopolitan published its first
issue in 1886, followed by Collier’s in 1888, McClure’s in 1893, and Every-
body’s in 1899. All of these monthly journals maintained a distinctive tone
27
thanks to their editors, who took charge of hiring staff writers and selecting
topics for stories. A typical issue featured in-depth, factual articles about cur-
rent events, scientific discoveries, world exploration, and entertainment.
These magazines also published the latest fiction and poetry by popular writ-
ers of the day, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur
Conan Doyle, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, and Mark Twain.
This new generation of magazines expanded their influence—as well as
the size of America’s reading public—by charging a low price of ten cents per
issue. “With Munsey’s, McClure’s, and Cosmopolitan selling at half the rates of
the Century, Harper’s, and Scribner’s, the die was cast—the country was to be the
empire of the low-priced, heavily illustrated, advertisement-
“The magazine press, laden, popular monthlies with their contents emphasizing
youthful optimism, self-improvement, and success,”10 one
and especially
historian noted.
McClure’s, [became] a
forum for new The Muckrakers Arrive
questions about the The rise of high-interest national magazines coincid-
nature and direction of ed with Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Roosevelt spear-
American society and headed the Progressive Movement by calling attention to
the government corruption and corporate greed underly-
government,” one ing the nation’s surface prosperity. His reform efforts
historian noted. received a great deal of reinforcement from the work of the
investigative journalists known as muckrakers. They con-
ducted extensive research into a variety of political and social problems,
then detailed their findings in compelling feature articles that appeared
mainly in the popular magazines of the era. “What was new and makes the
muckraking era unique,” according to the Weinbergs, “is that for the first
time there was a group of writers and a concentration of magazines hammer-
ing away at the ills they found in society. Neither before nor since has there
been in periodical literature anything which can compare to the relentless
drive for exposure.”11
The muckrakers enjoyed a number of advantages that increased the
impact of their work. First, in an era when television and the Internet had not
yet been invented, their magazines were the only news source that was dis-
tributed nationally and reached wide audiences. Second, their readership
included many educated, middle-class people who possessed a thirst for
28
Professional journalists, like the men pictured in this photo, aggressively pursued stories about
the problems facing American society during the muckraking era.
knowledge and a sense of civic responsibility. “The muckrakers had a power-

ful effect on the middle class, arousing its concern about social ills and shab-
by politics,” one historian explained. “Before they launched their attacks,
voices of dissent and disenchantment had been heard, but the expert journal-
ists who wrote for the ten-cent [magazines] cut through the national confu-
sion and gave Americans a full report on what was happening to them with-
out their knowledge or consent.”12
Finally, the muckrakers had the guidance and support of brilliant editors
and publishers who shared their concerns about the problems facing American
society. Joseph Pulitzer once described the public responsibility of newspapers
and magazines by saying that “We are a democracy, and there is only one way to
get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its munici-
pal, its state, its national conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed
about what is going on. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a
29
S.S. McClure’s Famous January 1903 Editorial
M any historians pinpoint the January 1903 issue of McClure’s magazine

as the start of the muckraking journalism movement. That issue fea-
tured three groundbreaking investigative reports about abuses of power
and disrespect for the law in American business, government, and society.
In the editorial excerpted below, publisher S.S. McClure famously calls
readers’ attention to the situation.
Concerning Three Articles in This Number of McClure’s, and a
Coincidence That May Set Us Thinking
How many of those who have read through this number of the
magazine noticed that it contains three articles on one subject?
We did not plan it so; it is a coincidence that the January
McClure’s is such an arraignment of American character as should
make every one of us stop and think. How many noticed that?
The leading article, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” might have
been called “The American Contempt of Law.” That title could
well have served for the current chapter of Miss Tarbell’s History
of Standard Oil. And it would have fitted perfectly Mr. Baker’s
“The Right to Work.” All together, these articles come pretty
near showing how universal is this dangerous trait of ours.
trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice that does not live by secrecy. Get
these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the
press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.”13
The reports of the muckrakers shocked the American people and inspired
them to demand change. In this way, the writers fed the fires of Roosevelt’s
progressive reform efforts. “They turned local issues into national issues, local
protests into national crusades,” one writer explained. “They didn’t preach to
the converted; they did the converting.”14 Of course, the magazines also bene-
fited from the muckraking crusades, in the form of increased advertising sales
and circulation. By 1906, when the muckrakers reached the height of their
30
Miss Tarbell has our capitalists conspiring among themselves,

deliberately, shrewdly, upon legal advice, to break the law so
far as it restrained them, and to misuse it to restrain others
who were in their way. Mr. Baker shows labor, the ancient
enemy of capital, and the chief complainant of the trusts’
unlawful acts, itself committing and excusing crimes. And in
“The Shame of Minneapolis,” we see the administration of a
city employing criminals to commit crimes for the profit of the
elected officials, while the citizens—Americans of good stock
and more than average culture, and honest, healthy Scandina-
vians—stood by complacent and not alarmed.
Capitalists, workingmen, politicians, citizens—all breaking the
law, or letting it be broken. Who is left to uphold it?... There is
no one left; none but all of us....
We all are doing our worst and making the public pay. The
public is the people. We forget that we all are the people; that
while each of us in his group can shove off on the rest the bill
of today, the debt is only postponed; the rest are passing it on
back to us. We have to pay in the end, every one of us. And in
the end the sum total of the debt will be our liberty.
Source: Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg, eds. The Muckrakers. Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 4.
popularity and influence, annual circulation of the top ten magazines that
focused on investigative journalism totaled three million.
Although the muckrakers tackled a wide variety of topics—from unsani-
tary conditions in meatpacking plants to poverty in the nation’s cities—their
work centered around one major theme: betrayal. “America’s citizens had been
betrayed by those who had supposedly made the country what it was, by the
men who had built the great corporations and who had made the free market a
national religion,” John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman wrote in The Maga-
zine in America, 1741-1990. “In this betrayal, they had been abetted and aided
by politicians at every level, but particularly those in the highest positions of
31
power. Reading these revelations, most Americans felt both shock and outrage,
and as one exposé followed another, they developed a fascination for what was
being told to them and were scarcely able to wait for the next revelation.”15
McClure’s Magazine Leads the Movement

Although dozens of magazines and newspapers published investigative
articles in the early 1900s, McClure’s magazine is generally credited with launch-
ing the muckraking movement. When publisher S.S. (Samuel Sidney) McClure
(see McClure biography, p. 119) founded his namesake magazine in 1893, he
told readers that his goal was to present “articles of timely interest” about “what
is newest or most important in every department of human activity.”16
What set McClure’s apart from other monthly journals of the era was its
stable of talented, passionate young journalists. McClure paid his writers a
generous monthly salary, rather than a rate based on how many words or
inches of type they produced. This policy freed the journalists to spend weeks
or even years researching and writing articles. McClure expected his writers
to meet high standards of factual accuracy and write in an engaging style.
From its first issue, McClure’s offered readers in-depth articles about the
most important events of the day, from international conflicts to revolution-
ary new inventions. The magazine distinguished itself by analyzing these
events and putting them into perspective for Americans. It challenged readers
to think about the nation, and its place in the world, in different ways. “The
magazine press, and especially McClure’s, [became] a forum for new questions
about the nature and direction of American society and government,”17 one
historian noted. The formula proved very popular, and the magazine’s circula-
tion grew from 60,000 copies per monthly issue in 1894 to 250,000 in 1896
to over 350,000 by the turn of the century.
Many historians trace the birth of the muckraking era to the January
1903 issue of McClure’s. In addition to the usual short stories, poems, and
news articles, the issue featured three groundbreaking investigative reports
that exposed serious problems in American business, government, and soci-
ety. One of these reports, by correspondent Ida M. Tarbell, was part of a series
on the history of the Standard Oil Company. It detailed some of the ruthless
business tactics used by its owner, the phenomenally wealthy John D. Rocke-
feller, in building the powerful trust. Another article, by Ray Stannard Baker,
reported on appalling working conditions and violent labor-management
32
conflict in the Pennsylvania coal mining

industry. In the third report, Lincoln Steffens
examined rampant political corruption in the
city government of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
McClure and his writers noticed that
these three reports offered variations on the
same theme: a general contempt for law in
American society. McClure identified the
theme for readers in an editorial that appeared
in the January 1903 issue (see sidebar “S.S.
McClure’s Famous January 1903 Editorial,” p.
30). And from that point forward, McClure’s
and many other magazines increasingly turned
their focus toward publishing hard-hitting
investigative reports on the various problems
facing American society. Years later, McClure
claimed that he had not intended to launch a
reform-journalism movement. He said that the
January 1903 issue “came from no formulated
plan to attack existing institutions, but was the
result of merely taking up in the magazine Publisher S.S. McClure and his stable of
talented writers made McClure’s a
some of the problems that were beginning to
leading muckraking journal.
interest the people a little before the newspa-
pers and the other magazines took them up.”18
In any case, the shocking exposés ignited calls for reform among the Amer-
ican people. “It was no new game to lift the rocks in twentieth-century America
and watch the bugs scramble for cover, but what was new was the expertise and
authority of the writing,... and the challenge accepted by Theodore Roosevelt in
the White House,” wrote one historian. “The country was quickly fragmenting
into militant economic interest groups bent upon class warfare.... By document-
ing this perilous national situation, by giving it reality, drama, and human inter-
est, the January McClure’s was ensured a success.”19
Notes
1 Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg, eds. The Muckrakers. Champaign: University of Illinois Press,
2001, p. xxii.
33
2 Quoted in Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History 1690-1960. New York: Macmillan,
1962, p. 9.
3 Quoted in Mott, p. 16.
4 Mott, p. 107.
6 Quoted in Serrin, Judith, and William Serrin, eds. Muckraking: The Journalism That Changed Amer-
ica. New York: New Press, 2002, p. 307.
7 Serrin, p. 307.
9 Tebbel, John, and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America, 1741-1990. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991, p. 13.
10 Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1970, p. 64.
11 Weinberg, p. xxii.
12 Tebbel, p 111.
13 Quoted in Jensen, Carl. Stories that Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2000, p. 21.
14 Dorman, Jessica. “Where Are Muckraking Journalists Today?” Nieman Reports, Summer 2000, p.
55.
15 Tebbel, p. 111.
16 Quoted in Wilson, p. 104.
17 Wilson, p. v.
18 McClure, Samuel Sidney, with Willa Cather. My Autobiography. New York: Frederick A. Stokes,
1914, p. 246.
19 Wilson, p. 146.
34
Chapter Three
Addressing
Social Problems
5
The journalist is a true servant of democracy. The best jour-
nalist of today occupies the exact place of the prophets of
old: he cries out the truth and calls for reform.
—Ray Stannard Baker, 1906
A lthough investigative journalism existed before the turn of the twenti-

eth century, the rise of mass-circulation, general-interest magazines
brought it to the forefront of American life at that time. Muckraking
turned into a movement that promoted progressive reform of a wide range of
social, political, and economic institutions. Investigative reports helped raise
public awareness of problems like poverty and squalor in the nation’s rapidly
growing cities, the struggles of newly arrived immigrants, and the exploita-
tion of child labor. The work of the muckrakers also helped create a climate
favorable to recognizing and addressing other social issues, like women’s
rights, racial equality, and environmental protection. “It didn’t take great
insight to recognize that poverty, vice, electoral fraud, unsafe foods, monopo-
listic practices, segregation, child labor exploitation, and civil rights viola-
tions were leading to the disintegration of society,” noted one historian. “But
it did take some courageous individuals who saw the problems to dedicate
their lives and talents to solving them.”1
Poverty and Squalor in the Cities

The rapid industrialization of the late nineteenth century led to explosive
growth in the population of American cities. The availability of work in facto-
35
ries convinced millions of people to move from rural to urban areas. Poor
whites left hardscrabble farms behind in search of better lives in big cities like
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit. In addition, millions of African
Americans migrated to these northern regions from the South, where their
opportunities were strictly limited by the discriminatory system of laws and
unwritten rules of conduct known as Jim Crow. “As long as Jim Crow ruled
the South, that system of segregation, subordination, and terror created pow-
erful incentives for leaving and staying away,”2 one historian acknowledged.
Meanwhile, twelve million immigrants arrived on American shores
between 1870 and 1900. While some immigrants headed inland from the
major port cities to establish farms on the frontier, millions of others joined
the competition for jobs and housing in already overcrowded urban areas.
“Once settled, immigrants looked for work. There were never enough jobs,
and employers often took advantage of the immigrants,” noted one study.
“Men were generally paid less than other workers, and women less than men.
Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Often stereotyped
and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical
abuse because they were ‘different.’”3 To minimize the hardships of adapting
to a new land, many immigrants settled in ethnic enclaves with others who
spoke the same language and followed the same customs (see sidebar “Anti-
Immigrant Sentiments in America,” p. 41).
Between migration and immigration, most American cities grew very
rapidly. In fact, the percentage of Americans who lived in the nation’s sixty
largest cities increased from 37 percent in 1900 to 50 percent by 1930. In
many cases, such rapid expansion outstripped the availability of jobs, hous-
ing, waste disposal, and other services. As a result, poor and working-class
urban residents often lived in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. The
concentrated industrial facilities and overtaxed municipal sewage systems
dumped pollution into the air and water, contributing to the spread of
cholera and other deadly diseases. “A single blast furnace, a single dye works
may easily have its effluvia absorbed by the surrounding landscape: twenty of
them in a narrow area effectively pollute the air or water beyond remedy,”4
one scholar noted.
Some of the worst living conditions were found in the tenement houses.
Owned and operated by greedy landlords with political connections, these
filthy, airless buildings were packed to the rafters with poor and working-
36
Chapter Three: Addressing Social Problems
Cleaning up crowded and unsanitary tenement districts, like Mulberry Street in New York City,
was a high priority for social reformers.
class people. In many cases, more than a dozen members of an extended fam-
ily would share a single room. They rarely had electricity or indoor plumbing,
and they usually relied on coal-fired furnaces or fireplaces for heat. Factory
workers received such low wages—and the landlords of nicer facilities
charged such high rents—that the tenements were the only option available
for many poor families. They could not afford to find cleaner, safer accommo-
dations within the city or to move out to the comfortable, middle-class sub-
urbs. The miserable living conditions in the tenements provided an ideal
environment for criminal activity, excessive alcohol consumption, and the
spread of disease.
Several prominent muckraking journalists addressed the problems of
poverty and squalor in their work. One of the best-known writers to investi-
37
gate the problems facing poor and working-class residents of American cities
was Jacob Riis (see Riis biography, p. 128). Riis had arrived in the United
States in 1870 as an immigrant from Denmark. He eventually got a job as a
police reporter for the New York Tribune. His job frequently took him into the
tenement districts on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Riis
wandered through the slums for years, recording his obser-
“They gave up all vations in a notebook and taking photographs of the resi-
dents and their surroundings. In 1890 he published the
thought of joyful living, results of his work in a powerful book called How the Other
probably in the hope Half Lives (see “Jacob Riis Chronicles the Struggles of the
that by tremendous Urban Poor,” p. 165).
exertion they could Riis’s investigation found 37,000 tenement buildings
in New York City housing over one million residents.
overcome their
Thanks to inconsistent employment, low wages, and high
poverty; but they rents, many of these people lived in terrible poverty and
gained while at work faced the threat of starvation. Riis was disgusted by the
only enough to keep dirty, overcrowded conditions he saw in the tenements. He
recognized that people forced to live in such conditions
their bodies alive,” often became so desperate that they resorted to begging
sociologist Robert and crime in order to survive. “In the tenements all the
Hunter wrote in influences make for evil,” he wrote, “because they are the
hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor
Poverty (1904). alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our
“Theirs was a sort of jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of 40,000
treadmill existence human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year
by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half
with no prospect of
million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a
anything else in life but standing army of 10,000 tramps with all that that implies;
more treadmill.” because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly
moral contagion.”5
Riis’s book forced middle-class Americans and government officials to
confront the problems facing people in the nation’s urban slums. His exposé
of New York City tenements led to the establishment of the Tenement House
Commission to improve the design of urban housing and provide safe and
sanitary living conditions for the poor. “Tenement-house reform holds the
key to the problem of pauperism in the city,” he declared. “We can never get
rid of either the tenement or the pauper. The two will always exist together in
38
This famous photograph by Jacob Riis shows poor immigrant children sleeping on a city street.
New York. But by reforming the one, we can do more toward exterminating
the other than can be done by all other means together that have yet been
invented, or ever will be.”6 Riis also helped to build playgrounds and improve
public schools in the cities.
Riis’s work, which is frequently cited as one of the earliest examples of
muckraking journalism, inspired many other reformers to address the prob-
lems faced by the urban poor. Some of the most effective assistance for poor
immigrants came from the settlement house movement. Reformer Jane
Addams founded one of the first settlement houses, Hull House, in Chicago
in 1889. It offered a variety of services to help immigrant families adjust to
life in the United States, including English-language instruction, citizenship
39
guidance, an employment bureau, recreational activities, and day care for

working mothers. By 1910 Hull House had become the model for a network
of 500 settlement houses in the nation’s largest cities. These facilities fought
to improve living conditions for working-class families by passing new health
and safety codes for tenements, modernizing sanitation and sewage systems,
offering libraries and social programs, and providing welfare benefits for wid-
ows and orphans.
Sociologist Robert Hunter worked closely with settlement houses and
charities in the tenement districts of both Chicago and New York City. In 1904
he published an influential book called Poverty that offered middle-class Ameri-
cans a detailed description of the plight of the nation’s urban poor. Hunter
pointed out that the low wages and difficult jobs available to working-class
people ensured that most of them would never rise above a minimal level of
existence. “The wages were so low that the men alone often could not support
their families, and mothers with babies toiled in order to add to the income,” he
wrote. “They gave up all thought of joyful living, probably in the hope that by
tremendous exertion they could overcome their poverty; but they gained while
at work only enough to keep their bodies alive. Theirs was a sort of treadmill
existence with no prospect of anything else in life but more treadmill.”7
Child Labor
A related social issue that the muckrakers addressed was child labor.
Many poor families had no choice but to send all members out in search of
employment. Around the turn of the century, many factories, textile mills,
and coal mines relied on child labor for their operations. Children were
cheaper to hire and easier to discipline or fire than adult workers, and their
small stature proved valuable in industries like mining, where workers often
had to fit into tight spaces.
Although children had worked to help their families in the past—farm
children helped harvest crops, for instance, while children of merchants
helped stock shelves—industrial jobs proved to be far more difficult and dan-
gerous for young workers. “Children have always worked, but it is only since
the reign of the machine that their work has been synonymous with slavery,”
declared muckraking journalist John Spargo in his 1906 book The Bitter Cry
of the Children. “The craftsman was supplanted by the tireless, soulless
machine. The child still worked, but in a great factory throbbing with the
40
Anti-Immigrant Sentiments in America
M illions of immigrants to America settled in communities that wel-

comed them with open arms. Once they passed through Ellis Island
and other gateways into the United States, immigrants frequently made
their way to neighborhoods and towns with similar ethnic and cultural ties
to the ones they left behind. Italian immigrants settled in New York City’s
“Italian” district, Swedish immigrants traveled to the Swedish-American
farming communities of Minnesota, and so on.
Immigrants chose these destinations not only out of considerations
of familiarity and comfort, but also because many Americans disliked and
distrusted the new arrivals. This hostility was displayed by both native-
born Americans and immigrants who had already found homes and jobs
in the New World. Such cold attitudes toward new immigrants had many
sources. Some people opposed the presence of the newcomers because
they felt that the wave of immigration was overwhelming America’s land
and other natural resources. Others worried—in some cases for good rea-
son—that the new immigrants posed a threat to their jobs or wages. And
still others feared that the influx of newcomers, with their unfamiliar lan-
guages, cultural practices, and appearance, might ruin the stability and
safety of the communities in which they lived.
Vicious racial and ethnic prejudice, though, was at the root of much
anti-immigrant sentiment. Many critics of immigration in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries viewed newcomers from southern
and eastern Europe as lazy, stupid, and immoral people. These opponents
of immigration saw the people streaming through Ellis Island as a disease
that threatened the health of America’s political, economic, and social sys-
tems, and they treated the newcomers accordingly.
Sources:
Handlin, Oscar. The Uprooted. 1951. Reprint. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 2002.
Tichenor, Daniel J. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
41
This 1909 photograph by Lewis Hine documents the use of child labor in a Georgia textile mill.
vibration of swift, intricate machines. In place of parental interest and affec-

tion there was the harsh, pitiless authority of an employer ... looking not to
the child’s well-being and skill as an artificer, but to the supplying of a great,
ever-widening market for cash gain.”8
Spargo’s book The Bitter Cry of the Children was one of several works that
condemned child labor during the muckraking era (see “John Spargo
Describes the Tragedy of Child Labor,” p. 170). The author came to the Unit-
ed States from England in 1901. England had recently instituted reforms to
address the exploitation of children in its cities and industries. Spargo was
shocked to find that similar conditions existed in his new home. In conduct-
42
ing a study of factories and other industrial facilities, he found children as

young as four years old working in New York City canneries, and as young as
five working in cotton mills in the South.
Spargo found it difficult to compile accurate statistics on the use of child
labor in America. Many children, as well as their parents, lied about their ages
because their families were so desperate for additional
income. Still, he estimated that in New York alone, 76,000
children under the age of fifteen missed the entire year of “Think of the deadly
school in 1900. “It is impossible for any one who is at all drudgery in these
conversant with the facts to resist the conclusion that, after
cotton mills,” wrote
making all possible allowances for other causes, by far the
larger part of these absentees are at work,” he wrote. Edwin Markham.
“Thousands find employment in factories and stores; oth- “Children rise at half-
ers find employment in some of the many street trades,
past four, commanded
selling newspapers, peddling, running errands for small
storekeepers, and the like.”9 by the ogre scream of
Some of the muckrakers evoked sympathy and out- the factory whistle;
rage in readers by describing the terrible conditions faced they hurry, ill fed,
by children working in industrial facilities. These boys and
unkempt, unwashed,
girls often performed repetitive tasks in hot, noisy factories
full of dangerous machines for ten to twelve hours per day. half dressed, to the
Investigative journalist Edwin Markham detailed the grim walls which shut out
existence of the 50,000 children who worked in the textile the day and which
mills of the South in the September 1906 edition of Cos-
mopolitan. “Think of the deadly drudgery in these cotton confine them amid the
mills,” he wrote. “Children rise at half-past four, com- din and dust and
manded by the ogre scream of the factory whistle; they merciless maze of
hurry, ill fed, unkempt, unwashed, half dressed, to the
walls which shut out the day and which confine them amid the machines.”
the din and dust and merciless maze of the machines. Here,
penned in little narrow lanes, they look and leap and reach and tie among
acres and acres of looms. Always the snow of lint in their faces, always the
thunder of machines in their ears.”10
The work of Spargo, Markham, and other writers helped bring the issue
of child labor to the attention of middle-class Americans and government
policymakers. In 1907 the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was
chartered by an act of Congress. The organization hired anthropologist and
43
Women fought for a number of progressive reforms, including the right to vote.
photographer Lewis Hine to further document the plight of impoverished

children in the nation’s cities. His work generated support for the passage of
numerous state laws restricting the use of child labor and promoting compul-
sory education. National pressure from the NCLC eventually led to federal
legislation banning most forms of child labor.
Women’s Issues
The social problems targeted by the muckrakers held particular interest
for many women. Moved to take action by the articles they read in McClure’s
and other magazines, middle-class women joined the progressive reform
movement in large numbers in the early 1900s. Since few middle-class
women worked outside the home in those days, they were able to dedicate
their time and talents to various issues that affected families less fortunate
44
than their own. Some women reformers helped the poor by working with
churches or charities. Others campaigned to end child labor or to improve
housing, sanitation, and educational opportunities in urban areas. Still others
launched some of the first U.S. campaigns to abolish prostitution and pornog-
raphy or promote family planning through sex education and birth control.
In 1899 activist Florence Kelley founded the National Consumers’ League, an
organization which fought to pass food safety laws and to end the exploita-
tion of female workers.
One of the main muckraking journalists to tackle women’s issues was
Rheta Childe Dorr. Born in Nebraska in 1863, Dorr made her way to New
York City with the goal of becoming a writer. She experienced gender and pay
discrimination in a series of jobs with newspapers and magazines. For
instance, Dorr went undercover to investigate working conditions for women
in a variety of industrial and retail jobs, only to have Everybody’s magazine
publish her exposé under the byline of a male colleague. In 1910 Dorr pub-
lished an influential book about the growing movement for women’s rights
called What Eight Million Women Want. She went on to become a war corre-
spondent and a prominent supporter of women’s suffrage.
Many activists understood that gaining the right to vote, or suffrage, was
key in bringing women’s issues to the forefront. The women’s suffrage move-
ment had actually started before the Civil War. It got new life during the Pro-
gressive Era, however, thanks to the efforts of women reformers. A number of
male political leaders, including Theodore Roosevelt, came to believe that
granting women the right to vote would make it easier to pass progressive
legislation. By 1910 seven western states had extended voting rights to
women. The women’s suffrage movement became increasingly militant dur-
ing the 1910s. Using confrontational protest methods like picket lines and
hunger strikes, the activists finally won the long battle. American women
gained the right to vote in 1920, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amend-
ment to the Constitution.
Women activists also played a leading role in the Progressive Era cam-
paign against excessive alcohol consumption. Some reformers believed that
the abuse of alcohol contributed to the social problems that affected Ameri-
can families, especially the poverty, crime, and immorality they saw in large
cities. Some argued for moderation or temperance, while others fought for an
outright ban on or prohibition of the use of alcohol. “If cities were choking in
45
Progressive reformers worked to conserve America’s natural resources, which were increasingly
used to fuel industrial growth.
industrial smoke and shameful immorality, if strange new peoples and alien
languages and political philosophies cast an eerie cloud over traditional
America, there had to be reasons,” one historian explained. “If economic mis-
ery strangled the nation, if families split apart, if crime increased and suicides
were on the rise, there had to be answers. For many the greatest of the rea-
sons was liquor; the most urgent of the answers was to wipe it out.”11
Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union helped make pro-
hibition a topic of spirited debate in the early 1900s. Although many politi-
cians approached the issue carefully, it gradually gained support during the
Progressive Era. Several states passed laws against alcohol during the 1910s,
and in 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution banned the man-
ufacture, distribution, or sale of alcohol throughout the United States. Prohibi-
tion proved to be nearly impossible to enforce, however, and alcohol remained
46
widely available. Generally recognized as a failure, Prohibition was repealed in

1933 with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution.
Environmental Protection
Another social issue that drew the attention of the muckrakers and pro-
gressive reformers was the environment. Industrialization had led to a signifi-
cant increase in the consumption of—and transfer of control over—America’s
natural resources. As part of their investigations of the power and influence of
big corporations and trusts, the muckrakers revealed that banks, mining
companies, railroads, logging companies, and other business interests had
gained control of huge swaths of public land.
These muckraking reports prompted increased public questioning of
government policies that “had always been to open up the country for private
development as rapidly as possible,” said one environmental historian. “The
developers, ranchers, mining and lumber interests, mostly in the West, saw
no reason to alter things.”12 But conservation-minded Americans seized on
the work of the muckrakers to press for new environmental protection laws.
The burgeoning conservation movement found a sympathetic ear in Roo-
sevelt. “The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained
[when I took office], and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent
and condition,” he recalled in his autobiography. “The relation of the conser-
vation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National
efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind.”13 But as activists and
muckrakers stirred up public support for conservation, Roosevelt took action
to protect remaining wilderness areas from logging, mining, and development.
As president, he added 50 million acres to the national forest system and
established 51 wildlife refuges, 18 national monuments, and 5 national parks.
Racial Equality
Progressive reformers and their muckraking allies in the press made
progress in addressing such pressing social problems as poverty, squalor,
child labor, and women’s rights. They were considerably less successful, how-
ever, in dealing with the issue of racial equality. “Progressives showed little
fear in dealing with problems of gender, family, class, and economy—but not
of race,”14 one scholar acknowledged. At the turn of the century, African
Americans in the South lived under Jim Crow laws that kept them segregated
47
from whites. They were denied access to many public facilities, like restau-
rants, theaters, hotels, and swimming pools. They were forced to sit in the
back of railroad cars and attend inferior schools.
Black citizens who did not obey the rules, or failed to show sufficient
humility and respect in their dealings with whites, faced a constant threat of
violence. Lynching (hanging of African Americans by gangs of whites) was a
common tactic used to intimidate African Americans and keep them in what
was said by some to be “their place.” Blacks who migrated to northern cities
found conditions somewhat better, although they still had fewer educational
and employment opportunities than whites and endured ugly discrimination
on a daily basis.
African-American activists, such as Ida B. Wells, fought to enlist the sup-
port of the muckrakers and other progressive reformers in bringing an end to
racial segregation and violence. The middle-class whites who led the charge for
progressive reform recognized the need to address racial tension and violence
against blacks. But few went so far as to promote true social and legal equality
for African Americans. A notable exception was Ray Stannard Baker (see Baker
biography, p. 115), whose 1908 book Following the Color Line: An Account of
Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy explored racial prejudice in the
United States. “The white man is in undisputed power in this country,” he
wrote. “The Negro ... is like a child in the house of a harsh parent. All that
stands between him and destruction is the ethical sense of the white man. Will
the white man’s senses of justice and virtue be robust enough to cause him to
withhold the hand of unlimited power? Will he see, as Booker T. Washington
says, that if he keeps the Negro in the gutter he must stay there with him?”15
Many progressive lawmakers felt reluctant to push for African-American
civil rights. They needed the support of Southern lawmakers in order to pass
progressive reforms, and they knew that most of these officials favored segre-
gation. Black leaders of the era resented such attitudes and argued that the
treatment of African Americans as second-class citizens conflicted with basic
American values. Many historians view the timid approach to racial issues as
one of the major failures of the Progressive Era.
Notes
1 Jensen, Carl, ed. Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2000, p. 15.
48
2 Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southern-
ers Transformed America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, p. 23.
3 Library of Congress. “Rise of Industrial America: Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900.”
Available online at http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities
/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/immgrnts.html.
4 Mumford, Lewis, and Bryan S. Turner. The Culture of Cities. New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 162.
5 Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. New York: Scribner’s, 1890, p. 3.
6 Quoted in Shapiro, Bruce, ed. Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in
America. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003, p. 58.
7 Hunter, Robert. Poverty. New York: Macmillan, 1904, p. 325.
8 Spargo, John. The Bitter Cry of the Children. New York: Macmillan, 1906, p. 129.
9 Spargo, p. 145.
10 Markham, Edwin. “The Hoe-Man in the Making.” Cosmopolitan, September 1906.
11 Bruns, Roger A. Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism. New York: W.W. Nor-
ton, 1992, p. 161.
13 Roosevelt, Theodore. Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1913, p. 410.
14 McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 6.
15 Baker, Ray Stannard. Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American
Democracy. New York: Doubleday, 1908, p. 299.
49
Chapter Four
Battling the
Titans of Industry
5
Murder it was that went on there upon the killing-floor, sys-
tematic, deliberate and hideous murder. They were slaugh-
tering men there, just as certainly as they were slaughtering
cattle; they were grinding the bodies and souls of them, and
turning them into dollars and cents.
—Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
O ne of the main goals of the Progressive Movement was to reduce the

power and influence of large corporations over workers, political
leaders, and other aspects of American society. The muckrakers
helped by exposing some of the unfair business practices used by the large
corporations or “trusts” that dominated most industries at that time. Journal-
ists chronicled the ways in which these industrial giants exploited workers by
demanding long hours and exhausting labor in hazardous conditions in
exchange for low wages and dehumanizing treatment. They also detailed
many cases in which big business took advantage of American consumers by
selling products that were spoiled, dangerous, or did not deliver on their
promised benefits. Muckraking articles and books about abuses of public
trust by large corporations generated outrage among both middle-class and
working-class Americans. They responded by pressuring state and federal
governments to step in to limit the power of big business and protect the
interests of small businesses, workers, and consumers.
Investigating the Trusts

The turn of the twentieth century saw a tremendous consolidation of
American business in the hands of a few wealthy men. Most industries were
51
dominated by a few large corporations. The U.S. Steel Corporation, for

instance, controlled 80 percent of all steel production nationwide, while the
Standard Oil Company controlled 90 percent of U.S. oil production. These
companies grew into huge monopolies by acquiring small-
“Muckraking was er competitors or forcing them out of business. In the late
1890s and early 1900s, for example, more than 4,000 inde-
what people wanted
pendent companies were consolidated into about 250 large
to hear,” wrote corporations or trusts. The corporations then used their
columnist Walter tremendous power and influence to negotiate favorable
contracts with other businesses, command high prices for
Lippmann. “There is
their products, demand concessions from their workers,
no other way of derail proposed government regulations, and build huge
explaining the quick fortunes for their owners.
approval which the Several prominent muckraking journalists went
muckrakers won.… behind the scenes to investigate the business practices of
the trusts. They pored through financial records and legal
There must have been documents, spoke with employees and competitors, and
real causes for prowled the factories and railroad yards they owned. Their
dissatisfaction, or the investigations uncovered countless examples of underhand-
ed deals and secret alliances among the large corporations.
land notorious for its
The exposés angered middle-class Americans and trans-
worship of success formed wealthy industrial magnates like J.P. Morgan, John
would not have turned D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie
into enormously controversial figures. In some parts of
so savagely upon those
America, in fact, these captains of industry became known
who had achieved it.” as “robber barons” for their ruthless business tactics and
willingness to exploit workers and consumers for personal
gain. “Muckraking was what people wanted to hear,” wrote influential colum-
nist Walter Lippmann in 1914. “There is no other way of explaining the quick
approval which the muckrakers won. They weren’t voices crying in a wilder-
ness, or lonely prophets who were stoned. They demanded a hearing; it was
granted. They asked for belief; they were believed. They cried that something
should be done and there was every appearance of action. There must have
been real causes for dissatisfaction, or the land notorious for its worship of
success would not have turned so savagely upon those who had achieved it.”1
One of the earliest and most famous muckraking attacks on the trusts
was journalist Ida M. Tarbell’s groundbreaking investigation of the Standard
52
Chapter Four: Battling the Titans of Industry
Oil Company (see Tarbell biography, p. 152).

This company was so big and powerful—and
its reach extended into so many different
areas of business—that it was known as “The
Octopus.” Tarbell started working on a histo-
ry of the massive company owned by John D.
Rockefeller (see Rockefeller biography, p.
132) in 1901, around the time that Theodore
Roosevelt took office as president of the Unit-
ed States. She spent a year gathering informa-
tion, tracking down leads, and reviewing doc-
uments. The first story in the series, “The
Birth of an Industry,” appeared in McClure’s
magazine in November 1902, and eight more
installments followed.
Tarbell told readers how Rockefeller had
gotten started in the oil business in Pennsyl-
vania in 1863, shortly after oil was first dis- Muckraking journalist Ida M. Tarbell,
pictured in 1905, is best known for
covered there. From there, she chronicled exposing the ruthless business practices
how Rockefeller formed Standard Oil in 1870 of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
and then used every possible means to Company.
expand its power and influence. The compa-
ny secretly negotiated favorable prices from the railroads, for instance, which
allowed it to reduce its shipping costs far below its competitors. This advan-
tage made it impossible for smaller businesses to compete, which allowed
Rockefeller to pressure them to sell their operations to him at less than their
true value. Tarbell also charged that Standard Oil officials had resorted to
bribery, threats, and even sabotage to cover up these shady dealings.
Tarbell made her case against Standard Oil patiently and systematically.
She was careful to criticize the business practices employed by Standard Oil,
rather than the size and power of the company. “I was willing that they
should combine and grow as big and rich as they could, but only by legiti-
mate means,”2 she explained.
Tarbell’s series for McClure’s proved so fascinating to readers that circula-
tion of the magazine increased by 100,000 copies during its run. She contin-
ued the story in a second series of articles that appeared in McClure’s between
December 1903 and October 1904. Tarbell eventually published her work in
53
This political cartoon depicts the Standard Oil Company as an octopus, with its tentacles
wrapped around various industries and branches of the U.S. government.
book form as The History of the Standard Oil Company (see “Ida Tarbell Inves-
tigates the Standard Oil Trust,” p. 173). Throughout the publication of these
reports, Rockefeller and other Standard Oil Company officials never chal-
lenged the accuracy of Tarbell’s work. Rockefeller generally followed a policy
of not responding to critics. But historians also note that Tarbell had convinc-
ing evidence to back up most of her claims.
At any rate, Tarbell’s revelations helped shift public opinion squarely against
Rockefeller. He turned into a symbol of ruthlessness and greed in the minds of
many Americans. Rockefeller and his defenders thought that the attacks were
unfair. Supporters claimed that he was simply an extraordinary businessman, and
they pointed out that he gave millions of dollars to charity. Still, it took decades
for his image to recover from the damage inflicted by the muckrakers.
Uncovering the Exploitation of Workers

Most of the large corporations that dominated American industries took
advantage of their economic power and political influence to treat their workers
54
poorly. The wealthy owners of mining operations, steel mills, textile factories,
slaughterhouses, and other industrial facilities believed that they had the right to
run their businesses as they pleased. Their main goal was to earn profits, and
their relentless pursuit of this goal often led them to exploit workers.
Even as the owners of large corporations amassed great personal wealth,
they barely paid subsistence wages to the workers in their mills and factories.
The average annual salary for workers in manufacturing industries was only
$435 in 1900, and some workers earned considerably less. The average salary
for coal miners was only $340 per year, for instance, while farmhands
received an average of $180 per year plus room and board.
To make matters worse, many industrial jobs were exhausting, requiring
workers to perform repetitive tasks for hours on end without breaks. Many jobs
were outright dangerous. Mine workers faced a constant threat of explosions or
cave-ins, for example, while thousands of factory workers were killed or
injured by machines each year. In addition, many workers in the nation’s paper
and steel mills, slaughterhouses, and mining operations were exposed to haz-
ardous levels of toxic chemicals, fumes, or dust. This exposure contributed to
numerous health problems, including asthma and tuberculosis (see sidebar
“Alice Hamilton, Occupational Health Pioneer,” p. 56). Most employers did lit-
tle to protect workers from such hazards or to compensate them if they became
unable to work.
Working-class Americans had very little power to resist or change this situ-
ation. Anyone who complained about long hours or dangerous working condi-
tions—or tried to organize fellow workers in protest—ran a high risk of being
fired. Since most working-class people depended on their meager income to
support their families, they could not afford to jeopardize their jobs. In addition,
workers in many industries were forced to live in “company towns” where all
the homes, shops, schools, and other facilities were owned by their employer.
Workers in these situations risked losing their homes as well as their jobs if they
voiced any objections. As a result, many turn-of-the-century workers simply
accepted long hours, low wages, and difficult working conditions as a fact of life.
Other workers, however, rebelled against these conditions. Workers in
some industries organized labor unions to bargain with employers for higher
wages, shorter hours, safer work environments, and other benefits. A few
unions made progress in improving working conditions for their members.
For the most part, though, American workers remained at the mercy of the
55
Alice Hamilton, Occupational Health Pioneer
Industrial workers in turn-of-the-century America spent long hours toiling

in hot, dirty, noisy factories for low wages. Yet these hardships were often
not the worst that they endured. Millions of workers in the nation’s mines,
mills, and factories were exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals,
fumes, or dust on the job. Many of them suffered from chronic illnesses or
deadly diseases as a result. Most employers made no effort to educate work-
ers about the health hazards they faced or to compensate them if they
became disabled. Occupational health and safety thus became a big issue
for progressive reformers.
One of the pioneers of this field of study was Alice Hamilton. Born in
1869, Hamilton received a medical degree from the University of Michigan
in 1893. Following postgraduate study in Germany and at Johns Hopkins
University, she became a professor of pathology at the Women’s Medical
School of Northwestern University in 1897. During her time in Chicago, she
became acquainted with Hull House, a settlement house dedicated to
improving the lives of the urban poor. Hamilton eventually opened a well-
baby clinic for poor families in the neighborhood. Her work brought her
into contact with countless immigrants and other working-class parents
who were suffering from pains, tremors, and illnesses triggered by work-
place conditions. She also learned of the sudden or unexplained deaths of
dozens of industrial workers.
Hamilton realized that little was known or understood about these
problems, and she grew determined to apply her medical knowledge to
the new field of occupational health. In 1908 she was appointed as the
managing director of the Illinois Commission on Occupational Diseases, a
state organization charged with investigating industrial poisoning from
big corporations. In the absence of laws protecting organized labor, mine and
factory owners could simply fire any employees who attempted to form a
union. If workers arranged a work stoppage or strike, a company could hire
replacement workers. In some cases, businesses resorted to intimidation and
violence to suppress union activities.
56
lead and other materials. In this role, Hamilton conducted an extensive

survey on industrial illnesses and their social consequences. She inspected
factories, spoke with workers and their families, examined hospital
records, and performed laboratory research. She issued a series of ground-
breaking reports showing that the majority of industrial workers in the
state faced life-threatening hazards on the job.
Hamilton’s work connected a number of common diseases with spe-
cific occupations. She found that steelworkers often suffered from carbon
monoxide poisoning, for instance, while workers in hat-making facilities
faced high rates of mercury poisoning. She also identified many kinds of
repetitive stress injuries among industrial workers, such as “dead fingers”
syndrome among workers who used jackhammers. Illinois legislators found
Hamilton’s report so persuasive that they passed sweeping reforms that set
occupational safety standards and improved the health of workers.
Hamilton continued her work on a national scale as a special investi-
gator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor from 1911 to 1919. She then accepted a
position as Assistant Professor of Industrial Medicine at the Harvard Med-
ical School, becoming the first woman to join the faculty of that presti-
gious institution. In 1925 she published the first American textbook on the
subject of industrial toxicology, Industrial Poisons in the United States. Fol-
lowing her retirement from Harvard in 1935, Hamilton became a consul-
tant to the U.S. Division of Labor Standards and served as the president of
the National Consumers League. She published her autobiography, Explor-
ing the Dangerous Trades, in 1943.
Hamilton died in 1970 at the age of 101. The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) named a laboratory after her in Cincinnati, Ohio. Research
in the field she pioneered continues in the twenty-first century through
the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Although the labor unions shared many goals with the larger progres-
sive movement, many Americans considered them to be too radical. They
worried that union leaders wanted to overthrow America’s system of capital-
ism and replace it with socialism. The main idea behind socialism—collec-
tive ownership of businesses and other property—appealed to some sup-
57
porters of the working class, but most middle-class Americans still believed
in the capitalist system of private property and free enterprise. Therefore,
most progressive reformers wanted to use the power of the U.S. government
to end the exploitation of workers by large corporations. They favored estab-
lishing new regulations at the city, state, and federal levels to limit the power
of the trusts and improve conditions for workers. The muckrakers helped
increase public demand for such regulations and put pressure on political
leaders to take action.
Creating Sympathy for the Working Class

A number of muckrakers chronicled the poor working conditions and
unfair labor practices endured by industrial workers. One famous article,
“Old Age at Forty” by John A. Fitch, appeared in the March 1911 issue of
American Magazine. Fitch investigated working conditions at steel mills and
discovered that most workers were required to put in twelve-hour shifts each
day. At the end of each week, when the day and night shifts switched places,
one group of workers was forced to remain on the job for twenty-four hours
straight. Fitch found that working such long hours in physically demanding
jobs took a huge toll on the steelworkers, their families, and the community.
Although many other industries had instituted an eight-hour workday
by this time, Fitch argued that the big steel operations “have inaugurated
labor policies that are undemocratic and destructive. They have taken more
and more of the day from their workmen; they have demanded more and
more of their strength; they have taken from them individual freedom; they
have robbed the home of a father’s time and care, and from the citizenship
of the mill towns they have sapped the virility and aggressiveness necessary
to democracy.”3
While Fitch and other writers raised awareness of poor industrial work-
ing conditions, several incidents occurred that brought national attention to
the issue. In May 1911 a deadly fire broke out in a New York City textile mill
owned by the Triangle Company. The facility produced a type of tailored
women’s blouse called a shirtwaist. Hundreds of young women, most of them
immigrants, toiled there in sweatshop conditions. Factory managers routine-
ly locked the doors to prevent the workers from leaving during their shift or
stealing material. When the factory caught on fire, many employees were
trapped inside. In all, the tragedy took the lives of 146 young women.
58
Reporter William G. Shepherd of

United Press was on the scene and
watched dozens of workers jump to
their death from the factory windows
rather than die in the inferno. He
described the horrific scene to his edi-
tors over the telephone: “The floods of
water from the firemen’s hose that ran
into the gutter were actually stained
red with blood. I looked upon the
heap of dead bodies and I remembered
that these girls were the shirtwaist
makers. I remembered their great
strike of last year in which these same
girls had demanded more sanitary
conditions and more safety precau-
tions in the shops. These dead bodies
were the answer.”4 In the wake of the
tragedy, the State of New York passed
several new laws that reduced work
hours for women and improved work-
place safety conditions.
Another shocking incident occurred This cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly
in April 1914 in Ludlow, Colorado. depicts a violent confrontation between
Ludlow was the home of miners who striking workers and corporate security
guards outside a steel mill owned by
worked for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Andrew Carnegie.
Company, owned by John D. Rocke-
feller. The miners went on strike to
protest the long hours, low wages, and poor working conditions they
received from the company. Following a series of minor confrontations,
Colorado National Guard troops under the direction of company manage-
ment attacked a tent city full of striking miners and their families. Twenty
people were killed in the mining camp, including two women and eleven
children. This violent incident, which became known as the Ludlow Mas-
sacre, drew renewed public attention to labor-management issues and gen-
erated political support for such reforms as a national eight-hour workday
and a ban on child labor.
59
Raising Concerns about Food Safety

Freelance writer Upton Sinclair (see Sinclair biography, p. 142) set out
to expose the hardships endured by workers in the meatpacking industry. As
it turned out, though, middle-class Americans were even more appalled by
his descriptions of the disgusting, unsanitary conditions in which meat was
processed. His work created a tremendous public outcry that led directly to
the passage of federal laws aimed at improving food safety.
In 1904 Sinclair received an assignment to investigate
slaughterhouse operations in Chicago and write a series of
“There was never the muckraking articles for a magazine called Appeal to Reason.
least attention paid to Chicago was the center of the nation’s meat production at
that time. Trainloads of cattle, pigs, and sheep from farms
what was cut up for and ranches across the Midwest arrived in the city’s rail
sausage,” Upton yards each day. A continuous stream of livestock was herd-
Sinclair wrote in The ed into slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities owned
by three powerful corporations: Armour, Swift, and Morris.
Jungle. “There would
Once inside, the animals were killed and processed by
be meat stored in great
an assembly line of workers. Each worker performed a sin-
piles in rooms; and the gle, repetitive task in the process of turning live animals
water from leaky roofs into saleable cuts of meat. The workers were known by
would drip over it, descriptive titles—such as knockers, stickers, skinners,
boners, trimmers, and luggers—based on the jobs they did
and thousands of over and over, day after day.
rats would race Sinclair conducted an undercover investigation over
about on it.” the course of seven weeks. Dressed in shabby work clothes
and carrying a lunchbox, he slipped into Chicago meat-
packing plants unnoticed. By pretending to be a worker, he
was able to observe the meatpacking operations firsthand. Sinclair even lived
at a settlement house in the nearby tenement district known as Packingtown.
He spoke with other workers and their families and developed a clear under-
standing of the challenges and hardships they faced.
In order to make the problems in the meatpacking industry seem more
immediate to readers, Sinclair decided to weave his observations into a story
about a fictional worker named Jurgis Rudkos. Rudkos was a Lithuanian
immigrant who worked in Packingtown and endured everything Sinclair had
witnessed in the plants and the surrounding neighborhood. At the end of the
60
Muckraker Upton Sinclair investigated conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants for his best-
selling book The Jungle.
story, Rudkos joins the Socialist Party, which promises to bring fairness to
workers by spreading ownership of the nation’s factories among all citizens.
Sinclair hoped that readers would share his view that socialism could help
61
solve the problems of modern industry and raise the standard of living for
working-class Americans.
Sinclair’s series of articles drew a great deal of attention and helped increase
the circulation of Appeal to Reason. In 1906 he revised and shortened the series
and published it as a book called The Jungle (see “Upton Sinclair Exposes Prob-
lems in the Meatpacking Industry,” p. 178). It became a best-seller, was translat-
ed into seventeen languages, and turned Sinclair into a worldwide celebrity. Still,
the author was disappointed that many readers focused on his revelations about
food safety, rather than his message about socialism. “I aimed at the public’s
heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,”5 he admitted.
Readers of The Jungle were shocked and disgusted by Sinclair’s descrip-
tions of unsanitary slaughterhouse and meatpacking operations. They were
particularly appalled to learn that diseased animals, spoiled meat, and even
rats routinely made their way into the nation’s food supply. “There was never
the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage,” he revealed. “There
would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs
would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it.... These
rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for
them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hop-
pers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled
into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a
rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in
comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.”6
The large corporations that controlled the meatpacking industry insisted
that their operations were clean and sanitary, and that they had inspections
and other precautions to ensure that no tainted meat ever reached American
consumers. The Jungle created such public outrage, however, that Roosevelt
sent federal investigators to Chicago to review the situation. The inspectors
not only confirmed Sinclair’s findings, but in some cases found conditions
even worse than those detailed in The Jungle. Roosevelt threw his weight
behind efforts to craft strong new regulations for the meatpacking industry,
and Congress responded by passing the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Protecting Consumers from Patent Medicines

The Pure Food and Drug Act also addressed another industry of concern
to American consumers: patent medicines. Patent medicines were mysterious
62
pills and potions that promised to cure

a wide variety of illnesses and ailments.
The companies that manufactured
these remedies advertised heavily in
newspapers and magazines. Their slick
ads often included glowing testimonials
from people who were miraculously
restored to good health by using the
product. In fact, patent medicine mak-
ers spent more money on advertising
than they did on manufacturing. They
spent so much money for ad space that
they were often able to dictate terms to
newspaper and magazine publishers. In
many cases, the patent medicine com-
panies inserted clauses in these con-
tracts that prohibited publications from
running any articles that were critical
of their business.
Nevertheless, a few muckraking
magazines conducted investigations of
the patent medicine industry. They In 1905 Collier’s magazine published a year-
found that most of the popular remedies long series of muckraking articles about the
were not healthy at all. In fact, many of health risks associated with patent medicines.
the products contained dangerous ingre-
dients, including alcohol, narcotics, stimulants, and depressants. A few in-
cluded addictive drugs like morphine and cocaine, which created dependence
in consumers and ensured that they would keep buying the product.
Several magazines published articles and editorials condemning the
patent medicine industry as a dangerous fraud perpetrated on American con-
sumers. Muckraker Samuel Hopkins Adams wrote a year-long series called
“The Great American Fraud” for Collier’s magazine in 1905. He charged that
the American people paid $75 million per year to patent medicine manufac-
turers for products that did nothing to improve their health. Edward Bok, the
editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, told his magazine’s readers that “It is not by
any means putting the matter too strongly to say that the patent medicine
habit is one of the gravest curses, with the most dangerous results, that is
63
Frank Norris Condemns

Greedy Railroad Barons in The Octopus
A nother classic work of muckraking literature that condemned corpo-

rate greed and its impact on the lives of working-class Americans was
The Octopus by Frank Norris. Published in 1901, this novel centered
around a deadly real-life confrontation between railroad barons and a
group of settlers over land rights in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
When the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, it sud-
denly became possible to travel from one side of the continent to the
other in a matter of days. Over the next few years, several major railroad
companies entered into a fierce competition to develop additional rail
lines across California. In most cases, these companies received grants of
land from the federal government along the routes where they planned
to lay tracks. Each rail line that was constructed opened up new areas for
settlement, ranching, and agriculture by ensuring that farm products
could be shipped back east to market.
Many people settled along the rail lines, with the understanding that
the railroad companies would eventually turn over ownership of the fed-
eral land grants to homesteaders at a fair market value. The settlers gener-
ally improved the land by building houses, barns, corrals, and irrigation
systems. Many families established homes and lived there for years, think-
ing that they were gradually gaining property rights, when in actuality the
railroad companies retained title to the land.
inflicting our American national life.”7 Other magazines revealed that the
patent medicine companies used their financial power to limit negative media
attention and government regulatory efforts.
American consumers were outraged by the deceptive and dangerous
practices of the patent medicine industry. They demanded that political lead-
ers take action to protect them from unhealthy products and false advertising.
In the resulting uproar, many magazines and newspapers announced that
they would no longer accept advertisements for patent medicines. In addi-
64
This situation had dire consequences for settlers of land granted to

the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in the San Joaquin Valley. In 1880,
when the railroad company decided to sell its parcels, it set the price per
acre ten times higher than the settlers had been led to expect. Railroad
executives justified the price increase by saying that it reflected the value
of the improvements the settlers had made. When the settlers were
unable to pay, the railroad company forced them to vacate the property.
In many cases, railroad employees and backers then stepped in to pur-
chase the improved land.
Some settlers got together to challenge the Southern Pacific’s actions
in court, but the railroad company used its financial strength and political
connections to ensure that all of the lawsuits were decided in its favor.
Devastated at the loss of everything they had worked to build, one group
of angry settlers got into an armed confrontation with railroad employees
and law enforcement officers who had been sent to evict them from the
disputed land. Six settlers were killed in the resulting gunfight, which
became known as the Battle at Mussel Slough.
This tragic incident forms the centerpiece of Norris’s novel. The Octo-
pus raised public awareness of the abuses of the railroad companies and
generated calls for progressive reforms. Still, some historians claim that
Norris presented a more sympathetic picture of wealthy industrialists and
large corporations than many other muckrakers.
tion, several state medical societies disavowed the products and state legisla-
tures banned their sale. Reinforcing the concerns about food safety raised by
The Jungle, the pressure to reform the patent medicine industry contributed
to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Busting the Trusts

Muckraking exposés about the large corporations that dominated Amer-
ican industry at the turn of the century had a dramatic impact on public
65
opinion (see sidebar “Frank Norris Condemns Greedy Railroad Barons in The
Octopus,” p. 64). Millions of middle-class citizens called for the federal gov-
ernment to take steps to limit the power and influence of large corporations
and promote the welfare of workers. The influence of the muckrakers was
“evident in the growth of the federal government’s regulatory power over rail-
roads, packing houses, and the food and drug industries,” according to one
historian. “The public demand that produced this result was unquestionably
inspired and maintained primarily by the magazine muckrakers.”8
By raising public awareness of the abuses of industry, the muckrakers
helped increase support for President Roosevelt’s progressive reforms. Roo-
sevelt believed that the role of government needed to
expand in order to address the many problems brought on
The influence of the
by rapid industrialization. He wanted to take action to
muckrakers was improve conditions for the poor and working class and
“evident in the growth restore the American people’s faith in democracy.
of the federal One of Roosevelt’s main concerns was labor-manage-
ment relations, which was a frequent muckraking topic. He
government’s
intervened on behalf of labor unions in several high-profile
regulatory power over disputes with management during his presidency, and he
railroads, packing launched an aggressive trust-busting campaign. In 1902,
for example, Roosevelt stepped in to help resolve a bitter
houses, and the food
strike by United Mine Workers members against the large
and drug industries,” corporations that controlled Pennsylvania coal mines. The
according to president threatened to put the mining operations under
one historian. federal government control if management did not agree to
settle the dispute through arbitration. Once the two sides
appeared before an impartial party, the miners received a
wage increase and other concessions that they had demanded. Roosevelt’s
handling of the strike put other large corporations on notice that his adminis-
tration would not automatically side with industry in labor disputes. “The
federal government, for the first time in its history, had intervened in a strike
not to break it, but to bring about a peaceful settlement,” noted one historian.
“The great anthracite strike of 1902 cast a long shadow.”9
Roosevelt also took action to stop or reverse the monopolistic business
practices of the trusts. In 1902, for instance, he used the Sherman Antitrust
Act to prevent financier J.P. Morgan from executing a plan to control all rail-
road transport between Chicago and the West Coast. Following the election
66
of 1904, which he won in a landslide with 57 percent of popular vote, Roo-

sevelt stepped up his trust-busting activities even further. In 1906 he pushed
the Hepburn Act through Congress, which empowered the Interstate Com-
merce Commission (ICC) to increase its regulation of the railroads. The
agency set reasonable shipping rates, ensured that the railroads did not make
unethical deals that favored big companies, and forced the railroads to sell off
their interests in unrelated industries.
Roosevelt prosecuted more than forty antitrust cases against corporate
giants during his second term in office. The most prominent trust-busting
effort involved Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Following a lengthy
investigation and legal battle that did not conclude until two years after Roo-
sevelt left office, the Department of Commerce and Labor used the Sherman
Antitrust Act to break up the trust. Rockefeller was forced to sell off thirty-
eight different pieces of his holdings. Some of these companies went on to
become successful oil industry players on their own, including Amoco,
Chevron, Exxon, and Mobil. The proceeds from these sales made Rockefeller
the richest man in the world. Still, the breakup of Standard Oil was cited by a
national panel of historians and journalists as one of the top 100 historic
events that changed America during the twentieth century.
Notes
1 Lippmann, Walter. Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest. H. Holt and
Company, 1914, p. 4.
2 Tarbell, Ida M. All in the Day’s Work. New York: 1938, p. 230.
3 Fitch, John A. “Old Age at Forty.” American Magazine, March 1911.
4 Shepherd, William G. “Eyewitness at Triangle.” United Press, May 27, 1911.
5 Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Clare Virginia Eby. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2003, p. 351.
6 Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: 1906, p. 162.
7 Bok, Edward. “The Patent-Medicine Curse.” Ladies’ Home Journal, 1904.
9 Reynolds, Robert L. “The Coal Kings Come to Judgment.” American Heritage, April 1960.
67
Chapter Five
Exposing Government
Corruption
5
If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue
whereby to single out the rascals ... from their fellows.
—Theodore Roosevelt, April 14, 1906
A s progressive reformers worked to pass new laws addressing poverty

and other social issues, reducing the power of large corporations, and
improving conditions for industrial workers, they often found their
efforts stalled by corrupt politicians. Many officials at all levels of government
had close ties to the wealthy industrialists who benefited from lax oversight of
their business activities. These businessmen used all of their political and eco-
nomic influence to resist regulatory reforms. In order to promote progressive
reforms in other areas, therefore, the muckrakers turned their attention to
exposing political corruption. “Legislation was necessary to protect woman and
child workers, to clean up slums, improve housing, and control the great cor-
porations, but first government itself had to be reformed,” one historian noted.
“And to do that it was necessary to rescue the democratic process from interest
groups whose only concern was in increasing their power and profits.”1
Bringing Shame on Corrupt City Governments

At the turn of the twentieth century, political corruption drove the gov-
ernment of virtually every major American city. Municipal jobs and contracts
were routinely awarded on the basis of connections, bribery, and political
favors rather than merit or cost efficiency. Citizens, merchants, and bankers
who needed city services usually had to pay the political “boss” or his repre-
69
sentatives in order to get things done.

The most notorious example was
William M. “Boss” Tweed, the leader of
a corrupt political machine that con-
trolled New York City and stole mil-
lions of dollars from its residents. Most
people simply accepted the fact that
their city leaders operated on the prin-
ciples of fraud and greed instead of the
age-old values of honesty and hard
work. They viewed corruption as a nec-
essary evil in a fast-growing, modern,
industrial city.
Such attitudes began to change
during the Progressive Era, when cor-
rupt city governments came under
investigation by muckraking journal-
ists. By bringing bribery, backroom
deals, and political favors into the open,
the muckrakers provoked public out-
rage at the unfairness and inefficiency of
civic corruption. Their work led to a
Muckraker Lincoln Steffens exposed series of reforms aimed at improving the
government corruption in his “Shame of the performance and responsiveness of city
Cities” series for McClure’s. governments across the country.
One of the earliest and best-known
muckraking attacks on city corruption is the “Shame of the Cities” series that
appeared in McClure’s. Its author, Lincoln Steffens (see Steffens biography, p.
148), joined the staff of the magazine in 1902. Shortly after Steffens’ arrival,
publisher S.S. McClure put him on a train headed west with instructions to
find important stories to cover. Steffens followed a lead to St. Louis, Missouri,
where he found a newly elected district attorney fighting a lonely battle
against political corruption in the city.
The attorney, Joseph Folk, told Steffens how political boss Ed Butler
directed every aspect of city business for the financial and political gain of
himself and his followers. Butler demanded payment from anyone who want-
ed a city contract or city services, from public transportation and road
70
Chapter Five: Exposing Government Corruption
improvements to garbage collection and zoning. He guaranteed votes on the

city council for a certain price. Folk told Steffens that millions of dollars in
bribes exchanged hands, with much of the money ending up in Butler’s pock-
ets. No one dared complain about the situation, however, because the boss’s
reach extended into every area of life in the city. He used intimidation and
coercion to silence critics and maintain his influence.
Steffens was shocked and disgusted by the extent of political corruption
in St. Louis. He was also amazed that so few residents of the city seemed to
share his outrage. Steffens hired a local reporter to research and write an arti-
cle detailing Butler’s abuse of the public trust, then returned to the McClure’s
offices in New York. When he received the article, however, Steffens noticed
that the local reporter had left out the most damaging
information about the boss’s activities. Steffens revised the
story, adding some of the disturbing facts he had learned “Legislation was
from Folk. But the local newsman reacted with panic when necessary to protect
he saw the new version. He demanded that Steffens issue woman and child
the story under his own name because “he could not live
workers, to clean up
and work in St. Louis if the article was printed as I had
edited it,”2 Steffens recalled. This incident helped convince slums, improve
the McClure’s staff that only outside reporters could expose housing, and control
local problems without fear of retribution.
the great corporations,
“Tweed Days in St. Louis,” the first installment in Stef-
fens’ “Shame of the Cities” series, appeared in the October
but first government
1902 issue of McClure’s (see “Lincoln Steffens Reveals the itself had to be
Shame of the Cities,” p. 182). Steffens showed readers how reformed,” one
the political corruption in St. Louis and other cities was relat-
historian noted.
ed to the social and economic problems facing the United
States. “Before Steffens, urban-reform reporting focused nar-
rowly on corrupt acts of office,” wrote one historian. “Steffens connected the
dots, showing the bargains between political machines and corporate interest.”3
The article generated a tremendous response from readers. Many people
wrote letters to the magazine describing similar problems in their own
municipal governments. These letters confirmed the suspicions of Steffens
and other McClure’s staff members that the situation in St. Louis was part of a
pattern of rampant political corruption in American cities. “Evidently you
could shoot me out of a gun fired at random,” Steffens told S.S. McClure,
“and wherever I lighted, there would be a story, the same way.”4
71
This 1906 cartoon from Collier’s magazine shows a corrupt political boss controlling the lives of
city residents.
Steffens immediately began investigating reports of political bosses and

corrupt officials controlling the governments of other major cities. He pub-
lished another exposé on the topic, “The Shame of Minneapolis: The Rescue
and Redemption of a City That Was Sold Out,” in the famous January 1903
issue of McClure’s that helped launch the muckraking movement. This install-
ment in the series followed the story of Albert Alonzo “Doc” Ames, the cor-
rupt mayor of Minneapolis. At one time a popular and respected local physi-
cian, Ames turned into an exceptionally greedy political boss once he was
elected to office. “He set out upon a career of corruption which for deliberate-
ness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled. It was as if he had made
up his mind that he had been careless long enough, and meant to enrich his
72
last years,” Steffens wrote. “Immediately upon his election, before he took
office, he organized a cabinet and laid plans to turn the city over to outlaws
who were to work under police direction for the profit of his administration.”5
Steffens followed up with stories about corruption and reform efforts
in such cities as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York. In 1904
he published seven of his reports together in book form as The Shame of the
Cities. His work increased public awareness of civic corruption and led to
the removal of many dishonest officials from office across the country. “The
articles had an enormous impact, resulting in reform for the individual
cities he reported on,” noted one historian. “They also had a cumulative
effect. Political and corporate crime was no longer a local issue—it was a
national problem. Steffens raised America’s social con-
sciousness and his exposés paved the way for reform pro-
grams at all levels, from the cities to the federal govern- With his exposés on
ment.”6 political corruption,
Lincoln Steffens
Exposing Corporate Influence over the U.S. Senate “raised America’s
The muckrakers’ exposure of corruption in city gov- social consciousness
ernments led to further investigations at the state and fed- and … paved the way
eral levels. Not surprisingly, these investigations uncov-
ered widespread problems with corporate trusts and for reform programs at
wealthy industrialists exercising undue influence over all levels, from the
elected officials. Powerful business interests often hand- cities to the
picked candidates for office, financed their election cam-
paigns, and then controlled their votes on proposed legis- federal government.”
lation that would reform or regulate their activities.
Some of the worst cases of corporate influence over elected officials were
found in the U.S. Senate. The method used to elect members of the Senate at
that time was particularly vulnerable to manipulation by business interests.
When the United States was founded in 1776, the framers of the Constitution
provided for senators to be elected by state legislatures rather than by popular
vote. This system made it easy for powerful political and financial figures in the
state to control the choice of senators for their own benefit. “The Senate was a
chamber of bosses with one senator from each state representing the political
machine in his state, and the other senator representing the leading business-
men,” charged one historian. “Together, they victimized the ordinary citizens.”7
73
In the early 1900s, a number of promi-

nent members of the Senate came under
investigation and were convicted of fraud and
other crimes. Many progressives, such as
newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst,
argued that the only way to end such corrup-
tion was to provide for the direct election of
U.S. Senators by popular vote. “The people
will never be protected against the trusts by a
Senate in which the trusts occupy many seats
and control a majority,”8 Hearst declared in
an editorial. When Hearst purchased the
muckraking journal Cosmopolitan in 1905, he
made exposing corruption in the Senate one
of his first orders of business. He assigned
David Graham Phillips (see Phillips biogra-
phy, p. 124), a veteran reporter who had also
written popular novels with an anti-corrup-
tion theme, to prepare a series of articles on
Muckraking journalist David Graham the subject.
Phillips attacked government
corruption in his “Treason of the
The first installment in Phillips’ nine-part
Senate” series for Cosmopolitan. series, “The Treason of the Senate,” appeared
in the March 1906 issue of Cosmopolitan (see
“David Graham Phillips Blasts Corrupt U.S. Senators,” p. 188). Hearst promot-
ed it heavily with advertising and sensational headlines, and its popularity
helped increase circulation of the magazine by 50 percent. Phillips started out
by explaining to readers how the Senate played a significant role in deciding
how the nation’s prosperity would be shared: “The laws it permits or compels,
the laws it refuses to permit, the interpreters of laws [judges] it permits to be
appointed—these factors determine whether the great forces which modern
concentration has produced shall operate to distribute prosperity equally or
with shameful inequality and cruel and destructive injustice.”9
Phillips went on to profile twenty-one senators whom he claimed had
inappropriate relationships with corporate interests. He questioned, for
instance, the common practice of senators accepting paid positions on corpo-
rate boards—and then voting on legislation affecting those businesses.
Phillips warned that such links often caused members of the Senate to act
74
against the best interests of the American people. “Treason is a strong word,
but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the
Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to
the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more danger-
ous,” he declared. “Interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all;
whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the people.”10
Enacting Political Reforms

Phillips’ “Treason of the Senate” series alarmed American voters and
generated a chorus of calls for reform. Progressives targeted political corrup-
tion and corporate influence at all levels of government with new vigor in the
wake of his articles. One of the top priorities for these reformers was chang-
ing the way senators were elected. They launched a campaign to pass a con-
stitutional amendment providing for the direct election of senators by popu-
lar vote. They felt that taking the responsibility for choosing senators out of
the hands of state legislatures and political parties would help reduce the
influence of corporate interests over the process.
Although it took several years, the campaign was ultimately successful.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on April 8,
1913, and voters elected senators directly in the following year’s elections. In
the meantime, Phillips’ series led to increased public scrutiny of Senate votes
on various reform issues. This attention contributed to the passage of a num-
ber of progressive laws regarding railroad rates, meat inspection, employer
liability, and other issues.
Reform-minded governors like Hiram Johnson of California and Robert
M. La Follette of Wisconsin also sponsored measures to combat political cor-
ruption at the state and municipal levels of government. The main idea
behind these measures was to increase citizen participation in the electoral
process. Reformers believed that if voters played a stronger role in choosing
their representatives and shaping legislation, they would remove corrupt law-
makers from office and reduce the influence of powerful corporate interests.
One important reform measure was the direct primary election. This
measure allowed voters, rather than political machines, to narrow the field of
candidates to appear on the ballot for a general election. Another reform mea-
sure, the secret ballot, enabled citizens to cast their votes without fear of retri-
bution from political bosses. Many cities and states also enacted measures
75
Criticism of corporate influence over the U.S. Senate—represented by the overbearing political
bosses in this cartoon—led to a Constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of
senators.
providing for recall elections, which gave voters a way to remove corrupt offi-
cials from office. Two other reform measures that found strong support at this
time were the initiative and the referendum. The initiative gave voters the
ability to bypass state legislatures and pass their own laws through special
elections. The referendum, on the other hand, gave voters a means to repeal
unpopular laws passed by state legislatures.
The efforts of the muckrakers in exposing political corruption also led to
greater enforcement of some long-ignored laws. For example, the Pendleton
Act of 1883 was intended to prevent political leaders from appointing their
friends and supporters to fill government jobs at the expense of more quali-
fied applicants. The Pendleton Act established a system of open testing, simi-
lar to the modern civil service exam, to determine job applicants’ qualifica-
tions. It also made it illegal for elected officials to require government
76
employees to contribute to or help with their campaigns. During the Progres-

sive Era, pressure from muckrakers and other reformers resulted in much
stricter federal enforcement of these provisions.
Trying Roosevelt’s Patience

Although the “Treason of the Senate” series encouraged lawmakers
across the country to enact important political reforms, it also severely
strained the relationship between Roosevelt and the muckrakers. For three
years the journalists and the president had generally worked as partners in
the drive for progressive reform. The muckrakers raised public awareness of
the problems facing American society and increased the pressure for change.
Roosevelt used the resulting public support to convince Congress to back the
policies and programs he devised to address the problems.
For much of his presidency, Roosevelt maintained a respectful and even
friendly relationship with the muckrakers, especially with the staff of
McClure’s. “I have learned to look to your articles for real help,” he once
wrote to Ray Stannard Baker. “You have impressed me with your earnest
desire to be fair, with your freedom from hysteria, and with your anxiety to
tell the truth rather than to write something that will be sensational.”11
During his last years in office, however, Roosevelt voiced growing con-
cerns about the trends he saw in American journalism. As muckraking
became a movement with dozens of publications competing for readers, the
president felt that the articles grew more sensational, unfair, bitter, and per-
sonal. Roosevelt worried that by exaggerating some problems, the muckrak-
ers would cause readers to lose faith in the foundations of American democ-
racy and capitalism. He also resented some writers’ insistence that wealthy
business owners were responsible for all the problems in American society.
Roosevelt did not appreciate some writers’ calls for a working-class revolu-
tion to install a socialist system.
On a few occasions, Roosevelt complained about what he viewed as an
excessively negative tone in the muckraking journals. In a 1905 letter to S.S.
McClure, he asked the publisher to strive for more balanced coverage. “It is an
unfortunate thing to encourage people to believe that all crimes are connected
with business, and that the crime of graft is the only crime. I wish very much
that you could have articles showing up the hideous iniquity of which mobs
are guilty, the wrongs of violence by the poor as well as the wrongs of corrup-
77
During his last years in office, President Theodore Roosevelt voiced growing concerns about the
negative tone of American journalism.
tion by the rich,” the president wrote. “Put sky in the landscape, and show, not
incidentally but of set purpose, that you stand as much against anarchic vio-
lence and crimes of brutality as against corruption and crimes of greed.”12
McClure and a few other magazine publishers took Roosevelt’s sugges-
tion to heart. Partly because they recognized that the American people were
growing weary of a steady diet of bad news, some journals made efforts to
include more positive stories. “I think you are right,” McClure told Ray Stan-
nard Baker, “that we should in some way offset the critical campaign of the
magazine by some articles that would show the real and conquering Ameri-
can in his true character and aspect. It is, of course, a little difficult to formu-
late such articles.”13
The End of the Muckraking Era

By the time Cosmopolitan published the “Treason of the Senate” series in
1906, however, Roosevelt had reached the end of his patience. Phillips’
78
account of political corruption in the federal government targeted a number

of the president’s friends, allies, and supporters. Roosevelt had counted on
these people to help him win reelection in 1904, and he needed them to help
push his policies of progressive reform. Combined with other articles—
including a series by Lincoln Steffens suggesting that the corruption reached
all the way to the White House—the attack convinced Roosevelt that the
muckrakers had finally crossed the line and become more of a hindrance than
a help to his legislative agenda.
In early 1906, Roosevelt launched a counterattack. He
“The man who never
made a number of statements criticizing the leading muck-
raking journals. He also characterized the crusading jour- does anything else,
nalists as dangerous radicals who threatened to destroy who never thinks or
American society. The president did not go out of his way to
speaks or writes save
differentiate between the writers whose work he felt had
merit, and those whose work he felt was irresponsible. of his feats with the
Upon learning that Roosevelt planned to make a speech muck-rake, speedily
outlining his views on the subject, Baker sent the president becomes, not a help to
a letter asking him to reconsider. “Even admitting that some
of the so-called ‘exposures’ have been extreme, have they society, not an
not, as a whole, been honest and useful?” he wrote. “Would incitement to good, but
not a speech, backed by all of your great authority, attacking one of the most potent
the magazines, tend to give aid and comfort to these very
rascals, besides making it more difficult in the future not forces of evil,”
only to get the truth told but to have it listened to?”14 thundered President
Roosevelt brushed aside Baker’s concerns. Instead, he Theodore Roosevelt in
expressed his feelings in an address before the Gridiron Club a 1906 speech.
in April 1906. Although this speech—delivered in a private
setting—was off the record, parts of it appeared in the press.
The president repeated the sentiments in another speech delivered at a ceremo-
ny laying the cornerstone for a new congressional office building on April 14
(see “Roosevelt Calls Crusading Journalists ‘Muckrakers,’” p. 192).
It was in these public statements that Roosevelt coined the term “muck-
raker” to describe the investigative journalists (see sidebar “Origin of the
Term ‘Muckraker,’” p. 80). He suggested that the writers were so busy raking
through the muck looking for problems to expose that they were incapable of
seeing anything admirable about the country. “There is filth on the floor,”
Roosevelt declared, “and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake, and there
79
Origin of the Term “Muckraker”
E ver since President Theodore Roosevelt made his famous 1906 speech
criticizing the investigative journalists of his era, the word “muckraker”
has been applied mainly to people who work to expose corruption and
wrongdoing. On occasion, it has been used to describe people who spread
gossip or sensational stories. Modern readers may be surprised to learn that
the term “muckrake” originally applied to a tool that resembled a pitchfork
and was used to clean barns.
Roosevelt drew his unusual use of the word “muckraker” from a clas-
sic work of English literature called The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
The book, which was written in the seventeenth century, follows the spiri-
tual journey of a character named Christian. After beginning his travels at
the City of Destruction, Christian must overcome a series of trials and
temptations in order to reach the Celestial City. His route passes through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for instance, and requires him to climb
the Hill of Difficulty. Christian’s journey represents the earthly existence of
man, and his destination represents heaven or the kingdom of God.
One of the characters in The Pilgrim’s Progress is called the Man with
the Muckrake. When a crown from heaven appears above this man’s head,
are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services
that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never
thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily
becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most
potent forces of evil.”15
Some of the best-known journalists of the era took offense at the presi-
dent’s speech and rejected his use of the term “muckraker.” They believed
that their work promoted the interests of all Americans by holding industrial
and political powers accountable for their actions. They worried that being
dismissed as radical troublemakers by a popular president would cause their
work to be marginalized. Lincoln Steffens, for one, declared that Roosevelt
had effectively put an end to the investigative reporting that had formed the
80
he continues looking downward and raking through the dirt at his feet.
Bunyan offers the character as an example of someone who is so focused
on the riches of earthly existence that he fails to notice the path to heaven
that is open to him. The encounter teaches Bunyan’s pilgrim the value of
living a simple life: “Whereas it was also showed thee that the man could
look no way but downwards, it is to let thee know that earthly things,
when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts
away from God.”
Roosevelt knew that The Pilgrim’s Progress was familiar to most
Americans of that era. He figured that his audience would understand his
reference to the Man with the Muckrake. He described the investigative
journalists who exposed the inequity and corruption in America as muck-
rakers because he felt they were too busy picking through the nation’s
problems to notice any positive things about the country. Yet many histori-
ans argue that the president distorted Bunyan’s character for his own pur-
poses. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the muckraker is too obsessed with earthly
wealth to worry about spiritual redemption. Given this fact, some scholars
claim that the word could more accurately be used to describe the robber
barons and corrupt officials whom the “muckrakers” targeted.
Source: Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. London: 1678.
basis for his rise to power. Some journalists, on the other hand, embraced the
muckraker label and wore it proudly. They felt that angering the nation’s
powerful corporate and government leaders was part of their job description.
They figured that earning enemies was a natural consequence of exposing
uncomfortable truths.
Still, Roosevelt’s criticism seemed to resonate with the American people.
After 1906, public interest diminished in the type of investigative reporting
that the muckraking journals offered. Sales of McClure’s and other muckrak-
ing magazines underwent a decline. Some historians, however, assert that
Roosevelt’s stance was not much of a factor in this downturn. Instead, they
point to public weariness of reading about the problems in American society.
Another factor in the decline, say historians, was the rise of marketing and
81
public relations functions in the world of business. Many large corporations

hired professionals to put a positive spin on their activities and improve their
public images. These efforts helped them to counteract muckraking reports
and create uncertainty about the facts in the public mind.
By the time Roosevelt made his speech, some observers even questioned
whether the most successful muckraking magazines were being hypocritical
when they criticized big business. McClure’s, for instance, had expanded over
the years to become a large corporation like those it investigated. As it grew,
the magazine depended on advertising revenue to cover its soaring produc-
tion costs. As a result, its editors became more cautious about criticizing the
companies that purchased ad space within its pages.
Citing differences in editorial philosophy with publisher S.S. McClure,
half a dozen prominent staff writers (including Baker, Steffens, and Tarbell)
left the magazine during the summer of 1906. They founded their own jour-
nal, American Magazine, and released its first issue in October 1906.
Although they still planned to publish exposés, the group announced that the
new magazine would focus on stories that “reflect a happy, struggling, fight-
ing world in which, as we believe, good people are coming out on top.”16
American Magazine went on to publish muckraking articles on such topics as
race relations, church corruption, West Coast politics, and efforts to abolish
the twelve-hour workday before it folded in 1916.
As the twentieth century entered its second decade, the growing threat
of World War I captured the interest of the American people as well as the
attention of the nation’s major magazines and newspapers. By 1912, as one
historian noted,
Muckraking was plainly going out of style. The radicals were

certain that ‘the interests’ had killed it, but later historians agree
that the muckrakers had simply worn out their welcome. For
nearly a decade they had delivered successive hammer blows
on the public skull, creating a colossal national headache, and
now people were beginning to sense how good they would feel
when it stopped.... Not that the muckraking magazines were
without merit. They threw a strong spotlight on the most seri-
ous of America’s social ills and alarmed the government enough
to cause it to make an attempt at setting up a regulatory check
82
on laissez-faire capitalism [an economic philosophy that advo-

cates limiting government intervention and allowing market
forces to take their own course]. Further, they invented the
kind of journalism we now call investigative reporting, thus
fulfilling what the architects of the First Amendment expected
the press to be: a force able to make government accountable to
the governed and to provide constant fuel to the democratic
machine by means of free inquiry.17
Notes
1 Traxel, David. Crusader Nation: The United States in Peace and the Great War, 1898-1920. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006, p. 6.
2 Steffens, Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1931, p. 372.
3 Shapiro, Bruce, ed. Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America.
New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003, p. 71.
4 Steffens, p. 392.
5 Steffens, Lincoln. “The Shame of Minneapolis,” McClure’s, January 1903. In Shapiro, Bruce, ed.
Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America. New York: Thunder’s
Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003, p. 75.
6 Jensen, Carl, ed. Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2000, p. 42.
7 Jensen, p. 42.
8 Quoted in Serrin, Judith, and William Serrin, eds. Muckraking: The Journalism That Changed Amer-
ica. New York: New Press, 2002, p. 105.
9 Quoted in Serrin, p. 106.
10 Quoted in Serrin, p. 106.
11 Dorman, Jessica. “Where Are Muckraking Journalists Today?” Nieman Reports, Summer 2000, p.
55.
12 Quoted in Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1970, p. 179.
13 Quoted in Wilson, p. 166.
14 Dorman, p. 55.
15 Roosevelt, Theodore. “The Man with the Muck-Rake.” Putnam’s Monthly and the Critic, October
1906, p. 42.
16 Baker, Ray Stannard. American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945, p. 226.
83
Chapter Six
The Muckraking
Tradition Continues
5
As long as the public was well informed and well led, the
muckrakers retained faith that the state would uphold the
public welfare and morality; it would indeed impose the gen-
eral will upon all the disintegrating facets of American life.
—Harold S. Wilson,
McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers
A lthough the first decade of the twentieth century is considered the

heyday of muckraking journalism, the media has continued to serve
as a watchdog of public interests ever since. Some of the same social
and political problems that confronted Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton
Sinclair, Ray Stannard Baker, and other early muckrakers remained issues in
American life. Large corporations continued to exploit workers and mislead
consumers, for instance, and powerful government leaders spun webs of lies
and corruption. But new generations of investigative journalists arrived on
the scene to expose such abuses and inspire reforms, even as journalism
expanded beyond newspapers and magazines to radio, television, documen-
tary films, and the Internet (see “Pete Hamill Explains the Importance of
Investigative Journalism,” p. 206).
In this way, they kept the muckraking tradition alive. “Independent,
aggressive journalism strengthens American democracy, improves the lives of
its citizens, checks the abuses of powerful people, supports the weakest mem-
bers of society, connects us all to one another, educates and entertains us,”1
declared one historian.
85
American Journalism Since the Muckrakers

When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, the muckraking era in
American journalism came to an end. Newspapers and magazines across the
United States dedicated large amounts of space to war coverage, and domestic
problems received much less attention. Some periodicals, especially evening
newspapers, saw their circulation grow during the war years. But wartime
increases in the price of paper, ink, and printing machinery caused many small
newspapers to go out of business or sell their operations to larger concerns.
This consolidation of newspaper publishing continued during the post-
war period, as successful owners bought out competing publications to create
chains or syndicates. By the mid-1920s, for example, William Randolph
Hearst owned twenty-eight newspapers in eighteen different cities. Successful
newspaper groups such as Gannett, Booth, and Ridder (later Knight-Ridder)
also got their starts during this time. The postwar period also saw the rise of
pulp magazines that focused on dramatic, action-oriented fiction, like True
Story and All-Story.
Yet some magazines continued to focus on news and current events.
Henry Luce introduced the weekly newsmagazine Time during the 1920s and
used it as the foundation to build a huge publishing empire. During the
1930s, the development of portable, 35-millimeter cameras and improve-
ments in photographic reproduction led to the rise of photojournalism, and
to the creation of such photo-heavy magazines as Life and Look.
Printed sources of news and information faced increasing competition
from the new medium of radio during the period between World Wars I and
II. The number of radio receivers in the United States increased from a few
hundred thousand in 1920 to reach 14 million in 1930 and 44 million in
1940. Concerned about the potential impact of this new communication
technology on circulation, a number of newspaper publishers launched their
own radio broadcasting arms. Still, the American people continued to rely on
newspapers and magazines as their main source of news.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the total daily circulation of
newspapers nationwide actually increased. Magazines experienced strong
sales, as well, and more than twenty different magazines could claim circula-
tion over one million by 1940. When the United States entered World War II
the following year, American newspapers and magazines sent hundreds of
war correspondents overseas to provide coverage. Radio networks also
86
Chapter Six: The Muckraking Tradition Continues
This 1906 political cartoon shows some of the leading writers of the muckraking era—including
Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell—marching into battle under the banner
of influential magazines.
offered extensive war reporting, and the American people watched newsreel
features on theater screens. Many historians consider World War II coverage
to be a high point in American journalism.
After the war ended in 1945, the new medium of television arose to chal-
lenge newspapers and magazines. Ownership of television sets increased
from 10 million nationwide in 1950 to reach 50 million by 1960. Meanwhile,
the number of broadcast TV stations grew from about 100 to more than 500
during this same decade. Although television newscasts could not provide
the volume of information available in print sources, they gave stories an
immediacy and visual appeal that newspapers and magazines often lacked.
“As a conduit for information, television is a joke compared with a newspa-
87
per. The full text of a network evening-news telecast takes up about one-third
of the front page of a regular newspaper,” one analyst noted. But “whenever
television wants to be first with a story, it can be. It doesn’t matter how well or
poorly television has covered the story.”2 During the 1950s and 1960s, leg-
endary broadcast journalists like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and Mike
Wallace anchored popular network TV newscasts.
The 1970s saw investigative journalism reach heights not seen since the
muckraking era. A new generation of young, idealistic publishers took the
reins of several major newspapers. They encouraged their reporters to ques-
tion authority, and the reporters responded by uncovering shocking informa-
tion about the inner workings of the U.S. government. These revelations con-
tributed to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and the withdrawal of
American military forces from Vietnam.
During the 1980s, the American people gained more media options with
the introduction of cable TV news channels like CNN. Facing high produc-
tion costs and declining readership, many newspapers and magazines either
failed or consolidated into giant media companies. However, some observers
complained that the quality of American journalism suffered during this peri-
od. Viacom, Time Warner, and other media giants were often criticized for
focusing on profits at the expense of quality products.
During the 1990s, the Internet brought about a major shift in the way
Americans received news and information. It challenged the dominance of
traditional media, like television and print journalism, by giving people
access to a huge variety of news sources at all times. As Americans increasing-
ly turned to online information sources, the nation’s daily newspapers suf-
fered severe declines in circulation. A number of major newspapers were
forced to reduce their reporting staffs, limit their delivery schedules, or even
close their doors. Some media critics worried that the technological changes
might spell the end of traditional investigative journalism. “By now, everyone
who cares about journalism and its role in society understands that the busi-
ness model that for four decades handsomely supported large metropolitan
newspapers has crumbled as readers and advertisers flock to the Internet,”
noted one analyst. “The result is a curious mixture of glut and shortage: an
explosion of certain kinds of information available instantly and free of
charge on the Web—spot news, stock prices, weather, sports, the latest
doings of celebrities and, most of all, opinion—offset by an accelerating
88
shrinkage of foreign reporting and in-

depth investigation.”3
Muckraking in the Second Half

of the Twentieth Century
Despite all the changes that have
taken place in American journalism
since the muckraking era, the media
has continued to serve a vital function
in society. On many notable occasions
throughout the years, determined re-
porters have picked up and carried the
muckraking torch. They have conduct-
ed investigations, uncovered problems,
raised public awareness, and generated
calls for reform. In this way, investiga-
tive journalists have protected the pub-
lic interest against powerful political Historians rank CBS News correspondent
and economic forces (see sidebar “The Edward R. Murrow among the best investigative
Muckraking Movies of Michael Moore,” journalists of the twentieth century.
p. 98).
One of the most famous examples of muckraking journalism during the
second half of the twentieth century came during the early years of television
news. It involved Edward R. Murrow, a legendary newsman who had first
gained fame during World War II for broadcasting radio reports from London
rooftops in the middle of German bombing raids. In 1951 Murrow launched a
television program called See It Now for CBS News. The show tackled a wide
range of controversial issues, from political corruption to nuclear weapons,
and set long-lasting standards for excellence in TV news reporting.
In 1954 Murrow dedicated eleven episodes of See It Now to challenging
Senator Eugene McCarthy of Wisconsin. McCarthy was one of the most pow-
erful and feared figures in the country at that time. Taking advantage of wide-
spread concerns about the spread of communism following World War II, in
the early 1950s McCarthy launched an anti-communist witch hunt. Using his
authority as chairman of a special congressional committee on “un-American
activities,” he terrorized celebrities, intellectuals, and anyone who disagreed
with his political views. His charges of disloyalty cost many of his victims their
89
reputations and jobs. But few people dared to speak out against McCarthy
because they worried about becoming the next target of his crusade.
Murrow felt that McCarthy’s campaign posed a threat to American
democracy. He was determined to expose the senator’s dangerous motivations
and unfair tactics. On the March 9, 1954, episode of See It Now, Murrow put
together clips of McCarthy speaking at campaign rallies and during hearings
of his investigating committee. He used the senator’s own words to condemn
him before the American people. “The line between investigation and perse-
cution is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped
over it repeatedly,” Murrow concluded. “We must not confuse dissent with
disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that
conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.”4
The program generated tens of thousands of viewer
“We must not confuse responses, nearly all of them supporting Murrow. His
courageous stand helped turn public opinion against
dissent with McCarthy. The Senate officially censured McCarthy for his
disloyalty,” Edward R. conduct in December 1954, and his political career ended a
Murrow declared in a short time later. “Murrow’s March 9, 1954, broadcast has
come to be known as ‘television’s finest hour,’” noted one
famous 1954 news
historian. “It revealed the power of the medium to fight evil
program condemning by telling the people what was really happening.”5
McCarthyism.
Taking On Large Corporations
Like the turn-of-the-century muckrakers, some modern-day writers have
famously challenged the health and safety practices of large corporations. One
prominent example is biologist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring
exposed the environmental damage resulting from the unregulated use of pes-
ticides. During the 1950s, chemicals like dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane
(DDT) were commonly sprayed on food crops and in homes to get rid of
unwanted “pests” like insects, rodents, and weeds. The U.S. government pro-
moted the use of DDT to help reduce insect-borne disease and increase food
production. The large chemical companies that manufactured DDT and other
pesticides insisted that they were safe. But Carson’s research showed that these
chemicals were toxic to birds, fish, and other creatures—including humans. In
Silent Spring, she explained how DDT accumulated in soil, water, and the tis-
sues of animals over time, causing terrible environmental damage.
90
The chemical companies attacked Carson, questioning her data and

challenging her qualifications as a scientist. Nevertheless, her book became a
best-seller and brought national attention to the dangers of pesticides. Silent
Spring created such a public outcry that the U.S. Congress formed a special
committee to investigate the use of the chemicals. The committee agreed with
Carson’s findings and recommended passing new laws to regulate pesticides.
In 1972 Congress banned DDT from use in the United States. Carson’s work
is widely credited with raising public awareness about pollution and helping
to launch the American environmental movement.
Another writer who famously took on powerful corporate interests was
Ralph Nader. An admirer of the muckrakers, Nader claimed that his efforts to
improve American society were inspired by reading Upton Sinclair’s book The
Jungle. After training to be a lawyer, Nader often found himself representing
the victims of car accidents. His growing interest in automobile safety led to a
job researching the issue for the U.S. Department of Labor in the 1960s.
In 1965 Nader published the results of his research in a book called
Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. He
told readers that highway accidents took the lives of over 50,000 Americans
each year and cost the nation an estimated $8 billion in property damage,
medical expenses, lost wages, and insurance payments. He claimed that large
automobile manufacturers like General Motors (GM) knowingly sold vehi-
cles that endangered consumers. Nader insisted that GM and other automak-
ers chose not to install costly safety equipment because it would reduce their
profits. “A great problem of contemporary life is how to control the power of
economic interests which ignore the harmful effects of their applied science
and technology,” he wrote. “The automobile tragedy is one of the most seri-
ous of these manmade assaults on the human body.”6
GM sent private investigators after Nader in an attempt to discredit
him, but the corporation’s efforts backfired. Nader sued GM for invasion of
privacy and ended up winning a large monetary settlement and a public
apology. His book became a best-seller and generated intense public concern
about automobile safety. The U.S. Congress investigated Nader’s claims and
addressed the problem by passing the Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of
1966. Nader’s work thus led to the introduction of mandatory safety equip-
ment like seatbelts and federal crash testing to ensure that new vehicles met
basic safety standards.
91
Following his initial success, Nader went on to found dozens of con-

sumer advocacy groups. His work helped spark the establishment of federal
agencies to oversee the health and safety practices of large corporations,
including the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA). “Ralph Nader started changing America in 1965 with
Unsafe at Any Speed,” wrote one historian. “The book was the landmark event
of a new public interest movement focused on consumer affairs.”7
Revealing Military Abuses

During the 1960s and early 1970s the United States became involved in
the Vietnam War. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in this failed
effort to prevent Communist-led North Vietnam from taking over South Viet-
nam, which was led by a U.S.-supported government. Over time, the Vietnam
War became deeply unpopular with the American people, in part because
journalists uncovered troubling information about the U.S. military’s policies
and conduct of the war.
One of the most shocking revelations about the Vietnam War came
from Seymour Hersh, who is often mentioned among America’s best inves-
tigative journalists. Fascinated with news gathering from an early age, Hersh
started his career as a copy boy and police reporter in Chicago. After serving
in the U.S. Army as a journalist and speechwriter, he joined the Associated
Press in 1963 and was assigned to cover the U.S. Department of Defense. As
he wandered around the Pentagon looking for stories, he began to realize
that military leaders did not always tell the American people the truth about
events in Vietnam.
In 1969 Hersh heard a rumor that a U.S. Army officer named William
Calley had led a murderous attack on innocent civilians in a Vietnamese vil-
lage called My Lai 4. He found Calley at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he
was secretly being court-martialed for his actions. Hersh conducted an
exclusive interview with Calley and got the full story of what became known
as the My Lai massacre. He learned that American soldiers had raided the
village and killed an estimated 500 people, many of them women, children,
and old men. Members of Calley’s platoon burned down huts with entire
families inside and threw hand grenades into protective bunkers that were
crammed full of unarmed villagers. At one point, Calley ordered his men to
92
Journalist Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation of the My Lai massacre, a
Vietnam War incident in which American soldiers killed hundreds of civilians.
push about 75 civilians into a drainage ditch and shoot them to death. “Sec-
onds after the shooting stopped, a bloodied but unhurt two-year-old boy
miraculously crawled out of the ditch, crying,” Hersh related. “He began
running toward the hamlet. Someone hollered, ‘There’s a kid.’ There was a
long pause. Then Calley ran back, grabbed the child, threw him back in the
ditch and shot him.”8
Hersh wrote a news story about the My Lai massacre, but the atrocities
he described were so horrific that the editors of several major newspapers and
magazines refused to believe that the incident really happened. He finally
convinced a friend to distribute the article through the small, independent
Dispatch News Service. Before long, the My Lai tragedy had become front-
page news across the country, and Hersh ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize
for investigative reporting. He expanded upon the story in two books, My Lai
93
4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath and Cover-Up: The Army’s Secret
Investigation of the Massacre of My Lai 4.
Hersh continued working as an investigative reporter and uncovered a
number of problems with U.S. military and intelligence operations over the
years. While working for the New York Times in the 1970s, for instance, he
exposed an illegal domestic spying operation conducted by the Central Intel-
ligence Agency (CIA). More recently, he gained attention for his criticism of
the planning and conduct of U.S.-led wars in Iraq, and for his efforts to
improve the treatment of U.S. military veterans.
Another major revelation about the Vietnam War took
place on June 13, 1971, when Neil Sheehan of the New
“Watergate became an York Times broke the story of the existence of the Pentagon
Papers. This 7,000-page report was a secret U.S. military
example for the ages, a study about the development of U.S. policy in Southeast
classic case when Asia and the causes of the Vietnam War. It showed that U.S.
journalism made a government and military leaders had misled the American
people for years about their decision-making processes in
difference,” one
Vietnam. “The Pentagon researchers ... examined not only
historian noted. “Good the policies and motive of American administrations, but
journalism does not also the effectiveness of intelligence, the mechanics and
often topple a consequences of bureaucratic compromises, the difficulties
of imposing American tactics on the Vietnamese, the gov-
president, but it ernmental uses of the American press, and many other trib-
frequently changes the utaries of their main story,” Sheehan wrote. “The authors
lives of citizens, both reveal, for example, that the American intelligence commu-
nity repeatedly provided the policy makers with what
grand and ordinary.” proved to be accurate warnings that desired goals were
either unattainable or likely to provoke costly reactions
from the enemy.”9
A former Pentagon advisor named Daniel Ellsberg, who had grown dis-
illusioned with U.S. conduct in the war, leaked a copy of the Pentagon
Papers to Sheehan. President Richard M. Nixon immediately went to court
to prevent the New York Times from publishing the documents. Three
weeks later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the newspaper could pro-
ceed under the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press. The
publication of the Pentagon Papers increased public mistrust of the govern-
ment and hastened the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. One historian
94
Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (left) and Bob Woodward uncovered the Watergate
scandal, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.
described it as an “investigative coup” and “the single most consequential

‘leak’ on record.”10
Uncovering the Political Scandal of the Century

Probably the most famous case of investigative journalism in American
history is the Watergate scandal uncovered by Bob Woodward and Carl Bern-
stein of the Washington Post. In June 1972, the young reporters were assigned
to cover a suspicious break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Com-
mittee, located inside the Watergate Hotel building in Washington, D.C.
Woodward and Bernstein quickly learned that the burglars had connections to
the Republican Party. “One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the
attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the
salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee,” they
revealed. “The five suspects, well-dressed, wearing rubber surgical gloves and
95
unarmed, were arrested about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when they were surprised by
Metropolitan police inside the 29-office suite of the Democratic headquarters
on the sixth floor of the Watergate. The suspects had extensive photographic
equipment and some electronic surveillance instruments capable of intercept-
ing both regular conversation and telephone communication.”11
Suspecting that the crime was politically motivated, Woodward and
Bernstein launched an investigation that lasted more than two years, pro-
duced a series of 225 news articles, and earned them a Pulitzer Prize. Based
on tips from sources inside the White House, they eventually discovered that
President Nixon and high-ranking members of his administration had tried
to cover up the crime and their knowledge of it. The Washington Post articles
led to the appointment of a U.S. Senate committee to investigate the matter.
Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment for his role
in the scandal, and twenty-two members of his administration ended up
going to prison.
Woodward and Bernstein wrote a best-selling book about their investiga-
tions called All the President’s Men. The movie version, starring Robert Red-
ford and Dustin Hoffman, won an Academy Award as Best Picture. The story
demonstrated the power of the press and inspired a new generation of Ameri-
cans to pursue careers as investigative journalists. “Watergate became an
example for the ages, a classic case when journalism made a difference,” one
historian noted. “Good journalism does not often topple a president, but it
frequently changes the lives of citizens, both grand and ordinary.”12
Revisiting Familiar Muckraking Themes

Even as the twenty-first century approached and the American media
underwent significant changes, investigative journalists drew attention to
some of the same issues that the muckrakers addressed almost one hundred
years earlier. In his 1997 book One World, Ready or Not, for instance, William
Greider explained how globalization brought old problems like child labor
and exploitation of factory workers to the doorsteps of American consumers.
Greider told about a terrible fire that destroyed a toy factory in Thailand
in 1993, killing more young female workers than had died in the 1911 Trian-
gle Shirtwaist factory fire. Although the Thai facility mostly produced toys for
large American companies—like Fisher-Price, Hasbro, and Tyco—the inci-
dent was almost completely ignored by the U.S. media. “Americans worried
96
In 2004 modern-day muckraking journalists exposed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military
personnel at Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.
obsessively over the everyday safety of their children, and the U.S. govern-
ment’s regulators diligently policed the design of toys to avoid injury to
young innocents,” he wrote. “Yet neither citizens nor government took any
interest in the brutal and dangerous conditions imposed on the people who
manufactured those same toys, many of whom were mere adolescent children
themselves. Indeed, the government position, both in Washington and
Bangkok, assumed that there was no social obligation connecting consumers
with workers, at least none that governments could enforce without disrupt-
ing free trade or invading the sovereignty of other nations.”13
In 2001, meanwhile, journalist Eric Schlosser investigated America’s
modern meatpacking industry in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-
American Meal. Schlosser visited slaughterhouse operations and encountered
many of the same terrible working conditions that famed muckraker Upton
97
The Muckraking Movies of Michael Moore
I n addition to newspapers, magazines, television, and the Internet, docu-

mentary films provide a venue for modern-day muckrakers to raise public
awareness of problems facing the nation. The best known—and most con-
troversial—muckraking filmmaker in America is Michael Moore. Moore was
born on April 23, 1954, in Flint, Michigan, an industrial town that was home
to several factories that produced automobiles for General Motors (GM).
Many members of Moore’s family worked on the assembly line and
belonged to the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
Moore launched his career as a muckraking journalist at the age of
twenty-two. After dropping out of college at the University of Michigan-
Flint, he founded an alternative weekly newspaper called The Michigan
Voice. The paper shut down in 1986 when Moore accepted a position as the
editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine. After only a few months
on the job, however, he was fired over disagreements about content. Moore
filed a lawsuit for wrongful dismissal and received an out-of-court settlement
of $58,000. He used this money to make his first documentary film.
Roger and Me, released in 1989, chronicles the decline of Flint and
the struggles of city residents after GM relocated its assembly plants—and
thousands of jobs—to Mexico. The film centers around Moore’s fruitless
efforts to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Roger Smith, the former
president of GM, to discuss the situation. Moore’s next film, Bowling for
Columbine (2002), examines the issues of gun ownership and violence in
the United States. It was inspired by the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High
School in Colorado, in which two students went on a shooting rampage
that took the lives of thirteen people.
Sinclair had written about a century earlier in The Jungle. Schlosser reported
that the majority of the workers were recent immigrants from developing
countries. They worked long hours in grueling jobs for low wages. Under
constant pressure to keep up with high-speed production lines, they faced a
high likelihood of job-related injuries. Many of these injuries went unreport-
ed, and the workers did not receive health care or other benefits.
98
Moore also wrote and directed Fahrenheit 9/11, a 2004 documentary

about the impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on U.S.
government policy and American society. The film was highly critical of
the George W. Bush administration and its decision to invade Iraq. In 2007
Moore released Sicko, a documentary which exposed problems in the
American health care system. He has also written several best-selling
books that offer his opinions about U.S. politics and culture, including
Downsize This!, Stupid White Men, and Dude, Where’s My Country?
Moore’s work has earned him many awards and millions of fans.
Bowling for Columbine won an Academy Award as Best Documentary Fea-
ture of 2002. Fahrenheit 9/11 earned $200 million in box-office receipts
worldwide, making it the highest-grossing documentary film of all time. In
2005, Time magazine featured Moore on its list of the 100 Most Influential
People in the United States. Admirers of the filmmaker claim that he sheds
light on important political, economic, and social problems and looks out
for the interests of ordinary Americans.
At the same time, though, Moore’s work has made him one of the
most reviled figures in America. A number of rival documentary filmmak-
ers have released movies that criticize and attempt to discredit Moore,
such as Michael and Me, Michael Moore Hates America, and Manufactur-
ing Dissent. In addition, there are numerous Web sites and blogs dedicat-
ed to pointing out factual errors, omissions, or misleading information in
Moore’s films. Moore’s critics claim that he ignores data that contradicts
his preconceived ideas, edits interviews in a way that slants the subjects’
meaning, and otherwise distorts the truth. Moore defends his methods
and his message on his own Web site, www.michaelmoore.com.
Modern-day muckrakers also continued to expose military abuses and

government cover-ups in the twenty-first century (see “The Washington Post
Gives Wounded Veterans a Voice,” p. 197). In 2004, for instance, American
magazines, newspapers, and television news programs revealed the systemat-
ic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
A number of military police officers took photographs of themselves tortur-
99
ing or humiliating prisoners at the facility. When these photographs came to

the attention of U.S. Army authorities in 2003, they conducted a secret inves-
tigation and charged several people involved under the Uniform Code of Mil-
itary Justice. But the matter did not become public knowledge until months
later, when the photographs were broadcast on 60 Minutes II and Seymour
Hersh published a report in the New Yorker. Some Americans expressed anger
about the journalists who publicized these embarrassing events, but others
rushed to defend Hersh and other reporters who exposed the conditions at
Abu Ghraib. “The most patriotic role the press can play is to fulfill its consti-
tutionally protected duty to aggressively probe and question those who have
the power to make the decisions that can affect our security and our liber-
ty,”14 declared one advocate.
Challenges for Future Muckrakers

Although investigative journalists continued to expose problems in
American government and society into the twenty-first century, the rapidly
changing media environment has created significant challenges for would-be
muckrakers. Faced with declining circulation and budget crises, most major
newspapers have reduced their reporting staffs and the amount of space dedi-
cated to national and international news (see “Modern-Day Muckrakers Face
Major Challenges,” p. 212).
At the same time, instantaneous access to news and information on
cable TV and the Internet has driven a significant decline in viewership for
network television newscasts. Local TV news has become more sensational
and crime-oriented in an effort to attract viewers, while several networks
have dropped their national news telecasts in favor of talk shows emphasizing
celebrity and entertainment features. Television newsmagazines that once
focused on in-depth, investigative reports—like 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC,
and PBS Frontline—have found this mission increasingly difficult in the face
of budget cuts and audience fragmentation. “It’s risky, it’s expensive, it takes
huge resources and talent, and with much of the press owned by large corpo-
rations, I think there’s a certain reluctance to do that [sort of reporting],”15
explained Bill Buzenberg, director of the Center for Public Integrity.
The spread of new information technology like the Internet has con-
tributed to the decline of traditional media. As more news and information
has become available through alternative sources, competition for reading
100
and viewing audiences has increased. But while the Internet has made a large
quantity of information available, some critics question whether the quality
of news gathering and reporting has declined as a result. “The best journal-
ism—much of it produced by a small number of newspapers—now reaches
more Americans than ever on the newspapers’ Internet sites and through
their relationships with, and influence on, the best news programs on televi-
sion and radio,” noted one analyst. “[But] too much of what has been offered
as news in recent years has been untrustworthy, irresponsible, misleading or
incomplete.... Too many of those who own and lead the nation’s news media
have cynically underestimated or ignored America’s need for good journal-
ism, and evaded their responsibility to provide it.”16
Other media critics, however, believe that the Internet can play an
important role in extending the reach of independent, muckraking journal-
ism. It provides ordinary citizens with an opportunity to express minority
viewpoints and organize opposition to powerful political and corporate inter-
ests. The Internet gives millions of people around the world the power to
become citizen journalists—providing photos and eyewitness accounts of
news events, posting comments on mainstream media sites, or contributing
insights through blogs.
A number of independent media centers and investigative journalism
nonprofits sprung up in the early 2000s to take advantage of the Internet’s
capacity for spreading news and information. Such organizations as the Cen-
ter for Public Integrity, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Center for
Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica are often compared to the early
muckrakers because they view journalism as an important tool in exposing
problems and promoting change.
Notes
1 Downie, Leonard Jr., and Robert G. Kaiser. The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril.
New York: Knopf, 2002, p. 13.
2 Andrews, Peter. “The Press.” American Heritage, October 1994, p. 36.
3 Steiger, Paul E. “Going Online with Watchdog Journalism.” Nieman Reports, Spring 2008, p. 30.
4 Bliss, Edward Jr. In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow. New York: Knopf, 1967,
p. 247.
5 Jensen, Carl. Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. New York: Seven Sto-
ries Press, 2000, p. 136.
6 Nader, Ralph. Unsafe at Any Speed. New York: Grossman, 1965.
7 Jensen, p. 224.
101
8 Hersh, Seymour. My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath. New York: Random House,
1970, p. 64.
9 Sheehan, Neil, and Hedrick Smith. “Vast Review of War Took a Year.” New York Times, June 13,
1971.
10 Shapiro, Bruce, ed. Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America.
New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003, p. 353.
11 Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. “GOP Security Aide among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair.”
Washington Post, June 17, 1972.
12 Downie and Kaiser, p. 3.
13 Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, p. 333.
14 Giles, Bob. “The Vital Role of the Press in a Time of National Crisis.” Nieman Reports, Winter 2002,
p. 96.
15 Quoted in Guthrie, Marisa. “Investigative Journalism under Fire.” Broadcasting and Cable, June 23,
2008, p. 10.
16 Downie and Kaiser, p. 9.
102
Chapter Seven
Legacy of the
Progressive Era
5
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much; it is whether we pro-
vide enough for those who have too little.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
A lthough the Progressive Era came to an end in the late 1910s, many of
the changes that took place during that time had an impact on Ameri-
can life for generations to come. Progressive leaders put a number of
safeguards in place to reduce corruption in politics and make government
more accountable to the people. They also established government agencies
and commissions to regulate the activities of big business and to protect both
workers and consumers from the worst abuses of powerful corporations.
Finally, they took steps to help the poor and to address some of the social
problems that had arisen from rapid industrialization.
Since the close of the Progressive Era, American politics has shifted back
and forth between periods dominated by progressive and conservative ideas.
Several times in the twentieth century, the nation has responded to major
social and economic problems by expanding the role of government and
instituting progressive reforms. During the 1930s, for instance, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs helped Americans survive the
Great Depression. In between these periods, though, the nation has chosen
leaders who advocated reducing the role of government in citizens’ lives,
deregulating industry, and promoting economic growth through free-market
capitalism. Some observers have speculated that the 2008 election of Presi-
dent Barack Obama might herald the beginning of a new Progressive Era.
103
Lasting Achievements of the Progressive Era

By the time President Theodore Roosevelt left office in 1908, the Pro-
gressive Era was in full swing. With the muckrakers generating public sup-
port for his policies, Roosevelt had launched a slate of reforms that broke the
monopoly power of trusts, outlawed a variety of unfair business practices,
improved the lives of poor and working-class Americans, protected con-
sumers from unsafe food and drugs, and conserved vast areas of land and nat-
ural resources.
Roosevelt’s successor, fellow Republican William Howard Taft, recog-
nized that the American people still had a thirst for reform when he took
office. Taft continued to pursue popular policies aimed at reducing the power
of big business in society and government. His efforts received support from a
coalition of Democrats and progressive Republicans that formed a majority in
the U.S. Congress.
One of the most significant pieces of legislation to pass during the Taft
administration was the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910. It imposed federal regula-
tions over the growing telephone, telegraph, and cable industries and also
strengthened regulations over the railroad industry. Trust-busting efforts con-
tinued under Taft as well, including the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil Company in 1911. Finally, two important Constitutional
amendments passed Congress during Taft’s term: the Sixteenth, which estab-
lished a federal income tax; and the Seventeenth, which provided for the
direct election of U.S. senators. Both amendments were ratified by the neces-
sary number of states in 1913.
By the time Taft’s first term ended in 1912, the Progressive Movement
had achieved many of its goals. “In just nine years, between 1903 and 1912,
with the muckraking magazines providing the public opinion behind politi-
cal action, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act had become the instrument to attack
monopoly, the Interstate Commerce Commission was serving as a model for
other regulatory commissions, the Pure Food and Drug Act was safely on the
books, and, for the first time, conservation was a national issue. From the
exposure of corruption in the senate came the popular election of senators,”
one historian noted. “Moreover, there was agitation to eradicate the evils of
child labor, to give working women more equality, and to shorten the hours
of workers. All these and other social reforms were, in part, the result of the
investigative reporting done by the muckrakers in the ten-cent magazines.”1
104
Chapter Seven: Legacy of the Progressive Era
Despite the changes that had continued to take place under Taft, though,
Roosevelt grew impatient with the pace of reform. In 1912 he decided to run
for president as the candidate of the newly formed Progressive Party (also
known as the Bull Moose Party). Progressive Republicans divided their votes
between Roosevelt and Taft, however, which handed the election to Democrat
Woodrow Wilson.
During Wilson’s first term in office, progressives in Congress passed a
number of significant reforms. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, for instance,
regulated the banking industry and helped stabilize the value of the dollar.
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 outlawed a variety of unfair business prac-
tices and protected the rights of workers to organize unions and conduct
peaceful labor protests. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 created a
new government regulatory agency to enforce the provi-
sions of the Clayton and Sherman Antitrust Acts. Finally,
the Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour work Since the close of the
day for employees of railroads that crossed state lines. Progressive Era,
American politics has
The End of the Progressive Era
shifted back and forth
By the mid-1910s, the Progressive Movement had
between periods
addressed many of the most pressing problems caused by
rapid industrialization. The federal government had dominated by
adopted measures aimed at reducing political corruption, progressive and
assumed greater regulatory control over large corpora-
conservative ideas.
tions, and established agencies and programs to improve
the lives of poor and working-class Americans. In the
meantime, however, international events began to capture a larger share of
public attention. World War I broke out in Europe in 1914 between the
Allies (mainly England, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (pri-
marily Germany, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary). The war’s impact on the
United States triggered a backlash against some of the underlying ideas of
the Progressive Era.
Progressive leaders were divided over whether the United States should
get involved in the war. Some opponents of U.S. involvement worried that
entering the war would distract people from the problems still facing Ameri-
can society. They also expressed concern that the wartime production of mili-
tary equipment would restore too much power to American industry. Support-
ers of involvement, on the other hand, argued that helping the Allies defeat the
105
Central Powers would “make the world safe

for democracy” and allow the spread of pro-
gressive ideas around the globe.
Once the United States entered the war in
1917, Wilson continued to expand federal
authority. He instituted an unpopular military
draft, and he convinced Congress to pass
sweeping measures designed to limit antiwar
activities. The Wilson administration spied on
citizens who openly criticized the war effort,
for instance, and placed restrictions on civil
liberties. Many people resented the loss of
their basic freedoms and viewed it as an indi-
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—a cation that the federal government had taken
distant cousin of President Theodore too much control over American society.
Roosevelt—instituted a wide range of
progressive reforms in the 1930s At the same time, the war changed many
through his New Deal programs. people’s opinion of the large corporations that
dominated the American economy. Business
leaders threw the nation’s industrial might squarely behind the war effort.
Factories churned out military arms and equipment that turned the tide in
favor of the Allies, and the war ended with Germany’s surrender in 1918. By
helping to win the war, the large corporations once again came to be viewed
as valuable assets—rather than threats—to the nation’s well-being.
Finally, some middle-class Americans felt less sympathy for workers,
immigrants, and other progressive groups during and after World War I. At a
time when the nation emphasized patriotism and worried about the spread
of communism, people who spoke out against government corruption, cor-
porate greed, and social injustice increasingly came to be regarded as dan-
gerous radicals.
Progressives won a couple of final battles immediately following World
War I. When the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution took effect in
1920, it banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol in the
United States. Later that year, American women gained the right to vote in
national elections following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. On
the whole, though, support for progressive causes dwindled. The election of
pro-business Republican Warren G. Harding to the presidency in 1920
marked a shift back toward conservative political ideas.
106
The New Deal Brings Back Progressive Ideas

In 1929 a sudden drop in the value of the U.S. stock market pitched the
nation into the Great Depression. This terrible economic downturn was
marked by widespread bank failures, financial losses, business closures, and
unemployment. By the early 1930s, 25 percent of the American workforce
was without jobs, and rates of hunger and homelessness were soaring.
Many people blamed the policies of Republican President Herbert
Hoover, who took office in 1929, for worsening the Depression. Hoover sup-
ported giving tax breaks and some public assistance to
struggling workers and farmers. But he also believed that President Franklin D.
local relief agencies and charities—rather than the federal
government—should take primary responsibility for help- Roosevelt believed that
ing people through the crisis. Because some people viewed active intervention by
Hoover as uncaring, the shantytowns full of poor and des- the federal government
perate people that sprung up in many American cities
could lift the nation
became known as Hoovervilles.
out of the Great
Discontent with Hoover’s response to the crisis led to
the election of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to the pres- Depression. He
idency in 1932. A distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, he convinced Congress to
believed that active intervention by the federal government pass an array of
could lift the nation out of the Depression. Roosevelt con-
vinced Congress to pass an array of progressive reforms progressive reforms
designed to help struggling Americans and stimulate the designed to help
economy. These programs, which were collectively known struggling Americans
as the New Deal, reflected the spirit of the Progressive Era.
In fact, the New Deal achieved several policy goals that
and stimulate
Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive Party had included the economy.
in their platform twenty years earlier.
A number of New Deal programs were intended to help American farm-
ers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, for instance, paid subsidies to
farmers for voluntarily reducing their production by keeping land idle. The
Farm Security Administration, created in 1937, gave farmers loans to help
them relocate from marginal land to more productive acreage. Many other
New Deal programs tried to improve conditions for industrial workers. For
example, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 abolished child labor
and established a minimum wage and a maximum work week. The National
107
Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, required employ-
ers to recognize labor unions.
A big priority for Roosevelt was putting unemployed Americans back to
work. He believed that providing people with jobs would not only lift their
spirits and enable them to support their families, but also give them money to
spend and help improve the economy. Accordingly, the New Deal created sev-
eral work relief agencies that provided people with jobs in public works pro-
jects. One successful agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority, built dams
throughout the South to control flooding and bring electricity to rural areas.
Another such agency, the Civilian Conservation Corps, put millions of young
men to work on conservation projects in national parks and other public
lands. Similarly, the Works Progress Administration employed over two mil-
lion workers building roads, bridges, airports, and government offices across
the country.
The New Deal also reformed U.S. tax laws and increased regulation of the
banking industry and stock market. The Securities and Exchange Commission
was created in 1934 to oversee the stock market and protect investors from
unfair and fraudulent dealings. Similarly, the Federal Deposit Insurance Cor-
poration was created to restore faith in the banking industry by placing a fed-
eral guarantee on bank deposits. Finally, the New Deal saw the passage of a
progressive income tax that charged wealthy Americans higher tax rates.
Probably the most important legislation to come out of the New Deal
was the Social Security Act of 1935. It created a “safety net” of federal assis-
tance for poor, disabled, and elderly Americans. This net consisted of a pen-
sion system, funded by income tax payments, to provide financial assistance
for retired workers. It also established unemployment insurance to help
workers who lost their jobs. Finally, Social Security offered aid to disabled
people and to children whose parents died or were unable to work.
The New Deal helped many people survive the Great Depression. It
established a number of regulatory agencies and social programs that continue
to protect Americans in the twenty-first century. Yet Roosevelt did not solve all
of the country’s problems, and the economy did not recover completely until
World War II. In addition, his policies were very unpopular among business
leaders and conservatives. Some critics argued that the increased regulation of
business, combined with higher taxes and government spending, actually pro-
longed the Depression. Others claimed that Social Security and other relief
108
The New Deal’s work relief programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, provided jobs for
unemployed Americans during the Great Depression.
programs reduced the incentives for people to work hard and instead encour-
aged them to depend on the government for their financial security. When the
nation entered a period of prosperity following World War II, such views con-
tributed to a return to conservative principles of government.
Shifts in American Political Thought

Since Roosevelt’s death in 1945, American political thought has swung
back and forth like a pendulum between progressive and conservative ideas.
In general, conservatives believe that too much government regulation of
business reduces individual initiative and hampers economic growth. They
also distrust government interference in American society, arguing that it
diminishes personal liberty and individual responsibility. Progressives, on the
other hand, feel that government involvement is sometimes necessary to fur-
ther the interests of the American people and help the nation prosper.
109
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs marked a return to progressive ideas in
the 1960s.
The next major era of progressive reform came in the 1960s. Led by
Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, the federal government launched a
number of progressive reforms that came to be known as the Great Society
programs. African Americans fought for equality in the civil rights move-
ment, and the federal government responded with such important legislation
as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Poor and
elderly Americans received greater access to affordable medical care during
this time through the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid. The govern-
ment also provided educational opportunities for a generation of military vet-
erans through the G.I. Bill, which had been passed a few years earlier.
Following the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, the nation shifted
back toward conservative values with the election of Republican Ronald Rea-
gan to the presidency in 1980. Reagan famously declared that “Government is
not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” During his eight
110
Proclaiming that “Government is the problem,” President Ronald Reagan shifted the nation
back toward conservative ideas.
years in office, he launched a number of initiatives designed to shrink the size

of the federal government, cut taxes, and reduce federal regulations on busi-
ness. Reagan also cut government spending on social programs, arguing that
they had created a “welfare state” in which people became excessively depen-
dent on federal assistance.
The two decades after Reagan left office in 1988 were marked by politi-
cal stalemates. Both conservatives and progressives enjoyed periods of advan-
tage, but the shifts were less pronounced than in earlier eras. Through much
of the 1990s, for instance, Democrat Bill Clinton—who generally supported
progressive policies—held the White House, while conservative Republicans
controlled both houses of Congress.
111
A New Progressive Era?

In 2008, however, the U.S. econo-
my entered into the worst recession in
recent history. Many Americans blamed
the conservative policies of President
George W. Bush, whose administration
cut taxes on the wealthy and reduced
federal regulation of banks and other
businesses. Such attitudes contributed
to the election of Democrat Barack
Obama to the presidency.
Upon taking the reins of govern-
ment in early 2009, the Obama admin-
istration faced a number of significant
challenges, including a severe econom-
ic downturn, growing inequality
between rich and poor, business crises
resulting from deregulation, and expen-
sive military involvement in overseas
wars. Some observers saw parallels
Some observers predicted that the election of
President Barack Obama marked the between these circumstances and those
beginning of a new Progressive Era in that applied in earlier eras when pro-
American politics. gressive ideas took hold. They predict-
ed that Obama’s response to the prob-
lems facing the country might mark the beginning of a new Progressive Era.
“The stars have aligned to give progressives a chance to permanently shift the
conversation about America’s values,” one article noted. “The question before
us now is, do today’s progressives have what it takes to do what FDR
[Franklin D. Roosevelt] and his allies accomplished 75 years ago—seize the
new politics, take on the big challenges, and usher in a new era?”2
Notes
2 Rosenberg, Simon, and Peter Leyden. “The 50-Year Strategy: A New Progressive Era.” Mother
Jones, October 31, 2007.
112
Biographies
Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946)
Journalist and Author of Following the
Color Line
R ay Stannard Baker, who also wrote

under the name David Grayson, was
born in Lansing, Michigan, on April
17, 1870. He was the first of six children born
to Joseph Stannard Baker, who worked as a
land agent, and Alice (Potter) Baker. They
raised their children in an environment that
emphasized the importance of literature and
religious faith, and their eldest son carried
these lessons with him for the rest of his life.
Baker graduated from Michigan Agricul-
tural College (now Michigan State Universi-
ty) in 1889, and also briefly studied law at the
University of Michigan. His career as a news-
paper journalist began at the Chicago News-Record, which he joined in 1892
after a couple of years of work in his father’s business. He spent six years at
the newspaper, providing a wide range of stories on the city’s political, eco-
nomic, and social problems. During this period, Baker’s attitudes about the
poor and uneducated men, women, and children that populated Chicago’s
sprawling tenement slums underwent a dramatic change.
Awakening of a Social Reformer

When Baker first took the job with the News-Record, he believed that
most of the impoverished people of Chicago had only themselves to blame
for their troubles. But as the years went by, he began to question his assump-
tions. In 1893 he covered a march of jobless men known as Coxey’s Army to
Washington, D.C., where they organized protests against unemployment.
One year later he was assigned to cover the Pullman Strike, a major labor
strike by railroad workers who walked off the job in protest when their
wealthy employer slashed their wages. As he wrote about these and other sto-
ries of industrial unrest and urban decay, Baker became convinced that the
problems of poverty, exhausting and dangerous workloads, and disillusion-
ment that faced working Americans were not always the result of personal
115
failures. He also came to believe that their complaints should be treated more
seriously by politicians and management.
Still, Baker’s development into a full-fledged “muckraker” was a gradual
one. In the summer of 1898 he left the Chicago News-Record for a staff posi-
tion with McClure’s Magazine. During Baker’s first three years at McClure’s, his
most notable contributions to the magazine were highly positive feature sto-
ries on powerful men in American politics and industry, like politician
Theodore Roosevelt and banking tycoon J.P. Morgan. In 1902, though, he was
assigned to cover a major strike of unionized coalminers in eastern Pennsyl-
vania. This assignment changed the course of Baker’s career forever.
Despite his earlier experiences in Chicago, Baker still retained faith in
America’s capitalist system—and the basic fairness and decency of most cor-
porate management toward workers—when he arrived in Pennsylvania. And
the report he submitted criticized union leaders for committing violence
against workers who crossed picket lines. But his investigation also revealed
the low wages, terrible working conditions, and dehumanizing treatment that
had led to the strike. When Baker returned to McClure’s editorial offices, his
story painted a grim picture of corporate greed and desperate miners. “Baker
was a first-class reporter of formidable integrity,” summarized one historical
account. “He did not selectively gather facts to support his bias [toward man-
agement] but tore away the top layers of the labor situation to expose the
appalling conditions in the mine fields.”1
Baker’s story on the Pennsylvania coal strike appeared in the January
1903 issue of McClure’s. The same issue also featured explosive articles by Ida
Tarbell on the ruthless practices of the Standard Oil Company and by Lincoln
Steffens on political corruption in Minneapolis. Together, these three articles
on American greed and division packed a huge punch, and their joint appear-
ance in McClure’s has frequently been described as the birthplace of the
muckraking era. “It was no new game to lift the rocks in twentieth-century
America and watch the bugs scramble for cover, but what was new was the
expertise and authority of the writing,”2 wrote one historian.
A Leading Voice of the Muckrakers

McClure’s remained at the forefront of American journalism throughout
the muckraking era. During this time, Baker emerged as one of the magazine’s
most famous writers. He contributed investigative reports on abusive treat-
116
Biographies: Ray Stannard Baker
ment of workers and corruption in the garment, beef, and railroad industries,
and he wrote sympathetically about the goals of organized labor unions.
Baker’s writing voice in all of these articles was calm and factual. His cool
style infuriated at least one McClure’s reader, who asked him why he did not
tear into corrupt politicians and greedy business executives in his articles.
Baker replied that “If I got mad, you wouldn’t.”3
In 1906 Baker and several of his colleagues at McClure’s left the magazine
to buy another periodical called Leslie’s Monthly Magazine. They renamed it
American Magazine and set about creating a publication that would blend
muckraking articles with more uplifting stories about various aspects of Amer-
ican life and society. Baker remained on the staff of American Magazine for the
next nine years, but his status as an investigative reporter enabled him to raise
his family far from the periodical’s New York offices. He and his wife Jessie
Irene Beal (whom he married in 1896) and their four children lived in Baker’s
hometown of Lansing and also in Amherst, Massachusetts, during this period.
During his time at American and beyond, Baker’s career took two differ-
ent paths. On the one hand, he continued to be a part of the muckraking tra-
dition of investigative reporting with books like Following the Color Line
(1908), which explored racial prejudice in the United States. He also con-
tributed articles to American on political reform movements and events like
the textile strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Baker also became a
friend and ally to Senator Robert M. La Follette, one of the most fiercely pro-
gressive political figures of the early twentieth century. Despite all this, how-
ever, Baker never joined some of his other reform-minded colleagues who
allied themselves with socialism and other left-wing political movements.
Instead, Baker launched a completely different writing career during this
time that purposely avoided the world of politics. Writing under the name
David Grayson, Baker produced a series of fanciful essays about wandering
through the countryside, where he enjoyed nature’s simple pleasures and the
generosity of rural people. The “Grayson stories” were so enormously popu-
lar with the reading public that Baker wrote a total of nine books using the
Grayson pen name from 1907 to 1942.
Biographer of Woodrow Wilson

In the mid-1910s Baker became a committed “Wilsonian”—a supporter
of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. When the United States entered
117
World War I in 1917 he worked as both a diplomat and press representative

for the Wilson administration. His advocacy for Wilson’s political positions
and causes continued long after Wilson’s 1921 retirement from office. In fact,
during the 1920s and 1930s, Baker became one of the country’s leading schol-
ars on Wilson and his presidency. He wrote the three-volume Woodrow Wilson
and World Settlement (1922) and joined with William E. Dodd to edit the six-
volume Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1925-1927).
In the early 1920s Wilson agreed to let Baker write a biography of his life
and presidency. He gave Baker access to his private papers and submitted to
interviews with the journalist. Wilson died in 1924, but three years later
Baker published the first of his biographical volumes. Baker eventually pub-
lished eight volumes of Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters from 1927 to 1939.
The series was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1940.
Baker withdrew from investigative reporting during the 1920s and
1930s, but he still occasionally commented on current affairs and political
controversies. In the 1940s he was slowed by poor health, but he still man-
aged to publish two autobiographies, Native American: The Book of My Youth
(1941) and American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker
(1945). Baker died of a heart attack in Amherst on July 12, 1946.
Sources:
Baker, Ray Stannard. American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Stannard Baker. New York:
Scribner, 1945.
Bannister, Robert C., Jr. Ray Stannard Baker: The Life and Thought of a Progressive. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1966.
Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1970.
Notes
1 Tebbel, John, and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America: 1741-1990. New York: Oxford
Press, 1970, p. 147.
3 Quoted in Tebbel, p. 192.
118
Biographies: S.S. McClure
S.S. McClure (1857-1949)

Progressive Owner and Editor of McClure’s
Magazine
S amuel Sidney McClure was born on Feb-

ruary 17, 1857, in Frocess, County An-
trim, Ireland. His father, Thomas McClure,
was a carpenter and farmer. His mother, Eliza-
beth (Gaston) McClure, divided her time
between farm work and caring for Samuel and
his three younger brothers. In 1865 Thomas
McClure died in an accident while working in
a shipyard. His sudden death threatened the
future of the rest of the family, which had
depended on his earnings for basic food, cloth-
ing, and shelter. The circumstances of Mc-
Clure’s family steadily worsened, and in 1866 Elizabeth McClure fled to Ameri-
ca—where four of her siblings had already immigrated—with her four sons.
Entering the World of Magazine Publishing

The McClure family settled on a small farm outside of Valparaiso, Indi-
ana. Their first months in America were a terrible struggle, but in 1867 Eliza-
beth McClure married a fellow Irish immigrant named Thomas Simpson. They
had four more children together before his death from typhoid fever in 1873.
Young Samuel attended school in Valparaiso, and by the time he gradu-
ated from high school he was known to classmates by his initials, “S.S.” In
1874 McClure enrolled at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he dis-
tinguished himself as the editor of the school newspaper (the Knox Student)
and the founder of the Western College Associated Press. During his time at
Knox, McClure developed an intense romantic attachment to Harriet Hurd,
the daughter of one of his professors. The relationship appeared to end after
McClure’s graduation in 1882. McClure fled to Boston after Hurd rejected
him in response to intense pressure from her disapproving family.
Within a year, though, McClure had established himself in the world of
magazine publishing by co-founding the highly successful magazine Wheel-
man with famed bicycle maker Albert Pope. McClure’s success with Wheel-
man enabled him to make another bid for Harriet Hurd’s hand in marriage,
119
and this time her family grudgingly consented to the union. They were mar-
ried on September 4, 1883, and eventually had five children.
Setting a New Course

In 1884 McClure and his wife left Boston for New York City, where he
worked briefly at a printing company and at Century magazine. Late in the
year, however, he launched his own business, which he called the McClure
Syndicate. This syndicate—one of the first of its kind established in the Unit-
ed States—sold articles and short stories by popular writers to magazines and
newspapers across the country. By the late 1880s McClure was working with
some of the world’s leading writers, including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Henry James, Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, and Jack London.
In 1893 McClure used his syndicate earnings to launch his own national
periodical, called McClure’s Magazine. The first issues were released at the
height of a serious economic downturn in the United States, and the maga-
zine barely survived its first year. But the high quality of its content and its
low price—10 cents an issue at a time when most other magazines cost 25 or
35 cents—brought steady increases in readership. McClure compensated for
the low price of the magazine by relying on advertising revenue. Other maga-
zines followed suit, and the percentage of space devoted to advertising in
many U.S. periodicals swiftly rose.
By 1900 McClure’s Magazine enjoyed a circulation of more than 350,000
and a national reputation for publishing top-notch fiction and journalism.
Several famous writers and reporters on the staff, including Ida Tarbell,
Willa Cather, and Lincoln Steffens, first came to the attention of American
readers in the pages of McClure’s. In addition, McClure continued to place
work from talented new fiction writers alongside contributions from some of
the country’s leading literary figures. His blend of news coverage, investiga-
tive reports, and high-quality fiction became the envy of nearly every other
magazine in America.
Flagship of the Muckraking Movement

McClure’s Magazine rose to prominence at a turbulent time in U.S. histo-
ry. Industrialization, free-market capitalism, and settlement of the West had
ushered in an exciting era of economic expansion across much of the country.
But the gap between America’s rich business class and its millions of working
120
poor seemed to be growing wider with each passing year. A so-called Progres-
sive Movement rose up to protest against this state of affairs, as well as other
perceived problems in American society such as political corruption, urban
squalor, and mistreatment of laborers.
As the first decade of the twentieth century unfolded, American newspa-
pers and magazines contributed to these calls for governmental and econom-
ic reform by publishing hard-hitting investigative reports detailing outra-
geous examples of consumer fraud, government corruption, and immoral
behavior by powerful corporations and individuals. These “muckraking”
reports, as they came to be known, became a specialty of several national
magazines, including Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Munsey’s, and The Independent.
But S.S. McClure’s magazine became the most famous of the muckraking
magazines of the Progressive Era.
McClure’s emergence as the flagship magazine of the muckraking move-
ment is usually traced to its January 1903 issue, which featured three explo-
sive investigative reports by Tarbell, Steffens, and muckraking journalist Ray
Stannard Baker. Tarbell’s piece on the ruthless practices of Standard Oil—the
third installment in an entire series of Tarbell articles on Standard that was
published by McClure’s—was one of the most famous reports of the entire
muckraking era. But the articles by Steffens and Baker—on political corrup-
tion and vicious lawlessness in the Pennsylvania coal fields, respectively—
had a similarly momentous impact on public opinion. Together, the three
investigative pieces amounted to a scathing attack on the state of American
politics, business, and society. Today, the publication of the January 1903
issue of McClure’s is often cited as one of the most important events in the his-
tory of American journalism.
As the muckraking movement gained momentum, McClure and his tal-
ented stable of writers and editors maintained a leading role. They were pro-
gressives themselves, and they saw the magazine as a tool that could help
bring about much-needed reforms to American factories, tenements, board-
rooms, and legislative chambers. As one historian observed, “McClure and
his staff were very conscious of participating in a political and economic
movement intent upon reshaping many of the country’s institutions.”1
This dedication to the reform cause led McClure and his editors to fill
issue after issue with reports and analyses of various problems in American
society. Meanwhile, the magazine’s lively and daring tone and its beautiful
121
covers and illustrations attracted a broad cross-section of readers. By 1905 it

was almost universally regarded as the finest general-interest magazine in the
country. “McClure’s was a supernova in the journalistic firmament,” con-
firmed one scholar. “Besides a talent for picking writers, McClure could talk
almost anyone into working for him, and when he did, he gave them a free
hand. He plowed his profits back into the magazine and thought nothing of
spending thousands of dollars on one story.”2
The Decline of McClure’s

The fortunes of McClure’s Magazine and its colorful owner changed dra-
matically in 1906. Over the course of that year, President Theodore Roosevelt
publicly condemned the muckrakers for being excessively negative about
American life and society. Even more importantly, McClure lost the services
of Tarbell, Baker, and Steffens. Each of these writers had become frustrated by
the publisher’s careless financial stewardship of McClure’s. In addition, they
were angered by the fact that he was framing the magazine as a guardian of
public and business morality at the same time that he was carrying out multi-
ple extramarital affairs.
The simultaneous resignation of the magazine’s three top journalists was
a terrible blow to McClure—he once described it as the greatest tragedy of his
life—but it was made even worse by the fact that they decided to establish
their own magazine. When the trio left McClure’s to form their own publica-
tion, called American Magazine, they took many readers with them. McClure
and chief editor Willa Cather tried several strategies to reverse his magazine’s
sliding sales, but none of them worked.
In 1912 McClure lost financial control of the magazine. In 1914 he pub-
lished his autobiography, but the book was actually written by Cather (who
later went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist). McClure spent
the next several years supporting himself as a writer, and in 1922 he returned
to McClure’s for a three-year stint as the magazine’s managing editor. He then
left the public spotlight almost entirely, and in 1929 his namesake magazine
went out of business. McClure spent his final years living quietly in New York
City, where friends and relatives reportedly gave him financial assistance. He
died of a heart attack on March 21, 1949.
Sources:
Cather, Willa. The Autobiography of S.S. McClure. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
122
Lyon, Peter. Success Story: The Life and Times of S.S. McClure. New York: Scribner’s, 1963.
Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1970.
Notes
Press, 1970, p. 191
2 Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989, p. 185.
123
David Graham Phillips (1867-1911)

Journalist Who Wrote the “Treason of the
Senate” Series
D avid Graham Phillips was born in

Madison, Indiana, on October 31,
1867. He was one of five children
born to David Graham Phillips Sr., a banker,
and Margaret (Lee) Phillips. Even as a young-
ster, Phillips had a strong interest in litera-
ture. This passion was encouraged by his par-
ents, who placed great value on education
and the arts. By the time he enrolled at Indi-
ana’s Asbury College (now Depauw Universi-
ty) in the early 1880s, Phillips was focused on
a writing career. In 1885 he transferred to
Princeton University in New Jersey, and he
graduated two years later.
Newspaperman from Cincinnati to London

In 1888 Phillips secured his first newspaper job, working as a reporter
for the Cincinnati Times-Star. Within two years, though, he had moved on to a
more prestigious position with the New York Sun. Phillips quickly cemented
his reputation within the New York newspaper world as a gifted journalist. In
1893 the New York World, which was owned by famed publisher Joseph
Pulitzer, hired him as its chief correspondent in London.
Phillips stayed with the World for the next nine years. During this time he
filed stories and investigative reports from all across Europe and the United
States, and even spent time in charge of the newspaper’s editorial page. As time
passed, though, Phillips became disenchanted with the constant deadlines and
hurried pace of newspaper work. In 1901 Phillips published his first novel,
The Great God Success, and a year later he decided to leave the paper for a life
of novel-writing and investigative reports for magazines. He stayed in New
York City, though. He lived in the city’s Gramercy Park neighborhood with one
of his sisters, Carolyn, who edited and organized much of his writing.
Phillips enjoyed a very successful career as a novelist, in part because he
put in such long hours at his craft. He wrote twenty-two novels and plays in
124
Biographies: David Graham Phillips
the space of ten years, including The Deluge (1905), The Plum Tree (1905),
Light-Fingered Gentry (1907), The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig
(1909) and The Hungry Heart (1909). His best-known novel was probably
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1917), which was published six years after his
death thanks to the tireless efforts of Carolyn. In 1931 Susan Lenox, which
told the story of a brave but downtrodden young woman trying to lift herself
out of a life of prostitution, was made into a motion picture starring Greta
Garbo and Clark Gable.
“The Treason of the Senate”

Many of the novels that Phillips produced focused on themes of political
corruption, corporate greed, and oppression of women and the poor. These
same issues dominated the muckraking investigative reports that he wrote for
Cosmopolitan, the Saturday Evening Post, Success, and other national maga-
zines during the early 1900s. His hard-hitting investigations of greed and law-
lessness by industrial tycoons and politicians earned Phillips many enemies,
but they also vaulted him to the forefront of the muckraking movement.
Phillips’s most famous contribution to the muckraking cause came in
1906, when he wrote a nine-part series for Cosmopolitan magazine known as
“The Treason of the Senate.” This series, which was later published in book
form, uncovered widespread fraud and corruption in the U.S. Senate. The
journalist took aim at numerous senators. He accused them of taking bribes
from industrial interests to pass business-friendly laws and of selecting cor-
rupt allies of industry for open senate seats.
Phillips used harsh and angry language throughout “The Treason of the
Senate.” He described New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt, for example, as
someone with a “long and unbroken record of treachery to the people in legis-
lation of privilege and plunder.” But the prime target of his muckraking series
was Nelson Aldrich, a powerful Republican senator from Rhode Island. Phillips
charged that under Aldrich’s corrupt leadership, rich Americans were accumu-
lating wealth and power at the expense of the nation’s poor and powerless.
“Property is concentrating in the hands of the few,” wrote Phillips, “and the lit-
tle children of the masses are being sent to toil in the darkness of mines, in the
dreariness and unhealthfulness of factories instead of being sent to school.”1
Many corporate leaders and national lawmakers, including President
Theodore Roosevelt, rejected the accusations leveled by Phillips. They
125
claimed that “Treason of the Senate” was riddled with misleading and untrue
charges. The publication of Phillips’s series has even been cited as a major fac-
tor behind Roosevelt’s decision to issue a stern 1906 speech condemning
muckraking journalism for eroding the American people’s faith in the coun-
try’s public and business institutions. Nonetheless, the series also was hailed
by thousands of reformers and ordinary citizens for exposing corruption and
decay at the highest levels of American government. “Glory Halleljujah!”
declared one Cosmopolitan reader. “You have found a David who is able and
willing to attack this Goliath of a Senate!”2
“Treason of the Senate” also gave new momentum to a reform campaign
to have U.S. senators elected by the American public. When the United States
was first formed, the Constitution provided for the election of senators by
individual state legislatures. Many people believed that this system was un-
democratic and rife with abuse and fraud, but calls for reform floundered
until Phillips’s series came along. As public anger intensified, lawmakers real-
ized that they had to respond with meaningful legislation. In June 1911 the
U.S. Senate approved a constitutional amendment providing for the direct
election of U.S. senators by American voters. Eleven months later, the House
of Representatives approved the amendment as well. It then went to the states
for ratification, and in April 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution was ratified.
Phillips did not live to see the Seventeenth Amendment become law,
however. On January 23, 1911, a mentally ill man named Fitzhugh Goldsbor-
ough shot Phillips on a New York street. Goldsborough had become obsessed
by the idea that Phillips’s 1909 novel The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua
Craig included veiled insults toward members of Goldsborough’s family. After
shooting Phillips, the murderer then turned the gun on himself and commit-
ted suicide. Phillips was rushed to a hospital, but he died one day later.
Phillips’s shocking death was mourned by political progressives and the
literary world alike. “He was a true patriot,” declared the New York Times,
“loving his country and his people to the point where he would put himself
to serious trouble to point out her faults or assist in curing her mistakes, or to
denounce what seemed to him wrong and sordid in the people’s ideals. The
loss of a man of such temper and conviction is a sad one indeed.”3
Sources:
Filler, Louis. The Muckrakers: Crusaders for American Liberalism. Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press,
1964.
126
Biographies: David Graham Phillips
Filler, Louis. Voice of the Democracy: A Critical Biography of David Graham Phillips, Journalist, Novel-
ist, Progressive. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978.
Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
Notes
1 Phillips, David Graham. “The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, the Head of It All.” Cosmopolitan,
March 1906.
2 Quoted in Streitmatter, Rodger. Mightier than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped
American History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, p. 100.
3 Hawthorne, Hildegarde. “David Graham Phillips: A Novelist Who was Inspired by Moral Purpose
and Aimed at Patriotic Ends,” New York Times, Jan. 29, 1911, p. BR44.
127
Jacob Riis (1849-1914)

Photographer and Author of How the Other
Half Lives
J acob A. Riis was born in the small town of

Ribe, Denmark, on May 3, 1849. His
father, Niels Edward Riis, worked as a
local schoolmaster. His mother, Carolina,
worked as a governess before she began hav-
ing children. She ultimately had fourteen chil-
dren—thirteen of them boys. Jacob was the
third-oldest child, and he had a strong bond
with his generous and kind-hearted mother.
“Mother deserves a halo” for being such a
“good soul,”1 Jacob wrote in a letter to one of
his siblings.
Riis apprenticed as a carpenter in Co-
penhagen, Denmark, as a young man. He
then returned to Ribe and proposed marriage
to Elizabeth Giortz, a young woman with whom he had fallen deeply in love.
But she did not feel the same way about Riis. She turned down his proposal
and a short time later announced her engagement to a young Danish military
officer. Her rejection, along with the poor Danish economy, convinced Riis to
build a new life for himself in America.
Life as a Reporter and Reformer

Riis arrived by immigrant ship in New York City in June 1870. Unlike
many other immigrants of that era, Riis could speak English and he was well-
educated. But he still struggled to find steady work, and at one point he was
reduced to sleeping in a graveyard and living on a diet of apples. As the
months passed by he managed to improve his situation with carpentry work.
But he never forgot those early months he spent in America as a penniless
immigrant, desperately searching for food, clothing, and shelter.
In 1873 Riis began his career as a newspaperman, accepting a reporter
position with a neighborhood paper called the Long Island City Review. Over
the next several years he became an experienced reporter on police work and
crime, mostly as a member of the staff of the New York Tribune. Meanwhile,
128
Biographies: Jacob Riis
he learned in 1874 that Giortz’s fiancé had died. He resumed correspondence

with Giortz, and in 1876 she agreed to join him in the United States. They
married on March 5, 1876, and stayed together until her death in 1905.
Riis’s ongoing work as a newspaper reporter on New York’s police beat
had a tremendous impact on the young journalist. His job took him into
high-crime tenement neighborhoods were residents lived with nightmarish
levels of poverty, overcrowding, disease, and filth. Riis even found himself
spending time in some of the same slums and alleyways that he had wandered
during his first horrible months in New York City. Riis was outraged and sad-
dened by the suffering that he saw all around him. Yet he was also inspired by
the courage and determination of the immigrant workers and families that
populated these tenements.
During the 1880s Riis devoted more and more of his writings to the hor-
rendous conditions in which so many New York residents lived—and the
indifference of wealthy industrialists and politicians to their suffering. By
1888, when he began using new flash-photography technology to illustrate
his articles, Riis had become a crusader for urban reform. He was determined
to educate middle-class Americans about the daily horrors that poor city resi-
dents endured, and to force reforms to New York’s police-operated poorhous-
es and city services.
Riis’s dedication to improving the lives of the urban poor was also evi-
dent in his private life. He joined local civic reform groups devoted to ending
child labor and toughening building codes. He also became a leading advo-
cate of efforts to build new parks, playgrounds, and settlement houses for
poor residents. But he remained best known for weaving together photogra-
phy and personal stories of immigrant despair and hope that pricked the con-
science of prosperous, native-born Americans.
How the Other Half Lives

In 1888 Riis moved to the New York Evening Sun, where he worked for
the next eleven years. It was during this period that the reform-minded jour-
nalist became famous not only in New York, but all across the country. In
1889 he published an article in Scribner’s magazine on the squalor in New
York’s slums. The article featured his trademark blend of sympathetic writing
and dramatic photography, and it caused such a sensation that publisher
Charles Scribner agreed to publish a book-length version. This expanded
129
work—called How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New
York—featured 44 of Riis’s photographs. It also gave readers a tour of the
slum neighborhoods of New York City, with Riis stopping at each point along
the way to discuss the living conditions he encountered and the wider causes
and effects of urban poverty.
Each paragraph of How the Other Half Lives was designed to awaken
more affluent Americans to the tragic toll that tenement conditions were tak-
ing on hard-working men and women and innocent children. “Long ago it
was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives,’”
he wrote in the book’s introduction. “That was true then. It did not know
because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles,
and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to
hold them there and keep its own seat.”1 Riis wanted to use his notepad and
his camera to change all that, and it is for that reason that he is sometimes
described as America’s first muckraker.
How the Other Half Lives was enormously popular and influential. The
book’s impact was due in part to Riis’s amazing photographs, which gave
readers a real sense of the misery of the urban poor. But it was also due to his
ability to frame his cause as one of basic decency and Christian compassion—
themes that his audience would recognize and appreciate. “In that first book,
Riis employed every means he could muster to arouse his readers: curiosity,
humor, shock, fear, guilt, and faith,” wrote one biographer. “His passion
ignited his audience, but his message was not truly incendiary.… [He was] a
skillful entertainer who presented controversial ideas in a compelling but
ultimately comforting manner.”2
Chronicling Life in the American City

How the Other Half Lives made Riis both wealthy and famous. He became
a highly sought-after lecturer on poverty and other urban issues, in part
because his presentations featured lantern slides of his famous photographs
set to music. Riis also struck up a deep and enduring friendship with New
York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who later served as
president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt respected Riis so
much that he reportedly called him “the best American I ever knew.”
But despite the dramatic improvement in his own personal circum-
stances, Riis did not forget the poor people of New York. Instead, he spent the
130
Biographies: Jacob Riis
1890s and early 1900s publishing one book after another on the issues of
urban poverty and reform. Notable titles of this period include The Children
of the Poor (1892), Out of Mulberry Street: Stories of Tenement Life in New York
City (1898), A Ten Years’ War: An Account of the Battle with the Slum in New
York (1900), and Children of the Tenements (1903). He also wrote a best-sell-
ing autobiography called The Making of an American (1901). All of these
books were marred by racial stereotyping, but they also shone with sympathy
for the downtrodden and optimism for the future of American cities.
In 1907 Riis married his second wife, Mary Phillips. They bought a farm
in Massachusetts in 1911, and it was there that Riis spent most of his last few
years. He died of a heart attack on May 25, 1914. Today, he is remembered
both for his pioneering work with flash photography and his status as a fore-
runner of the muckraking movement.
Sources:
Alland, Alexander, Jr. Jacob A. Riis: Photographer and Citizen. New York: Aperture, 1974.
Buk-Sweinty, Tom. The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America. Trans-
lated by Annette Buk-Sweinty. New York: Norton, 2008.
Davis, Kay. “Documenting ‘The Other Half’: The Social Reform Photography of Jacob Riis and Lewis
Hine.” Available online at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Davis/photography/home/home.html.
Lane, James B. Lane. Jacob Riis and the American City. New York: Kennikat Press, 1974.
Pascal, Janet B. Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Yochelson, Bonnie, and Daniel Czitrom. Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photogra-
phy in Turn of the Century New York. New York: New Press, 2007.
Notes
1 Quoted in Pascal, Janet B. Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer. New York: Oxford University Press,
2005, p. 11.
2 Yochelson, Bonnie, and Daniel Czitrom. Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photog-
raphy in Turn of the Century New York. New York: New Press, 2007, p. 7.
131
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

Industrial Tycoon, Philanthropist, and Major
Target of the Muckrakers
J ohn Davison Rockefeller, Sr., was born

on July 8, 1839, in Richford, a small
town in upstate New York. His father,
William Avery Rockefeller, was an irresponsi-
ble man who scrambled to make money as a
businessman, farmer, magician, and traveling
medicine salesman (the medications he sold
included worthless cancer “remedies”). His
long absences left Rockefeller’s mother, Eliza
Davison Rockefeller, as the sole caregiver for
their four children for weeks at a time.
The Rockefeller family moved frequently before settling in Cleveland,
Ohio, in 1853. Young Rockefeller was both serious and industrious, and he
worked at a variety of after-school jobs. Rockefeller also took a keen interest
in learning about all facets of business. Years later he declared that by the
time that he was in his mid-teens, he knew more about the rules and princi-
ples of business than men twice his age.
Business Success at an Early Age

Rockefeller’s rise to the heights of American business began modestly. In
1855 he graduated from high school and took a job as an assistant accounting
clerk in a Cleveland brokerage house. Four years later, he partnered with
Maurice Clark to establish a small trading company that did business in grain
and other commodities. In 1864 Rockefeller married Laura Celestia Spelman,
with whom he eventually had five children.
Rockefeller continued his march up the ladder of U.S. business and
finance during the 1860s by hitching his star to America’s fledgling oil indus-
try. Abandoning his partnership with Clark, he made major investments in oil
refineries during the waning months of the Civil War. He also found a new
business partner in Henry Flagler, and on January 10, 1870, the two men
established the Standard Oil Company.
Over the next several months, Rockefeller and Flagler put together a
cunning plan to seize a commanding grip over America’s oil refining industry,
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Biographies: John D. Rockefeller
which was based in Cleveland at the time. First, they reached a secret busi-
ness agreement with Thomas Scott, the powerful president of the Pennsylva-
nia Railroad. This railroad was the largest corporation in the United States in
the 1860s. The alliance with Scott gave Standard Oil new levels of access to
lawmakers across the country, for as social reformer Wendell Phillips
observed, when “[Scott] trailed his garments across the country the members
of 20 legislatures rustled like dry leaves in a winter’s wind.”1
Operating under a shell company called the South Improvement Com-
pany (SIC), Scott and Rockefeller put together an oil shipping scheme that
would give both Standard and the Pennsylvania Railroad major advantages
over their competitors. When details of the plan began to emerge, however,
public outrage forced Rockefeller and Scott to dissolve the SIC.
Building an Oil Empire

Undaunted by the unraveling of the SIC plan, Rockefeller carried out a
campaign of economic warfare against his competitors in the Cleveland area.
During February and March 1872 he used Standard’s operating advantages over
most other refiners to great effect, pressuring nearly two dozen operations to
sell out to him. Critics of Standard Oil’s ruthless business practices assailed
these events as the “Cleveland Massacre,” but Rockefeller proclaimed that he
was actually providing a public service. He insisted that Standard Oil would be
the “salvation of the oil business” because it would transform the industry from
a “disgraceful, gambling, mining scheme” into a “reputable pursuit.”2
Rockefeller acquired more competitors in the 1870s and 1880s, which
enabled him to further expand his reach into profitable new markets. In 1882
he formally established the Standard Oil Trust to coordinate all exploration,
refining, production, and distribution activities. This trust was essentially a
giant corporation composed of numerous smaller corporations.
In the 1890s Rockefeller ’s empire grew to encompass iron ore mining,
shipping, and other industry sectors. Oil remained the cornerstone of the Stan-
dard Oil empire, though. By the 1890s it controlled nearly 90 percent of the oil
produced in the United States. “Everything about its operation was colossal,”
wrote one Rockefeller biographer. “Twenty thousand wells poured their output
into 4,000 miles of Standard Oil pipelines, carrying the crude to seaboard or to
5,000 Standard Oil tank cars. The combine now employed 100,000 people and
superintended the export of 50,000 barrels of oil daily. Rockefeller’s creation
133
could be discussed only in superlatives: it was the biggest and richest, the most
feared and admired business organization in the world.”3
Not surprisingly, the staggering success of Rockefeller and Standard
drew the admiring attention of business owners and executives all across the
nation. Many corporate chiefs reshaped their own businesses to reflect the
Rockefeller business model. By the close of the 1890s, corporate trusts had
taken dominant positions in coal, sugar, beef, and many other U.S. industries.
Target of the Muckrakers

As the twentieth century dawned, an aura of mystery swirled around
Rockefeller, who only rarely appeared in public. This was due in part to a
bout with alopecia in the early 1890s. This rare medical condition caused
Rockefeller to lose all the hair on his body, even including his eyebrows. But
the tycoon’s retirement from day-to-day management of Standard’s affairs was
also a factor in his withdrawal from public life. This retirement, which
occurred gradually over the course of the 1890s, left direction of most Stan-
dard operations in the hands of executive John Archbold. Rockefeller never
publicly announced his retirement, however, and he retained his title as presi-
dent of the company until 1911.
As a result, Rockefeller remained the figure most closely associated with
the Standard Oil empire. And as America’s first billionaire, he ranked for many
years as one of the country’s leading symbols of industrial wealth. This status
made him enormously controversial. Some people admired his long record of
business triumphs and hailed his life as a classic example of the fulfillment of
the American dream. Most working-class Americans and political reformers
loathed him, however. They saw the fabulously wealthy Rockefeller as one of
the worst of the “robber barons”—industrial tycoons who built their riches
through decades of trickery, deceit, and exploitation of workers.
This viewpoint was fueled to a significant degree by intense scrutiny
from America’s muckraking journalists. Fierce criticism of Rockefeller’s busi-
ness practices and Standard’s monopoly power had appeared in newspapers
and magazines as far back as the 1870s. One of the earliest American muck-
rakers, journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd, was an especially bothersome critic.
His 1881 Atlantic Monthly article “Story of a Great Monopoly,” and his 1894
book Wealth against Commonwealth, painted extremely bleak and unattractive
portraits of Standard Oil and its founder.
134
Biographies: John D. Rockefeller
But the fiercest criticism of Rockefeller and Standard Oil came during
the early 1900s, when the muckraking movement reached its peak. Many
muckraking journalists joined progressive activists in condemning the “rob-
ber baron” Rockefeller and the fearsome Standard “octopus” he had created.
The most influential of these individuals was Ida Tarbell. Her exposé of Stan-
dard was published first in McClure’s in a nineteen-part series beginning in
late 1902. She then published her report in book form in 1904 as History of
the Standard Oil Company. Tarbell’s depiction of Standard Oil and its founder
as thoroughly corrupt forces in American society sparked a tremendous pub-
lic uproar. In late 1904 mounting political pressure led President Theodore
Roosevelt to approve a federal investigation of Standard’s business practices.
The End of Standard Oil

On November 18, 1906, the U.S. government formally filed suit against
Standard Oil. Federal lawyers charged that the company was a business
monopoly that was operating in clear violation of American antitrust laws. A
tremendous court battle ensued, but after five years of legal wrangling the
federal government won the case. On May 15, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court
announced that Standard Oil had to be broken up. Over the next several
months, Rockefeller’s empire was carved into numerous smaller companies.
The largest of these, Standard Oil, eventually became ExxonMobil; other
major oil companies formed by the breakup evolved into such well-known oil
companies as Chevron, Amoco, Sunoco, and the American arm of British
Petroleum (BP).
Ironically, Rockefeller’s personal wealth actually increased in the wake of
the court-ordered dismantling of Standard. He retained big ownership stakes
in most of the oil companies that came about as a result of the break-up, and
these companies became hugely profitable in the 1910s and 1920s with the
rise of the gasoline-guzzling automobile.
Rockefeller’s reputation underwent some significant changes in his later
years. During the 1910s the wealthy industrialist made huge financial contri-
butions to charities, churches, and other philanthropic causes. His financial
gifts also paid for the creation of the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (which
played a big role in eradicating the hookworm disease from the American
South), and the Rockefeller Foundation, which remains one of the world’s
135
leading philanthropic organizations in the twenty-first century. He also

donated millions of dollars for libraries, schools, and the preservation of his-
torical landmarks and nature preserves. Rockefeller spent his last few years
living quietly at his compound in Ormond Beach, Florida. He suffered a heart
attack and died on May 23, 1937.
Sources:
Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House, 1998.
“John D. Rockefeller Sr. 1839-1937” In American Experience: The Rockefellers, http://www.pbs
.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_rock_jsr.html.
Morris, Charles R. Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan
Invented the American Supereconomy. New York: Macmillan, 2005.
Nevins, Allan. Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist. 2 vols. New York:
Scribner’s, 1953.
Weinberg, Steve. Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle Between Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.
New York: Norton, 2008.
Notes
1 Quoted in Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House,
1998, p. 135.
2 Quoted in Chernow, p. 154.
3 Chernow, p. 249.
136
Biographies: Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

President of the United States, 1901-1909
T heodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was born in

New York City on October 27, 1858.
His father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was
a prosperous businessman. His mother, Martha
(Bulloch) Roosevelt, devoted her days to tak-
ing care of her four children (Teddy was the
second-oldest). Roosevelt’s early childhood
was marred by frailty and sickness, and he
struggled with asthma and poor eyesight. As a
young teen, though, he launched a campaign
of physical self-improvement that had remark-
able results. He took up boxing, weightlifting,
horseback riding, hunting, mountain climbing,
canoeing and rowing, and other challenging
activities, and by the time he entered college he
had transformed his spindly body into one of hard-packed muscle. This physi-
cal transformation—and the joy that Roosevelt took in all of these activities—
gave him a lifelong passion for what he liked to call the “strenuous life.”
Entering the World of Politics

Roosevelt received his early education from private tutors, and then
entered Harvard College in 1876. He graduated four years later and promptly
married Alice Hathaway Lee. Roosevelt developed a keen interest in politics
during his years at Harvard. In 1882 he cast aside notions of a career as a
lawyer or historian and instead became a Republican member of the New
York state assembly. He served three one-year terms in the assembly, but his
last term was darkened by the death of his wife died during childbirth.
Leaving his infant daughter Alice in the care of relatives, Roosevelt left
New York for the Dakota Territory. He immediately made his mark out west as
an ambitious and hard-nosed cattle rancher and sheriff. In 1886 he married
Edith Kermit Carow, with whom he eventually had one daughter and four sons.
In 1889 Roosevelt returned to New York City when he was offered a
position with the U.S. Civil Service Commission. He quickly became one of
the city’s most outspoken and effective crusaders against political corruption
137
in city government. His dedication to the reform cause led to his appointment
as New York City police commissioner in 1895.
Roosevelt’s tenure as police commissioner was brief, though. National
political leaders had taken note of the brash and charismatic reformer, and in
the spring of 1897 he was selected to serve in Washington, D.C., as assistant
secretary of the Navy. One year later, however, he resigned this position to
take part in the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt personally organized and
served as colonel of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, which distin-
guished itself throughout the brief conflict. The exploits of Roosevelt and his
so-called “Rough Riders” made him a military hero when he returned home
to New York in the summer of 1898.
Governor and Vice President

Roosevelt and New York’s Republican Party took full advantage of the
young politician’s mushrooming reputation as a tough and fearless reformer.
Republicans nominated Roosevelt as their candidate for governor, and the
newly returned war hero campaigned across the state with his usual gusto. He
won a narrow victory in November 1898, in large part because voters placed
greater value on his personal history than on the anti-reform, big-business
reputation of the wider Republican Party.
As governor, Roosevelt bucked his own party on numerous occasions to
force the passage of important new business and government reforms. He also
supported labor against management in several high-profile clashes, which
was very unusual for the governor of any state at that time. Some progressive
activists expressed dissatisfaction that Roosevelt did not take even bolder
steps to curb the power of big business, but as historian John Allen Gable
noted, “Who in office was more radical in 1899?”1
In 1900 Republican President William McKinley asked Roosevelt to be
his vice presidential nominee for the upcoming fall elections (his previous
vice president, Garret Hobart, had died in office in November 1899). Roo-
sevelt accepted, and the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket cruised to victory. Ten
months later, however, McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York, and
Roosevelt was sworn in as president on September 14, 1901.
Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement

When Roosevelt took his seat in the Oval Office, he was younger than any
of the other twenty-five men who had previously held the presidency. But he
138
did not suffer from any self-doubts about his ability to do the job. To the con-
trary, his high energy and self-confidence was evident from the outset. Roo-
sevelt believed that the United States was the greatest of countries, and he
repeatedly praised its democratic system of government, its capitalist economic
foundations, and the vitality and patriotism of its citizens. But he also believed
that America’s corporate giants had become too powerful—and too ruthless in
their treatment of workers, smaller businesses, and natural resources.
Roosevelt’s desire to pass reforms that would address these concerns was
greatly aided by the Progressive Movement. This movement of concerned
middle-class citizens and liberal activists gave Roosevelt the political support
he needed to help working-class causes, address urban poverty, and curb the
excesses of industry. Roosevelt’s cause was also helped by his boisterous and
energetic personality, which was a big hit with the American public. “The gift
of the gods to Theodore Roosevelt was joy, joy in life,” explained muckraking
journalist Lincoln Steffens years later. “He took joy in everything he did, in
hunting, camping, and ranching, in politics, in reforming the police or the
civil service, in organizing and commanding the Rough Riders.”2
When the November 1904 elections came around, Roosevelt easily won
another four years in the White House. In his second term he pressed for
even bolder reforms to various sectors of American business and society.
These campaigns were applauded by progressives all across the country. “Men
say he is not safe,” scoffed Elihu Root, who served as Roosevelt’s secretary of
state for the last four years of his presidency. “He is not safe for the men who
wish to prosecute selfish schemes to the public detriment [or] … who wish
government to be conducted with greater reference to campaign contribu-
tions than to the public good.”3
Clashing with the Muckrakers

Roosevelt had many triumphs during his second term that were hailed
by progressives. He helped impose new laws regulating corporate behavior,
attacked industry monopolies, ushered in new protections for workers and
consumers, and passed the nation’s first great wave of natural resource con-
servation laws. These developments were welcomed by many of the corrup-
tion-fighting journalists who whipped up popular support for government
reforms during the early 1900s.
Yet Roosevelt’s relations with these crusading members of the press
became extremely tense during his second term in office. He came to feel that
139
the stories that investigative magazines like McClure’s and Cosmopolitan

emphasized were eroding the public’s faith in basic American institutions.
The president also feared that their exposés were contributing to public sup-
port for truly radical proposals offered by Socialists, Communists, and anar-
chists to remake American society. In addition, Roosevelt became convinced
that some of the journalists were simply taking advantage of working-class
jealousy and envy of the rich to sell magazines.
In 1906 Roosevelt’s frustrations finally boiled over. During one official
dinner, he issued a stinging speech in which he compared America’s crusad-
ing journalists to the “man with the muck-rake” in John Bunyan’s famous
book Pilgrim’s Progress—a character who was interested only in raking filth,
to the exclusion of all other aspects of life. Roosevelt’s use of the term “muck-
rakers” was intended as a terrible insult, and some American journalists took
it that way. But others actually thought it was a pretty good description of
their work, and they embraced the term. Before long, “muckrakers” had
become a common term, and it is still used today in reference to American
journalists who uncover evidence of corporate greed, government corrup-
tion, and other lawlessness.
An Enduring Figure in American Politics

Roosevelt turned aside calls for him to run for re-election in 1908.
Instead, he asked fellow Republicans to nominate his Secretary of War,
William Howard Taft. The party promptly fell in line behind Taft, who won
the 1908 election and took office in March 1909.
Roosevelt departed the Oval Office for a long hunting and scientific expe-
dition in Africa followed by an extended tour of Europe. When he returned to
the United States in mid-1910, however, he found a Republican Party at war
with itself. Taft’s presidency was proving more conservative and pro-business
than some party members liked. Some reform-minded Republicans even
accused Taft of betraying Roosevelt with his policies. Roosevelt himself
expressed disappointment with Taft’s performance, and he made an unsuccess-
ful bid for the Republican nomination in 1912. When he fell short, he and his
supporters formed a third political party. This party, known as the Progressive
or Bull Moose Party, nominated Roosevelt as its presidential nominee.
The 1912 presidential election campaign between Roosevelt, Taft, and
Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson was a spirited battle. In the end, how-
140
ever, Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote and Wilson cruised to vic-
tory. One year later, Roosevelt undertook another major expedition, this time
into the jungles of South America. He returned weakened by tropical infec-
tions contracted during his adventure but remained a feisty political pres-
ence. After World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, for example, he repeated-
ly called for the United States to join the war on the side of the Allies. When
Wilson did take the United States into the conflict in 1917, all four of Roo-
sevelt’s sons served as soldiers in the war effort. Roosevelt died peacefully in
his sleep on January 6, 1919.
Sources:
Brands, H.W. T.R.: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Miller, Nathan. Theodore Roosevelt: A Life. New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1994.
Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. New York: Random House, 2001.
Notes
1 Quoted in Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Modern Library, 1979, p.
773.
2 Steffens, Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. 1931. Reprint. Berkeley, CA: Heyday
Books, 2005, p. 502.
3 Quoted in Roosevelt, Nicolas. Theodore Roosevelt: The Man as I Knew Him. New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1967, p. 66.
141
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Journalist, Political Leader, and Author of
The Jungle
U pton Beall Sinclair, Jr., was born in

Baltimore, Maryland, on September
20, 1878. His father, Upton Beall Sin-
clair, Sr., was a liquor salesman. His mother,
Priscilla Augusta Harden, was the daughter of
a wealthy railroad executive. As a youngster,
Upton and his family endured periods where
good food, clothing, and shelter were hard to
come by. These grim days were due mostly to
his father’s alcoholism and limited business
abilities. But young Sinclair also spent consid-
erable stretches of time with his maternal
grandparents, who enjoyed a luxurious exis-
tence. These dramatic shifts in his surround-
ings made a big impression on Sinclair, who developed a life-long interest in
the divisions between rich and poor in America.
Sinclair’s family moved to New York City when he was ten years old. Sin-
clair was a bright and energetic student who loved literature. He excelled so
much in his studies that he was able to enroll at the City College of New York
(CCNY) at age fourteen. Over the next few years he paid for much of his
tuition by selling stories and articles to publishers of magazines and adven-
ture novels for young boys. Sinclair graduated from CCNY in 1897 with a
bachelor’s degree. He then enrolled at Columbia University, also in New York
City, to continue his studies. He spent the next few semesters studying litera-
ture, law, and politics, but left the school before graduating.
Joining the Socialist Party

As the twentieth century began, Sinclair’s life underwent major changes. In
1900 he married Meta H. Fuller, with whom he had one son, David, before they
divorced in 1913. He also launched his career as a serious novelist during this
time. Beginning with the 1901 novel Springtime and Harvest, Sinclair published
five novels in a four-year period. None of these works proved to be a financial
success, but Sinclair did not waver from his goal of becoming a successful author.
142
Biographies: Upton Sinclair
Sinclair first dove into the world of political activism in the early 1900s
as well. He joined the Socialist Party in 1902, only one year after it was
founded. Sinclair later explained that his strong Christian faith played an
important role in his decision to become a Socialist. He believed that social-
ism displayed the same concern for the poor and the same regard for equality
and fairness that Jesus Christ had shown in his life and teachings.
Finally, Sinclair developed an intense interest in muckraking journalism
during this period. He was greatly impressed with the work of reform-minded
reporters like Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Lincoln Steffens. Their
exposés of political corruption, corporate treachery, and misery in America’s
inner cities became a source of inspiration to the young Socialist.
Writing The Jungle

In 1904 Fred Warren, who served as editor of a Socialist magazine called
Appeal to Reason, commissioned Sinclair to write a story about immigrant
workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. Sinclair spent nearly two
months in Chicago conducting research for the assignment. He wandered the
city’s stockyards and meatpacking warehouses, and spent long evenings talk-
ing with the poor and miserable working families who lived in the squalid
slums surrounding the factories.
When he returned to New York City, Sinclair wrote about what he had
seen with barely contained fury. “I wrote with tears and anguish, pouring into
the pages all that pain which life had meant to me,”1 he recalled. He
described in excruciating detail the many ways in which Chicago meatpack-
ing companies exploited their powerless immigrant workforce. In addition,
he revealed that many Americans were eating meat laced with rat carcasses,
human body parts, and toxic chemicals.
Sinclair’s thinly fictionalized account of life in the Chicago meat indus-
try, which he termed “The Jungle,” first appeared in several successive issues
of Appeal to Reason in 1905. It caused an immediate stir from readers who
were greatly disturbed by Sinclair’s account. But Sinclair’s efforts did not pro-
duce full-blown public outrage until 1906, when his manuscript was pub-
lished in book form as The Jungle by Doubleday Publishers.
Sinclair’s book was extremely popular with readers in both the United
and Europe. It sold over 150,000 copies in the United States in its first few
years of availability, and editions of The Jungle were eventually published in
143
seventeen languages. The book also vaulted Sinclair to the top ranks of Ameri-
can muckrakers. “The Jungle attracted attention because it was obviously the
most authentic and most powerful of the muckraking novels,” wrote critic
Alfred Kazin. “The romantic indignation of the book gave it its fierce honesty,
but the facts in it gave Sinclair his reputation, for he had suddenly given an
unprecedented social importance to muckraking.… Sinclair became a leading
exponent of the muckraking spirit to thousands in America and Europe.”2
The Jungle triggered a firestorm of public pressure for government to
take action against the meatpacking industry. Disgusted and angered by the
revelations in Sinclair’s book, American consumers demanded reforms to
ensure that contaminated meat would no longer be sold to unsuspecting fam-
ilies. Congress and the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt wast-
ed little time in responding. Before 1906 was over, both the Pure Food and
Drug Act (which established the Food and Drug Administration) and the
Meat Inspection Act had become law.
Sinclair was glad that The Jungle prompted increased government over-
sight of the meatpacking industry and improvements in food safety. But he
was tremendously disappointed by the book’s reception in other respects. His
main purpose in writing the book had been to increase public knowledge and
anger about the deplorable living conditions in which Chicago’s working
families existed. But instead, most Americans had focused on his stomach-
churning accounts of food contamination. “I aimed at the public’s heart and
by accident hit it in the stomach,”3 he lamented.
Deepening Involvement in Politics

Sinclair made his first bid for public office in 1906, running for a seat in
Congress in New Jersey as a Socialist. He finished in a distant third place in
the balloting, with fewer than 800 votes. Around this same period, Sinclair
used money earned from sales of The Jungle to help establish a small Socialist
community in Englewood, New Jersey, called Helicon Home Colony. But it
burned to the ground in March 1907 under mysterious circumstances. Sin-
clair blamed the fire on arson committed by anti-Socialists, but this charge
was never proven.
Sinclair continued to turn out novels and other writings during the
1910s, including an anthology of political writings called The Cry for Justice
(1915). None of these works of social protest ever approached the popularity
144
or impact of The Jungle, but they further burnished his reputation with Amer-
icans who shared his radical political beliefs. In 1913 he divorced his first
wife and married Mary Craig Kimbrough. They remained married until her
death in 1961. A few months later Sinclair entered into his third and final
marriage, to Mary Elizabeth Willis.
By the mid-1910s, Sinclair ranked as one of the best known Socialists in
the entire United States. But when the United States entered World War I in
1917, he decisively split with most members of his party. Sinclair supported
America’s entrance into the war on the side of the Allies, which also included
England, France, Russia, and Canada. He believed that the future of the
world depended on defeating Germany’s dreams of using military force to cre-
ate a new empire in Europe. But many of Sinclair’s fellow Socialists were con-
vinced that U.S. entry into the war was causing needless death and enriching
American industrialists. They responded by organizing antiwar rallies and
other activities, even though they knew that authorities might arrest them for
violating newly created “anti-treason” laws.
Sinclair was extremely troubled by these actions. “I know you are brave
and unselfish people, making sacrifices for a great principle, but I cannot join
you,”4 he told one group. By the end of 1917 the divisions between Sinclair
and the Socialist Party over World War I were so great that he regretfully sub-
mitted a formal note of resignation from the party. As the war continued,
however, and hundreds of Socialists were arrested and imprisoned for oppos-
ing the war, Sinclair angrily condemned the American government for tram-
pling on their political rights. The United States, he charged, was fighting “to
win democracy abroad [while] losing it at home.”5
Running for Governor of California

After World War I came to an end in November 1918 with an Allied vic-
tory, Sinclair gradually returned to the Socialist Party fold. He formally
rejoined the party in 1920. Two years later, he represented the Socialists in an
unsuccessful campaign for a California U.S. Senate seat.
In 1926 Sinclair launched the first of three election campaigns to become
governor of California. In 1926 and 1930 he ran under the Socialist banner
and attracted little popular support. Meanwhile, he continued to turn out nov-
els and essays on a regular basis. One of the most notable Sinclair books from
this era was Oil (1927), a novel about corruption and greed in the early oil
145
industry. (Eighty years after its initial publication, this book was made into a
major motion picture called There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day Lewis.
Widely acclaimed by critics, it was nominated for eight Academy Awards.)
In 1934 Sinclair made a third bid for the governorship of California.
This time, however, he ran as a Democrat, and his campaign attracted a lot of
attention from Depression-battered Californians. The cornerstone of Sinclair’s
candidacy was a jobs program called EPIC (End Poverty in California). It
enabled him to beat out establishment Democrat candidates to win that
party’s gubernatorial nomination. As the 1934 election drew closer, many
observers thought that Sinclair’s strong support from working-class Ameri-
cans and Socialist groups gave him a fighting chance to defeat the state’s sit-
ting governor, Republican Frank Merriam.
The prospect of a Sinclair victory alarmed every mainstream business
and political group in the state. They leveled vicious attacks on his candidacy
with the willing cooperation of newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, which
compared his supporters to maggots. When election day arrived, Sinclair
earned nearly 900,000 votes, which amounted to about 37 percent of the total
cast. But Merriam claimed more than 1.1 million votes (48 percent of the
total) to win re-election.
A Prolific Writer to the End

After his loss in 1934, Sinclair never again ran for political office. But he
continued to comment on political and social events in his books and articles.
His outlook on the world continued to infuriate some Americans, but made
him a hero to other people in America and around the world. The famed Irish
playwright George Bernard Shaw, for example, wrote Sinclair a letter in 1941
that read in part, “I have regarded you, not as a novelist, but as an histori-
an.… When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not
refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to your novels.”6
Sinclair never again reached the heights of literary influence and popu-
larity that he experienced with The Jungle. But some of his most noteworthy
efforts were published decades after he first burst onto the American scene
with that famous muckraking epic. In 1942 his nonfiction book Dragon’s
Teeth, which covered the rise of Nazi Germany, won a Pulitzer Prize. And
from 1940 to 1953 he wrote an eleven-volume “Larry Budd” series that was
very popular with readers. By the time Sinclair died on November 25, 1968,
146
he had written more than ninety books of fiction and non-fiction about
American politics, economics, class, and culture.
Sources:
Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006.
Mattson, Kevin. Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century. New York: Wiley, 2006.
Mitchell, Greg. The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and
the Birth of Media Politics. New York: Random House, 1993.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. 1906. Reprint. New York: Pocket Books, 2004.
Notes
1 Sinclair, Upton. Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962, p. 112.
2 Kazin, Alfred. On Native Grounds. An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature. New
York: Doubleday, 1956, p. 91.
3 Sinclair, p. 53.
4 Quoted in Harris, Leon A. Upton Sinclair: American Rebel. New York: Crowell, 1975, p. 157.
5 Quoted in Harris, p. 226.
6 Quoted in Zinn, Howard. “Upton Sinclair and Sacci & Vanzetti,” In The Zinn Reader:Writings on
Disobedience and Democracy. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997, p. 478.
147
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936)

Journalist and Author of The Shame of the
Cities
J oseph Lincoln Steffens was born on April

6, 1866, in San Francisco, California. He
was the oldest of four children born to
Joseph Steffens, a wealthy businessman, and
Elizabeth Louisa (Symes) Steffens. In 1870
the family moved to Sacramento, where Stef-
fens and his three younger sisters were raised
in one of the city’s finer mansions.
Finding a Life in Journalism

By his own account, Steffens was an
adventurous but restless youngster who did
not always apply himself in school. His par-
ents emphasized the importance of study to
his future, but they also recognized that their
eldest son was not a shy, studious sort. “They sent me to school, they gave me
teachers of music, drawing; they offered me every opportunity in their
reach,” Steffens recalled in his autobiography. “But also they gave me liberty
and the tools of quite another life: horses, guns, dogs, and the range of an
open country.”1
After completing his elementary schooling, Steffens attended a military
academy in San Mateo, California. He graduated in 1884 and one year later
enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley. Steffens earned his bache-
lor’s degree in 1889, then promptly went to Europe to continue his studies
and see the world. In Germany he met a fellow American student named
Josephine Bontecou. They secretly married in the fall of 1891 and returned to
the United States one year later.
Steffens and his wife settled in New York City, where he found work as a
reporter for the New York Evening Post. He found the experience of covering
events on Wall Street and city hall—including a major police corruption
scandal—to be both interesting and personally rewarding. These early news-
paper experiences helped lay the groundwork for Steffens’s lifelong interest in
politics, social issues, and reform.
148
Biographies: Lincoln Steffens
In 1897 Steffens left the Evening Post to become city editor of a fading
newspaper called the Commercial Advertiser. The move seemed a strange one
to casual observers, but Steffens was attracted by the Advertiser’s promise of
freedom in shaping the paper’s content and operations. Over the next few
years he brought new life to the newspaper by hiring talented young journal-
ists and writers who emphasized stories about immigration, Jewish-American
life, and other issues of interest to working-class New Yorkers.
Moving on to McClure’s
When he was not working as city editor, Steffens was working on his
own writing career. He published several magazine pieces in his spare time,
including a profile of New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt that appeared
in an 1899 issue of McClure’s, one of the top magazines in the country. Pub-
lisher S.S. McClure was extremely impressed by the article, and he wrote a
personal note to Steffens about the “rattling good” piece. “I could read a
whole magazine of this kind of material,”2 he added.
By 1901 Steffens had helped restore the Commercial Advertiser to prof-
itability. But increased interference from the newspaper’s ownership with edi-
torial operations soured Steffens on his work at the Advertiser. In addition,
both he and his wife suffered from bouts of poor health during this time.
Finally, Steffens felt mounting frustration with a novel that he had been
working on for some time. All of these factors convinced him that he needed
a change of scenery, so when McClure’s offered him an editorial position on its
staff in 1901, he quickly accepted.
Steffens’s move to McClure’s in the fall of 1901 revitalized him. Within a
matter of a few months, he was out on the road, investigating reports of mas-
sive political corruption in some of America’s largest cities. His first report on
this problem, called “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” appeared in the October 1902
issue of McClure’s. Some scholars have called this piece the first genuine
“muckraking” article in U.S. magazine publishing history, in part because of
the moral outrage that dripped from Steffens’s pen. “Public spirit became pri-
vate spirit [and] public enterprise became private greed” in late nineteenth
century St. Louis, wrote Steffens:
Public franchises and privileges were sought, not only for

legitimate profit and common convenience, but for loot. Tak-
149
ing but slight and always selfish interest in the public councils,
the big men misused politics. The riffraff, catching the smell of
corruption, rushed into the Municipal Assembly, drove out the
remaining respectable men, and sold the city—its streets, its
wharves, its markets, and all that it had—to the now greedy
business men and bribers. In other words, when the leading
men began to devour their own city, the herd rushed into the
trough and fed also.3
Two months later, Steffens targeted municipal corruption in Minneapolis

in the January 1903 issue of McClure’s. This article was accompanied by two
other hard-hitting investigative reports—a piece by Ida Tarbell on the ruth-
less rise of Standard Oil and an article by Ray Stannard Baker on the war
between labor and management in the Pennsylvania coal fields. Together,
these three articles marked a turning point in American journalism. From
this point forward, investigative reporting of social and political problems—
or muckraking, as it came to be known—was seen as a legitimate pursuit for
magazines and newspapers.
Leaving the Muckraking Movement Behind

Over the next few years, the muckraking movement continued to gain
steam. Journalists all across the country published articles and books detail-
ing the destructive effects of political corruption, urban poverty, and unregu-
lated corporations on American society. The cranky but brilliant Steffens
remained at the forefront of this movement, which generated broad support
for progressive reforms to the nation’s political and economic systems. In
1904, for example, he published The Shame of the Cities, a famous collection
of six of his best-known McClure’s articles. These pieces, which uncovered
corruption in city governments in St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pitts-
burgh, Philadelphia, and New York, remain among the most influential works
of the entire muckraking movement.
In 1906 Steffens, Tarbell, and Baker all left McClure’s because of dissatis-
faction with S.S. McClure’s stewardship of the magazine. They became part of
a group that launched a new muckraking publication called American Maga-
zine, which became a prominent reform-oriented magazine in its own right.
But Steffens stayed with the magazine for only a year before departing to pur-
sue freelance writing for a wide range of publishers.
150
Biographies: Lincoln Steffens
By 1911, when his wife died, Steffens had adopted a radical perspective
on American society. Increasingly attracted to Socialist and Communist polit-
ical ideas, he bitterly criticized American-style capitalism. But his influence
waned during this period, in part because of declining public interest in the
muckraking movement with which he was so closely associated.
In the late 1910s Steffens regularly extolled the benefits of communism
over American-style capitalism. He then traveled to Russia, which had
become a Communist state under Vladimir Lenin. After touring Russia and
interviewing Lenin, he returned to America in 1921 and declared that “I have
seen the future; and it works.” In 1924 he married Ella Winter, with whom he
had one son.
Steffens spent most of the 1920s in Europe, where radical political views
were tolerated more than they were in the United States. In 1927, though, he
returned to America and settled in Carmel, California. He spent the next few
years writing his memoirs, which were published in 1931 as The Autobiogra-
phy of Lincoln Steffens. This entertaining account of his life and political views
reflected disillusionment with communism, but also maintained that serious
reforms were still necessary in America. The autobiography was a bestseller,
and it restored him to a level of prominence in America that he had not
enjoyed in many years. He spent the next few years lecturing and writing to
audiences across the United States. In 1933, though, Steffens suffered a serious
heart attack. He never really recovered from this setback, and he spent the
next three years virtually housebound. He died in Carmel on August 6, 1936.
Sources:
Kaplan, Justin. Lincoln Steffens, A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
Steffens, Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. 1931. Reprint. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books,
2005.
Notes
1 Steffens, Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. 1931. Reprint. Berkeley, CA: Heyday
Books, 2005, p. 111
2 Quoted in Kaplan, Justin. Lincoln Steffens, A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004, p.
90.
3 Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities. 1904. Reprint. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957, p. 21.
151
Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944)

Journalist and Author of The History of the
Standard Oil Company
M uckraking journalist Ida Minerva Tar-

bell was born on November 5, 1857,
in rural Erie County, Pennsylvania.
Her father, Franklin Tarbell, was a barrel and
tank maker for local oil companies. Her mother,
Esther Ann (McCullough) Tarbell, was a home-
maker who cared for Ida and her two younger
siblings (another child died in infancy).
Frank Tarbell’s barrelmaking business
thrived in the 1860s, when Pennsylvania
became the center of America’s oil boom. Ida’s memories of her childhood
surroundings, though, were grim. “No industry of man in its early days has
ever been more destructive of beauty, order, decency, than the production of
petroleum,” she later wrote. “Every tree, every shrub, every bit of grass in the
vicinity [of the oil fields] was coated with black grease and left to die.”1
Pursuing a Career in Journalism

In 1870 the Tarbell family moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, where young
Ida attended high school. By all accounts, she was both intellectually curious
and very smart, and after graduating from high school she became the first
young woman to attend Allegheny College in nearby Meadville. She briefly tried
school teaching after graduating in 1880, but then found work in the editorial
offices of the Chautauquan, a monthly magazine devoted to popular education.
Tarbell worked at the magazine for eight years before relocating to Paris,
France. She studied and wrote articles for American magazines for the next three
years. Several of these pieces caught the attention of S.S. McClure, an ambitious
American editor and businessman who was plotting to start up a new magazine
that would bear his name. He convinced her to return to America in 1894 and
join his editorial staff. Before long, Tarbell was publishing serialized biographies
of Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte in the pages of McClure’s. These
efforts vaulted her to the top ranks of McClure’s stable of talented writers.
In 1901 Tarbell embarked on the assignment that would make her one
of the most famous journalists in American history. She decided to investigate
152
Biographies: Ida M. Tarbell
the rise of industrialist John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, a corpo-

rate giant that had been a constant presence throughout her childhood and
young adulthood in Pennsylvania. By the close of the nineteenth century,
Rockefeller ranked as perhaps the most powerful industrialist in the United
States. This stature was due to his ironhanded direction of Standard Oil,
which had become a dominant force in all sectors of the nation’s oil industry.
Tarbell’s plan was to trace the history of Rockefeller and his company and tell
McClure’s readers how they had achieved such wealth and power.
The History of the Standard Oil Company

Over the next two years, Tarbell dug into newspaper files and courtroom
records and conducted interviews to trace the history of Rockefeller and his
business empire. The finished product of her investigative journalism was a
nineteen-part series on Standard Oil that appeared in McClure’s from Novem-
ber 1902 through October 1904. The series was also published in book form
as the two-volume The History of the Standard Oil Company in late 1904.
Tarbell’s series was a groundbreaking event in the history of American
journalism, for it caught public attention like no other investigative report
ever had. This impact was due in part to the progressive spirit of the times,
but it also was a testament to the writer’s talent. “The breadth of her research
was remarkable,” observed one analysis, “but even more impressive was her
ability to digest Rockefeller’s complicated business maneuvers into a narrative
that would be accessible and engaging to the average reader.”2
Tarbell painted a damning picture of Rockefeller and Standard Oil.
Using all sorts of evidence uncovered during her research, she described the
company as a ruthless monopoly that manipulated America’s political and
economic systems in a never-ending quest for greater power. She never
attacked American capitalism, but she summarized her feelings about Stan-
dard Oil’s management by saying that they “never played fair, and that ruined
their greatness for me.”3 Tarbell also offered a harsh judgment of Rockefeller
himself, saying that “our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier,
meaner, for the kind of influence he exercises.”4
Icon of the Muckraking Movement

Tarbell’s investigation of Standard Oil played a major role in the rise of
the muckraking movement of the early twentieth century. She and other
153
reform-minded journalists, like Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair, inspired

numerous reporters and editors to conduct and publish their own examina-
tions of corporate misbehavior, political corruption, and social injustice.
Even a century later, Tarbell’s work remained an inspiration to journalists and
historians. As Tarbell biographer Steve Weinberg wrote in 2008, her tech-
niques of gathering “information about a secretive corporation and its eva-
sive, powerful chief executive taught me that a talented, persistent journalist
can penetrate any façade through close readings of government documents,
lawsuits, and interviews.”5
The History of the Standard Oil Company also led to a federal investiga-
tion of Standard Oil to see if its operations violated antitrust laws. On
November 18, 1906, the U.S. government formally filed suit against Standard
Oil, charging that it was an illegal monopoly. Five years later the U.S.
Supreme Court ordered the breakup of Rockefeller’s business empire. Histori-
ans agree that Tarbell’s documentation of Standard’s business practices con-
tributed to the Court’s final decision.
Throughout that five-year court battle, Tarbell continued to write about
social and political problems in America. But most of these reports appeared
in magazines other than McClure’s. In 1906 she resigned from the magazine
along with fellow muckrakers Lincoln Steffens and Ray Stannard Baker and
editor John S. Phillips. Frustrated by S.S. McClure’s managerial policies and
irresponsible personal behavior, they decided to form their own periodical,
called American Magazine.
Tarbell wrote for American Magazine for the next nine years before mov-
ing on to a free-lance writing career. She remained an outspoken critic of ille-
gal and dishonest activities by corporate America during this time, but she
also became known as a strong supporter of Democratic President Woodrow
Wilson. In addition, Tarbell emerged as an opponent of women’s suffrage, to
the surprise and disappointment of many of her old progressive colleagues.
During the 1920s and 1930s Tarbell left investigative journalism behind
and concentrated on biography writing. The most notable works of this peri-
od were biographies of industrialists Elbert H. Gary and Owen D. Young,
both of which cast their subjects in largely positive lights. In 1939 she pub-
lished an autobiography of her life and career called All in the Day’s Work.
Tarbell died of pneumonia at her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Janu-
ary 6, 1944.
154
Biographies: Ida M. Tarbell
Sources:
Brady, Kathleen. Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989.
Tarbell, Ida Minerva. All in the Day’s Work: An Autobiography. 1939. Reprint. Champaign: University
of Illinois Press, 2003.
Weinberg, Steve. Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle between Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.
Notes
1 Tarbell, Ida Minerva. All in the Day’s Work: An Autobiography. 1939. Reprint. Champaign: Universi-
ty of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 9.
2 “Ida Tarbell: 1857-1944” in American Experience: The Rockefellers, available online at http://www
.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/p_tarbell.html.
3 Tarbell, p. 230.
4 “Ida Tarbell: 1857-1944.”
5 Weinberg, Steve. Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle between Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.
155
Primary Sources
President Theodore Roosevelt Promises Progressive Reform
Theodore Roosevelt took office as President of the United States on September 14, 1901, follow-
ing the assassination of William McKinley. On December 3, he outlined the priorities of his
administration in his first annual message to Congress. Roosevelt offered his views on a wide
range of issues facing the nation. In the section excerpted below, he acknowledges growing pub-
lic discontent with the power and influence of large corporations, and expresses a willingness to
increase federal government regulation of big business. Roosevelt thus sets the stage for the pro-
gressive reforms that he implemented during his presidency.
T he tremendous and highly complex industrial development which

went on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the
nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twen-
tieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs
which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regu-
late the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes
which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they
are no longer sufficient.
The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the
growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial centers has
meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of wealth, but in the
number of very large individual, and especially of very large corporate, for-
tunes. The creation of these great corporate fortunes has not been due to the
tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural causes in the busi-
ness world, operating in other countries as they operate in our own.
The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is
wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the
poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man,
the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this coun-
try and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accu-
mulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legiti-
mate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on
condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful
enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the condi-
tions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.
The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this
continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our manu-
159
factures, have on the whole done great good to our people. Without them the
material development of which we are so justly proud could never have taken
place. Moreover, we should recognize the immense importance of this materi-
al development of leaving as unhampered as is compatible with the public
good the strong and forceful men upon whom the success of business opera-
tions inevitably rests. The slightest study of business conditions will satisfy
anyone capable of forming a judgment that the personal equation is the most
important factor in a business operation; that the business ability of the man
at the head of any business concern, big or little, is usually the factor which
fixes the gulf between striking success and hopeless failure....
Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant
violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the
interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life—the rule which
underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up
or down together. There are exceptions; and in times of prosperity some will
prosper far more, and in times of adversity, some will suffer far more, than oth-
ers; but speaking generally, a period of good times means that all share more or
less in them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less
degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this state-
ment; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we
can contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing.
Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the
men at the top. It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is
worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries; but
the wage-worker may be deprived of even bare necessities.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care
must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance.
Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great indus-
trial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy,
known as “trusts,” appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely
the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit
men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial
conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will general-
ly be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and
with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts would
have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective.
In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless
160
Primary Sources: President Theodore Roosevelt Promises Progressive Reform
agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils which he has been
nominally opposing. In dealing with business interests, for the Government
to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out
to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster
that it would be preferable to undertake nothing at all. The men who demand
the impossible or the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with which
they are nominally at war, for they hamper those who would endeavor to find
out in rational fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in
what manner it is practicable to apply remedies.
All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils, one
of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful consequences;
and a resolute and practical effort must be made to correct these evils.
There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people
that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and
tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit of envy
or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements that
have placed this country at the head of the nations struggling for commercial
supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the neces-
sity of meeting changing and changed conditions of trade with new methods,
nor upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the effort to
accomplish great things is necessary when the world’s progress demands that
great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination and
concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable
limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.
It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require
that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business
under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and
enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall
do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property
in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate
commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working
to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social
betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire
body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they
are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right
and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.
161
The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial
combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the interest of the pub-
lic, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the work-
ings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business. Publicity is the
only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What further remedies are need-
ed in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be deter-
mined after publicity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course
of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—
knowledge which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other associa-
tions, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges,
should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate
information as to their operations should be made public regularly at reason-
able intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in
one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business
in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity in
the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in or
power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get adequate
regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole peo-
ple, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the
matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corpo-
rations doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the corpo-
ration derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic
element or tendency in its business. There would be no hardship in such
supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a
simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that supervision of corpora-
tions by the National Government need not go so far as is now the case with
the supervision exercised over them by so conservative a State as Massachu-
setts, in order to produce excellent results.
When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth centu-
ry, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial
and political conditions, which were to take place by the beginning of the
twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that the
several States were the proper authorities to regulate, so far as was then nec-
essary, the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies
162
Primary Sources: President Theodore Roosevelt Promises Progressive Reform
of the day. The conditions are now wholly different and wholly different
action is called for. I believe that a law can be framed which will enable the
National Government to exercise control along the lines above indicated;
profiting by the experience gained through the passage and administration of
the Interstate Commerce Act. If, however, the judgment of the Congress is
that it lacks the constitutional power to pass such an act, then a constitution-
al amendment should be submitted to confer the power.
There should be created a Cabinet officer, to be known as Secretary of
Commerce and Industries, as provided in the bill introduced at the last session
of the Congress. It should be his province to deal with commerce in its broad-
est sense; including among many other things whatever concerns labor and all
matters affecting the great business corporations and our merchant marine.
The course proposed is one phase of what should be a comprehensive
and far-reaching scheme of constructive statesmanship for the purpose of
broadening our markets, securing our business interests on a safe basis, and
making firm our new position in the international industrial world; while
scrupulously safeguarding the rights of wage-worker and capitalist, of
investor and private citizen, so as to secure equity as between man and man
in this Republic....
The most vital problem with which this country, and for that matter the
whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has for one side the
betterment of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and for
another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions
which we group together when we speak of “labor.” The chief factor in the
success of each man—wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—must ever
be the sum total of his own individual qualities and abilities. Second only to
this comes the power of acting in combination or association with others.
Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations or unions
of wage-workers, when managed with forethought, and when they combine
insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of
others. The display of these qualities in such bodies is a duty to the nation no
less than to the associations themselves. Finally, there must also in many
cases be action by the Government in order to safeguard the rights and inter-
ests of all. Under our Constitution there is much more scope for such action
by the State and the municipality than by the nation. But on points such as
those touched on above the National Government can act.
163
When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indis-
pensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we
strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside
help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his
brother’s keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried
with advantage to himself or anyone else, yet that each at times stumbles or
halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him.
To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man
to help himself; and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the
work that is of common interest to all....
Source: Roosevelt, Theodore. “First Annual Message,” December 3, 1901. In Woolley, John
T., and Gerhard Peters. The American Presidency Project. Santa Barbara, CA: Universi-
ty of California, n.d. Available online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index
.php?pid=29542&st=&st1=.
164
Primary Sources: Jacob Riis Chronicles the Struggles of the Urban Poor
Jacob Riis Chronicles the Struggles of the Urban Poor

One of the best-known writers to investigate the problems facing poor and working-class resi-
dents of American cities was Jacob Riis. Riis spent years exploring the tenement districts of New
York City, recording his observations in a notebook and taking photographs of the residents and
their surroundings. In 1890 he published the results of his work in a powerful book called How
the Other Half Lives. The following excerpt from Chapter 1 describes the dirty, overcrowded
conditions he encountered in the tenements. Riis’s book forced middle-class Americans and gov-
ernment officials to confront the problems facing people in the nation’s urban slums. His exposé
led to the establishment of the Tenement House Commission to improve the design of urban
housing and provide safe and sanitary living conditions for the poor.
I n thirty-five years the city of less than a hundred thousand came to harbor
half a million souls, for whom homes had to be found. Within the memo-
ry of men not yet in their prime, Washington had moved from his house
on Cherry Hill as too far out of town to be easily reached. Now the old resi-
dents followed his example; but they moved in a different direction and for a
different reason. Their comfortable dwellings in the once fashionable streets
along the East River front fell into the hands of real-estate agents and board-
ing-house keepers; and here, says the report to the Legislature of 1857, when
the evils engendered had excited just alarm, “in its beginning, the tenant-
house became a real blessing to that class of industrious poor whose small
earnings limited their expenses, and whose employment in workshops,
stores, or about the warehouses and thoroughfares, render a near residence of
much importance.” Not for long, however. As business increased, and the city
grew with rapid strides, the necessities of the poor became the opportunity of
their wealthier neighbors, and the stamp was set upon the old houses, sud-
denly become valuable, which the best thought and effort of a later age have
vainly struggled to efface. Their “large rooms were partitioned into several
smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being
lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became
filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth,
loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary
itself.” It was thus the dark bedroom, prolific of untold depravities, came into
the world. It was destined to survive the old houses. In their new role, says
the old report, eloquent in its indignant denunciation of “evils more destruc-
tive than wars,” “they were not intended to last. Rents were fixed high
enough to cover damage and abuse from this class, from whom nothing was
165
expected, and the most was made of them while they lasted. Neatness, order,
cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house sys-
tem, as it spread its localities from year to year; while reckless slovenliness,
discontent, privation, and ignorance were left to work out their invariable
results, until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapida-
tion, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded
beneath mouldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clam-
my cellars.” Yet so illogical is human greed that, at a later day, when called to
account, “the proprietors frequently urged the filthy habits of the tenants as
an excuse for the condition of their property, utterly losing sight of the fact
that it was the tolerance of those habits which was the real evil, and that for
this they themselves were alone responsible.”
Still the pressure of the crowds did not abate, and in the old garden
where the stolid Dutch burgher grew his tulips or early cabbages a rear house
was built, generally of wood, two stories high at first. Presently it was carried
up another story, and another. Where two families had lived ten moved in.
The front house followed suit, if the brick walls were strong enough. The
question was not always asked, judging from complaints made by a contem-
porary witness, that the old buildings were “often carried up to a great height
without regard to the strength of the foundation walls.” It was rent the owner
was after; nothing was said in the contract about either the safety or the com-
fort of the tenants. The garden gate no longer swung on its rusty hinges. The
shell-paved walk had become an alley; what the rear house had left of the gar-
den, a “court.” Plenty such are yet to be found in the Fourth Ward, with here
and there one of the original rear tenements.
Worse was to follow. It was “soon perceived by estate owners and agents
of property that a greater percentage of profits could be realized by the conver-
sion of houses and blocks into barracks, and dividing their space into smaller
proportions capable of containing human life within four walls.… Blocks were
rented of real estate owners, or ‘purchased on time,’ or taken in charge at a per-
centage, and held for under-letting.” With the appearance of the middleman,
wholly irresponsible, and utterly reckless and unrestrained, began the era of
tenement building which turned out such blocks as Gotham Court, where, in
one cholera epidemic that scarcely touched the clean wards, the tenants died
at the rate of one hundred and ninety-five to the thousand of population;
which forced the general mortality of the city up from 1 in 41.83 in 1815, to 1
in 27.33 in 1855, a year of unusual freedom from epidemic disease, and which
166
wrung from the early organizers of the Health Department this wail: “There
are numerous examples of tenement-houses in which are lodged several hun-
dred people that have a pro rata allotment of ground area scarcely equal to two
square yards upon the city lot, court-yards and all included.” The tenement-
house population had swelled to half a million souls by that time, and on the
East Side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world,
China not excluded, it was packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a
state of affairs wholly unexampled. The utmost cupidity [greed] of other lands
and other days had never contrived to herd much more than half that number
within the same space. The greatest crowding of Old London was at the rate of
175,816. Swine roamed the streets and gutters as their principal scavengers.
The death of a child in a tenement was registered at the Bureau of Vital Statis-
tics as “plainly due to suffocation in the foul air of an unventilated apartment,”
and the Senators, who had come down from Albany to find out what was the
matter with New York, reported that “there are annually cut off from the popu-
lation by disease and death enough human beings to people a city, and enough
human labor to sustain it.”
And yet experts had testified that, as compared with uptown, rents were
from twenty-five to thirty per cent higher in the worst slums of the lower
wards, with such accommodations as were enjoyed, for instance, by a “family
with boarders” in Cedar Street, who fed hogs in the cellar that contained eight
or ten loads of manure; or “one room 12 x 12 with five families living in it,
comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds,
without partition, screen, chair, or table.” The rate of rent has been successful-
ly maintained to the present day, though the hog at least has been eliminated.
Lest anybody flatter himself with the notion that these were evils of a
day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten, let me mention here
three very recent instances of tenement-house life that came under my notice.
One was the burning of a rear house in Mott Street, from appearances one of
the original tenant-houses that made their owners rich. The fire made home-
less ten families, who had paid an average of $5 a month for their mean little
cubby-holes. The owner himself told me that it was fully insured for $800,
though it brought him in $600 a year rent. He evidently considered himself
especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property. Another was
the case of a hard-working family of man and wife, young people from the old
country, who took poison together in a Crosby Street tenement because they
were “tired.” There was no other explanation, and none was needed when I
167
stood in the room in which they had lived. It was in the attic with sloping
ceiling and a single window so far out on the roof that it seemed not to
belong to the place at all. With scarcely room enough to turn around in they
had been compelled to pay five dollars and a half a month in advance. There
were four such rooms in that attic, and together they brought in as much as
many a handsome little cottage in a pleasant part of Brooklyn. The third
instance was that of a colored family of husband, wife, and baby in a
wretched rear rookery in West Third Street. Their rent was eight dollars and a
half for a single room on the top-story, so small that I was unable to get a pho-
tograph of it even by placing the camera outside the open door. Three short
steps across either way would have measured its full extent.
There was just one excuse for the early tenement-house builders, and
their successors may plead it with nearly as good right for what it is worth.
“Such,” says an official report, “is the lack of house- room in the city that any
kind of tenement can be immediately crowded with lodgers, if there is space
offered.” Thousands were living in cellars. There were three hundred under-
ground lodging-houses in the city when the Health Department was orga-
nized. Some fifteen years before that the old Baptist Church in Mulberry
Street, just off Chatham Street, had been sold, and the rear half of the frame
structure had been converted into tenements that with their swarming popu-
lation became the scandal even of that reckless age. The wretched pile har-
bored no less than forty families, and the annual rate of deaths to the popula-
tion was officially stated to be 75 in 1,000. These tenements were an extreme
type of very many, for the big barracks had by this time spread east and west
and far up the island into the sparsely settled wards. Whether or not the title
was clear to the land upon which they were built was of less account than
that the rents were collected. If there were damages to pay, the tenant had to
foot them. Cases were “very frequent when property was in litigation, and
two or three different parties were collecting rents.” Of course under such cir-
cumstances “no repairs were ever made.”
The climax had been reached. The situation was summed up by the
Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor in these words:
“Crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp
basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables converted into
dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands
of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, Christian city.” “The city,” says its histo-
rian, Mrs. Martha Lamb, commenting on the era of aqueduct building
168
between 1835 and 1845, “was a general asylum for vagrants.” Young
vagabonds, the natural offspring of such “home” conditions, overran the
streets. Juvenile crime increased fearfully year by year. The Children’s Aid
Society and kindred philanthropic organizations were yet unborn, but in the
city directory was to be found the address of the “American Society for the
Promotion of Education in Africa.”
Source: Riis, Jacob. “Chapter 1: Genesis of the Tenement.” In How the Other Half Lives.
New York: Scribner’s, 1890, pp. 7-14.
169
John Spargo Describes the Tragedy of Child Labor

Around the turn of the twentieth century, an estimated two million American children worked in
the nation’s factories, textile mills, coal mines, and other industrial operations. Many poor families
had no choice but to send all members out in search of employment. Children often worked up to
seventy hours per week—performing hard, physical labor in depressing or even dangerous work
environments—and received wages of just pennies per day. The tragedy of child labor became a
focus of muckraking journalists like John Spargo, whose 1907 book The Bitter Cry of the Chil-
dren generated public sympathy and outrage for the plight of these young workers. In the follow-
ing excerpt, the author describes the terrible conditions faced by boys working in U.S. coal mines.
A ccording to the census of 1900, there were 25,000 boys under sixteen
years of age employed in and around the mines and quarries of the
United States. In the state of Pennsylvania alone,—the state which
enslaves more children than any other,—there are thousands of little “breaker
boys” employed, many of them not more than nine or ten years old. The law
forbids the employment of children under fourteen, and the records of the
mines generally show that the law is “obeyed.” Yet in May, 1905, an investiga-
tion by the National Child Labor Committee showed that in one small bor-
ough of 7000 population, among the boys employed in breakers 35 were nine
years old, 40 were ten, 45 were eleven, and 45 were twelve—over 150 boys
illegally employed in one section of boy labor in one small town! During the
anthracite coal strike of 1902, I attended the Labor Day demonstration at
Pittston and witnessed the parade of another at Wilkesbarre. In each case
there were hundreds of boys marching, all of them wearing their “working
buttons,” testifying to the fact that they were bona fide workers. Scores of
them were less than ten years of age, others were eleven or twelve.
Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched
over the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate
and other refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the
cramped position they have to assume, most of them become more or less
deformed and bent-backed like old men. When a boy has been working for
some time and begins to get round-shouldered, his fellows say that “He’s got
his boy to carry round wherever he goes.” The coal is hard, and accidents to
the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the
boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified shriek is heard, and a
boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in the chute to be
picked out later smothered and dead.
170
Primary Sources: John Spargo Describes the Tragedy of Child Labor
Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the
foundations for asthma and miners’ consumption. I once stood in a breaker
for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelve-year-old boy was doing day
after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day. The gloom of the
breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was pellucid
[clear], and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the
breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the
harsh, grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal
through the chutes filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from
the hurrying stream of coal, often missing them; my hands were bruised and
cut in a few minutes; I was covered from head to foot with coal dust, and for
many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of
anthracite I had swallowed.
I could not do that work and live, but there were boys of ten and twelve
years of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day. Some of them had never
been inside of a school; few of them could read a child’s primer. True, some of
them attended the night schools, but after working ten hours in the breaker
the educational results from attending school were practically nil. ”We goes
fer a good time, an’ we keeps de guys wots dere hoppin’ all de time,” said little
Owen Jones, whose work I had been trying to do. How strange that barbaric
patois [dialect] sounded to me as I remembered the rich, musical language I
had so often heard other little Owen Joneses speak in faraway Wales. As I
stood in that breaker I thought of the reply of the small boy to Robert Owen.
Visiting an English coal-mine one day, Owen asked a twelve-year-old lad if he
knew God. The boy stared vacantly at his questioner: “God?” he said, “God?
No, I don’t. He must work in some other mine.” It was hard to realize amid
the danger and din and blackness of that Pennsylvania breaker that such a
thing as belief in a great All-good God existed.
From the breakers the boys graduate to the mine depths, where they
become door tenders, switch-boys, or mule-drivers. Here, far below the sur-
face, work is still more dangerous. At fourteen or fifteen the boys assume the
same risks as the men, and are surrounded by the same perils. Nor is it in
Pennsylvania only that these conditions exist. In the bituminous mines of
West Virginia, boys of nine or ten are frequently employed. I met one little fel-
low ten years old in Mt. Carbon, W. Va., last year, who was employed as a “trap
boy.” Think of what it means to be a trap boy at ten years of age. It means to sit
alone in a dark mine passage hour after hour, with no human soul near; to see
171
no living creature except the mules as they pass with their loads, or a rat or
two seeking to share one’s meal; to stand in water or mud that covers the
ankles, chilled to the marrow by the cold draughts that rush in when you open
the trap-door for the mules to pass through; to work for fourteen hours—wait-
ing—opening and shutting a door—then waiting again—for sixty cents; to
reach the surface when all is wrapped in the mantle of night, and to fall to the
earth exhausted and have to be carried away to the nearest “shack” to be
revived before it is possible to walk to the farther shack called “home.”
Boys twelve years of age may be legally employed in the mines of West
Virginia, by day or by night, and for as many hours as the employers care to
make them toil or their bodies will stand the strain. Where the disregard of
child life is such that this may be done openly and with legal sanction, it is
easy to believe what miners have again and again told me—that there are
hundreds of little boys of nine and ten years of age employed in the coal-
mines of this state.
Source: Spargo, John. The Bitter Cry of the Children. New York: Macmillan, 1907, pp. 163-
67.
172
Primary Sources: Ida Tarbell Investigates the Standard Oil Trust
Ida Tarbell Investigates the Standard Oil Trust

The large corporations or trusts that dominated American industry at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury became a major target for muckraking journalists. These companies used their tremendous
power and influence to negotiate favorable contracts with other businesses, command high prices
for their products, demand concessions from their workers, derail proposed government regulations,
and build huge fortunes for their owners. One of the earliest and most famous muckraking attacks
on the trusts was journalist Ida M. Tarbell’s groundbreaking investigation of the Standard Oil Com-
pany, which was owned by the wealthy industrialist John D. Rockefeller. In the following excerpt
from her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company, Tarbell explains the strategy and
tactics Rockefeller used to bring 90 percent of U.S. oil production under his control.
M r. Rockefeller was certainly now in an excellent condition to work

out his plan of bringing under his own control all the refineries of
the country. The Standard Oil Company owned in each of the great
refining centres, New York, Pittsburg and Philadelphia, a large and aggressive
plant run by the men who had built it up. These works were, so far as the
public knew, still independent and their only relation that of the “Central
Association.” As a matter of fact they were the “Central Association.” Not
only had Mr. Rockefeller brought these powerful interests into his concern;
he had secured for them a rebate of ten per cent, on a rate which should
always be as low as any one of the [rail]roads gave any of his competitors. He
had done away with middlemen, that is, he was “paying nobody a profit.” He
had undeniably a force wonderfully constructed for what he wanted to do
and one made practically impregnable as things were in the oil business then,
by virtue of its special transportation rate.
As soon as his new line was complete the work of acquiring all outside
refineries began at each of the oil centres. Unquestionably the acquisitions
were made through persuasion when this was possible. If the party
approached refused to lease or sell, he was told firmly what Mr. Rockefeller
had told the Cleveland refiners when he went to them in 1872 with the South
Improvement contracts, that there was no hope for him; that a combination
was in progress which was bound to work; and that those who stayed out
would inevitably go to the wall. Naturally the first fruits to fall into the hands
of the new alliance were those refineries which were embarrassed or discour-
aged by the conditions which Mr. [H.H.] Rogers [a defender of Rockefeller’s
combination plan] explains above....
173
Those who felt the hard times and had any hope of weathering them
resisted at first. With many of them the resistance was due simply to their
love for their business and their unwillingness to share its control with out-
siders. The thing which a man has begun, cared for, led to a healthy life,
from which he has begun to gather fruit, which he knows he can make
greater and richer, he loves as he does his life. It is one of the fruits of his
life. He is jealous of it—wishes the honour of it, will not divide it with
another. He can suffer heavily his own mistakes, learn from them, correct
them. He can fight opposition, bear all—so long as the work is his. There
were refiners in 1875 who loved their business in this way. Why one should
love an oil refinery the outsider may not see; but to the man who had begun
with one still and had seen it grow by his own energy and intelligence to ten,
who now sold 500 barrels a day where he once sold five, the refinery was the
dearest spot on earth save his home. He walked with pride among its evil-
smelling places, watched the processes with eagerness, experimented with
joy and recounted triumphantly every improvement. To ask such a man to
give up his refinery was to ask him to give up the thing which, after his fam-
ily, meant most in life to him.
To Mr. Rockefeller this feeling was a weak sentiment. To place love of
independent work above love of profits was as incomprehensible to him as a
refusal to accept a rebate because it was wrong! Where persuasion failed
then, it was necessary, in his judgment, that pressure be applied—simply a
pressure sufficient to demonstrate to these blind or recalcitrant individuals
the impossibility of their long being able to do business independently. It
was a pressure varied according to locality. Usually it took the form of cut-
ting their market. The system of “predatory competition” was no invention
of the Standard Oil Company. It had prevailed in the oil business from the
start. Indeed, it was one of the evils Mr. Rockefeller claimed his combination
would cure, but until now it had been used spasmodically. Mr. Rockefeller
never did anything spasmodically. He applied underselling for destroying his
rivals’ market with the same deliberation and persistency that characterised
all his efforts, and in the long run he always won. There were other forms of
pressure. Sometimes the independents found it impossible to get oil; again,
they were obliged to wait days for cars to ship in; there seemed to be no end
to the ways of making it hard for men to do business, of discouraging them
until they would sell or lease, and always at the psychological moment a
purchaser was at their side.
174
Take as an example the case of the Harkness refinery in Philadelphia

[condensed from testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives antitrust
investigating committee]:
“I was the originator of the enterprise,” said William W. Harkness,
“believing that there was no better place than Philadelphia to refine oil, par-
ticularly for export. We commenced then, as near as I can now recollect,
about 1870, and we made money up to probably 1874. We managed our busi-
ness very close and did not speculate in oil. We bought and we sold, and we
paid a great deal of attention to the statistical part of our business so as to
save waste, and we did a nice business. But we found in some years that prob-
ably five months out of a year we could not sell our oil unless it would be at a
positive loss, and then we stopped. Then when we could sell our oil, we
found a difficulty about getting cars. My brother would complain of it, but I
believed that the time would come when that would be equalised. I had no
idea of the iniquity that was going on; I could not conceive it. I went on in
good faith until about 1874, and then the trouble commenced. We could not
get our oil and were compelled to sell at a loss. Then Warden, Frew and Com-
pany formed some kind of running arrangement where they supplied the
crude, and we seemed to get along a little better. After a while the business
got complicated, and I got tired and handed it over to my brother; I backed
out. That was about 1875. I was dissatisfied and wanted to do an independent
business, or else I wanted to give it up. In 1876—I recollect that very well,
because it was the year of the Centennial Exposition—we were at the Centen-
nial Exposition. I was sitting in front of the great Corliss engine, admiring it,
and he told me there was a good opportunity to get out. Warden, Frew and
Company, he said, were prepared to buy us out, and I asked him whether he
considered that as the best thing to do; whether we had not better hold on
and fight it through, for I believed that these difficulties would not continue;
that we would get our oil. I knew he was a competent refiner, and I wanted to
continue business, but he said he thought he had better make this arrange-
ment, and I consented, and we got our investment back.”
Here we have a refiner discouraged by the conditions which Mr. Rocke-
feller claims his aggregation will cure. Under the Rutter circular [a private
agreement with James H. Rutter, freight agent of the New York Central Rail-
road] and the discrimination in freight to the Standard which followed, his
difficulty in getting oil increases, and he consents to a running arrangement
with Mr. Rockefeller’s partner in Philadelphia, but he wants to do an “inde-
175
pendent business.” Impossible. As he sits watching the smooth and terrible

power of that famous Corliss engine of 1876, an engine which showed to
thousands for the first time what great power properly directed means, he
realised that something very like it was at work in the oil business—some-
thing resistless, silent, perfect in its might—and he sold out to that some-
thing. Everywhere men did the same. The history of oil refining on Oil Creek
from 1875 to 1879 is almost uncanny. There were at the beginning of that
period twenty-seven plants in the region, most of which were in a fair condi-
tion, considering the difficulties in the business. During 1873 the demand for
refined oil had greatly increased, the exports nearly doubling over those of
1872. The average profit on refined that year in a well-managed refinery was
not less than three cents a gallon. During the first half of 1874 the oil busi-
ness had been depressed, but the oil refiners were looking for better times
when the Rutter circular completely demoralised them by putting fifty cents
extra freight charges on their shipments without an equivalent raise on com-
petitive points. It was not only this extra charge, enough to cut off their prof-
its, as business then stood, but it was that the same set of men who had
thrown their business into confusion in 1872 was again at work. The
announcement of the Central Association with Mr. Rockefeller’s name at its
head confirmed their fears. Nevertheless at first none of the small refiners
would listen to the proposition to sell or lease made them in the spring of
1875 by the representative first sent out by the Central Association. They
would have nothing to do, they said bluntly, with any combination engi-
neered by John D. Rockefeller. The representative withdrew and the case was
considered. In the mean time conditions on the creek grew harder. All sorts of
difficulties began to be strewn in their way—cars were hard to get, the mar-
kets they had built up were cut under them—a demoralising conviction was
abroad in the trade that this new and mysterious combination was going to
succeed; that it was doing rapidly what its members were reported to be say-
ing daily: “We mean to secure the entire refining business of the world.”
Such was the state of things on the creek when in the early fall of 1875
an energetic young refiner and oil buyer well known in the Oil Regions, J. D.
Archbold, appeared in Titusville as the representative of a new company, the
Acme Oil Company, a concern which everybody believed to be an offshoot of
the Standard Oil Company of Cleveland, though nobody could prove it. As a
matter of fact the Acme was capitalised and controlled entirely by Standard
men, its stockholders being, in addition to Mr. Archbold, William Rocke-
176
feller, William G. Warden, Frank Q. Barstow, and Charles Pratt. It was evident
at once that the Acme Oil Company had come into the Oil Regions for the
purpose of absorbing the independent interests as Mr. Rockefeller and his
colleagues were absorbing them elsewhere. The work was done with a
promptness and despatch which do great credit to the energy and resourceful-
ness of the engineer of the enterprise. In three years, by 1878, all but two of
the refineries of Titusville had “retired from the business gloriously,” as Mr.
Archbold, flushed with victory, told the counsel of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania in 1879, when the state authorities were trying to find what was
at work in the oil interests to cause such a general collapse. Most of the con-
cerns were bought outright, the owners being convinced that it was impossi-
ble for them to do an independent business, and being unwilling to try com-
bination. All down the creek the little refineries which for years had faced
every difficulty with stout hearts collapsed. “Sold out,” “dismantled,” “shut
down,” is the melancholy record of the industry during these four years. At
the end practically nothing was left in the Oil Regions but the Acme of
Titusville and the Imperial of Oil City, both of them now under Standard
management. To the oil men this sudden wiping out of the score of plants
with which they had been familiar for years seemed a crime which nothing
could justify. Their bitterness of heart was only intensified by the sight of the
idle refiners thrown out of business by the sale of their factories. These men
had, many of them, handsome sums to invest, but what were they to put
them in? They were refiners, and they carried a pledge in their pockets not to
go into that business for a period of ten years. Some of them tried the dis-
couraged oil man’s fatal resource, the market, and as a rule left their money
there. One refiner who had, according to popular report, received $200,000
for his business, speculated the entire sum away in less than a year. Others
tried new enterprises, but men of forty learn new trades with difficulty, and
failure followed many of them. The scars left in the Oil Regions by the Stan-
dard Combination of 1875-1879 are too deep and ugly for men and women of
this generation to forget them.
Source: Tarbell, Ida Minerva. The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: McClure,
Phillips and Co., 1904, pp. 154-60.
177
Upton Sinclair Exposes Problems in the Meatpacking Industry

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is one of the most famous works of muckraking literature. Pub-
lished in 1906, it grew out of the author’s undercover investigation of working conditions in
Chicago’s meatpacking plants. Sinclair wove his observations of disgusting, unsanitary facilities
and dangerous, dehumanizing jobs into a story about a fictional meatpacking industry worker
named Jurgis Rudkos. Rudkos was a Lithuanian immigrant who endured everything Sinclair
had witnessed in the plants and the surrounding tenement district known as Packingtown. The
following excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Jungle describes the methods used to disguise spoiled
meat so it can be sold to unsuspecting consumers. It also demonstrates the terrible toll the work
took on Rudkos and his family.
W ith one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working

in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the
great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as
they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for any-
thing else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had
been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could
now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a
new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest—that they use every-
thing of the pig except the squeal.
Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the
smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of
chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted,
whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the
pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time
and increased the capacity of the plant—a machine consisting of a hollow
needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and work-
ing with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And
yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an
odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To
pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which
destroyed the odor—a process known to the workers as “giving them thirty
per cent.” Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some
that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as “Number Three
Grade,” but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and
178
Primary Sources: Upton Sinclair Exposes Meatpacking Problems
now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and
insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer
Number One, Two, and Three Grade—there was only Number One Grade.
The packers were always originating such schemes—they had what they
called “boneless hams,” which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into
casings; and “California hams,” which were the shoulders, with big knuckle
joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy “skinned hams,” which were
made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one
would buy them—that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and
labeled “head cheese!”
It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute
flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a
ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to
what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe
old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white—it would
be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made
over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled
out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and
spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored
in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage
places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and
sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and
the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then
rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy
story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who
did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—
there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poi-
soned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands
before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in
the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of
smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the
waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and
left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced,
there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among
these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and
179
in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cart-
load after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with
fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make
into “smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore
expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it
with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage
came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp
some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.
***
Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such
was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it
left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was part of the
machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine
was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about
the cruel grind—that it gave her the gift of insensibility. Little by little she
sank into a torpor—she fell silent. She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the
evening, and the three would walk home together, often without saying a
word. Ona, too, was falling into a habit of silence—Ona, who had once gone
about singing like a bird. She was sick and miserable, and often she would
barely have strength enough to drag herself home. And there they would eat
what they had to eat, and afterward, because there was only their misery to
talk of, they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it
was time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the
machines. They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from
hunger, now; only the children continued to fret when the food ran short.
Yet the soul of Ona was not dead—the souls of none of them were dead,
but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel
times. The gates of memory would roll open—old joys would stretch out their
arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir
beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable
weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them,
more dreadful than the agony of death. It was a thing scarcely to be spoken—a
thing never spoken by all the world, that will not know its own defeat.
They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was
not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with wages and
grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look
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Primary Sources: Upton Sinclair Exposes Meatpacking Problems
about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child
grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone—it would never be! They had
played the game and they had lost. Six years more of toil they had to face
before they could expect the least respite, the cessation of the payments upon
the house; and how cruelly certain it was that they could never stand six
years of such a life as they were living! They were lost, they were going
down—and there was no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it
gave them the vast city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a
wilderness, a desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the
nighttime, when something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the beating
of her own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of the old primeval terror of life.
Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross. After that
she learned to weep silently—their moods so seldom came together now! It
was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves.
Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter
following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one else to
speak of it—he had never acknowledged its existence to himself. Yet the bat-
tle with it took all the manhood that he had—and once or twice, alas, a little
more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
week—until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work with-
out pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day and night,
and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went down the street.
And from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance—
he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he
would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of
his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing
and cracking jokes with his companions—he would be a man again, and
master of his life.
Source: Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, 1906, pp. 188-93.
181
Lincoln Steffens Reveals the Shame of the Cities

During the Progressive Era, corrupt city governments came under investigation by muckraking
journalists like Lincoln Steffens. After joining the staff of McClure’s magazine in 1902, Steffens
compiled a series of articles about the ways in which bribery, backroom deals, and political
favors drove the governments of virtually every major American city. The first installment in his
“Shame of the Cities” series, entitled “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” is excerpted below. Steffens
describes the lonely battle waged by a newly elected district attorney, Joseph Folk, to clean up
corruption in St. Louis, Missouri.
S t. LOUIS, the fourth city in size in the United States, is making two
announcements to the world: one that it is the worst-governed city in
the land; the other that it wishes all men to come there and see it. It isn’t
our worst-governed city; Philadelphia is that. But St. Louis is worth examin-
ing while we have it inside out.
There is a man at work there, one man, working all alone, but he is the
Circuit (district or state) Attorney, and he is “doing his duty.” That is what
thousands of district attorneys and other public officials have promised to do
and boasted of doing. This man has a literal sort of mind. He is a thin-lipped,
firm-mouthed, dark little man, who never raises his voice, but goes ahead
doing, with a smiling eye and a set jaw, the simple thing he said he would do.
The politicians and reputable citizens who asked him to run urged him when
he declined. When he said that if elected he would have to do his duty, they
said, “Of course.” So he ran, they supported him, and he was elected. Now
some of these politicians are sentenced to the penitentiary, some are in Mexi-
co. The Circuit Attorney, finding that his “duty” was to catch and convict
criminals, and that the biggest criminals were some of these same politicians
and leading citizens, went after them. It is magnificent, but the politicians
declare it isn’t politics.
The corruption of St. Louis came from the top. The best citizens—the
merchants and big financiers—used to rule the town, and they ruled it well.
They set out to outstrip Chicago. The commercial and industrial war between
these two cities was at one time a picturesque and dramatic spectacle such as
is witnessed only in our country. Businessmen were not mere merchants and
the politicians were not mere grafters; the two kinds of citizens got together
and wielded the power of banks, railroads, factories, the prestige of the city
and the spirit of its citizens to gain business and population. And it was a
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Primary Sources: Lincoln Steffens Reveals the Shame of the Cities
close race. Chicago, having the start, always led, but St. Louis had pluck,
intelligence, and tremendous energy. It pressed Chicago hard. It excelled in a
sense of civic beauty and good government; and there are those who think yet
it might have won. But a change occurred. Public spirit became private spirit,
public enterprise became private greed.
Along about 1890, public franchises and privileges were sought, not
only for legitimate profit and common convenience, but for loot. Taking but
slight and always selfish interest in the public councils, the big men misused
politics. The riffraff, catching the smell of corruption, rushed into the Munic-
ipal Assembly, drove out the remaining respectable men, and sold the city—
its streets, its wharves, its markets, and all that it had—to the now greedy
businessmen and bribers. In other words, when the leading men began to
devour their own city, the herd rushed into the trough and fed also.
So gradually has this occurred that these same citizens hardly realize it.
Go to St. Louis and you will find the habit of civic pride in them; they still
boast. The visitor is told of the wealth of the residents, of the financial
strength of the banks, and of the growing importance of the industries, yet he
sees poorly paved, refuse-burdened streets, and dusty or mud-covered alleys;
he passes a ramshackle firetrap crowded with the sick, and learns that it is the
City Hospital; he enters the “Four Courts,” and his nostrils are greeted by the
odor of formaldehyde used as a disinfectant, and insect powder spread to
destroy vermin; he calls at the new City Hall, and finds half the entrance
boarded with pine planks to cover up the unfinished interior. Finally, he
turns a tap in the hotel, to see liquid mud flow into wash basin or bathtub.
The St. Louis charter vests legislative power of great scope in a Munici-
pal Assembly, which is composed of a Council and a House of Delegates. Here
is a description of the latter by one of Mr. Folk’s grand juries:
“We have had before us many of those who have been, and most of those
who are now, members of the House of Delegates. We found a number of
these utterly illiterate and lacking in ordinary intelligence, unable to give a
better reason for favoring or opposing a measure than a desire to act with the
majority. In some, no trace of mentality or morality could be found; in others,
a low order of training appeared, united with base cunning, groveling
instincts, and sordid desires. Unqualified to respond to the ordinary require-
ments of life, they are utterly incapable of comprehending the significance of
an ordinance, and are incapacitated, both by nature and training, to be the
183
makers of laws. The choosing of such men to be legislators makes a travesty

of justice, sets a premium on incompetency, and deliberately poisons the very
source of the law.”
These creatures were well organized. They had a “combine”—a legisla-
tive institution—which the grand jury described as follows:
“Our investigation, covering more or less fully a period of ten years,
shows that, with few exceptions, no ordinance has been passed wherein valu-
able privileges or franchises are granted until those interested have paid the
legislators the money demanded for action in the particular case. Combines
in both branches of the Municipal Assembly are formed by members suffi-
cient in number to control legislation. To one member of this combine is del-
egated the authority to act for the combine, and to receive and to distribute to
each member the money agreed upon as the price of his vote in support of, or
opposition to, a pending measure. So long has this practice existed that such
members have come to regard the receipt of money for action on pending
measures as a legitimate perquisite of a legislator.”
One legislator consulted a lawyer with the intention of suing a firm to
recover an unpaid balance on a fee for the grant of a switchway. Such difficul-
ties rarely occurred, however. In order to insure a regular and indisputable
revenue, the combine of each house drew up a schedule of bribery prices for
all possible sorts of grants, just such a list as a commercial traveler takes out
on the road with him. There was a price for a grain elevator, a price for a short
switch; side tracks were charged for by the linear foot, but at rates which var-
ied according to the nature of the ground taken; a street improvement cost so
much; wharf space was classified and precisely rated. As there was a scale for
favorable legislation, so there was one for defeating bills. It made a difference
in the price if there was opposition, and it made a difference whether the
privilege asked was legitimate or not. But nothing was passed free of charge.
Many of the legislators were saloonkeepers—it was in St. Louis that a practi-
cal joker nearly emptied the House of Delegates by tipping a boy to rush into
a session and call out, “Mister, your saloon is on fire”—but even the saloon-
keepers of a neighborhood had to pay to keep in their inconvenient locality a
market which public interest would have moved.
From the Assembly, bribery spread into other departments. Men empow-
ered to issue peddlers’ licenses and permits to citizens who wished to erect an
awning or use a portion of the sidewalk for storage purposes charged an
184
amount in excess of the prices stipulated by law, and pocketed the difference.
The city’s money was loaned at interest, and the interest was converted into
private bank accounts. City carriages were used by the wives and children of
city officials. Supplies for public institutions found their way to private
tables; one itemized account of food furnished the poorhouse included Cali-
fornia jellies, imported cheeses, and French wines! A member of the Assem-
bly caused the incorporation of a grocery company, with his sons and daugh-
ters the ostensible stockholders, and succeeded in having his bid for city sup-
plies accepted although the figures were in excess of his competitors’. In
return for the favor thus shown, he indorsed a measure to award the contract
for city printing to another member, and these two voted aye on a bill grant-
ing to a third the exclusive right to furnish city dispensaries with drugs.
Men ran into debt to the extent of thousands of dollars for the sake of
election to either branch of the Assembly. One night, on a street car going to
the City Hall, a new member remarked that the nickel he handed the conduc-
tor was his last. The next day he deposited $5,000 in a savings bank. A mem-
ber of the House of Delegates admitted to the grand jury that his dividends
from the combine netted $25,000 in one year; a councilman stated that he
was paid $50,000 for his vote on a single measure....
The blackest years were 1898, 1899, and 1900. Foreign corporations
came into the city to share in its despoliation, and home industries were driv-
en out by blackmail. Franchises worth millions were granted without one
cent of cash to the city, and with provision for only the smallest future pay-
ment; several companies which refused to pay blackmail had to leave; citizens
were robbed more and more boldly; payrolls were padded with the names of
nonexistent persons; work on public improvements was neglected, while
money for them went to the boodlers.
Some of the newspapers protested, disinterested citizens were alarmed,
and the shrewder men gave warnings, but none dared make an effective
stand. Behind the corruptionists were men of wealth and social standing,
who, because of special privileges granted them, felt bound to support and
defend the looters. Independent victims of the far-reaching conspiracy sub-
mitted in silence, through fear of injury to their business. Men whose integri-
ty was never questioned, who held high positions of trust, who were church
members and teachers of Bible classes, contributed to the support of the
dynasty—became blackmailers, in fact—and their excuse was that others did
185
the same, and that if they proved the exception it would work their ruin. The
system became loose through license and plenty till it was as wild as that of
Tweed in New York.
Then the unexpected happened—an accident. There was no uprising of
the people, but they were restive; and the Democratic party leaders, thinking
to gain some independent votes, decided to raise the cry “reform” and put up
a ticket of candidates different enough from the usual offerings of political
parties to give color to their platform. These leaders were not in earnest.
There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals
that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the “outs”
wanted more than was given to them. “Boodle” was not the issue, no expo-
sures were made or threatened, and the bosses expected to control their men
if elected. Simply as part of the game, the Democrats raised the slogan,
“reform” and “no more Ziegenheinism.”
Mayor Ziegenhein, called “Uncle Henry,” was a “good fellow,” “one of the
boys,” and though it was during his administration that the city grew ripe and
went to rot, his opponents talked only of incompetence and neglect, and repeat-
ed such stories as that of his famous reply to some citizens who complained
because certain street lights were put out: “You have the moon yet—ain’t it?”
When somebody mentioned Joseph W. Folk for Circuit Attorney the
leaders were ready to accept him. They didn’t know much about him. He was
a young man from Tennessee; had been president of the Jefferson Club, and
arbitrated the railroad strike of 1898. But Folk did not want the place. He was
a civil lawyer, had had no practice at the criminal bar, cared little about it, and
a lucrative business as counsel for corporations was interesting him. He
rejected the invitation. The committee called again and again, urging his duty
to his party, and the city, etc.
“Very well,” he said, at last, “I will accept the nomination, but if elected I
will do my duty. There must be no attempt to influence my actions when I am
called upon to punish lawbreakers.”
The committeemen took such statements as the conventional platitudes
of candidates. They nominated him, the Democratic ticket was elected, and
Folk became Circuit Attorney for the Eighth Missouri District.
Three weeks after taking the oath of office his campaign pledges were
put to the test. A number of arrests had been made in connection with the
186
recent election, and charges of illegal registration were preferred against men
of both parties. Mr. Folk took them up like routine cases of ordinary crime.
Political bosses rushed to the rescue. Mr. Folk was reminded of his duty to
his party, and told that he was expected to construe the law in such a manner
that repeaters and other election criminals who had hoisted democracy’s flag
and helped elect him might be either discharged or receive the minimum
punishment. The nature of the young lawyer’s reply can best be inferred from
the words of that veteran political leader, Colonel Ed Butler, who, after a visit
to Mr. Folk, wrathfully exclaimed, “D—n Joe! He thinks he’s the whole thing
as Circuit Attorney.”
The election cases were passed through the courts with astonishing
rapidity; no more mercy was shown Democrats than Republicans, and before
winter came a number of ward heelers and old-time party workers were
behind the bars in Jefferson City. He next turned his attention to grafters and
straw bondsmen with whom the courts were infested, and several of these
leeches are in the penitentiary today. The business was broken up because of
his activity. But Mr. Folk had made little more than the beginning....
Mr. Folk has shown St. Louis that its bankers, brokers, corporation offi-
cers—its businessmen—are the sources of evil, so that from the start it will
know the municipal problem in its true light. With a tradition for public spir-
it, it may drop Butler and its runaway bankers, brokers and brewers, and
pushing aside the scruples of the hundreds of men down in blue book, and
red book, and church register, who are lying hidden behind the statutes of
limitations, the city may restore good government. Otherwise the exposures
by Mr. Folk will result only in the perfection of the corrupt system. For the
corrupt can learn a lesson when the good citizens cannot....
This is St. Louis’ one great chance. But, for the rest of us, it does not mat-
ter about St. Louis any more than it matters about Colonel Butler et al. The
point is, that what went on in St. Louis is going on in most of our cities, towns
and villages. The problem of municipal government in America has not been
solved. The people may be tired of it, but they cannot give it up—not yet.
Source: Steffens, Lincoln. “Tweed Days in St. Louis.” McClure’s, October 1902. Reprinted in
Weinberg, Lila Shaffer. The Muckrakers. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001,
pp. 122-27.
187
David Graham Phillips Blasts Corrupt U.S. Senators

Among the most controversial muckraking reports is the “Treason of the Senate” series by David
Graham Phillips. In this nine-part series on federal government corruption, Phillips profiled
twenty-one U.S. Senators whom he claimed had inappropriate relationships with corporate
interests. The first installment, which is excerpted below, appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine
in March 1906. It accuses the two senators from New York, Thomas Platt (served 1897-1909)
and Chauncey Depew (served 1899-1911), of being under the control of wealthy industrialists.
Although the “Treason of the Senate” series encouraged lawmakers across the country to enact
important political reforms, it also severely strained the relationship between President
Theodore Roosevelt and the muckrakers. Phillips’s reports targeted a number of the president’s
friends, allies, and supporters. The month after the first article was published, Roosevelt made a
famous speech denouncing the journalists for being too negative and ignoring the many positive
aspects of American society and government.
Politics does not determine prosperity. But in this day of concentrations,

politics does determine the distribution of prosperity. Because the people have
neglected politics, have not educated themselves out of credulity to flimsily
plausible political lies and liars, because they will not realize that it is not
enough to work, it is also necessary to think, they remain poor, or deprived of
their fair share of the products, though they have produced an incredible
prosperity. The people have been careless and unwise enough in electing
every kind of public administrator. When it comes to the election of the Sen-
ate, how describe their stupidity, how measure its melancholy consequences?
The Senate is the most powerful part of our public administration. It has vast
power in the making of laws. It has still vaster power through its ability to
forbid the making of laws and in its control over the appointment of the
judges who say what the laws mean. It is, in fact, the final arbiter of the sharing
of prosperity. The laws it permits or compels, the laws it refuses to permit, the
interpreters of laws it permits to be appointed—these factors determine
whether the great forces which modern concentration has produced shall
operate to distribute prosperity equally or with shameful inequality and cruel
and destructive injustice. The United States Senate is a larger factor than your
labor or your intelligence, you average American, in determining your
income. And the Senate is a traitor to you.
The treason of the Senate! Treason is a strong word, but not too strong,
rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager,
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Primary Sources: David Graham Phillips Blasts Corrupt U.S. Senators
resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people

as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous; interests that
manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for the
few; interests whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the
people, of the educated into sycophants, of the masses toward serfdom.
A man cannot serve two masters. The senators are not elected by the
people; they are elected by the “interests.” A servant obeys him who can pun-
ish and dismiss. Except in extreme and rare and negligible instances, can the
people either elect or dismiss a senator? The senator, in the dilemma which
the careless ignorance of the people thrusts upon him, chooses to be comfort-
able, placed and honored, and a traitor to oath and people rather than to be
true to his oath and poor and ejected into private life.
New York’s Misrepresentatives

Let us begin with the state which is first in population, in wealth, in
organization of industries. As we shall presently see, the nine states that con-
tain more than half the whole American people send to the Senate eighteen
men, no less than ten of whom are notorious characters, frankly the servants
of the interests the American people have decided must be destroyed, unless
they themselves are to be crushed down. And of these servants of the plutoc-
racy none is more candid in obsequiousness, in treachery to the people, than
are the two senators from the state which contains one-tenth of our popula-
tion and the strong financial citadel-capital of the plutocracy.
Thomas Collier Platt! Chauncey Mitchell Depew!
Probably Platt’s last conspicuous appearance will have been that on the
witness stand in the insurance investigation, where he testified that he had
knowingly received thousands of dollars of the stolen goods of the insurance
thieves. He confessed this with obvious unconsciousness of his own shame.
We shall come across this phenomenon frequently in our course
through the Senate—this shamelessness that has lost all sense of moral dis-
tinctions. Our Platts and Burtons have no more moral sense than an ossified
man has feeling. Then, there are those of our public men who, through fear
or lack of opportunity or some instinct of personal self-respect, sit inactive,
silent or only vaguely murmurous spectators, while the treasons are plotted
and executed. These men have been corrupted by association. The public
man meets the people only in masses, at political gatherings. His associations
189
are altogether with other public men and with the class that is either fattening
on the people or quite cynical about corruption of that kind. Hence, his sense
of shame becomes paralyzed, atrophied.
The very “interests” that are ruining the people come to stand in his
mind for the people themselves, and in his confused mind prostitution
becomes a sort of patriotism.
Platt cannot live long. His mind is already a mere shadow. The other day a
friend found him crying like a child because Roosevelt was unable to appoint
for him to a federal district attorneyship a man who had been caught stealing
trust funds, and insisted that he must select some henchman wearing the brand
less conspicuously. “Platt was like an unreasonable child,” said his friend....
But let us not linger upon Platt—Platt, with his long, his unbroken
record of treachery to the people in legislation of privilege and plunder pro-
moted and in decent legislation prevented. Let us leave him, not because he is
sick and feeble; for death itself without repentance or restitution deserves no
consideration; but because he needs no extended examination to be under-
stood and entered under his proper heading in the record. Wherever Platt is
known, to speak of him as a patriot would cause wonder if not open derision.
The most that could be said of him is that, wherever the interests of the peo-
ple do not conflict with the interests of the “interests” or with his own pock-
et, which includes that of his family, Platt has been either inactive or not posi-
tively in opposition.
Let us turn to the other of the two representatives whom the people of
New York suffer to sit and cast the other of their two votes in the body that
arbitrates the division of the prosperity of the country, the wages and the
prices. At this writing Depew has just given out a flat refusal to resign. “Why
should I resign?” he cried out hysterically. “Has anybody put forward any
good reason why I should resign?” And he added, “As soon as I have com-
pleted my resignation from certain companies, I shall give all my time to my
senatorial duties.”
What are his senatorial duties? What does he do in the body that is now
as much an official part of the plutocracy as the executive council of a Rocke-
feller or a Ryan? No one would pretend for an instant that he sits in the Sen-
ate for the people. Indeed, why should he, except because he took an oath to
do so—and among such eminent respectabilities as he an oath is a mere for-
mality, a mere technicality. Did the people send him to the Senate? No! The
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Primary Sources: David Graham Phillips Blasts Corrupt U.S. Senators
Vanderbilt interests ordered Platt to send him the first time; and when he
came up for a second term the Vanderbilt-Morgan interests got, not without
difficulty, Harriman’s O.K. on an order to Odell to give it to him....
It was ... when Depew was but thirty-two years old that he took “personal
and official” service with the Vanderbilt family. And ever since then they have
owned him, mentally and morally; they have used him, or rather, he, in his
eagerness to please them, has made himself useful to them to an extent which
he does not realize nor do they. So great is his reverence for wealth and the
possessors of wealth, so humble is he before them, that he probably does not
appreciate how much of the Vanderbilt fortune his brain got for that family....
And, for reward, the Vanderbilts have given him scant and contemptu-
ous crumbs. After forty years of industrious, faithful, and, to his masters,
enormously profitable self-degradation he has not more than five millions,
avaricious and saving though he has been. And they tossed him the senator-
ship as if it had been a charity. Of all the creatures of the Vanderbilts, none
has been more versatile, more willing or more profitable to his users than
Depew. Yet he has only five million dollars and a blasted name to console his
old age, while his users are in honor and count their millions by the score.
Source: Phillips, David Graham. “The Treason of the Senate.” Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
191
Roosevelt Calls Crusading Journalists “Muckrakers”

During his second term in office, President Theodore Roosevelt voiced growing concerns about
the trends he saw in American journalism. The investigative reports that had dominated nation-
al magazines for much of his presidency had often served to generate public support for his pro-
gressive reforms. But Roosevelt felt that the articles had become more sensational, unfair, bitter,
and personal over time. He expressed his views in a speech entitled “The Man with the Muck-
Rake,” delivered on April 14, 1906, at a ceremony laying the foundation for a new congressional
office building. In this famous speech, which is excerpted below, the president describes the cru-
sading journalists as “muckrakers” and warns that their excessive focus on the negative could
damage the country.
O ver a century ago Washington laid the corner stone of the Capitol in
what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here
beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great
additional buildings for the business of the government.
This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof
and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of
action of the national government has grown. We now administer the affairs
of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been out-
stripped by the growth of wealth in complex interests. The material problems
that face us today are not such as they were in Washington’s time, but the
underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under
altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were
evident in Washington’s time, and are helped by the same tendencies for
good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word today.
In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress you may recall the description of the Man
with the Muck Rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with
the muck rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck
rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered,
but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.
In Pilgrim’s Progress the Man with the Muck Rake is set forth as the example
of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of spiritual things. Yet he also typ-
ifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and
fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing.
Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile
and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the
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Primary Sources: Roosevelt Calls Crusading Journalists “Muckrakers”
muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed
of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything
else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake,
speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.
There are in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils,
and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be
relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or
business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life.
I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform
or in a book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such
attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use
only if it is absolutely truthful.
The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the
form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon
knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exag-
geration to assail a bad man with untruth.
An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but
very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an hon-
est man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.
Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said, easy to affect to
misunderstand it, and if it is slurred over in repetition not difficult really to
misunderstand it. Some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that
to denounce mud slinging does not mean the endorsement of whitewashing;
and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing and those others
who practice mud slinging like to encourage such confusion of ideas.
One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault
upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction
which is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who
really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible,
to be put in the penitentiary. If Aristides is praised overmuch as just, people
get tired of hearing it; and overcensure of the unjust finally and from similar
reasons results in their favor.
Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the
reactions instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the
excess, is apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of
193
giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial
or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public
calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or
in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public senti-
ment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal
sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at
any price....
At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is not for immuni-
ty to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his
trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate
or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out
of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the crimi-
nal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensation-
al, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the pub-
lic mind than the crime itself.
It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against
the forces of evil that I ask the war be conducted with sanity as well as with
resolution. The men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well
being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to
look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy
endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they
gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power
of usefulness is gone.
If the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to
single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally
induces a kind of moral color blindness; and people affected by it come to the
conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are
all gray.
In other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the
honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation
as of the offense; it becomes well nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath
against wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental atti-
tude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men.
To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with
such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include decent men in the gen-
eral condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a
194
Primary Sources: Roosevelt Calls Crusading Journalists “Muckrakers”
general attitude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption

or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad.
Either attitude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole.
The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and
what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and
yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot,
to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allega-
tion of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is
worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the
vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before
they could grow to fruition. There is any amount of good in the world, and
there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the bet-
terment of mankind was being done than now. The forces that tend for evil
are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and hon-
esty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a
foolish and timid, no less than a wicked thing, to blink the fact that the forces
of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength
of the forces that tell for good.
Hysterical sensationalism is the poorest weapon wherewith to fight for
lasting righteousness. The men who with stern sobriety and truth assail the
many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in
books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and
political betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say,
if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they
thereby betray the good cause and play into the hands of the very men against
whom they are nominally at war....
At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest—social,
political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future
that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life,
of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequality of conditions, but the
unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the indi-
vidual and the nation.
So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the
form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors
of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed
as a sign of healthy life.
195
If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appetite against
appetite, of a contest between the brutal greed of the “have nots” and the bru-
tal greed of the “haves,” then it has no significance for good, but only for evil.
If it seeks to establish a line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good
men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto,
which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it
will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic....
More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sym-
pathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage worker, the welfare of the
tiller of the soil, upon these depend the welfare of the entire country; their
good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the
prime object of all our statesmanship.
Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for
all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he
is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living
and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important;
but we appreciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more
important.
The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high indi-
vidual character of the average citizen.
Source: Roosevelt, Theodore. “The Man with the Muck-Rake,” April 14, 1906. Presidential
Rhetoric Program, Texas A&M University, n.d. Available online at http://www
.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/roosevelt_theodore/muckrake.html.
196
Primary Sources: The Washington Post Gives Wounded Veterans a Voice
The Washington Post Gives Wounded Veterans a Voice

The 2007 Washington Post article excerpted below provides an example of modern-day muck-
raking journalism. It is the first installment of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series by
Dana Priest and Anne Hull entitled “The Other Walter Reed.” The series called attention to the
poor outpatient medical care provided to wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In this article, Priest and Hull reveal
that U.S. military personnel were forced to recover from serious injuries in rundown, unsanitary
facilities, and that they were confronted with a frustrating array of administrative hassles.
These revelations led to a Congressional investigation and contributed to the resignation of sev-
eral key military officials.
B ehind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is
torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the
wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can
see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building,
constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs
of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained
carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan
expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical
Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear,
nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the
hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hun-
dreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that
shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained
combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something
else entirely—a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged
outpatients. Almost 700 of them—the majority soldiers, with some
Marines—have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or
From The Washington Post, February 18, 2007. © 2007 The Washington Post. All rights reserved. Used
by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying,
redistribution, or retransmission of the material without express written permission is prohibited.
197
are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to

active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back
damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have
grown so exponentially—they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17
to 1—that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of
nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10
months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan’s, but the despair of Build-
ing 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed’s treatment of the wound-
ed, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and
current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washing-
ton Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient
world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many
agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they
complained publicly.
While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles,
with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the
Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as
chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of
“Catch-22.” The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with
psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at
risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case
managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers’ families who are close
to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or
helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
“We’ve done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded.
Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the
easy transition should be doing it,” said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an
amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. “We don’t know what to
do. The people who are supposed to know don’t have the answers. It’s a non-
stop process of stalling.”
198
Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to

fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative
effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.
“It creates resentment and disenfranchisement,” said Joe Wilson, a clini-
cal social worker at Walter Reed. “These soldiers will withdraw and stay in
their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are
meant to be helpful.”
Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans
who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed,
said soldiers “get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved,” but,
“Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, ‘You saved
me for what?’ The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This
leads to anger.”
This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases
the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under
the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their
regular visits to the hospital’s spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.
“We owe them all we can give them,” Bush said during his last visit, a
few days before Christmas. “Not only for when they’re in harm’s way, but
when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them
adjust after their time in service.”
Along with the government promises, the American public, determined
not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even
as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the
generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane
tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.
Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Sev-
enty-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their
experience was “stressful.” Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses
from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the
narrative here.
Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for
her son. “It just absolutely took forever to get anything done,” Heron said.
“They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo
199
the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted
for the rest of their lives, and they don’t put any priority on it.”
Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran
housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican
floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but
they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed
staff members.
Evis Morales’s severely wounded son was transferred to the National
Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Wal-
ter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she
slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told
her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. “They just let me off the
bus and said ‘Bye-bye,’” recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident.
Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline
number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer.
“If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go
into the Army, why can’t they have Spanish-speaking translators when he’s
injured?” Morales asked. “It’s so confusing, so disorienting.”
Soldiers, wives, mothers, social workers and the heads of volunteer orga-
nizations have complained repeatedly to the military command about what
one called “The Handbook No One Gets” that would explain life as an outpa-
tient. Most soldiers polled in the March survey said they got their information
from friends. Only 12 percent said any Army literature had been helpful.
“They’ve been behind from Day One,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-
Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investi-
gated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. “Even the stuff
they’ve fixed has only been patched.”
Among the public, Davis said, “there’s vast appreciation for soldiers, but
there’s a lack of focus on what happens to them” when they return. “It’s awful.”
Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an
interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change
from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is
that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can,
“because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with
an all-volunteer force since the Revolution.”
200
Acknowledging the problems with outpatient care, Weightman said

Walter Reed has taken steps over the past year to improve conditions for the
outpatient army, which at its peak in summer 2005 numbered nearly 900, not
to mention the hundreds of family members who come to care for them. One
platoon sergeant used to be in charge of 125 patients; now each one manages
30. Platoon sergeants with psychological problems are more carefully
screened. And officials have increased the numbers of case managers and
patient advocates to help with the complex disability benefit process, which
Weightman called “one of the biggest sources of delay.”
And to help steer the wounded and their families through the complicat-
ed bureaucracy, Weightman said, Walter Reed has recently begun holding
twice-weekly informational meetings. “We felt we were pushing information
out before, but the reality is, it was overwhelming,” he said. “Is it fail-proof?
No. But we’ve put more resources on it.”
He said a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq has Walter Reed bracing for
“potentially a lot more” casualties.
Bureaucratic Battles
The best known of the Army’s medical centers, Walter Reed opened in
1909 with 10 patients. It has treated the wounded from every war since, and
nearly one of every four service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The outpatients are assigned to one of five buildings attached to the
post, including Building 18, just across from the front gates on Georgia
Avenue. To accommodate the overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and
apartments. Living conditions range from the disrepair of Building 18 to the
relative elegance of Mologne House, a hotel that opened on the post in 1998,
when the typical guest was a visiting family member or a retiree on vacation.
The Pentagon has announced plans to close Walter Reed by 2011, but
that hasn’t stopped the flow of casualties. Three times a week, school buses
painted white and fitted with stretchers and blackened windows stream down
Georgia Avenue. Sirens blaring, they deliver soldiers groggy from a pain-relief
cocktail at the end of their long trip from Iraq via Landstuhl Regional Medical
Center in Germany and Andrews Air Force Base.
Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in
November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed’s
201
hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in
the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when
someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room
across post.
A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disorient-
ed that he couldn’t even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around
outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright,
he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.
Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division’s Ghost Recon Platoon until
he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper;
“Lone Wolf” was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the
Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress dis-
order. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then
nothing.
“I thought, ‘Shouldn’t they contact me?’” he said. “I didn’t understand
the paperwork. I’d start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments.
I finally ran across someone who said: ‘I’m your case manager. Where have
you been?’
“Well, I’ve been here! Jeez Louise, people, I’m your hospital patient!”
Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries
sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange
them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.
One outpatient, a 57-year-old staff sergeant who had a heart attack in
Afghanistan, was given 200 rooms to supervise at the end of 2005. He quickly
discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would
check in by phone. “We called them ‘call-in patients,’” said Staff Sgt. Mike
McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw
on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from
the hospital.
Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork.
The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different com-
mands—most of them off-post—to enter and exit the medical processing
world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information
systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate
with one another. The Army’s three personnel databases cannot read each
202
other’s files and can’t interact with the separate pay system or the medical
recordkeeping databases.
The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common
reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to
soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that
a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to
bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there,
after a clerk couldn’t find a record of her service.
Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he
had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to
replace the bloody one left behind on a medic’s stretcher. When he finally
tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was
mistakenly left off the “GWOT list”—the list of “Global War on Terrorism”
patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.
He brought his Purple Heart to the clerk to prove he was in Iraq.
Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend
their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the
Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.
The Army has tried to re-create the organization of a typical military unit
at Walter Reed. Soldiers are assigned to one of two companies while they are
outpatients—the Medical Holding Company (Medhold) for active-duty sol-
diers and the Medical Holdover Company for Reserve and National Guard
soldiers. The companies are broken into platoons that are led by platoon
sergeants, the Army equivalent of a parent.
Under normal circumstances, good sergeants know everything about the
soldiers under their charge: vices and talents, moods and bad habits, even
family stresses.
At Walter Reed, however, outpatients have been drafted to serve as pla-
toon sergeants and have struggled with their responsibilities. Sgt. David
Thomas, a 42-year-old amputee with the Tennessee National Guard, said his
platoon sergeant couldn’t remember his name. “We wondered if he had men-
tal problems,” Thomas said. “Sometimes I’d wear my leg, other times I’d take
my wheelchair. He would think I was a different person. We thought, ‘My
God, has this man lost it?’”
203
Civilian care coordinators and case managers are supposed to track

injured soldiers and help them with appointments, but government investiga-
tors and soldiers complain that they are poorly trained and often do not
understand the system.
One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified
because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in
Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. “I went
to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could
help me,” he said.
Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D.
Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call.
When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, “They don’t even
know you exist.”
“They didn’t know who I was or where I was,” the soldier said. “And I
was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day.”
The lack of accountability weighed on Shannon. He hated the isolation
of the younger troops. The Army’s failure to account for them each day wore
on him. When a 19-year-old soldier down the hall died, Shannon knew he
had to take action.
The soldier, Cpl. Jeremy Harper, returned from Iraq with PTSD after see-
ing three buddies die. He kept his room dark, refused his combat medals and
always seemed heavily medicated, said people who knew him. According to
his mother, Harper was drunkenly wandering the lobby of the Mologne
House on New Year’s Eve 2004, looking for a ride home to West Virginia. The
next morning he was found dead in his room. An autopsy showed alcohol
poisoning, she said.
“I can’t understand how they could have let kids under the age of 21
have liquor,” said Victoria Harper, crying. “He was supposed to be right there
at Walter Reed hospital.… I feel that they didn’t take care of him or watch
him as close as they should have.”
The Army posthumously awarded Harper a Bronze Star for his actions in
Iraq.
Shannon viewed Harper’s death as symptomatic of a larger tragedy—the
Army had broken its covenant with its troops. “Somebody didn’t take care of
him,” he would later say. “It makes me want to cry.”
204
Shannon and another soldier decided to keep tabs on the brain injury
ward. “I’m a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, and I take care of people,” he said.
The two soldiers walked the ward every day with a list of names. If a name
dropped off the large white board at the nurses’ station, Shannon would hound
the nurses to check their files and figure out where the soldier had gone.
Sometimes the patients had been transferred to another hospital. If they
had been released to one of the residences on post, Shannon and his buddy
would pester the front desk managers to make sure the new charges were
indeed there. “But two out of 10, when I asked where they were, they’d just
say, ‘They’re gone,’” Shannon said.
Even after Weightman and his commanders instituted new measures to
keep better track of soldiers, two young men left post one night in November
and died in a high-speed car crash in Virginia. The driver was supposed to be
restricted to Walter Reed because he had tested positive for illegal drugs,
Weightman said.
Part of the tension at Walter Reed comes from a setting that is both mili-
tary and medical. Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, the squad leader who lost one leg
and the use of his other in a grenade attack, said his recovery was made more
difficult by a Marine liaison officer who had never seen combat but dogged
him about having his mother in his room on post. The rules allowed her to be
there, but the officer said she was taking up valuable bed space.
“When you join the Marine Corps, they tell you, you can forget about
your mama. ‘You have no mama. We are your mama,’” Groves said. “That
training works in combat. It doesn’t work when you are wounded.”
Source: Priest, Dana, and Anne Hull. “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top
Medical Facility.” Washington Post, February 18, 2007, p. A1.
205
Pete Hamill Explains the Importance of Investigative Journalism

During his long career as a journalist, Pete Hamill served as editor-in-chief of the New York Daily
News and the New York Post. In the following essay, Hamill discusses the important role that
muckraking journalism has played throughout American history. “Without criticism, no modern
society can endure,” he explains, “and investigative journalism is essentially a form of criticism.”
T he reporter is the member of the tribe who is sent to the back of the
cave to find out what’s there. The report must be accurate. If there’s a
rabbit hiding in the darkness it cannot be transformed into a dragon.
Bad reporting, after all, could deprive people of shelter and warmth and sur-
vival on an arctic night. But if there is, in fact, a dragon lurking in the dark it
can’t be described as a rabbit. The survival of the tribe could depend upon
that person with the torch.
In certain basic ways, the modern investigative reporter is only a refine-
ment of that primitive model. The tools of the trade are now extraordinary:
the astonishing flood of documents on the Internet, the speed of other forms
of communication, local and international, and, perhaps most important, the
existence of a tradition.
Much of that tradition comes from work done over many decades in the
United States, where a splendid variety of men and women took advantage of
the First Amendment to the Constitution and made that specific freedom real
by practicing it. In many ways, they had a simple task: to note the difference
between what the United States promised and what the United States deliv-
ered. Those reporters were the first to dig into the system that seemed beyond
any laws. They took their torches to the back of the cave and in newspapers
and magazines they told the citizenry what they found.
Their basic search was for an explanation of what all could plainly see:
rotting city slums, child labor, widespread prostitution, exploitation of immi-
grant labor. They knew that thousands were dying in cities like New York
because there was not enough water. There were not enough hospitals. There
were few schools. There were no libraries open to the poor. Thousands died
each summer of cholera and smallpox. Others, broken in spirit, found
From Shaking the Foundations by Bruce Shapiro. Foreword © 2003 Pete Hamill. Reprinted by permis-
sion of Nation Books, a member of Perseus Books Group.
206
Primary Sources: Pete Hamill on Investigative Journalism
degraded refuge in alcohol or petty crime. Clearly, the gaudy promises of

America were not being kept, and those early investigative reporters saw a
common root to all our ills: corruption.
This was not a case of a few isolated thieves. Much corruption was sys-
temic. When the New York Times brought down William M. Tweed in 1871
(with the immense help of Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast), it was
by publishing documents that showed the way the system worked. The
records were provided by an unhappy low-level politico who had been
bypassed in his own quest for some of the swag. On one level, they proved
what almost everybody suspected: Boss Tweed and his Ring were stealing
millions through a system that involved kickbacks from municipal contrac-
tors. But they also showed that the system was wider than anyone had
thought. Tweed was corrupt, but his corruption had a purpose beyond per-
sonal enrichment: as a New York Democrat he needed cash to bribe the
upstate Republicans who controlled the city from Albany. If he wanted to
get water to his constituents, or build a school in the Five Points (services
essential to maintaining his personal power), Tweed needed cash to bribe
the Republicans. That was the system he had inherited from his predeces-
sors; when he was gone, the system persisted, in newer, subtler, more
respectable clothing.
The reporters and their editors understood that one victory was not the
end of the campaign. Exposure in the press was soon an essential part of a
process that all knew must continue for as long as there was a United States.
After the Civil War, the cycles were established: corruption, then exposure,
then reform, followed by a slow drift back into corruption. They continue
today. In a way, those cycles are an almost comforting expression of the eter-
nal American verities. They are infuriating, and can certainly hurt human
beings, but they remind us of the endless capacity of human beings for larce-
ny and folly, and assure us that the nation will never achieve the dubious per-
fection of utopia. In the twentieth century, we all learned that the promise of
utopia almost always leads to mounds of corpses.
Across the years from the 1870s to the present, investigative reporters
have become a mainstay of American journalism.… They are a special breed.
They don’t require the indifference to physical danger of the great war corre-
spondents (although they do, in fact, sometimes risk their lives). They don’t
need the instinct for celebration that is essential to the greatest sportswriters.
207
They don’t often display the entertaining cynicism of veteran police reporters.
But they share one absolutely essential quality: an almost obsessive tenacity.
That sometimes ferocious tenacity is what serves as the motor for all of
their other skills. Day after day, they go on. They batter at closed doors and
they gnaw away at hidden redoubts. The quarry is often clever and always
elusive. They examine documents designed to be obtuse, studying them like
archaeologists examining Mayan hieroglyphs, looking for patterns, for buried
facts, for implied verbs. Most of us would see such work as tedium; they do it
with growing excitement. They meet in remote coffee shops with people who
might be persuaded to tell the real story. They go back to sources once fruit-
lessly interviewed, hoping for illumination on the second, third, or fifth try.
They go on and on.
They are not, of course, cops. They carry no guns. They have no subpoe-
na power. Sometimes they are helped by good cops who suspect felonies that
they cannot prove in court. Sometimes they are in pursuit of the cops them-
selves. But like the best police detectives, they have a gift for imagining them-
selves into the minds of felons. They try to think the way the bad guys think,
imagining their strengths and weaknesses, creating a number of possible sce-
narios. They’re not simply clerking crimes against the citizens; they must first
imagine them.
They pick up the spoor of stories in a variety of ways. They see the
announcement of some major municipal contract—school books, parking
meters, road construction—and experience urges them to examine the fine
print. They search the names of contractors, dig out past records, match names
with campaign contributions, demand lists of subcontractors. They always sus-
pect that some piece of the cost to taxpayers will include payoffs to hoodlums,
or diversions of money to personal bank accounts. The investigation begins.
On other occasions, they receive anonymous phone calls, whispering of
nefarious schemes. Or they are in a bar with reporters and lawyers and they
pick up a rumor. They begin to check out these tips, knowing, as one great
newspaper editor told me years ago, “If you want it to be true, it usually
isn’t.” Sometimes the rumors turn out to be false, planted by political oppo-
nents or personal enemies. The reporters acknowledge that they’ve hit a “dry
hole,” from which nothing will flow, and they close the file. More often, they
follow the trail of one possible story and discover that it leads to a completely
different destination, much richer or more nefarious than the first.
208
In that sense, most investigative reporters resemble prosecutors. Indeed,

their labors often force previously indifferent prosecutors to actually prosecute,
that is, to put the right people in jail. But there are many investigators who also
serve as unofficial counsel for the defense. They work valiantly to get the
wrongfully accused out of jail. They use their tenacious gifts to defend the weak
from those with careless power. They go after union leaders who make sweet-
heart deals at the expense of their members, while looting the pension plans on
the side. They go after vicious slumlords who create misery among their poor
tenants. They expose businesses that defraud investors and employees.
But they are also surprising people. In my experience, most of today’s
investigative reporters have vague politics. In that sense, they don’t resemble
the great generation of muckrakers at the turn of the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries, who were men and women with an idealistic, mainly socialist
vision of the America that would emerge from their labors. Today’s investiga-
tors have an almost permanent skepticism about human virtue, political or
otherwise. If they are pursuing a crooked judge, they don’t much care
whether he is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative, or a
man who gives alms to orphans and bellows “God Bless America” most loud-
ly on the fourth of July. If he’s a crook, they want to nail him. As the great
Washington columnist Lars-Erik Nelson once said to me, “The enemy isn’t
liberalism. The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy is bullshit.”
To be sure, however, most investigative journalism—no matter what the
personal politics of its practitioners—aids the progressive side of American
politics. It’s part of the process of reform, of improving the lot of at least some
citizens, incrementally leading toward the goal of elemental social justice that
has always belonged to the left. Exposure of corruption usually leads to pun-
ishment of big shots (not always, of course). Sometimes the ratholes are actu-
ally plugged by legislation. Sometimes (again, not always) there is even a
clear moral lesson: power does not always guarantee immunity. Many of us
have lived through a time when even a president of the United States fell
before the tenacity of investigative reporters.
In this country, and in most others, there is no great tradition of right-
wing investigative reporting (William Safire of the New York Times is an
exception). Most right-wing governments, from that of Francisco Franco to
that of Saddam Hussein, have smothered all attempts at exposure, sometimes
with violence. The Soviet Union, in spite of all its official socialist rhetoric,
209
was essentially a right-wing state, and feared a free press almost as much as it
feared its own citizens. Reporters for Pravda and Tass were chosen on the
basis of ideological rigidity, and such people make poor reporters. They sub-
stitute dogma for curiosity, certainty for doubt. Skepticism, of course, was a
crime. In the service of the armed Stalinist bureaucracy, the Soviet reporters
asked no questions. Asking questions, after all, could lead to the basement of
the Lubyanka prison.
Communism failed for a number of reasons, but one was certainly the
absence of an independent press. There was no pain-in-the-ass reporter shin-
ing a light upon the slippery privileges of the nomenklatura. There was no
fearless weekly making sardonic fun of the difference between what was
being said by the leadership and what was actually delivered. No Soviet
reporter cast a word of doubt or rage on the processes of the Purge Trials or
asked why the Kulaks died or raised arguments against the pact with Hitler.
Forgive the apparent absurdity, but there was no Soviet equivalent of the Wall
Street Journal, explaining that a certain ball-bearing plant in Minsk was ineffi-
cient because the managers were relatives of some big shot in Moscow and
were essentially thieves or brutes or both. Soviet inefficiency and corruption
were never scrutinized in public. Finally, the whole wormy structure crum-
pled into the rubbish heap of history.
That dismal, murderous example should remind us of how crucial the
press is to our own imperfect system. Without criticism, no modern society
can endure, and investigative journalism is essentially a form of criticism.
Every journalist knows that great journalism is impossible without great pub-
lishers; no Katharine Graham, no Woodward and Bernstein. Publishers must
provide both money and patience while their reporters do their work, and
then they must publish their findings. That truth has to be learned again in
every generation. When newspapers and magazine publishers turn timid—
usually out of fear of the readers or fear of the advertisers—the news package
itself gets softer and flabbier. One result: the readers become increasingly
indifferent. Worse, the larger society itself becomes stagnant, and the thieves
and scoundrels get bolder.
But even timidity is part of the recurring American cycle of advance and
retreat. As I write, there’s an atmosphere of triumphant right-wing vindication
in the air over the war in Iraq, and a sneering dismissal of those who refuse to
embrace the conventional pieties. But even the story of the war remains hid-
210
den, incomplete, buried behind the image-mongering. We should be reassured

by one thing: investigative reporters are at work, methodically separating
myth from fact, propaganda from actuality. The full story will come out, as it
always does, because someone is heading into the cave with a torch.
Source: Hamill, Pete. “Foreword.” In Shapiro, Bruce. Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of
Investigative Journalism in America. New York: Nation Books, 2003, pp. vii-xii.
211
Modern-Day Muckrakers Face Major Challenges

The article reprinted below originally appeared in a 2008 special issue of Nieman Reports ded-
icated to “Twenty-First Century Muckrakers.” Nieman Reports is published by the Nieman
Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. The article outlines some of the challenges
facing investigative journalism in America, and it emphasizes the continuing need for modern-
day muckrakers to expose government corruption and corporate abuses of the public trust. The
author of the article, longtime investigative reporter Florence Graves, is the founding director of
the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. Her organization is
part of a growing network of journalism nonprofits that are helping to fill the gaps in coverage
left by the mainstream media.
O nce upon a time, the nation was crawling with brave and well-funded
investigative reporters who found and exposed wrongdoing wherever
it occurred. From Ida Tarbell to Bob Woodward, journalists crusading
for truth bravely defended democracy from the incursions of corruption and
undue influence. Alas, how we have fallen from those mighty days! As news-
rooms slash budgets and publishers demand higher profits, investigative
journalism is under attack.
It’s a great narrative. But it’s a myth.
The profit pressures on journalism are very real. In fact, that is one rea-
son I founded the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism in 2004, as
one of the emerging nonprofit models for investigative journalism. And the
urgent need to expose undue influence, tainted decision-making, and hidden
malfeasance is real. Those are among the main goals of the Schuster Institute
at Brandeis University, and it’s also why I founded and ran Common Cause
Magazine with a focus on investigative reporting during the 1980s. We can
admire—and aim at—this goal without believing the myth. The truth: Even
when news organizations were flush, in-depth investigative reporting has
been more an ideal than a reality.
Consider the research done by Michael Schudson, professor at the Univer-
sity of California at San Diego and at the Graduate School of Journalism of
Columbia University, and published in his books The Power of News and Water-
gate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget and Reconstruct the Past.
• In The Power of News, Schudson wrote, “The muckraking theme has
been powerful in American journalism for a century, even though its
practice is the exception, not the rule.” He points out that “in the time
212
Primary Sources: Modern-Day Muckrakers Face Major Challenges
between Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker in 1904
and Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 and 1973,” muckraking had “no
culturally resonant, heroic exemplars.”
• In analyzing myths generated by Watergate, Schudson concluded that
“the press as a whole during Watergate was—as before and since—pri-
marily an establishment institution with few ambitions to rock estab-
lishment bonds.” While he concluded that many news organizations’
commitments to investigative reporting began to increase in the
1960s—before Watergate—that commitment was already dissipating
early in the Reagan years.
Government Watchdog
The myth of journalists doggedly uncovering all the facts is both impor-
tant—and dangerous. “What is most important to journalism is not the spate
of investigative reporting or the recoil from it after Watergate,” wrote Schud-
son, “but the renewal, reinvigoration, and remythologization of muckraking.”
This helps all of us aim higher and dig even more deeply.
Here’s the danger: Many Americans naively believe that Watergate
spawned hordes of investigative reporters who are urgently ferreting out all
waste, fraud and abuse of power in the public interest. This fosters a false and
complacent public impression that if there is any wrongdoing by government
or corporate officials, heroic journalists are doing everything they can to
track it down and report it.
While the Washington press corps has grown mightily, is it adequate?
Most medium-sized newspapers have a Washington presence, but these
reporters often focus on the same few issues and the same few people at the
top—leaving significant issues and agencies uncovered. Those U.S. news orga-
nizations that do assign a full-time reporter to an agency “beat,” usually assign
them only to a handful of big beats such as the Pentagon, Department of Jus-
tice, Department of State, and Treasury. Those “beats” usually involve tracking
major policy decisions and rarely leave enough time for reporters to make con-
nections between these policies and relevant influence-peddlers or to dig
deeply into other agency business. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible,
for these reporters—as well as those who are assigned to cover several agen-
cies at one time—to cover the “official” daily news and the insider machina-
tions about decisions and also track the influence of hundreds of well-paid
213
lobbyists and well-staffed PR firms dedicated to protecting huge corporations’

interests and who have vast access to policymakers. This doesn’t even take into
account the increased difficulties reporters confront when facing the recent
and unprecedented government clampdown on the release of information and
deliberate slowdowns in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests, the increasing trend of the government issuing subpoenas to journal-
ists to disclose their confidential sources, and the threat posed by libel suits.
Contrary to the myth, only a skeleton crew of reporters is trying to find
out how Americans’ daily lives—what they eat, the medicines they take, the
products they use, and the environmental conditions in which they live—are
being affected by hundreds of lobbyists, dozens of partisan and “Astroturf”
[fake or industry-funded] think-tanks, scores of federal agencies, and hun-
dreds of officials all defended by the ironically named “public information
officers” who prevent the flow of many important facts out of their offices.
To get a sense of just how bad the problem was becoming, in 2001 the
Project on the State of the American Newspaper surveyed newspapers and
wire-services to determine which ones “regularly cover” 19 federal depart-
ments and agencies. The survey found that apart from the major departments
such as defense, state, justice and treasury—which are comparatively well
covered by reporters—a surprising number of agencies with huge budgets
had either no reporters or just a few, including the following:
• No full-time reporter: Veterans Affairs ($46 billion budget) and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission ($482 million budget)
• Two full-time reporters: Department of Interior ($10 billion budget)
• Three full-time reporters: Agriculture ($73 billion budget), Environ-
mental Protection Agency ($8 billion budget), and Social Security
Administration ($7 billion budget)
• Four full-time reporters: Labor Department ($39 billion budget) and
Internal Revenue Service ($9 billion budget).
Congress is where laws are passed, but it is within these agencies that
the laws are shaped into realities that affect our lives. Are only three full-time
reporters enough to oversee all of the government’s decision-making about
environmental protection and monitor all of what lobbyists do to shape those
regulations behind closed doors? Consider, too, the spectacular growth in
sophistication and influence of a vast number of power centers—multina-
214
tional corporations, global financial institutions, international governments,

and nongovernmental organizations. Then there is coverage of local and state
news, when editors and publishers are subjected to even greater pressure
from special interests—commercial and otherwise—in their community.
Increasingly bereft of key resources—time, people and money—to do in-
depth reporting, journalists have become much more dependent on leaks and
tips from people who usually have an agenda that might not always be so
obvious. One resulting paradox is that while more reporters than ever are
covering Washington, we really know less about many very important things.
Consider the press’s spectacular failure to find out the truth about the
[George W. Bush] administration’s claims about Iraq. Or how long it took to
unmask Congressmen Tom DeLay and Randy (Duke) Cunningham. Or the
overlooked warnings about today’s subprime [mortgage] crisis—and in earli-
er years the Savings & Loan crisis, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development scandal, and the Iran-contra arms deals.
This is not to say that investigative reporters have been failing. Press
investigations have recently revealed unacceptable conditions for Iraq War
veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the CIA’s abuses in prisoner
interrogations, the use of warrantless wiretaps of citizens’ phones by the U.S.
government, and other memorable watchdog stories. We can find plenty of
other examples of superb investigative journalism—likely more and better
than a decade ago—but that doesn’t mean there’s enough of it.
In our news media’s daily practice and performance, watchdog reporting
is not keeping pace with the growing need. While powerful institutions—
government, corporate and nonprofit, both U.S. and global—that need to be
watched are multiplying and getting richer and more sophisticated, precisely
the opposite is happening in journalism: The number and availability of
reporters who have the time, institutional backing, and resources to be effec-
tive watchdogs are getting pinched. Nor does it seem that this trend is about
to change given the faltering financial resources available at most news orga-
nizations—and the ways in which these resources are being used in this era of
celebrity and entertainment journalism.
Uncovering Corporate Malfeasance

Meanwhile, news organizations have never been very committed to
exposing corporate wrongdoing. A convincing argument could be made that
215
today corporations effectively run the country—including what happens in

Washington, D.C.—through their campaign contributions, opposition
research, careful spin-doctoring, sophisticated public influence campaigns,
heavy-hitting lobbyists, and still more tools. Arguably, corporate titans might
be in a better position to abuse the public trust than many government offi-
cials. While numerous outlets cover business and report on corporate news,
most of what reaches the public is aimed at investors, usually indicating whose
business is up and whose is down. The New York Times then-media reporter
Felicity Barringer pointed out a few years ago that “more than 250 Pulitzers in
journalism have been awarded since 1978. Business figures prominently in
about 10.” She then asked, “But what about corporations and industries? Are
there some comfortable folk there who could do with some afflicting?”
Our own survey of the Pulitzers revealed that out of the 90 Pulitzers
given for public service journalism, only about a handful involved primarily
an investigation of corporate power. And of the 25 Pulitzer Prizes awarded for
investigative journalism, in just two of them did the reporters focus specifi-
cally on situations involving corporations.
Even in flush times, the job of systematically and thoroughly covering
the government, the corporate sector, and the nonprofit sector would have
been a mammoth David-takes-on-Goliath effort. But these are not flush times
for the news business. And that’s why there’s such an urgent need for what
Chuck Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, has been calling the
new nonprofit journalism. Each of us who launched one of these new non-
profit models did so independently, albeit with similar reckonings about the
need. None of us pretend to be the solution to the ongoing financial crisis
that has led many newspapers to eliminate or cut back their investments in
investigative reporting. But all of us want to contribute to the solution—
albeit in slightly different ways and with somewhat different areas of focus.
Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism is the nation’s first—
and only—investigative reporting center based at a university (in our case,
Brandeis University) that is intended to help fill the increasing void in high-
quality public interest and investigative journalism. As journalists, we
research, report, place and publish or broadcast our work. Our ongoing inter-
action with students comes in working closely with those we hire to assist us
216
with our investigations; we get superb research assistance, while we mentor

them and offer an intimate sense of what is required to do in-depth reporting.
We also reveal to them the value this kind of reporting holds for our nation.
No matter what these students end up doing, whether it’s journalism, law,
business or politics, they take with them an understanding of—and apprecia-
tion for—the importance of a free and unfettered press in a democracy.
Our goal is to explore in-depth significant social and political problems
and uncover corporate and government abuses of power and reveal what we
find through “impact journalism,” in which our in-depth projects break
important news and jump-start public policy discussions about underreport-
ed social and political injustices important to a democracy. The three prime
areas of our interest are:
1. Political and Social Justice
2. Gender and Justice
3. The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project.
Our investigations reach the public via broadcast, the Web, and in news-
papers and magazines that have a proven ability to inform the public. In collab-
oration with the Washington Post, I explored a whistleblower lawsuit against
Boeing. In reporting that story, we found that Boeing—with what seemed like
almost a wink from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—was installing
unapproved (and potentially dangerous) parts on its planes. With the freedom I
have through my association with this institute, I was able to delve deeply for
months. Few reporters would have had the time to study the FAA’s regulations
and requirements deeply enough to be able to challenge its spin. “Boeing Parts
and Rules Bent, Whistle-Blowers Say,” appeared as an above-the-fold Page One
story in April 2006 and was picked up around the world. While reporting the
story, I discovered many indications that Boeing and the FAA have a tighter
relationship than any citizen would want to exist, and I uncovered half a dozen
other stories I’d like to pursue when I have more time.
There are certainly other ways to do this work—and plenty of room for
many more news organizations and journalists to commit to doing it. The
breadth of global “beats” is only going to expand, while it appears likely that
crucial stories simply are not going to be done. Last fall, the Columbia Journal-
ism Review editorialized that, “As newsroom resources continue to contract—
foreign bureaus close, staffs shrink, travel budgets evaporate—producing a
217
broad, deep and authoritative news report day in and day out may in some
cases require that news operations join forces.” The Schuster Institute alone—
or even in concert with every other nonprofit investigative journalism entity in
existence today—will never be able to fill the growing gap. Doing so is going
to require innovative ideas matched with unprecedented cooperation and col-
laboration among journalists and a commitment to this job by all of us.
Source: Graves, Florence. “Watchdog Reporting: Exploring Its Myth.” Nieman Reports,
Spring 2008. Available online at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx
?id=100065.
218
Important People,
Places, and Terms
Baker, Ray Stannard (1870-1946)

Muckraking journalist who is best known for exploring race relations in
his book Following the Color Line.
Bernstein, Carl (1944- )
Investigative journalist whose reporting of the Watergate scandal
contributed to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
Boss
A corrupt official who controls a city government and awards municipal
jobs and contracts on the basis of bribery, connections, and political favors.
Capitalism
An economic system that emphasizes free enterprise, competition, and
private ownership of property as keys to prosperity.
Carnegie, Andrew (1835-1919)
Businessman who made a fortune in the steel industry and later gave
away much of his money to support philanthropic causes.
Carson, Rachel (1907-1964)
Biologist and writer who exposed the environmental damage resulting
from the unregulated use of pesticides in her 1962 book Silent Spring.
Civil War
A military conflict (1861-65) between the northern and southern parts of
the United States over slavery and other issues.
Conservative
A political philosophy that favors lowering taxes and government
spending, reducing government regulation of business, and limiting the
role of government in society.
219
Great Depression
A severe economic downturn in the 1930s that was marked by bank
failures, financial losses, business closures, and high unemployment.
Hamilton, Alice (1869-1970)
Physician and occupational health pioneer who investigated industrial
illnesses and their social consequences.
Hersh, Seymour (1937- )
Investigative journalist who uncovered the 1969 My Lai massacre during
the Vietnam War and also reported on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S.
military personnel at Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad in 2004.
Industrial Revolution
A period during the 1800s when a series of important advances in
technology, communication, transportation, energy, and commerce
brought fundamental changes to American society.
Investigative journalism
A type of reporting that emphasizes uncovering problems and bringing
them to public attention.
Labor Union
An organization that represents workers in negotiations with employers
for shorter work hours, better wages, safer working conditions, and other
benefits.
McClure, S.S. (1857-1949)
Progressive owner and editor who turned McClure’s magazine into a
leader of the muckraking movement.
McKinley, William (1843-1901)
President of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.
Monopoly
A situation in which one individual, corporation, or group of related
companies controls a product or industry without viable competition.
Moore, Michael (1954- )
Controversial documentary filmmaker who has examined such issues as
gun violence, the health care crisis, and U.S. policy toward Iraq.
220
Important People, Places, and Terms
Muckrakers
A term used to describe crusading journalists who conduct
investigations, uncover problems, raise public awareness, and generate
calls for reform.
Murrow, Edward R. (1908-1965)
Broadcast journalist who famously challenged the anti-communist “witch
hunts” of Senator Eugene McCarthy on his CBS News television program
See It Now.
Nader, Ralph (1934- )
Attorney, consumer advocate, political activist, and author whose 1965
book Unsafe at Any Speed raised public awareness of automobile and
highway safety issues.
New Deal
A set of progressive reforms designed to help struggling Americans and
stimulate the economy during the Great Depression.
Norris, Frank (1870-1902)
Author best known for his 1901 novel The Octopus, which revolved
around a deadly real-life confrontation between railroad companies and
settlers over land rights.
Patent medicines
Pills and potions of dubious medical value that were widely advertised as
cures for a variety of ailments; they became a target for consumer
advocates and muckraking journalists during the Progressive Era.
Phillips, David Graham (1867-1911)
Muckraking journalist best known for writing the “Treason of the Senate”
series for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1906.
Progressive
A political philosophy that supports government intervention to address
social, political, and economic problems.
Progressive Era
A period in American history (roughly from the 1890s through the
1910s) that was marked by reform of various social, political, and
economic institutions that had been transformed by industrialization.
221
Prohibition
The period from 1920 to 1933 when the manufacture, distribution, and
sale of alcohol was banned in the United States.
Riis, Jacob (1849-1914)
Journalist and photographer who is best known for chronicling poverty
and squalor in American cities in his 1890 book How the Other Half Lives.
Robber Barons
A term used by critics to describe the small group of wealthy
businessmen who dominated the American banking, railroad, oil, and
steel industries at the turn of the twentieth century.
Rockefeller, John D. (1839-1937)
Wealthy businessman and philanthropist whose ruthless business
practices as owner of the Standard Oil Company made him a major target
of the muckrakers.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1882-1945)
President of the United States (served 1933-1945) who enacted
progressive New Deal policies to help the nation recover from the Great
Depression.
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)
President of the United States (served 1901-1909) whose policies
launched the Progressive Era.
Sherman Antitrust Act
Passed in 1890, this legislation gave the federal government power to
prevent large corporations from gaining monopoly control over entire
industries.
Sinclair, Upton (1878-1968)
Muckraking journalist best known for his 1906 book The Jungle, an
exposé of the meatpacking industry that drew national attention to the
issue of food safety.
Social Darwinism
A theory that explains the gulf between wealthy and impoverished
Americans by claiming that rich people are genetically superior in terms
of intelligence and ambition.
222
Important People, Places, and Terms
Socialism
An economic system that emphasizes collective ownership of business
and other property as a means to distribute wealth fairly among all
members of a society.
Spargo, John (1876-1966)

Muckraking writer best known for exploring the tragedy of child labor in
his 1906 book The Bitter Cry of the Children.
Standard Oil Company

A powerful trust, owned by John D. Rockefeller, that became known as
“the Octopus” because its influence spread into so many different areas of
business and government.
Steffens, Lincoln (1866-1936)

Muckraking journalist who is best known for uncovering government
corruption in his 1904 book The Shame of the Cities.
Suffrage
The right to vote.
Taft, William Howard (1857-1930)

President of the United States from 1908 to 1913.
Tarbell, Ida M. (1857-1944)

Muckraking journalist who is best known for her 1904 book The History
of the Standard Oil Company, which exposed the ruthless business
practices of John D. Rockefeller and contributed to the passage of new
antitrust laws.
Tenement
A type of urban housing used by poor and working-class residents; these
buildings were often dirty, airless, and overcrowded, and served as
breeding grounds for crime and disease.
Trust
A large corporation or group of related companies that dominated various
industries and exerted a great deal of control over the U.S. economy at
the turn of the twentieth century.
223
Trust-busting
Government efforts to break up large corporations or trusts that hold
monopoly power over certain industries.
Woodward, Bob (1943- )
Investigative journalist whose reporting of the Watergate scandal
contributed to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
224
Chronology
1690
The first newspaper in the American colonies, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and
Domestick, is published in Boston. See p. 22.
1704
The Boston News-Letter becomes the first ongoing newspaper in the American
colonies. See p. 22.
1721
Brothers James and Benjamin Franklin launch a newspaper called the New England
Courant. See p. 22.
1740s
The first magazines appear in the American colonies. See p. 27.
1765
British authorities pass the Stamp Act, which requires all legal documents, books,
and newspapers printed in the American colonies to appear on specially stamped
paper; American newspapers refuse to pay the high tax on stamped paper, and the
act is repealed. See p. 22.
1769
The steam engine, one of the great inventions of the Industrial Revolution, is unveiled
in England. See p. 8.
1776
American newspapers help shape public opinion in favor of independence from Eng-
lish rule. See p. 24.
1787
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. See
p. 24.
1830s
The invention of the cylinder press makes newspaper publishing faster and cheaper.
See p. 24.
225
1833
Editor Benjamin H. Day launches the New York Sun. See p. 25.
1835
Editor James Gordon Bennett launches the New York Herald. See p. 25.
1851
The New York Times publishes its first edition. See p. 26.
1870
John D. Rockefeller forms the Standard Oil Company. See p. 53.
1880
A deadly confrontation takes place between railroad company representatives and
settlers over land rights in California; known as the Battle at Mussel Slough, the
incident later forms the centerpiece of Frank Norris’s novel The Octopus. See p. 65.
1883
Renowned publisher Joseph Pulitzer focuses on investigative reporting at the New
York World. See p. 26.
The Pendleton Act of 1883 puts measures in place to prevent elected officials from
appointing their friends and supporters to fill government jobs at the expense of
more qualified applicants. See p. 76.
1886
The rise of nationally distributed, general-interest, monthly magazines begins when
Cosmopolitan publishes its first issue. See p. 27.
1887
The Interstate Commerce Act creates the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate
Commerce Commission, to oversee the operations of the nation’s railroads. See p.
17.
1888
Collier’s magazine is introduced. See p. 27.
1889
Reformer Jane Addams launches the settlement house movement by founding Hull
House, which offers a variety of services and assistance to immigrant families in
Chicago. See p. 39.
1890
The Sherman Antitrust Act gives the federal government power to prevent large cor-
porations from gaining monopoly control over entire industries. See p. 17.
Journalist and photographer Jacob Riis chronicles the struggles of the urban poor in
How the Other Half Lives. See p. 38.
226
Chronology
1891
A national political party called the People’s Party or Populists forms with the goals of
limiting the power of large corporations and reducing corruption in government.
See p. 18.
1892
Publisher William Randolph Hearst launches a trend toward “yellow journalism” at
the New York Morning Journal. See p. 26.
1893
Editor S.S. McClure launches his namesake monthly journal. See p. 32.
1894
The federal government sides with wealthy railroad owners over labor union mem-
bers in breaking up the Pullman Palace Car strike. See p. 14.
1899
Everybody’s joins the parade of new general-interest magazines. See p. 27.
Activist Florence Kelley founds the National Consumers’ League, an organization which
fought to pass food safety laws and end the exploitation of female workers. See p. 45.
1901
Following the assassination of President William McKinley in September, Theodore
Roosevelt takes office. See p. 19.
The Octopus, a novel by Frank Norris, condemns corporate greed and its impact on
the lives of working-class Americans. See p. 64.
1902
President Roosevelt intervenes on behalf of United Mine Workers members to resolve
a bitter strike against the large corporations that control Pennsylvania coal mines.
See p. 66.
Muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens publishes “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” the first
installment of his famous “Shame of the Cities” series on government corruption,
in the October issue of McClure’s. See p. 71.
The first article in Ida M. Tarbell’s famous investigative series on the Standard Oil
Company runs in the November issue of McClure’s. See p. 53.
1903
The January issue of McClure’s features investigative reports by Tarbell, Steffens, and
Ray Stannard Baker that expose serious problems in American business, govern-
ment, and society; it is generally considered the start of the muckraking move-
ment in American journalism. See p. 32.
1904
Sociologist Robert Hunter calls public attention to the plight of the urban poor in his
influential book Poverty. See p. 40.
227
Ida M. Tarbell publishes her landmark book The History of the Standard Oil Company.
See p. 54.
Lincoln Steffens collects his articles on municipal corruption in the book Shame of
the Cities. See p. 73.
Roosevelt wins reelection in a landslide, with 57 percent of the popular vote. See p.
67.
1905
Samuel Hopkins Adams attacks the patent medicine industry in a series of articles for
Collier’s entitled “The Great American Fraud.” See p. 63.
William Randolph Hearst purchases Cosmopolitan with the goal of turning it into a
muckraking journal. See p. 74.
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle appears in serial form in Appeal to Reason magazine.
See p. 60.
1906
Cosmopolitan publishes a series of articles by Edwin Markham detailing the grim
existence of child workers in textile mills. See p. 43.
John Spargo publishes The Bitter Cry of the Children, which further raises public
awareness of the tragedy of child labor. See p. 42.
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s influential novel about the meatpacking industry, is pub-
lished in book form. See p. 62.
Increased public concerns about food safety lead to the passage of the Pure Food and
Drug Act of 1906. See p. 62.
The Hepburn Act empowers the Interstate Commerce Commission to increase its
regulation of the nation’s railroads. See p. 67.
David Graham Phillips publishes the first installment of his “Treason of the Senate”
series in the March issue of Cosmopolitan. See p. 74.
On April 14, Roosevelt makes a famous speech describing investigative journalists as
“muckrakers” and calling upon the national magazines to offer more balanced
reporting. See p. 79.
A group of prominent journalists leave the staff of McClure’s to form their own jour-
nal, American Magazine, which publishes its first issue in October. See p. 82.
1907
The U.S. Congress charters the National Child Labor Committee to investigate the
use of child labor and make recommendations for laws restricting it. See p. 43.
1908
Ray Stannard Baker publishes Following the Color Line, a book exploring racial preju-
dice in the United States. See p. 48.
228
Chronology
1909
President Theodore Roosevelt leaves office and is succeeded by fellow Republican
William Howard Taft. See p. 104.
Lewis Hine’s published photographs of children at work in factories increases public
demand for child labor protection laws. See p. 44.
1910
Journalist and activist Rheta Childe Dorr publishes an influential book about the
growing movement for women’s rights called What Eight Million Women Want. See
p. 45.
The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 establishes federal regulation of the telephone, tele-
graph, cable, and railroad industries. See p. 104.
1911
John A. Fitch’s article “Old Age at Forty,” criticizing twelve-hour work shifts in the
steel industry, appears in the March issue of American Magazine. See p. 58.
In May, a fire destroys the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, taking the
lives of 146 young female textile workers. See p. 58.
S.S. McClure retires as editor of McClure’s magazine. See p. 122.
The U.S. Supreme Court orders the breakup of the Standard Oil Company. See p. 67.
1912
Running as the candidate of the Progressive Party, Theodore Roosevelt loses the pres-
idential election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. See p. 105.
1913
The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution provides for the direct election of
U.S. Senators by popular vote. See p. 75.
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 regulates the U.S. banking industry and helps stabi-
lize the value of the dollar. See p. 105.
1914
In April, a strike by miners in Ludlow, Colorado, ends in violence when troops under
the direction of company management attack a tent city full of workers and their
families; twenty people are killed in the tragedy, which further tarnishes the public
reputation of company owner John D. Rockefeller. See p. 59.
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 outlaws a number of unfair business practices and
protects the rights of workers to organize and engage in peaceful labor protests.
See p. 105.
The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 creates a new government regulatory
agency to enforce antitrust laws. See p. 105.
World War I erupts in Europe. See p. 105.
229
1916
The Adamson Act of 1916 establishes an eight-hour workday for interstate railroad
employees. See p. 105.
1917
The United States enters World War I. See p. 106.
1918
World War I ends in victory for the United States and its allies. See p. 106.
1919
An investigation of gambling in professional sports, prompted by a New York World
story by Hugh Fullerton, reveals that several players with the Chicago White Sox
deliberately lost the World Series as part of a betting scheme.
1920
The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans the manufacture, distribu-
tion, and sale of alcohol in the United States, initiating the era known as Prohibi-
tion. See p. 46.
American women gain the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amend-
ment to the Constitution. See p. 45.
The election of pro-business Republican Warren G. Harding to the presidency marks
a shift back toward conservative political ideas. See p. 106.
1929
A sudden crash in the value of the U.S. stock market pitches the nation into the Great
Depression. See p. 107.
1932
Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president; after taking office, his New Deal
policies shift the nation back toward progressive ideas. See p. 107.
1933
Prohibition is repealed with the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment to the Con-
stitution. See p. 47.
1935
Progressives achieve a longstanding goal with the passage of the Social Security Act,
which creates a safety net of federal assistance for poor, disabled, and elderly
Americans. See p. 108.
1938
George Seldes writes about the dangers of cigarette smoking in his weekly newspaper
In Fact.
1939
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath raises public awareness of the hardships
faced by migrant farm workers.
230
Chronology
1952
Reader’s Digest publishes “Cancer by the Carton,” a hard-hitting article by Roy Norr
about the health risks associated with cigarette smoking.
1954
Journalist Edward R. Murrow challenges the anti-communist “witch hunt” of Senator
Eugene McCarthy on his CBS television news program See It Now. See p. 89.
1962
Biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, a groundbreaking expose of the envi-
ronmental hazards associated with the unregulated use of pesticides. See p. 90.
1963
President Lyndon B. Johnson launches a number of progressive reforms that come to
be known as the Great Society programs. See p. 110.
Self-described “queen of the muckrakers” Jessica Mitford exposes fraudulent prac-
tices in the funeral industry in her book The American Way of Death.
1965
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader publishes Unsafe at Any Speed, which raises con-
cerns about automobile safety. See p. 91.
1966
Partly in response to Unsafe at Any Speed, the U.S. Congress passes the Traffic and
Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. See p. 91.
1969
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh uncovers the My Lai massacre, an incident in
the Vietnam War in which U.S. troops raided a village and killed hundreds of civil-
ians. See p. 92.
1971
New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan reveals the existence of the Pentagon Papers, a
secret study of U.S. policy in southeast Asia and conduct of the Vietnam War. See
p. 94.
1972
Partly due to the public outcry over Silent Spring, the U.S. Congress bans the pesti-
cide DDT from use in the United States. See p. 90.
In June, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are assigned to
cover a suspicious break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in
the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.; their investigation lasts two years and
plays a vital role in uncovering the Nixon administration’s involvement in the bur-
glary. See p. 95.
Associated Press reporter Jean Heller uncovers a secret U.S. military medical experi-
ment in which syphilis was left untreated in African-American soldiers without
the patients’ knowledge or consent.
231
1974
President Richard M. Nixon chooses to resign from office rather than face impeach-
ment for his role in the Watergate scandal. See p. 96.
1980
The election of President Ronald Reagan marks a return to conservative policies. See
p. 110.
1985
The National Catholic Reporter launches an investigation into child abuse by priests.
1997
In his book One World, Ready or Not, modern-day muckraker William Greider
explains how globalization brings old problems like child labor and exploitation
of factory workers to the doorsteps of American consumers. See p. 96.
2001
Journalist Eric Schlosser revisits the meatpacking industry and food safety issues in
his book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. See p. 97.
2004
The American media uncovers the systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers
at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. See p. 99.
2007
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull reveal mistreatment of wounded
veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. See p. 197.
232
Sources for
further study
Andrews, Peter. “The Press.” American Heritage, October 1994. This American Heritage
cover story traces the history of journalism in the United States and outlines major
criticisms of the twenty-first century American media.
Bausum, Ann. Muckrakers: How Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens Helped
Expose Scandal, Inspire Reform, and Invent Investigative Journalism. New York: Nation-
al Geographic Books, 2007. This readable book for students relates the history of the
muckraking movement through the stories of three journalists who made important
contributions to it.
Jensen, Carl. Stories that Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2000. This collection features excerpts from major muckraking books
and articles, ranging from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein’s Watergate reporting.
Serrin, Judith, and William Serrin, eds. Muckraking: The Journalism That Changed America.
New York: New Press, 2002. This collection includes examples of investigative
reporting on a wide range of social and political topics—including poverty, public
health and safety, women’s rights, and conservation—from throughout American his-
tory.
Shapiro, Bruce, ed. Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America.
New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003. Arranged by historical era,
this collection of investigative reports follows the development of muckraking jour-
nalism through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
“Twenty-First Century Muckrakers.” Nieman Reports, Spring 2008. Available online at
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports.aspx?id=100000. This special issue of Nie-
man Reports, based upon a year-long research project, examines some of the chal-
lenges facing investigative journalists in the modern era.
University of Kansas, School of Journalism and Mass Communications. “History of Ameri-
can Journalism.” Available online at http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1900/1900.shtml.
Compiled as part of a graduate program in journalism, this informative web site
offers a decade-by-decade history of the most important trends, stories, and personal-
ities in American media in the twentieth century.
233
Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg, eds. The Muckrakers. Champaign: University of Illi-
nois Press, 2001. This collection includes excerpts from many of the best-known
muckraking exposés of the early twentieth century.
234
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can Democracy. New York: Doubleday, 1908.
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photo and
Illustration credits
Cover and Title Page: Photograph attributed to Lewis Wickes Hine on provenance, National
Child Labor Committee Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division,
Library of Congress, LC-DIG-nclc-02146.
Chapter One: John C. H. Grabill Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02615 (p. 9); Harris & Ewing Collection, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-hec-03941 (p. 11); Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-56650 (p. 12); Illustration by
William Balfour Ker, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-
45985 (p. 15); National Photo Company Collection, Prints and Photographs Division,
Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-131913 (p. 18).
Chapter Two: Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine based on provenance, Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-nclc-03734 (p. 23); Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-68945 (p. 25); Art & Architecture Collection,
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Pub-
lic Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (p. 27); George Grantham Bain Col-
lection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-12529
(p. 29); Brown Brothers, Sterling, PA (p. 33).
Chapter Three: Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-1584 (p. 37); Photograph by Jacob A. Riis,
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-39057 (p. 39); Lewis
Wickes Hine based on provenance, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Con-
gress, LC-DIG-nclc-05394 (p. 42); George Grantham Bain Collection, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-10997 (p. 44); Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-67628 (p. 46).
Chapter Four: Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-68572 (p.
53); Lithograph by Udo J. Keppler, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Con-
gress, LC-USZC4-435 (p. 54); Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62-75205 (p. 59); Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-
USZ62-97323 (p. 61); Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-
USZ62-58861 (p. 63).
239
Chapter Five: Photo by Pirie MacDonald, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Con-
gress, LC-USZ62-42997 (p. 70); Illustration by Walter Appleton Clark, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-11317 (p. 72); Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-99843 (p. 74); Lithograph by J.
Ottmann after drawing by J. Keppler, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Con-
gress, LC-USZC4-494 (p. 76); Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62-78053 (p. 78).
Chapter Six: Lithograph by Hassman, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62-64261 (p. 87); CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images (p. 89); Wally McNamee/
Corbis (p. 93); AP Photo (p. 95); Courtesy of Washington Post via Getty Images (p.
97).
Chapter Seven: Photograph by Elias Goldensky, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, LC-USZ62-117121 (p. 106); Camp Rock Creek, CA, 1933. Courtesy of the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Digital Archives (p. 109); Photograph by Warren K. Lef-
fler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-03196 (p. 110); Prints and
Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-101369 (p. 111); PRNewsFo-
to/Newsweek/via Newscom (p. 112).
Biographies: George Grantham Bain Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, LC-USZ62-36754 (p. 115); Arnold Genthe Collection, Prints and Pho-
tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-G399-4601 (p. 119); George Grantham
Bain Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-
ggbain-05630 (p. 124); George Grantham Bain Collection, Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-05687 (p. 128); Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-123825 (p. 132); Prints and Photographs
Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-13026 (p. 137); Hulton Archive/Getty Images
(pp. 142, 148); J.E. Purdy & Co., Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Con-
gress, LC-USZ62-117943 (p. 152).
240
Index
A January 1903 McClure’s and, 30, 31, 32,

121, 150
Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, 99-100
relationship with Theodore Roosevelt,
Academy Awards, 96, 99, 146
77, 79
Adams, John, 24 Barringer, Felicity, 216
Adams, Samuel, 24 Battle at Mussel Slough, 65
Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 63 Bennett, James Gordon, 25
Adamson Act of 1916, 105 Bernstein, Carl, 95 (ill.), 95-96, 210, 213
Addams, Jane, 39 “Birth of an Industry, The” (Tarbell), 53
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, 107 Bitter Cry of the Children, The (Spargo), 40,
Aldrich, Nelson, 125 42-43
All in the Day’s Work (Tarbell), 154 excerpt, 170-72
All the President’s Men (Woodward and “Boeing Parts and Rules Bent, Whistle-
Bernstein), 96 Blowers Say” (Graves), 217
All-Story, 86 Bok, Edward, 63-64
American Chronicle: The Autobiography of Ray Bonaparte, Napoleon, 152
Stannard Baker, 118 Boston News-Letter, 22
“American Crisis” (Paine), 24 Bowling for Columbine (Moore), 98, 99
American Magazine, 58, 82, 117, 122, 150 Bradford III, William, 23
Ames, Albert Alonzo “Doc,” 72-73 Brandeis University, 212, 216
Appeal to Reason, 60, 62, 143 Bryan, William Jennings, 18
Archbold, John D., 134, 176 Bull Moose Party. See Progressive Party
Atlantic Monthly, 27, 134 Bunyan, John, 80-81, 140, 192
Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, The, 151 Bush, George W., 99, 112, 199, 215
automobile safety, 91 Butler, Ed, 70-71, 187
B C
Baker, Ray Stannard, 35, 48, 78, 85, 87 (ill.), Calley, William, 92-94
115 (ill.), 143, 213 Campbell, John, 22
American magazine and, 82, 122, 154 Carnegie, Andrew, 10, 11 (ill.), 17, 52
biography, 115-18 Carson, Rachel, 90-91
241
Cather, Willa, 120, 122 Cover-Up: The Army’s Secret Investigation of the
CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Massacre of My Lai 4 (Hersh), 94
CDC. See U.S. Centers for Disease Control Coxey’s Army, 115
(CDC) CPSC. See Consumer Product Safety
Center for Investigative Reporting, 101 Commission (CPSC)
Center for Public Integrity, 101, 216 Crane, Stephen, 28, 120
Century, 120 Cry for Justice, The (Sinclair), 144
Chautauquan, 152 Cunningham, Randy “Duke,” 215
Chicago, Illinois, 11-12, 39
Chicago News-Record, 115 D
child labor, 40, 42-44, 107, 170-72
Darwin, Charles, 16-17
See also labor unions; working
Dateline NBC, 100
conditions
Children of the Poor, The (Riis), 131 Davis III, Thomas M., 200
Children of the Tenements (Riis), 131 Day, Benjamin H., 25
CIA. See U.S. Central Intelligence Agency DeLay, Tom, 215
(CIA) Deluge, The (Phillips), 125
Cincinnati Times-Star, 124 Depew, Chauncey Mitchell, 188, 189-91
Civil Rights Act of 1964, 110 Disabled American Veterans, 199
civil rights movement, 110 Dispatch News Service, 93
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 108 Dorr, Rheta Childe, 45
Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, 105 Downsize This! (Moore), 99
Cleveland, Grover, 14 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 28
Clinton, Bill, 111 Dragon’s Teeth (Sinclair), 146
Collier’s, 27, 63, 121 Dude, Where’s My Country (Moore), 99
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 59
Columbia Journalism Review, 217 E
Commercial Advertiser, 149 Ellsberg, Daniel, 94
communism, 89, 106, 140, 151, 210 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 92
conservation movement, 47, 91, 104, 139 EPA. See Environmental Protection Agency
conservative political principles, 107, 109, (EPA)
110-11, 112 Everybody’s, 27, 45
Constitution. See U.S. Constitution evolution, Darwin’s theory of, 16-17
Consumer Product Safety Commission Exploring the Dangerous Trades (Hamilton), 57
(CPSC), 92
corporate abuses, 51-52, 54-57, 58-60, 62-
65, 215-16 F
corruption. See government corruption FAA. See Federal Aviation Administration
Cosmopolitan, 27, 121, 140 (FAA)
major muckraking articles in, 43, 74, 79, Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore), 99
125, 188 Farm Security Administration, 107
242
Index
Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, The Greeley, Horace, 25

(Phillips), 125, 126 Greider, William, 96-97
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All- Gridiron Club, 79
American Meal (Schlosser), 97-98
FDA. See U.S. Food and Drug Administration H
(FDA)
Hamill, Pete, 206-11
FDIC. See Federal Deposit Insurance
Hamilton, Alice, 56-57
Corporation (FDIC)
Hancock, John, 24
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 217
Harding, Warren G., 106
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Harkness, William W., 175
(FDIC), 108
Harper’s Weekly, 27, 207
Federal Reserve Act of 1913, 105
Harris, Benjamin, 22
Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, 105
Hearst, William Randolph, 25 (ill.), 26, 86
Fitch, John A., 58
Henry, O., 28
Flagler, Henry, 132
Hepburn Act of 1906, 67
Folk, Joseph, 70-71, 182, 186-87
Hersh, Seymour, 92-94, 93 (ill.), 100
Following the Color Line (Baker), 48, 117
Hine, Lewis, 42 (ill.), 44
food safety, 60-62, 97-98, 143-44, 178-81
History of the Standard Oil Company, The
Franco, Francisco, 209 (Tarbell), 30, 32, 54, 135, 153, 154
Franklin, Benjamin, 22 excerpt, 173-77
Franklin, James, 22 Hobart, Garret, 138
Hoffman, Dustin, 96
G Hoover, Herbert, 107
Gable, Clark, 125 How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 38-39, 130
Garbo, Greta, 125 excerpt, 165-69
Gary, Elbert H., 154 Hull, Anne, 197-205
General Motors (GM), 91, 98 Hull House, 39-40
G.I. Bill, 110 Hungry Heart, The (Phillips), 125
GM. See General Motors (GM) Hunter, Robert, 40
Godey’s Lady’s Book, 27 Hussein, Saddam, 209
Goldsborough, Fitzhugh, 126
government corruption, 69-75, 95-96, 125- I
26, 149-50, 182-91, 207, 213-15 ICC. See Interstate Commerce Commission
Graham, Katharine, 210 (ICC)
Grange movement, 14 immigrants, 11, 36, 41
Graves, Florence, 212-18 Independent, The, 121
Grayson, David. See Baker, Ray Stannard Industrial Poisons in the United States
“Great American Fraud, The” (Adams), 63 (Hamilton), 57
Great Depression, 86, 103, 107-08 Industrial Revolution, 7, 8-9, 24
Great God Success, The (Phillips), 124 impact on American society, 10-13, 35-37
Great Society programs, 110 Internet, 88, 100-01
243
Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 17, 163 Luce, Henry, 86

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), 17, Ludlow Massacre, 59
67, 104
Iraq War, 99-100, 197, 210, 215
M
magazines, development of modern, 27-28
J Making of an American, The (Riis), 131
James, Henry, 120 “Man with the Muck-Rake, The” (Roosevelt),
Jim Crow laws, 36, 47-48 192-96
Johnson, Hiram, 75 Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, 104
Johnson, Lyndon B., 110 (ill.) Markham, Edwin, 43
journalism McCarthy, Eugene, 89-90
challenges facing, 100, 212-18 McClure, Samuel Sidney (S.S.), 21, 32, 33
history of, 21-28, 86-89, 206-11 (ill.), 70, 119 (ill.), 149, 152
See also muckrakers biography, 119-23
Jungle, The (Sinclair), 51, 62, 65, 91, 98, 143- January 1903 editorial, 30-31, 33
44 loses writers to American magazine, 82,
excerpt, 178-81 154
relationship with Theodore Roosevelt,
K 77-78
Kelley, Florence, 45 McClure’s, 53, 70, 77, 81-82, 135, 140
Kipling, Rudyard, 28, 120 founding of, 27, 32, 120
January 1903 issue, 30-33, 116, 121-22,
150
L McKinley, William, 18, 19, 138, 159
La Follette, Robert M., 3, 4-6, 75, 117 Meat Inspection Act of 1906, 144
labor unions, 14, 55-58, 66, 108 meatpacking industry, 60-62, 97-98, 143,
See also child labor; working conditions 178-81
Ladies’ Home Journal, 63-64 Medicaid, 110
“Larry Budd” series (Sinclair), 146 Medicare, 110
Lenin, Vladimir, 151 Merriam, Frank, 146
Lewis, Chuck, 216 Minneapolis, Minnesota, 30, 31, 33, 72-73,
Lewis, Daniel Day, 146 116
Life, 86 Moore, Michael, 98-99
Light-Fingered Gentry (Phillips), 125 Morgan, John Pierpont (J.P.), 10, 52, 66, 116
Lincoln, Abraham, 152 Mother Jones, 98
Lippmann, Walter, 52 muckrakers
Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 134 challenges facing future, 100-01
London, Jack, 120 corporate abuses and, 51-54, 58-65,
Long Island City Review, 128 134-35, 143-46, 153-54, 173-81
Look, 86 government corruption and, 69-75, 125-
Los Angeles Times, 146 26, 149-50, 182-91
244
Index
impact on American society, 3-5, 19, 30- New York Times, 26, 94, 207, 209, 216
32, 35, 65-67, 104, 206-11 New York Tribune, 25, 128
journalistic movement, 28-30, 32-33, New York World, 26, 124
81-83, 121-22 New Yorker, 100
modern-day, 85, 89-100, 197-205, 212- newspapers
18 challenges facing, 86, 88, 212-18
origin of term, 4, 79-81, 140, 192-96 development of modern, 24-26
relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, 3- Nieman Reports, 212
4, 77-79, 125-26, 130, 139-40 Nixon, Richard M., 88, 94, 96
social issues and, 37-39, 42-48, 129-31, Norris, Frank, 64-65
165-72
See also journalism
Munsey’s, 121
O
Murrow, Edward R., 89 (ill.), 89-90 Obama, Barack, 103, 112
Mussel Slough, Battle at, 65 occupational health and safety, 56-57
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Occupational Safety and Health Commission
Aftermath (Hersh), 94 (OSHA), 92
My Lai massacre, 92-94 Octopus, The (Norris), 64-65
Oil (Sinclair), 145-46
“Old Age at Forty” (Fitch), 58
N On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 16-17
Nader, Ralph, 91-92 One World, Ready or Not (Greider), 96-97
Nast, Thomas, 207 OSHA. See Occupational Safety and Health
National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Commission (OSHA)
43-44 “Other Walter Reed, The” (Priest and Hull),
National Consumers’ League, 45, 57 197-205
National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, 107 Out of Mulberry Street: Stories of Tenement Life
National Institute for Occupational Safety in New York (Riis), 131
and Health, 57 Outcault, Richard F., 26
National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 108
Native American: The Book of My Youth P-Q
(Baker), 118 Paine, Thomas, 24
NCLC. See National Child Labor Committee patent medicines, 62-65
(NCLC) PBS Frontline, 100
Nelson, Lars-Erik, 209 Pendleton Act of 1883, 76-77
New Deal, 103, 107-09 Pennsylvania Journal, 23, 24
New England Courant, 22 Pennsylvania Railroad, 133
New York Evening Post, 148 Pentagon Papers, 94
New York Evening Sun, 129 People’s Party. See Populist Party
New York Herald, 25 Phillips, David Graham, 74 (ill.), 74-75, 79-
New York Morning Journal, 26 80, 124 (ill.), 188-91
New York Sun, 25, 124 biography, 124-27
245
Phillips, John S., 154 Reagan, Ronald, 110-11, 111 (ill.)

photojournalism, 86 Redford, Robert, 96
Pilgrim’s Progress, The (Bunyan), 80-81, 140, “Right to Work, The” (Baker), 30, 32
192 Riis, Jacob, 38-39, 39 (ill.), 128 (ill.), 165-69
Platt, Thomas Collier, 125, 188, 189-90 biography, 128-31
Plum Tree, The (Phillips), 125 robber barons, 10, 52, 134
political corruption. See government Rockefeller Foundation, 135-36
corruption Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, 135
Pope, Albert, 119 Rockefeller, John D., 10, 67, 104, 132 (ill.)
Populist Party, 18 biography, 132-36
Poverty (Hunter), 40 target of muckrakers, 52-54, 59, 153,
Power of News, The (Schudson), 212-13 173-77
Priest, Dana, 197-205 Roger and Me (Moore), 98
Progressive Era, 4, 7, 19, 103-07, 112 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 103, 106 (ill.), 107,
early reform efforts, 13-14, 16-18, 39-40 108, 109
political reforms, 70, 75-77 Roosevelt, Theodore, 18 (ill.), 78 (ill.), 105,
progressive movement, 17, 19, 28, 44-48, 107, 116, 137 (ill.), 149
104, 121, 139 biography, 137-41
efforts to reform corporate practices, 51, calls journalists “muckrakers,” 79-81,
55-56, 62, 64-67 192-96
Great Society reforms, 110 leads progressive reform movement, 21,
New Deal reforms, 103, 107-09 28, 33, 62, 66-67, 135
Progressive Party, 105, 140 political philosophy, 19, 45, 47, 159-64
Prohibition, 45-47 relationship with muckrakers, 3-4, 77-
Project on the State of the American 79, 122, 125-26, 130, 188
Newspaper, 214 Root, Elihu, 139
ProPublica, 101 Rough Riders, 138
Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Baker), 118 Rumsfeld, Donald, 199
Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and
Domestick, 22 S
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, 101
Safire, William, 209
Pulitzer, Joseph, 26, 29, 124
St. Louis, Missouri, 70-71, 149-50, 182-87
Pulitzer Prize, 93, 96, 118, 146, 197
Saturday Evening Post, 27, 125
Pullman Palace Car Company, 14
Schlosser, Eric, 97-98
Pullman strike of 1894, 14, 115
Schudson, Michael, 212
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, 62, 65,
Schuster Institute for Investigative
104, 144
Journalism, 212, 216-18
Scott, Thomas, 133
R Scribner’s, 129
racial equality, 47-48 SEC. See Securities and Exchange
radio, 86 Commission (SEC)
246
Index
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Steffens, Lincoln, 85, 87 (ill.), 120, 148 (ill.),
108 213
See It Now, 89-90 American magazine and, 82, 122, 154
settlement houses, 39-40 biography, 148-51
“Shame of Minneapolis, The” (Steffens), 30, January 1903 McClure’s and, 33, 121
31, 33, 72-73, 116 relationship with Theodore Roosevelt,
“Shame of the Cities” series (Steffens), 70-73 79, 80, 139
“Shame of the Cities” series, 70-73, 116,
excerpt, 182-87
182-87
Shame of the Cities, The (Steffens), 73, 150
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 28, 120
Shaw, George Bernard, 146 “Story of a Great Monopoly” (Lloyd), 134
Sheehan, Neil, 94 Stupid White Men (Moore), 99
Shepherd, William G., 59 Success, 125
Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, 17, 66, 67, Sumner, William Graham, 16
104 Susan Lenox: Her Rise and Fall (Phillips), 125
SIC. See South Improvement Company (SIC)
Sicko (Moore), 99 T
Silent Spring (Carson), 90-91 Taft, William Howard, 104-05, 140, 141
Sinclair, Upton, 85, 142 (ill.), 154 Tarbell, Ida M., 53 (ill.), 85, 87 (ill.), 120,
biography, 142-47 143, 152 (ill.), 212, 213
The Jungle, 51, 60-62, 91, 98, 178-81 American magazine and, 82, 122
60 Minutes, 100 biography, 152-55
Smith, Roger, 98 investigation of Standard Oil Company,
Social Darwinism, 16-17 52-54, 135, 173-77
Social Security Act of 1935, 108 January 1903 McClure’s and, 30, 31, 32,
socialism, 57-58, 61, 77, 117, 140, 151 116, 121, 150
Socialist Party, 61, 143, 144, 145 television, 87-88
temperance movement, 45-47
South Improvement Company (SIC), 133
Ten Year’s War: An Account of the Battle with the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 65
Slum in New York, A (Riis), 131
Soviet Union, 209-10
Tenement House Commission, 38, 165
Spanish-American War, 138 tenement housing, 13, 36-38, 129, 130, 165-
Spargo, John, 40, 42-43, 170-72 69
Spencer, Herbert, 16 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 108
Springtime and Harvest (Sinclair), 142 There Will Be Blood, 146
Stamp Act of 1765, 22-23 Time, 86
Standard Oil Company, 132-34 Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966,
government breakup of, 67, 104, 135, 91
154 “Treason of the Senate, The” (Phillips), 74-
investigation by muckraker Ida M. 75, 77, 79-80, 125-26
Tarbell, 52-54, 116, 121, 135, 150, excerpt, 188-91
153, 173-77 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 58-59, 96
247
True Story, 86 Warren, Fred, 143

TVA. See Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Washington Post, 95-96, 197, 217
Twain, Mark, 28 Watergate in American Memory (Schudson),
“Tweed Days in St. Louis” (Steffens), 71, 149- 212, 213
50 Watergate scandal, 95-96, 213
excerpt, 182-87 Wealth against Commonwealth (Lloyd), 134
Tweed, William M. “Boss,” 70, 207 Weightman, George W., 200-01
Wells, Ida B., 48
U What Eight Million Women Want (Dorr), 45
United Mine Workers, 66 Wheelman, 119
United States, immigration to, 11, 36, 41 White, William Allen, 7
Unsafe at Any Speed (Nader), 91-92 Whitman, Walt, 120
urban problems, 11-13, 35-40, 129, 165-69 Wilson, Harold S., 85
U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 57 Wilson, Woodrow, 105, 106, 117-18, 140-
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 94 41, 154
U.S. Constitution Women’s Christian Temperance Movement,
Eighteenth Amendment, 46, 106 46
First Amendment, 24, 206 women’s suffrage movement, 45, 154
Nineteenth Amendment, 45, 106 Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (Baker),
Seventeenth Amendment, 75, 104, 126 118
Sixteenth Amendment, 104 Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (Baker), 118
Twenty-First Amendment, 47 Woodward, Bob, 95 (ill.), 95-96, 210, 212,
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 213
144 working conditions, 13, 51, 55, 58-59, 96-
U.S. Senate, 73-75, 188 98, 178-81
U.S. senators, direct election of, 74, 75, 126 See also child labor; labor unions
U.S. Steel Corporation, 52 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 108
World War I, 82, 86, 105-06, 141, 145
V World War II, 86-87, 89, 108
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 10, 52, 191 WPA. See Works Progress Administration
Vietnam War, 88, 92-95 (WPA)
Voting Rights Act of 1965, 110
Y-Z
W-X yellow journalism, 26
Wagner Act of 1935, 108 “Yellow Kid, The” (Outcault), 26
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 197, 215 Young, Owen D., 154
248

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Defining Moments

Laurie Collier Hillstrom

Laurie Collier Hillstrom

P.O. Box 31-1640

Kevin Hillstrom, Series Editor

Peter E. Ruffner, Publisher

Copyright © 2010 Omnigraphics, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hillstrom, Laurie Collier, 1965-

Jacob Riis (1849-1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

Important People, Places, and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219

T hroughout the course of America’s existence, its people, culture, and

Rose Davenport, M.S.L.S., Ed.Specialist

Comments and Suggestions

The second section, Biographies, provides valuable biographical back-

S tarting a research paper can be a challenge, as students struggle to

• Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and his complicated relationship

A decade ago young men trained in journalism came to see this

of money in the municipal government of every large city. It

It found Philadelphia giving away franchises [contracts], fran-

The free and independent periodical turned her searchlight on

No men ever faced graver responsibilities. None have ever

—William Allen White

T he Progressive Era developed in response to rapid changes that had

The Industrial Revolution

of food and manufactured goods to population centers. These transportation

Impacts on American Society

Not all American citizens enjoyed

Early Reform Efforts

Populists Demand Change

The Progressive Movement

A fter taking office in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt asked the

The Early History of American Journalism

ion. From their first appearance in America, newspapers and magazines

Some American newspapers continued publishing on illegal paper after

Colonial newspapers played an important role in shaping public opinion

editors came on the scene. They empha-

Pulitzer and Hearst

The technology of newspapers continued to improve in the late 1800s.

The Rise of Magazines

knowledge and a sense of civic responsibility. “The muckrakers had a power-

S.S. McClure’s Famous January 1903 Editorial

M any historians pinpoint the January 1903 issue of McClure’s magazine

Miss Tarbell has our capitalists conspiring among themselves,

McClure’s Magazine Leads the Movement

conflict in the Pennsylvania coal mining

—Ray Stannard Baker, 1906

A lthough investigative journalism existed before the turn of the twenti-

Poverty and Squalor in the Cities

guidance, an employment bureau, recreational activities, and day care for

Anti-Immigrant Sentiments in America

M illions of immigrants to America settled in communities that wel-

Tichenor, Daniel J. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America.

vibration of swift, intricate machines. In place of parental interest and affec-

ing a study of factories and other industrial facilities, he found children as

photographer Lewis Hine to further document the plight of impoverished

widely available. Generally recognized as a failure, Prohibition was repealed in

—Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

O ne of the main goals of the Progressive Movement was to reduce the