David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate: New York’s Misrepresentatives and Aldrich, The Head of It All. Cosmopolitan, March 1906. From New York’s Misrepresentatives: “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 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.”
Continue reading...December 1, 1905
Railroad Rebates: Exposé of illegal railway rebates in the early 1900s
Ray Stannard Baker, Railroad Rebates. McClure’s, December 1905, second of a five-part series. “One of the chief purposes of taxation is to build and maintain roads…. The railroad, by all the laws of the nation, is quite as much a highway as is a wagon road. But instead of levying direct taxes for keeping up the rail-highways…we Americans ‘farm out’ the power of taxation to private individuals organized as a railroad corporation…. The instrument tat conveys this power upon a railroad company is a ‘charter.’ It gives the railroad company the right to operate the rail-highways and to charge a freight-rate (a tax) for doing it.”
Continue reading...November 26, 1905
Football Year’s Death Harvest: Record Shows That Nineteen Football Players Have been Killed in 1905
Football Year’s Death Harvest. Chicago Daily Tribune, 26 November 1905. “Record shows that nineteen [football] players have been killed; one hundred thirty-seven hurt…. Chancellor MacCracken of New York [University] calls for the reform or abolition of the game. Urges Harvard to lead the way. Telegraphs President Eliot [of Harvard University] asking him to call a conference of College Presidents to act.”
Continue reading...November 4, 1905
The Patent Medicine Conspiracy Against Freedom of the Press
Mark Sullivan, The Patent Medicine Conspiracy Against Freedom of the Press. Collier’s, 4 November 1905. “In the Lower House of the Massachusetts Legislature one day last March [1905] there was a debate which lasted one whole afternoon and engaged some twenty speakers, on a bill providing that every bottle of patent medicine sold in the State should bear a label stating the contents of the bottle…. The debate at times was dramatic–a member from Salem told of a young woman of his acquaintance now in an institution for inebriates as the end of an incident which began with patent medicine dosing for a harmless ill….In short, the debate was interesting and important–the two qualities which invariably ensure to any event big headlines in the daily newspapers. But that debate was not celebrated by big headlines, nor any headlines at all…. Now why? Why was this one subject tabooed?”
Continue reading...October 7, 1905
The Great American Fraud: the Patent Medicine Evil
Samuel Hopkins Adams, The Great American Fraud. Collier’s Weekly, 7 October 1905. “…[T]he introductory article of a [six-part] series…contain[s] a full explanation and exposure of patent-medicine methods, and the harm done to the public by this industry, founded mainly on fraud and poison. Results of the publicity given to these methods can already be seen in the steps recently taken by the National Government, some State Governments and a few of the more reputable newspapers. The object of the series is to make the situation so familiar and thoroughly understood that there will be a speedy end to the worst aspects of the evil.”
Continue reading...February 25, 1905
The Jungle: The Horrific Conditions of Labor and Meat Production in the Meatpacking Industry
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (link to Project Gutenberg). Appeared in Appeal to Reason in serial form between 25 February and 4 November 1905. Christopher Hitchens: “[Upton Sinclair’s] intention was to direct the conscience of [people in the US] to the inhuman conditions in which immigrant labor was put to work. However, so graphic and detailed were his depictions of the filthy way in which food was produced that his book sparked a revolution among consumers instead (and led at some remove to the passage of the [Pure Food and Drug Act] and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. He wryly said of this unintended consequence that he had aimed for the public’s heart but had instead hit its stomach.”
Continue reading...March 1, 1904
The Shame of the Cities
Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. March 1904. Introduction: “When I [Steffens] set out to describe the corrupt systems of certain typical cities, I meant to show simply how the people were deceived and betrayed. But in the very first study–St. Louis–the startling truth lay bare that corruption was not merely political; it was financial, commercial, social; the ramifications of boodle were so complex, various, and far-reaching, that one mind could hardly grasp them….” The seven articles in The Shame of the Cities appeared first in McClure’s in 1902 and 1903 in the following order: “Tweed Days in St. Louis;” “The Shame of Minneapolis: The Rescue and Redemption of a City That Was Sold Out;” “The Shamelessness of St. Louis” (a sequel to “Tweed Days”); “Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed;” “Philadelphia: Corrupt and Content;” “Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On;” and “New York: Good Government in Danger.”
Continue reading...November 1, 1902
The History of the Standard Oil Company
Ida M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company. 19-part series in McClure’s published from 1902-1904. Published as a book in 1904. “Written by journalist Ida Tarbell in 1904, The History of the Standard Oil Company was an exposé of the Standard Oil Company, run at that time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in America’s history. Originally serialized in 19 parts in McClure’s magazine, the book was a seminal example of muckraking (known today as “investigative journalism”) and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts. Trusts were large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust law in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries. The History of the Standard Oil Company was credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911.”
Continue reading...June 25, 1892
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. First published in The New York Age, 25 June 1892. From The Anti Lynching Pamphlets of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1920 by Patricia A. Schechter: “In order to launch resistance to lynching, [Ida B. Wells] had to prove that lynching’s primary victims, African American men, were people worthy of sympathy and citizens deserving protection. At the same time, she needed to present herself — an educated, middle-class Southern woman of mixed racial ancestry — as a credible dispenser of truth, a “representative” public figure able to command social and amoral authority. The context of racism and sexism in which she functioned made both tasks difficult. Wells-Barnett described lynching as an expression of conflict over rights, physical integrity, human dignity, and social power and the movement to end it was similarly fraught and contentious.”
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