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convention, in which Judge Parker notified his party of his repudiation of the Bryan doctrine of free silver. The political depression of the Democrats is indicated by the fact that some of them talked seriously of a fourth nomination of Grover Cleveland, as the only person who could beat Roosevelt.

The struggle for the votes in 1904 was one-sided in that the personality of Judge Parker was no match for that of President Roosevelt. The Democratic Party had no principles that were not more attractively stated in either the Republican platform or the speeches of the President, and the country was still rioting in the prosperity that had dominated the preceding campaign. Not until the last of the canvass did any matter of genuine interest appear. Then came an episode, as a consequence of which, says John Hay, Judge Parker "was called a liar, and a malignant liar, and a knowing and conscious liar," by the President.

funds

The issue involved had been hinted at by Democratic speakers throughout the canvass. They had complained that Cortelyou, Roosevelt's campaign manager, had as Campaign Secretary of Commerce and Labor been in a position through his Bureau of Corporations to examine the private accounts of big business. They charged that the great corporations were giving freely to the Republican campaign fund, and they insinuated as directly as they dared that in this connection there was an opportunity for possible blackmail. On the last day of October Judge Parker, speaking in Madison Square Garden, denounced Cortelyou's campaign fund as a scandal and repeated the insinuation as to his methods. To this President Roosevelt replied in a resounding and indignant denial of the fact and the inference. Whether the Democratic inference of blackmail was correct or not, the fact was that great corporations, following their usual practice, had made large gifts. George W. Perkins soon admitted making a contribution of nearly fifty thousand dollars on behalf of the New York Life Insurance Company, and other contributions were subsequently brought to light in the Senate investiga

tion of 1912. In 1907 Congress forbade any federal corporation to contribute to any campaign fund, and any corporation to contribute toward the election of a President, a Senator, or a Representative.

The attack of Judge Parker created a ripple of interest, but was more than offset, for the time being, by Roosevelt's denial and his appeal to "all men of common sense and "all honest men." No President had ever received so large a majority as Roosevelt did in 1904. Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate, ran third with six hundred thousand votes.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The works listed under Chapter XXX are useful here also. Herbert Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna (1912), is a vivid historical reconstruction, considering that Hanna left almost no collected papers. The Wisconsin movement may be watched in Robert M. La Follette, Autobiography (1913). Joseph G. Cannon is now (1920) publishing chapters of his own autobiography. J. L. Laughlin and H. P. Willis, Reciprocity (1903), contains materials on the Cuban problem.

Public

business

CHAPTER XXXII

MUCKRAKING AND THE NEW STANDARDS

THE attack upon big business directed by Roosevelt in 1902 and 1903 was the first and the heaviest of the shocks that destroyed the complacency of the American opinion and spirit and introduced a period of suspicion and distrust. The America of the nineties was impregnated with what some critics described as gross materialism. The history of the nation had seen the rewards of life fall to the individual with spirit and ingenuity. The frontier ideal had everywhere prevailed, and had gloried in the successful surmounting of obstacles. The road from the log cabin to the White House had been traveled more than once, and the other road that led to wealth and business influence was beaten broad and smooth. Public opinion looked upon the successful man as a desirable asset in society. Individuals looked forward to success for themselves as a reasonable expectation, and the resulting popular confidence in personal achievement produced a spirit of complacency in the presence of material comfort. The inspiring careers of the captains of the industrial development lost much of their luster as the spirit got abroad that business was corrupt, and that success was often founded upon unfair practices.

Before the mechanism for the control of trusts could be created, the public had to be shown that the trusts were bad enough to need control. Criminal prosecutions and public attacks directed from the seats of the mighty helped to accomplish this. The period of suspicion was hastened by the advent of a literature of exposure that dragged unsightly practices from the seclusion of private business and invested them with a public interest. It was a short step for public opinion, from its stand that the trust must obey the law, to its new stand that, in a great strike, the interests of the

direct combatants are less than those of the general public; and from this to its new position that all business that affects the public is the public's business.

The Roosevelt Administration witnessed the development of the literature of exposure as it passed from sensation to sensation, and ended in a riot among the unsightly facts that suggested the name of "muckraking" to cover the process. It beheld as well an improvement in standards of taste and a broadening of appreciation in literature and art. It saw also a revival of interest in education and in the sciences that bear upon the facts of life. The practice of government began to change, under the influence of nonpolitical experts whose decisions were more and more based upon scholarly judgments, and whose number increased with each new function of supervision assumed by the United States.

New types

ism

A new national journalism was the vehicle of the muckrakers. The American newspaper passed through one stage in its development with the group of great editors that arose after the Civil War - Greeley of journaland Reid, Bowles, Halstead, Horace White, and Henry Watterson. The vogue of the personal editors weakened in the eighties as new habits in advertising and new methods of handling news through the press associations threw their influence in favor of local and colorless journalism founded upon the interests of the business office. In the nineties no American journal had an influence such as Horace Greeley exerted for a generation with his weekly Tribune. The new journals of local gossip founded by Hearst and his imitators substituted thrill and flavor for influence and sound knowledge, and did little to help in the formation of an enlightened public opinion.

The mechanical devices of the printing trade made possible new results in the printing of periodicals. The half-tone process and the zinc etching made their appearance in the eighties, followed by illustration on a scale of accuracy and beauty hitherto unknown. The improvements in transportation widened the range and ease of

distribution, and prepared the way for a type of journalism that was represented by McClure's Magazine, in 1893.

The tencent magazines

The story of the ten-cent magazines has to do with the widening of interest in forms of literature higher than the daily press. The old literary magazines kept to their policy and their higher prices in spite of the new competition. The Atlantic, Harper's Monthly, Century, and Scribner's Magazine had established definite reputations before S. S. McClure organized the new invasion of the field. McClure's Monthly, Munsey's, and The Cosmopolitan were the chief members of the new periodical group that reached out for the news-stand trade at a nominal price, and that sought for literary wares of interest to the new clientèle.

The limitations of this clientèle are discussed in the autobiography of S. S. McClure. The range included the great middle class capable of larger interests than the ephemeral daily press could satisfy, yet not up to as high standards as the readers of the Atlantic and Harper's. The Century Magazine had come in contact with this class to its great financial profit when in the eighties it ran its two serials, the "Biography of Lincoln," by Nicolay and Hay, and the "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," by the leaders themselves. The new cheap magazines made deliberate search for articles that should be universal in their appeal, and hence marketable over the whole country. They needed also to be obvious in their significance, for the profits of the business depended upon reaching a public unaccustomed to serious reading. A thrill of some sort was indispensable. The yellow journals were already flourishing upon the appetite of society for exciting news. The ideal material for the new periodicals combined universality with obvious clearness, and some of the element that came to be known as "punch."

Ida M.
Tarbell

McClure was the leader among the new periodical journalists and early in his career discovered the greatest of his co-editors, Ida M. Tarbell. Two serials by this young historian, covering the lives of Lincoln

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