THE "MUCK-RAKERS"

Before Roosevelt was inaugurated for his second term, the national "revival," in which he and Bryan and other preachers of civic virtue had played the speaking parts, was sweeping over the country. The menace of the trusts was seen and exaggerated as railways, corporations, and labor availed themselves of the means of coÖperation. The connection between the great financial interests and politics was believed to be dangerous to public welfare. All the mechanical reforms for the recovery of government by the people, that had been originated between 1889 and 1897, were revived once more, and there was added to confidence in them a widespread belief in the existence of a malevolent, plundering class.

It was not enough that the trust movement should be explained as an unavoidable development from modern communication. It was believed to constitute more than an economic evolution. The public was prone to place an ethical responsibility upon an individual or groups of individuals, and there came a series of revelations or exposures that appeared, in part, to fix the blame. All the old uprisings against boss-rule were revivified, and capitalistic control was placed upon the Index.

Miss Ida M. Tarbell, an historical student who had gained an audience through popular and discriminating lives of Napoleon and Lincoln, published a history of the Standard Oil Company in McClure's Magazine during 1903. She showed conclusively the connection between transportation and monopoly in the oil industry, revealing the mastery of the tools of transportation, by rebates, by control of tank cars, or by pipe lines, that had enabled John D. Rockefeller to establish his great trust. She showed also the unlovely methods of competition, long common to all business, but magnified by their use in the hands of a monopoly to establish itself. "What we are witnessing," wrote Washington Gladden a little later, "is a new apocalypse, an uncovering of the iniquity of the land.... We have found that no society can march hellward faster than a democracy under the banner of unbridled individualism."

Three years before Miss Tarbell displayed the tendency of the trusts, President Hadley, of Yale, had suggested that social ostracism, or social stigma, might be made an efficient tool for reform. Other writers used the tool. Lincoln Steffens, in a series of articles on "The Shame of the Cities," exposed the connection between graft and politics. Thomas Lawson, with spectacular exaggeration, laid the troubles of society at the feet of "Frenzied Finance." Collier's Weekly undertook to reveal the worthlessness and fraud in the trade in patent medicines. Many of the exposers encroached upon the fields of fiction in their work, while books of avowed fiction exploited the conditions they portrayed. Coniston, by Winston Churchill, was based upon the control of a State by a railroad boss. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the meat-packers.

A new journalism aided and was aided by the zeal to expose and the greed of the public for literature of exposure. In the later nineties city journalism was reorganized under the influence of the "yellow" papers, and sensational news was made a profitable commodity as never before. The range of the daily paper was, however, limited by a few hundred miles, and its influence could not become national. A new periodical literature, resembling the old literary monthlies, but using many timely and journalistic articles, sprang into life and gained national circulation and influence. S.S. McClure was one of its pioneers. Everybody's, the Cosmopolitan, Munsey's, the American, and weeklies like Collier's, the Outlook, and the Independent were among the journals that helped to spread the conclusions and advocate reforms. Besides these a horde of imitators fattened for a time upon exposure.

Journalism had a large part in directing the American revival, and private investigators furnished many of the facts. Public suits marked an attempt to act upon the facts and remedy them. In Missouri Joseph W. Folk conducted a series of prosecutions against grafters in St. Louis that elevated him in a few months to the head of his party and the governorship of his State. The Bureau of Corporations, attached to the new Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, made a series of reports the most notable of which showed that the charges against the Standard Oil Company for extorting rebates, and against the meat-packers for unsanitary conditions, were founded upon fact.

The most notable public exposure of indiscretion and wrongdoing in high finance occurred in New York. Here, during 1905, a quarrel over the management of the Equitable Life Insurance Company led to a legislative investigation by a so-called Armstrong Committee. One of the attorneys employed by the committee, Charles E. Hughes, soon became the spirit of the examination. One by one he called insurance officers to the witness stand, and drew from their reluctant lips the story of their relation to banking, to speculative finance, and to politics. He revealed the existence of a group among the bankers not unlike a money trust. He proved that for at least three national campaigns the insurance companies, like other corporations, had given heavy subsidies to the campaign funds, sometimes of both but always of the Republican party.

Whenever an investigator rose above the level and established his reputation for honesty and competence, the aroused public seized upon him for use in politics. In September, 1906, the Democrats of New York nominated the most successful of the sensational journalists, Hearst, for governor. On the same day the Republican Convention, in which no delegate had been instructed for him, nominated Hughes as governor of New York, because public opinion in the party would take no other candidate. Hughes was elected in 1906 and again in 1908, in spite of the hostility of Republican party leaders. His administrations were prophetic of the new spirit that was entering politics.

Many of the problems raised by the investigations were old and presented only a need for an honest enforcement of the law against law-breakers. Others were simple and prescribed their own methods of treatment. The evil of corporation contributions to campaign funds was met in 1907 by a law forbidding national banks to contribute to any election, or any corporations to contribute to a presidential or congressional election. In 1906 the gift of free railroad passes upon interstate railroads was prohibited by law. The presidential candidates in 1908 pledged themselves to publicity in the matter of contributions, while the complaints of poverty-stricken campaign managers in 1908 and 1912 indicated that the laws were generally obeyed. Still other problems raised large questions of scientific investigation and legislation.

The reaction from the carelessness revealed by the investigation of the meat-packers stimulated a pure-food movement that had had its advocates for many years. With the concentration of food manufacture and the increase in the consumption of "package products," the consumer had given up the preparation of his own food and thrown himself upon the dealer. The numerous domestic industries typical of the American family in 1880 had been sorted out. The sewing had gone to the sweat shop and the factory, the baking had gone to the public baker, the laundry was going, the killing and preservation of meat and the preparation of canned vegetables and fruits were nearly gone. Population followed the industries to work in the factories. Country life lost much of its variety and interest, while the congested masses in the cities were made dependent for their health and strength upon private initiative. Rigorous bills for the inspection of meats at the slaughter houses, and for the proper labeling of manufactured foods and medicines, were carried through Congress in 1906 on the strength of the popular revulsion against the manufacturers. Hereafter the Department of Agriculture stood between the people and their food. James Wilson, of Iowa, had been Secretary since 1897 and remained in the office until 1913. He and his subordinates, notably Dr. Harvey Wiley, in charge of the pure-food work, administered the law amid the proddings of consumers and the protests of manufacturers. With much complaint, but with little difficulty because of the consolidation of control, business adjusted itself to the new requirements and labels in the next few years.

The anti-railroad movement reminded the public that the Interstate Commerce Law of 1887 was an imperfect statute. It had always done less than its framers had intended. Judicial interpretation had limited its scope. The commission did not have power to fix a rate or to compel in the railroads the uniformity of bookkeeping without which no scientific rates could be established. After Roosevelt had directed his speeches of 1903 and 1904 to the subject, Congress responded to the public interest thus aroused with a flood of projected railroad bills. One of these passed the House of Representatives in 1905, but was held up in the Senate while a new investigation of interstate commerce, the most exhaustive since the Cullom investigation of 1885, was undertaken. In 1906 the Hepburn Railway Bill was passed. In its chief provisions it gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power to fix rates and to prescribe uniform bookkeeping, and it forbade railways to issue free passes or to own the freight they carried. The long railroad debate was made notable by the speeches of a new Senator, Robert M. LaFollette, of Wisconsin, who had fought his way to the governorship on this issue and gone through a prolonged fight with the railroads of his own State. He insisted that public rate-making could not succeed without a preliminary physical valuation of the roads that would show the extent of their real capitalization. He talked, often, to empty chairs in the Senate, but he prophesied that the people had a new interest in their affairs, and that many of the seats, vacant because of the indifference of their owners, would soon be filled with Senators of a new type. In vacations he spoke to public audiences on the same subject, reading his "roll-call," and telling the people how their representatives voted for or against commercial privilege. With its enlarged powers the Interstate Commerce Commission made rapid headway against rebates and discrimination.

The popular revival was well advanced by 1905, but was becoming more sensational every month. Led on by an expectant public, the magazines manufactured exposures to supply the market, and hysteria often took the place of investigation. The real needs of reform were in danger of being lost in a flood of denunciation. In the spring of 1906 President Roosevelt spoke out to check the indiscriminate abuse. He drew his topic from Bunyan's "Man with the Muck-Rake," pointed out that blame and exposure had run its course, and demanded that enforcement of the law be taken up, and that efforts be turned from destruction to construction. He had done much himself to "arouse the slumbering conscience of the nation," and turned now to direct it toward a permanent advantage.

The trend of criticism injured the party under whose administration corporate abuse had grown up. The personal popularity of Roosevelt, and his associates, Root, Taft, Knox, and Hughes, saved the party from defeat. In 1906 the congressional campaign was fought on the basis of holding on to prosperity, enforcing the law against all violators, and strengthening the hands of government. Roosevelt wrote the substance of the platform, and his party gained control of its sixth consecutive Congress since 1896. The canvass over, Roosevelt departed from an old precedent, left the territory of the United States, and visited the Isthmus of Panama to inspect the work on the canal.

Six months after the signing of the Panama Treaty in 1903 the United States took possession of the Canal Zone and began to dig. It had to learn lessons of both management and tropical engineering. One by one its chief engineers deserted the enterprise. The choice between a sea-level and a lock canal divided the experts. The legislation by Congress was inadequate. In the spring of 1906 Roosevelt, with the approval of Taft, who had been recalled from the Philippines to be Secretary of War, determined to build a lock canal. The President tramped over the workings in November, 1906, and sent an illustrated message about them to Congress on his return. In 1907 Major George W. Goethals was detailed from the army to be benevolent despot and engineer of the Canal Zone. Inspired and encouraged by repeated visits from Taft, the work now made rapid progress toward completion. Sir Frederick Treves, the great English surgeon, visited the canal in 1908, and found there not only gigantic engineering works, but a triumph for the preventive medicine of Colonel William C. Gorgas, chief of the sanitary officers.

The attention of the world, directed toward the United States since 1898, was held by the canal and by a continuation of a vigorous and open diplomacy. In February, 1904, Russia and Japan, unable to agree upon the conduct of the former in Manchuria, had gone to war. Hostilities had continued until Russian prestige was shattered and Japanese finance was wavering. In June, 1905, the United States directed identical notes to the belligerents, offering a friendly mediation. The invitation was accepted, and during the summer of 1905 the envoys of Russia and Japan met in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to conclude a treaty of peace. In 1906 the Nobel Committee awarded to Roosevelt the annual prize for services to peace.

Relations with all the world were friendly between 1905 and 1909. Great Britain contributed to the cordiality by sending to the United States as her ambassador the best-fitted of her subjects, James Bryce. Under his tactful management the next five years were a period of unprecedented friendship. The South American republics, always sensitive about the headship of the United States, were brought to kindlier feelings. There had been two congresses of all the Americas, one in 1889, at the instigation of Blaine, the next in Mexico in 1901. In 1906 the American republics convened at Rio de Janeiro in July. Secretary of State Elihu Root made a plea for friendship before this congress. From Rio he went to other capitals of South America, achieving notable triumphs in his public speeches.

The Pan-American Conference at Rio was an American preliminary to a larger meeting in which the United States played an important part in 1907. During 1904 Roosevelt had agreed to start a movement for a second conference at The Hague. He took up the negotiation during the Russo-Japanese War, deferred it at the instance of the Czar, and then stood aside to let the latter issue the formal invitation. The American delegation at the Second Hague Conference was led by Joseph H. Choate, leader of the American Bar and former ambassador to Great Britain. It forced the discussion throughout the session, tried in vain to produce an agreement to abolish the right of capture of enemy property on the high seas in time of war, and helped to strengthen the permanent court of arbitration. In January, 1906, the United States had sat in conference at Algeciras, over the affairs of Morocco. It had mediated in the Oriental war. It had strengthened its position at home. It was no longer true that the United States was entirely disinterested in the affairs of Europe, for it had become a world power.

A visible emblem of power was afforded to the world in 1907. Since the Treaty of Portsmouth there had been friction with Japan over the treatment of Japanese subjects on the Pacific Coast, and alarmists had drawn pictures of a possible war. Late in 1907 the President announced a practice voyage for the whole effective navy that would carry it around South America and into the Pacific. In December he reviewed the fleet, and saw it off from Hampton Roads. From the Pacific it was ordered round the world, visited Japan and China, and was received with keen interest everywhere. It came home early in 1909, having made a record for holding together without breakdown or accident.

While the fleet was going round the world and business was adjusting itself to the new constructive laws, an old problem was formally ended. The tribal sovereignty, which had made the Indians a problem, was terminated. The Dawes Act of 1887 had substituted severalty for tribal landholdings among the Indians. Out of the first cessions which followed the act Oklahoma Territory had been made in 1890. This had developed more rapidly than any previous Territory because of the railroads that crossed it in every direction. By 1900 it demanded statehood. In 1906 it was enabled, and during 1907 it was admitted, with the longest and most radical of state constitutions. Fear of the activities of corporate wealth and distrust of the agents of government were written into nearly every article.

In the spring of 1908 nearly all of the forty-six governors met with President Roosevelt in the White House and registered another problem upon which agitation and revelation had led to public reflection. The coal strikes of 1900 and 1902 had drawn attention to the possible relation of government to the coal supply of the people. The beginnings of reclamation in 1902 had revealed the fact that public reclamation was impeded by large private and corporate water rights. The natural resources of the country were seen to be following the course of all business and settling into the control of great corporations. The waste of coal and timber and water and land itself was unreasonable. The denudation of the hills led to terrible floods along the rivers. The future was being darkened by the organized selfishness of the present. A movement for conservation grew out of the conference of governors, but Congress for the present would not encourage it.

In popular education, in initiation of new administrative policies, and in the passage of constructive laws efforts were being made to adjust government to the needs of modern industry and to safeguard society. The business interests affected by the changes obstructed the process when they could, and were intensified in their opposition by the series of prosecutions brought by Attorney-General Knox, and his successor Charles J. Bonaparte, under the Sherman Law. At no time in the earlier history of this law had there been a strong disposition to test its merit, and no one of the notorious trusts had been attacked before the Northern Securities case. In later years it was turned against the Standard Oil Company, the beef-packers, the Tobacco Trust, the Sugar Trust, and the United States Steel Corporation, while railways and smaller corporations, in great number, were prosecuted. The enforcement of the law aroused blind opposition among many of the victims, and stimulated queries as to whether or not any attempt to limit the size of business was sound public policy. The debate upon regulation, as against prohibition of trusts and monopolies, ran on with no sign of victory for either side of the argument. Personal hostility against the Administration for applying the law gave color to the last two years of Roosevelt's Administration.

By 1907 there had been ten years of the prosperity that had begun with the election of McKinley. Finance had developed with industry and trade. The needs of corporations dealing in millions and hundreds of millions of capital had induced the consolidation of banks and the concentration of financial power in the hands of a small group of men. The holding companies were great aids in the furtherance of this concentration. J. Pierpont Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were best known as representative of the inner circle. Their speculations and investments were embarrassed by the weakening of public confidence. It was certain there would come a time when the whole surplus capital of the United States would be invested in permanent improvements. Such periods had followed eras of boom in 1837, 1857, and 1873. It was too probable that some accident occurring in the period of liquidation would create a panic. Suspicion had been directed against the controlling agents of business by the revelations of 1902-07. It was exaggerated by sensational journalism. It reached a climax in the fall of 1907 when a group of banks, reputed strong, failed through dishonesty and speculative management. The failure of the Mercantile National Bank and the suspension of the Knickerbocker Trust Company in New York brought the crisis on October 22, 1907. The loss to the public was lessened by resolute and sympathetic coÖperation among the clearing-houses, Morgan, Rockefeller, and the United States Treasury, but a period of enforced economy was begun for all.

The managers of big business attributed the panic to "Theodore the Meddler." They claimed that business was sound and honest, and the upheaval was caused by the agitation of demagogues. The President, they asserted, had destroyed confidence by his attack on the commercial class. Federal prosecutions, new laws, and the enforcement of inquisitorial pure-food regulations had made it impossible for business to live. "Let us alone," they cried.

They convinced only themselves, a small minority of the people of the United States. Since 1902 the people as a body, regardless of the great parties, had opened their eyes to the trend of business and had decided that public authority must be summoned to the defense of democracy. The independent vote broke away from each party in increasingly numerous cases. The old American view that democracy meant unrestrained individualism had given way to the newer view that democratic opportunity was dependent upon the restriction of monopoly. The ostensible leaders, from the President down, were only the mouths that spoke the new language. Without them the same condition would have existed in large degree. The attack of the financial interests and Wall Street upon the President only convinced the people that the Roosevelt policies were, on the whole, their policies, and that individual interest and party machinery must give way to their attainment.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE