Claude (18:38)

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Lindsey Graham (19:22)

In the early 1900s, a new generation of crusading journalists began to capture the nation's attention by digging up dirt on big business and government. President Theodore Roosevelt would later brand them as muckrakers, accusing them of focusing on dirt and muck rather than finding solutions. These journalists published shocking stories of corruption in cheap mass market magazines, including McClures, Cosmopolitan, and Colliers, shedding light on crooked politicians, criminal police, and the exploitation of children in sweatshops, factories and mines. And the mudslinging magazines they wrote for waged aggressive circulation wars as readers devoured accounts confirming their worst fears about modern society. Spearheading the muckraking movement was editor Samuel McClure of McClure's magazine. He recognized the public's appetite for information on the inner workings of American institutions, and in 1901 he hired a New York City newspaper reporter named Lincoln Steffens to his staff to dig in. Steffens was initially reluctant to leave a newspaper for a magazine, but his discussions with McClure convinced him that the monthly magazine format would offer Steffens the space to tell the whole completed story. At McClure's, Steffens was thrilled to find himself among a group of tenacious reporters and editors. He recalled that arriving at the magazine was like springing up from a bed and diving into the lake. He described his new boss, Samuel McClure's aggressive approach, writing, he was a flower that did not sit and wait for the bees to come and take his honey. He flew forth to find and rob the bees, and McClure expected his reporters to take the same approach. At the end of 1901, McClure approached Steffens at his desk and told him, you can't learn to edit a magazine here in the office. Get out of here, buy a railroad ticket, get on a train, and there, where it lands you, there you will learn to edit a magazine. Steffens followed this advice, and in the spring of 1902, he bought a train ticket to St. Louis, Missouri, then the fourth largest city in America, whose rapid growth had made it a magnet for corruption. Steffens worked with the city's newly elected district attorney to uncover the details of how city officials accepted bribes from business leaders in exchange for favorable laws. In the fall of 1902, Steffens published his findings in McClure's. The article was an instant success, and editor Samuel McClure decided to build an entire series around municipal corruption. Steffens traveled to another half dozen major American cities looking for dirt and. And he soon found it in Minneapolis, where he discovered that illegal gambling dens, opium houses, and unlicensed saloons paid weekly bribes to the police in exchange for their protection. This money was then divided between the mayor, his associates, and the police captains. Steffens piece on Minneapolis made headlines across the country, and fellow reporters praised Steffens for performing a public service. While readers invited Steffens to uncover corruption in their own cities, more articles followed with titles including A City Ashamed, Philadelphia Content and Corrupt and Chicago Half Free and Fighting On. And during these many investigations, Steffens refined his interviewing technique by sharing small tidbits of information and implying he already knew the full story. He convinced politicians, business heavyweights, and criminals alike to reveal more than they intended. His ability to make subjects talk became legendary. By 1904, Steffens had enough material to collect his articles into a book, the Shame of Cities. By exposing the crooked dealings and nefarious ties between big business and politics in several cities, he showed that corruption was not a local problem, but a national crisis. Writing the spirit of graft and of lawlessness is the American spirit. And he warned that he was undermining democracy, declaring that it was literally changing the form of our government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy representative of special interests. But Steffens was not the only crusading muckraker journalist. While he investigated corruption in American cities, his colleague Ida Tarble was on a mission to uncover corruption in one of America's largest corporations. Tarble had become a Kluwer star writer after she wrote a series on Abraham Lincoln, which nearly doubled its circulation. But in 1902, she set her sights on the Standard Oil Company, calling it the mother of Trusts. It was a topic close to home. Tarble was born in 1857 in a log cabin in western Pennsylvania's oil region. Her father, Frank, toiled for years building oil storage tanks, but his income grew once he switched to oil production and Refining, she wrote, there was ease such as we had never known, luxuries we had never heard of. But everything changed in 1871, Tarble recalled of the area she grew up in. Suddenly, this gay, prosperous town received a blow between the eyes. That blow came from a shrewd young businessman named John D. Rockefeller and his newly incorporated Standard Oil Company. 14 year old tarble watched as Rockefeller came to town and gave her father and dozens of other small oil producers an ultimatum. Sell their business or face ruin. The men who accepted buyouts became rich. Tarble's father Frank refused to sell, determined to remain independent. But competing with Rockefeller proved impossible. And Frank Tarble's company suffered when his business partner committed suicide. Frank was forced to mortgage the family home to cover his debts. Ida Tarble recalled the pain of her family's ruin. Out of the alarm and bitterness and confusion I gathered from my father's talk a conviction to which I still hold that what had been undertaken was wrong. So 30 years later, Tarble resolved to expose the corrupt business practices that built Standard Oil. Her father warned her that Rockefeller would crush her just as he had crushed their town. But Tarble was prepared to be as relentless as her subject. She began her research by securing an interview with an executive at Standard Oil named Henry H. Rogers through his good friend, author Mark Twain. Rogers mistakenly believed Tarble was writing a flattering piece. And after meeting regularly over the course of months, Rogers and Tarble developed a warm relationship. Rogers even shared internal documents with Tarble and explained how Standard Oil took over the industry by using secret rebates. Tarble learned that Rockefeller had arranged for railroads to ship Standard Oil products at lower rates than his competitors, giving his company a major cost advantage. For two years, Tarble meticulously analyzed public records, uncovering a vast amount of information on Rockefeller's rise and Standard Oil's own underhanded tactics. One key breakthrough came from a Standard Oil office boy who was tasked with destroying records every night while going about his duties. He recognized the name of his Sunday school teacher on several documents. This teacher also happened to be a rival oil refiner. And the documents showed that railroads were warning Standard Oil about the rival refiners shipments in advance. It was conclusive evidence that Standard Oil was colluding with with railroads to snuff out the competition. The boy gave the documents to his teacher, who passed them on to Tarble. And after reviewing them, she realized she finally had hard proof confirming her suspicions about the company behind her family's ruin. Imagine it's February 1904 in New York City. You're an executive at Standard Oil, and you're sitting across from Ida Tarble in your office at the company headquarters in Lower Manhattan. You fling an issue of McClures down on the polished coffee table. It's open to her latest article titled Cutting to Kill. You rise and pace in front of your desk, barely able to control your anger. Now, miss, how the hell did you get this information? Marble sits up straight in the tufted armchair across from the coffee table, her hands neatly folded in her lap. You know very well I cannot reveal my sources. But you also know that everything I wrote is true. Ah, so now you decided to be a model of discretion. You release private corporate correspondence for the world to see. Well, the public needs to know. You stare at her in disbelief. The documents and records that Tarble has dug up were supposed to have been buried, destroyed. Your jaw tightens. So it's your job, huh, to decide what is public and what is private? It's my job to uncover as much information as I can. Especially when a business as big as yours is engaged in corporate espionage. Now, this is absurd. I invited you into my home. I fed you at my dinner table. I answered all your questions frankly, in a spirit of honesty. And this is how you repay me? No, you lied to me. You told me that Standard Oil only engages in legitimate forms of competition. But this, this isn't competition. It's annihilation. I should never have trusted you. Never have brought you in my home. Well, from your point of view, I would agree. Get out. Tarble continues to lock eyes with you as she stands and smooths her skirt, then walks out the door. You grip the edges of your desk, your knuckles whitening. For the first time in your career at Standard Oil, you find yourself playing defense. Beginning in November 1902, McClures published Ida Tarble's articles as a 19 part series. Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers had continued speaking to Tarble up until the February 1904 installment of the magazine. She remembered how Roger's face went white with rage when he realized that she had unearthed proof that Standard Oil was continuing to engage in corporate espionage. He refused to speak with her again after this. Later in 1904, Tarble's series was compiled into a book titled the History of the Standard Oil Company. Tarble wrote it in simple but dramatic prose, but her greatest skill was her ability to translate complex business maneuvers into a compelling narrative for the public. She concluded the series with a detailed character study of Rockefeller, calling him money mad, a hypocrite, and a living mummy. She wrote, our national life is on every side, distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner for the kind of influence he exercises. Editor Samuel McClure was thrilled with his reporter's popularity with the public. He told her, people universally speak of you with such irreverence that and I'm getting sort of afraid of you. Tarble's book, the History of the Standard Oil Company, became a landmark piece of investigative journalism, fueling public distrust of Standard Oil and building support for government regulation of big business. And calls for corporate regulation would grow more insistent during President Roosevelt's second term. One month after McClures published the final installment of Tarble series, President Roosevelt achieved a sweeping victory in the election of 1904. He secured 336 electoral votes, while the lackluster Democratic nominee, New York Judge Alton Parker, won just 140. This was the highest number of electoral votes won by any candidate to date. So after stepping into the role in the wake of President McKinley's assassination, Theodore Roosevelt had now been elected in his own right, and he entered his second term ready to step up his demands for corporate control. But his hunger for reform would pit him against the powerful conservatives who controlled Congress and their allies in business, who were determined to preserve the status quo at any cost. If you have a locked AT&T phone we're here with bolt cutters. T mobile will help pay off your locked phone and give you a new 5G phone for free. All on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com carrierfreedom via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days free phone up to 830 via 24 monthly bill credits plus tax and a 10 device connection charge qualifying port and trade in service on Go 5G next and credit required.

Claude (31:02)

Contact us before canceling entire account to.

Lindsey Graham (31:04)

Continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on required finance agreement as do you have bill credits and if you pay off devices early. As a contractor for the nsa, Edward Snowden had access to a range of top secret government programs. But as he learned more about these clandestine operations, he came to understand a devastating secret the government was conducting mass surveillance on its citizens. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, whistleblower Edward Snowden changes the national conversation about privacy on the Internet as he risks his own freedom and his family's well being. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. On the heels of a resounding election victory, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed sweeping reforms. In his annual message to Congress in December 1904, he demanded bold new policies to restore fairness in American society, including federal oversight of labor and business, railroad safety regulations, urban renewal projects, and improved education and recreation opportunities for city children. And he encouraged immigration, saying it made no difference what country people came from as long as they were what he called the right kind of people, those capable of becoming good American citizens. But Capitol Hill was dominated by an old guard of conservative Republicans resistant to change. They were led by the multimillionaire Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. Aldrich's only daughter had married J.D. rockenfeller's only son, a union that epitomized the tight bonds between politics and big business. And he used his control of vast sums of corporate campaign money to force legislators to do his bidding. In the House, Congressman Joseph Cannon, known as Uncle Joe, served as speaker. But despite his avuncular nickname, he ruled with an iron fist to make sure that the legislative agenda remained in conservative hands. Despite this opposition in Congress, though, President Roosevelt forged ahead with his agenda, determined to use his bully pulpit to push for reform. In 1905, he traveled the country campaigning for the regulation of railroads, then America's largest industry. For years, railroad companies have given unfair advantages in shipping rates to certain companies while hiking rates for others. Roosevelt wanted the government to end such preferential treatment and set maximum shipping rates. Roosevelt's push for reforms coincided with a series of scandals that were splashed across the pages of magazines and newspapers. Americans read about bribery trials in California and Pennsylvania and allegations against a US Senator from Texas accused of corrupt involvement in a subsidiary of Standard Oil. In New York, a young lawyer named Charles Evans Hughes uncovered shocking ties between political parties and gas and insurance companies. Another reporter recalled, a large number of thoughtful Americans were growing increasingly anxious or indignant about the lawless conditions existing in so many walks of our life. So, with popular support for reform surging, Roosevelt's campaign for railroad regulation came to fruition in January 1906, when the House passed the Hepburn act to empower the toothless Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad shipping rates. But the bill stalled in the Senate until, in the middle of Senate debates, Cosmopolitan magazine launched a series called the Treason of the Senate. Over the course of nine articles, best selling novelist David G. Phillips Accused the vast majority of US Senators of being pawns of big business. He wrote, treason is a strong word, but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager agent of interests. As hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, these articles doubled cosmopolitan circulation and greatly increased American suspicion of the Senate. But president Roosevelt was horrified by the coverage. The Hepburn act already faced stiff opposition in the Senate, and he needed to win over senators, not alienate them. So, fearing these articles might threaten his legislative agenda, he lashed out. In April, in a speech in which he gave the muckrakers their name, he compared investigative journalists to the man with a muckrake in John Bunyan's novel Pilgrim's Progress, A character who's fixated on the filth on the floor lore. He accused these journalists of reporting only what is vile and debasing, Rather than offering any solutions. Many writers and editors felt deeply betrayed by Roosevelt's criticism. In the aftermath of his speech, publishers lost their appetite for muckraking journalism and commissioned fewer exposes. But Roosevelt could not have battled Congress if the muck raking press had not galvanized public opinion in favor of reform. One newspaper observed, congress might ignore a president, but could not ignore a president and the people. So faced with a determined president, a crusading press, and an angry populace. After some minor horse trading on tariff legislation, Nelson Aldrich and his Republican followers relented, and the Senate finally passed the hepburn act on May 18, 1906. But the spirit of reform would not stop with just the railroads and the Hepburn act. That spring, the American people found a new focus for their outrage following the publication of Upton Sinclair's sensational novel, the Jungle. This book followed the life of a Lithuanian immigrant working in the Chicago meatpacking industry. Sinclair intended to convert Americans to socialism by depicting the exploitation of immigrant workers, but instead, readers focused on his graphic descriptions of filthy meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses. Sinclair described walls stained with animal blood, rotten beef treated with chemicals, and dead rats mixed into sausage meat. Workers with tuberculosis cough and spat blood onto the floors and used open latrines necks to process meat. Responding to the outcry his novel caused, Sinclair quipped that he aimed at the heart of the American people and instead hit their stomach. The shocking details Sinclair had exposed lent publicity and momentum to the food safety movement. For years, reporters, food scientists, and middle class women had pushed for government regulation of food, drinks and medication. In the early 1900s, food and milk tainted with formaldehyde killed thousands of infants. A year Packaging fraud was rampant, with manufacturers marketing brick dust as cinnamon and sold colored corn syrup as honey. But for years, federal legislation to regulate the food and drug industry had started, all due to corporate influence in Congress. But now, amid growing public outcry over the grisly details in the jungle, President Roosevelt believed he again had the upper hand. Imagine it's May 26, 1906 in Washington D.C. you're a congressman from Illinois and the speaker of the House and you've come to the White House to speak with President Roosevelt about a bill to regulate the meatpacking industry. You're joined by two fellow congressmen and as you step into Roosevelt's office, the President gives you a warm handshake and a hearty clap on the back. Now, welcome gentlemen. Please have a seat. Roosevelt ushers you into three rocking chairs across from his desk and then sits down to face you. You take off your hat and give him a thin lip smile. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Chicago's in an uproar. All this hullablue just because some writer wanted to sell novels. And now we have this cockamamie meat inspection bill. Roosevelt picks up a thick dog eared report and drops it in the center of the desk. Well, I've read the Senate bill, but I've also read this. My inspectors just returned from Chicago and what they found would curl the toes of an alley rat. That's all exaggerations, I'm sure. I don't think so. I ate this slop in Cuba. Canned meat was part of our army rations. Sometimes it was so bad you'd rather go hungry. I say enough is enough. I want you gentlemen to pass this bill. Pass the bill. With all due respect, Mr. President, this would crush the meat packers. If we saddle them with the cost of compliance, they'll be forced to pass the burden on to the consumers. Prices will skyrocket. Demand for US exports would disappear. Everyone would suffer. We're talking unemployment, hunger. You think high prices are going to kill exports? Wait until the Europeans get their hands on this report. Once they see what's really on their dinner plates, they won't buy a single pound of American meat. Then the meat packers will discover the true meaning of hardship. Mr. President, you can't go blowing up an entire industry. Nope. I'm giving you a choice, gentlemen. Pass the Senate's bill and we'll keep this crisis contained. But refuse and I'll release this entire report to the newspapers so the public and the world can read every nauseating detail. The congressman beside you lean forward, exchanging nervous glances, you pick up your hat and stand. Well, thank you for your time, Mr. President. Thank you for yours. I trust you'll make the right decision. You lead your colleagues out of Roosevelt's office. You refuse to give the President the satisfaction of a concession. But as much as you hate to admit it, you know that he has you cornered. President Roosevelt was one of just many Americans who had read the Jungle in the spring of 1906, and although he opposed the book's socialist themes, he was concerned about the book's description of the meatpacking industry. So he sent two government inspectors to Chicago to corroborate Sinclair's account. The inspectors did, writing we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables, rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, gathering dirt, splinters, fluoro filth, and the expectoration of tuberculosis. Then, meeting with legislators, Roosevelt threatened to release the full report to the public if they continued holding up a meat inspection bill languishing in Congress. This ultimatum broke the logjam. On June 30, 1906, Roosevelt signed two landmark bills into law. The Meat Inspection act established sanitary standards for meat processing and shipments and the Pure Food and Drug act created the Food and Drug Administration, the fda, and banned misbranded and adulterated food, medicines and liquor in interstate commerce. But new federal corporate regulation and consumer protection laws were by no means addressing all the ills of American society. The efforts of reconstruction to build an equitable nation had ended almost three decades ago without significant result. And despite despite the success of the growing progressive movement, black Americans felt excluded. Their own demands for change met with silence and hostility from one to eat. This is episode two of our five part series the Progressive Era from American Historytellers on the next episode Panic on Wall street forces President Theodore Roosevelt to turn to America's biggest bankers for help. Racial terror in the streets gives rise to American new era in the movement for civil rights and progressives fight to protect women in the workplace. If you like American Historytellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondry.com survey American Historytellers is hosted, edited and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship Audio editing by Christian Paraga Sound design by Molly Bach Supervising Sound Designer Matthew Filler Music by Thrum this episode is written by Ellie Stanton Edited by Dorian Marina Produced by Alida Ryazanski Managing Producer Desi Blaylock, senior Managing Producer Callum Plews senior Producer Andy Herman and executive producers are Jamie Lauer, Beckman, Marsha Louie and Aaron o' Flaherty For Wondery.

Claude (43:15)

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