The Muckrakers 557contributions. The working and living conditions of
slum dwellers remained abominable, and the child
labor problem was particularly acute; in 1900 about
1.7 million children under the age of sixteen were
working full time—more than the membership of the
American Federation of Labor. In addition, laws reg-
ulating the hours and working conditions of women
in industry were inadequate, and almost nothing had
been done, despite the increased use of dangerous
machinery in the factories, to enforce safety rules or
to provide compensation or insurance for workers
injured on the job. As the number of professionally
competent social workers grew, the movement for
social welfare legislation gained momentum.
America was becoming more urban, more indus-
trial, more mechanized, more centralized—in short,
more complex. This trend put a premium on effi-
ciency and cooperation. It seemed obvious to the
progressives that people must become more socially
minded, and the economy more carefully organized.
By attracting additional thousands of sympathizers
to the general cause of reform, the return of prosperity
after 1896 fueled the progressive movement. Good
times made people more tolerant and generous. As
long as profits were on the rise, the average employer
did not object if labor improved its position too.
Middle-class Americans who had been prepared to go
to the barricades in the event of a Bryan victory in
1896 became conscience-stricken when they compared
their own comfortable circumstances with those of the
“huddled masses” of immigrants and native-born poor.
Giant industrial and commercial corporations
undermined not so much the economic well-being as
the ambitions and sense of importance of
the middle class. What owner of a small
mill or shop could now hope to rise to
the heights attained by Carnegie or mer-
chants like John Wanamaker and
Marshall Field? The growth of large
labor organizations worried such types.
In general, character and moral values
seemed less influential; organizations—
cold, impersonal, heartless—were com-
ing to control business, politics, and too
many other aspects of life.
Protestant pastors accustomed to
the respect and deference of their flocks
found their moral leadership challenged
by materialistic congregations who did
not even pay them decent salaries.
College professors worried about their
institutions falling under the sway of
wealthy trustees who had little interest
in or respect for learning. Lawyers had
been “the aristocracy of the United
States,” James Bryce recalled in 1905; they were now
merely “a part of the great organized system of indus-
trial and financial enterprise.”
The middle classes could support reform mea-
sures without feeling that they were being very radical
because they were resisting change and because the
intellectual currents of the time harmonized with
their ideas of social improvement and the welfare
state. The new doctrines of the social scientists, the
Social Gospel religious leaders, and the philosophers
of pragmatism provided a salubrious climate for pro-
gressivism. Many of the thinkers who had formulated
these doctrines in the 1880s and 1890s turned to the
task of putting them into practice in the new century.
Their number included the economist Richard T. Ely,
the philosopher John Dewey, and the Baptist clergy-
man Walter Rauschenbusch, a civic reformer who
wrote many books extolling the Social Gospel.The Muckrakers
As the diffuse progressive army gradually formed its
battalions, a new journalistic fad brought the move-
ment into focus. For many years magazines had been
publishing articles discussing current political,
social, and economic problems. Henry Demarest
Lloyd’s first blast at the Standard Oil monopoly
appeared in the Atlantic Monthlyin 1881. Over the
years the tempo and forcefulness of this type of liter-
ature increased. Then, in the fall of 1902, McClure’s
began two particularly hard-hitting series of articles,
one on Standard Oil by Ida Tarbell, the other on
big-city political machines by Lincoln Steffens.These children in Baltimore (1909) pull the stringy parts from beans in preparation for
canning. Photographs such as this one were enlisted in support of laws preventing young
children from being exploited as laborers.