"The January 1903 issue of McClure’s Magazine was the high-water mark of the Progressive Era investigative journalism known as muckraking. Muckrakers took on the corruption of turn-of-the-century America, digging into the pernicious influence of money on politics. Americans had long suspected that rich men bought the government. What else could explain the legislation that enabled industrialists to amass fortunes while their uneducated employees — including children — lost their youth, often their eyes or arms, and sometimes their lives on the work floor?

Muckrakers gave definitive shape to those vague suspicions. Deeply researched studies into the many facets of the link between business and government by journalists Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens galvanized regular Americans and inspired them to retake their nation."