MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE (1893–1929)
“Capitalists, workingmen, politicians, citizens—all breaking the law, or letting it be broken. Who is left to uphold
it? There is no one left; none but all of us.” (McClure’s
Magazine, January 1903, 336) These fighting words from
Ulster-born Samuel Sidney McClure initiated Progressiveera agitation in which muckraking reporters used a journalism to expose how industrializing America threatened
the rights of its most vulnerable citizens. In January 1903,
Ida Tarbell’s article on the Standard Oil Trust, Lincoln
Steffens’s attack on municipal lawlessness, and Ray Stannard Baker’s story of suffering among coal miners opened a
new era in the magazine’s battle against corrupt power and
encouraged competing magazines to take public service
seriously and join in the struggle.
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the
nation’s population increased 50 percent, national wealth
doubled, and consumer goods reached $25 billion annually. High-speed presses, halftone photoengraving, rural
free delivery, and reduced postal rates made magazines
attractive for advertisers. With $7,300 in seed money from
Phillips and his syndicate, McClure marketed his monthly
magazine at fifteen cents, less than half the price of Harper’s, Century, Scribner’s, and the Atlantic Monthly. Initially,
he aimed to bring the best in biography, science, and fiction
to a wide readership, but the enterprise began badly and the
magazine lost $80,000 during its first year and half. His
enthusiasm undiminished, McClure remained determined
to offer “noble entertainment” and “worthy knowledge” to
“uplift, refresh and encourage all who read it” (McClure
Papers. Correspondence. Box 3. Folder 7. Lilly Library.
Indiana University). By late 1894, McClure’s circulation
began its rise from forty-five thousand to eighty thousand
with sixty pages of advertising per issue. Cosmopolitan,
Munsey’s, Godey’s, and Peterson’s soon joined McClure’s
in offering mass marketed monthlies for subscription costs
of a dollar a year.
McClure sustained circulation gains with writers who
could “seize hold of new, complex ideas” while “studying them down to the bottom and putting them in readable
prose.” (Lyon 1963, 116) A heavily illustrated seven-part
series on Napoleon, and a two-volume work on Abraham
Lincoln, raised readership in December 1895 to three hundred thousand. McClure’s, which publicized inventors and
ran lengthy interviews with Thomas Edison and Alexander
Graham Bell, was among the first publications to appreciate Marconi’s work in wireless, the Wright Brothers early
experiments in manned flight, and the social significance
of the horseless carriage. Acquisition editor Viola Rosebore
promoted high quality fiction by publishing the work of Stephen Crane, Jack London, O. Henry, Rex Beach, Bret Harte,
Willa Cather, Booth Tarkington, and Hamlin Garland.
McClure presented “the latest in politics, finance, education, health and science” told in a way that would capture a
national following (Wilson 1970, 104–105). In spring, 1901,
McClure directed his staff to investigate the role of trusts in
American business practices. Tarbell took the lead, gathering information on Standard Oil, the largest of all trusts, the
company that had been responsible for driving her father
and other competing oilmen into bankruptcy. Her pathbreaking series first appeared in 1902, and exposed John
D. Rockefeller’s top secret “Cleveland Plan,” a monopoly
built on illegal rebates and drawbacks. It served as a template for investigative journalism in McClure’s and among
its competitors, and eventually led to action by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1911 that broke up the Standard Oil trust.
In 1904, Burton J. Kendrick followed Tarbell by exposing
fraud within the life insurance industry. During the same
period, Baker attacked racism, mob violence, and lynching.
Samuel Hopkins Adams investigated miscarriages of justice across the South and the role of unsanitary conditions
in promoting contagious diseases. Steffens, in the meantime, exposed municipal mismanagement from St. Louis to
New York City.
At the height of its influence, McClure’s suffered twin
defeats in 1906 that greatly influenced its future. President
Roosevelt had been an early and enthusiastic supporter of
its reform-minded journalism, but in April he criticized
“muckrakers” for what he saw as their determination to dig
up dirt on people in public life. Although not intended as a
direct attack on McClure’s, the widely publicized remarks
put many Progressive Era publications on the defensive.
McClure’s visionary plans to launch another popular magazine, a book reprint business, and his long absences from
New York, further alienated his staff. John Phillips and Tarbell, who were heavily financially invested in the magazine,
offered to buy him out. When he refused, they bolted, taking Baker and Steffens with them. Together they launched
a competing magazine, the American Chronicle. McClure’s
would never again reclaim its status as the nation’s leading
progressive publication.
Between 1906 and 1911 McClure rebuilt his staff and
attempted to continue the magazine’s commitment to investigative journalism. He made Willa Cather his managing
editor. George K. Turner’s articles on the links between
political corruption, organized crime, and prostitution led in
1910 to a Congressional ban on the transportation of women
across state lines for purposes of prostitution. Other articles
advocated conservation, public health, and penal reforms.
In the fall of 1911, McClure lost control of the magazine but
the publication continued for another eighteen years. In its
final days it was a women’s magazine pushing consumerism
behind front covers of Gibson Girls, and offering “reckless,
irrepressible youth” ads for “modern rouge that stays on
no matter what one does!” (McClure’s Magazine, January
1923, inside back cover).
In old age, McClure reconciled with key members of his
staff and they warmly remember the days in which their
work set a standard of excellence in journalism’s effort to
cultivate a civil society that would protect its most vulnerable members.
Further Reading
Baker, Ray Stannard. American Chronicle: The Autobiography
of Ray Stannard Baker. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1945.
Evensen, Bruce J. “The Evangelical Origins of the Muckrakers.”
American Journalism, Winter 1989.
Evensen, Bruce J. “The Media and Reform, 1900–1917.” In The
Age of Mass Communication, edited by Wm. David Sloan.
Northport, AL: Vision Press, 1998.
Filler, Louis. The Muckrakers: Crusaders for American Liberalism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
Lyon, Peter. Success Story: The Life and Times of S.S. McClure.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963.
McClure, S.S. My Autobiography. New York: Frederick Ungar,
1963.
McClure Publishing Company Archives, Special Collections
Department, University of Delaware Library, Newark.
Moers, Ellen. “The Tradition of McClure’s.” Commentary, April
1964.
Papers of Samuel Sidney McClure, Manuscripts Department,
Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Steffens, Joseph Lincoln. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931.
Tarbell, Ida. All in a Day’s Work. New York: Macmillan, 1939.
Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Bruce J. Evensen