The daughters of the poor “flood east through narrow streets
in a winter’s twilight,” George Kibbe Turner (1869–1952)
wrote, “returning to their homes in the East Side tenements. The exploitation of young women as money-making machines has reached a development on the East Side
of New York probably equaled not anywhere in the world”
(Weinberg and Weinberg 1961, 420). Turner’s investigation
of Tammany Hall’s determination to “wholesale the bodies” of the daughters of the poor “at good profit” and to
push their plan nationwide (Weinberg and Weinberg 1961,
429) would contribute to passage of the Mann Act making
it a federal crime to transport women across state lines for
purposes of prostitution.
One of the Progressive Era’s most effective muckrakers,
Turner was born in Quincy, Illinois, the son of Rhodolphus K. Turner, a real estate broker, and Sarah Ella Kibbe
Turner. Turner’s lifelong interest in Progressive causes was
stirred at Williams College, where he graduated in 1890,
and during a fifteen-year apprenticeship as a reporter at the
Springfi eld (Massachusetts) Republican under taskmaster
Samuel Bowles. Turner became a contributor to McClure’s
Magazine in 1899 and a staff writer seven years later, specializing in urban problems.
In 1906, Turner traveled to Galveston, Texas, to report on
the aftermath of the September, 1900, hurricane that killed
six thousand of the town’s thirty-seven thousand residents,
and destroyed half the homes and businesses. Later that
year, Turner wrote in McClure’s about a “revolution in local
government,” established when local commissioners successfully oversaw the city’s rebuilding (McClure’s Magazine, October 1906, 611). The construction of a seawall, the
raising of the city’s grade, and the building of a causeway
connecting the island to the mainland converted Turner to
the cause of commission government. Twelve million copies
of his article were reprinted and in the decade-long debate
that followed more than three hundred cities experimented
in non-partisan commission forms of government.
Turner reported on Chicago’s “dealers in dissipation” in
1907, and observed that “the basic guarantees of civilization” had broken down (Kibbe 1907, 576–577). He uncovered a citywide conspiracy involving ward politicians,
police, and the courts, that netted liquor, prostitution, and
gambling interests $135 million annually. Turner’s reporting prompted civic reformers to demand action. Chicago’s
vice commission, launched in 1910, became the model for
Progressive-minded reforms in cities across America.
Public reaction to Turner’s muckraking was even more
immediate in 1909 after McClure’s published his article
“Tammany’s Control of New York by Professional Criminals” that alleged the complicity of city officials in New
York’s growing prostitution problem. “Daughters of the
Poor, “published in McClure’s five months later, detailed the
“closely organized machine” of slum politicians that preyed
upon New York’s tenement population while exporting procurement to other large cities (Weinberg and Weinberg 1961, 412–413). In January 1910, Turner was subpoenaed
for two days of testimony before a grand jury investigating
organized crime in the city. The publicity led to Congressional passage of the Mann Act on June 25, 1910, and vice
commission initiatives in Minneapolis, Portland, Hartford,
and other American cities.
Turner muckraked corporate capitalism for McClure’s in
a seven-part series co-written with John Moody between
1910 and 1911. Thereafter, he turned to fiction and film
scripts. Turner married Julia Hawks Parker in 1892. Some
historians see Turner as the author who contributed to the
moral panics stemming from America’s uncertain encounter with modernity. Others see him as one of the most effective muckraking reformers of the Progressive Era.
Further Reading
Bridges, Lamar W. “George Kibbe Turner of McClure’s Magazine.” Journalism Quarterly 61, 1984.
Filler, Louis Crusaders for American Liberalism. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
New York Times, February 16, 1952.
Turner, George Kibbe. “The City of Chicago: A Study of the Great
Immoralities.” McClure’s Magazine, April 1907.
——. “The Daughters of the Poor.” McClure’s Magazine, November 1909.
——. “Galveston: A Business Corporation.” McClure’s Magazine, October 1906.
——. “The Men Who Learned to Fly.” McClure’s Magazine, February 1908.
Weinberg, Arthur, and Lila Weinberg, eds. The Muckrakers: The
Era in Journalism That Moved America to Reform. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1961.
Wilson, Harold S. McClure’s Magazine and the Muckrakers.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1970.
Bruce J. Evensen