Samuel
McClure was born in County Antrim, Ireland,
in 1857. He emigrated to America in 1866 and after becoming a journalist,
established in 1884 one of the first newspaper feature syndicates
in the world.
McClure established McClure's Magazine,
an American literary and political magazine, in June 1893. Selling
at the low price of 15 cents, this illustrated magazine published
the work of leading popular writers such as Rudyard
Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle.
In 1902 the magazine began to specialize in what became known as muckraking
journalism. Writers who worked for the magazine during this period
included Jack London, Ida
Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Ray
Stannard Baker. Sales of the magazine declined in the 1920s and
the last issue appeared in March 1929. Samuel McClure died in 1949.
(1) Samuel McClure, McClure's
Magazine (January,
1903)
How many of those who have
read through this number of the magazine
noticed that it contains three articles on one subject? We did not
plan it so; it is
a coincidence that the January McClure's is such an arraignment
of American character as should make every one of us stop and think.
How many noticed that?
The leading article, "The
Shame of Minneapolis," might have been called "The American
Contempt of Law." That title could well have served for the current
chapter of Miss Tarbell's History of Standard Oil. And it would have
fitted perfectly Mr. Baker's "The Right to Work." All together,
these articles come pretty near showing how universal is this dangerous
trait of ours.
Miss Tarbell has our capitalists
conspiring among themselves, deliberately, shrewdly, upon legal advice,
to break the law so far as it restrained them, and to misuse it to
restrain others who were in their way. Mr. Baker shows labor, the
ancient enemy of capital, and the chief complainant of the trusts'
unlawful acts, itself committing and excusing crimes. And in "The
Shame of Minneapolis" we see the administration o£ a city
employing criminals to commit crimes for the profit of the elected
officials, while the citizens - Americans of good stock and more
than average culture, and
honest, healthy Scandinavians - stood by complacent and not alarmed.
Capitalists, workingmen,
politicians, citizens - all breaking the law, or letting it be broken.
Who is left to uphold it? The lawyers? Some of the best lawyers in
this country are hired, not to go into court to defend cases, but
to advise corporations and business firms how they can get around
the law without too great a risk of punishment. The judges? Too many
of them so respect the laws that for some "error" or quibble
they restore to office and liberty men convicted on evidence overwhelmingly
convincing to common sense. The churches? We know of one, an ancient
and wealthy establishment, which had to be compelled by a Tammany
hold-over health officer
to put its tenements in sanitary condition. The colleges? They do
not understand.
There is no one left;
none but all of us. Capital is learning (with indignation at labor's
unlawful acts) that its rival's contempt of law is a menace to property.
Labor has shrieked the belief that the illegal power of capital is
a menace to the worker. These two are drawing together. Last November
when a strike was threatened by the yard-men on all the railroads
centering in Chicago, the men got together and settled by raising
wages, and raising freight rates too. They made the public pay. We
all are doing our worst and making the public pay. The public is the
people. We forget that we all are the people; that while each of us
in his group can shove off on the rest the bill of today, the debt
is only postponed; the rest are passing it on back to us. We have
to pay in the end, every
one of us. And in the end the sum total of the debt will be our liberty.
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