The U.S. federal government of the 19th century was small and relatively weak. Those who were elected often became corrupted by a system that encouraged longevity at the expense of policy. Organizations of elected officials, known as political machines, saw their role as giving favors to connected businesses and individuals in exchange for ongoing patronage, which allowed them to keep their political positions. Elected office became a matter of power rather than policy, leading to a mob-like environment in many major cities.
This situation changed with civil service reforms of the late 19th century and the election of progressive politicians who were determined to stamp out political machines and the policies they purveyed. A new era had begun with the turn of the 20th century, one in which public demands for government reform grew louder and a shared goal of modernization of civil society came into focus.
Much like social media has dramatically influenced the elections of Presidents Obama and Trump, and will likely affect most future administrations, the rise of mass mediaânamely, magazinesâand the use of investigative journalism known as muckraking, helped to bring concerns about corruption, anti-competition, and ineffective governance to the forefront of the votersâ agenda. One of the prime examples of this effort involves the meatpacking industry and appeared in a series of articles by Upton Sinclair in 1906:
[Excerpts From Upton Sinclairâs âThe Jungleâ]
Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said this, and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that he came upon Jurgis. He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not understand a word of it he did not object. He followed the boss, who showed him where to put his street clothes, and waited while he donned the working clothes he had bought in a secondhand shop and brought with him in a bundle; then he led him to the âkilling beds.â The work which Jurgis was to do here was very simple, and it took him but a few minutes to learn it. He was provided with a stiff besom, such as is used by street sweepers, and it was his place to follow down the line the man who drew out the smoking entrails from the carcass of the steer; this mass was to be swept into a trap, which was then closed, so that no one might slip into it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of the morning were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work. It was a sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot bloodâone waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering, but to Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul was dancing with joyâhe was at work at last! He was at work and earning money! All day long he was figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and a half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked until nearly seven oâclock in the evening, he went home to the family with the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a single day!
(Excerpt from Chapter 4)
The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came, literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each other for a chance for life. Blizzards and cold made no difference to them, they were always on hand; they were on hand two hours before the sun rose, an hour before the work began. Sometimes their faces froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all togetherâbut still they came, for they had no other place to go. One day Durham advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice; and all that day the homeless and starving of the city came trudging through the snow from all over its two hundred square miles. That night forty score of them crowded into the station house of the stockyards districtâthey filled the rooms, sleeping in each otherâs laps, toboggan fashion, and they piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the police shut the doors and left some to freeze outside. On the morrow, before daybreak, there were three thousand at Durhamâs, and the police reserves had to be sent for to quell the riot. Then Durhamâs bosses picked out twenty of the biggest; the âtwo hundredâ proved to have been a printerâs error.
(Excerpt from Chapter 7)
And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The ruler of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little Irishman named Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in the state, and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boast that he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an enormously rich manâhe had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood. It was Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seen the first day of their arrival. Not only did he own the dump, but he owned the brick factory as well, and first he took out the clay and made it into bricks, and then he had the city bring garbage to fill up the hole, so that he could build houses to sell to the people. Then, too, he sold the bricks to the city, at his own price, and the city came and got them in its own wagons. And also he owned the other hole near by, where the stagnant water was; and it was he who cut the ice and sold it; and what was more, if the men told truth, he had not had to pay any taxes for the water, and he had built the ice-house out of city lumber, and had not had to pay anything for that. The newspapers had got hold of that story, and there had been a scandal; but Scully had hired somebody to confess and take all the blame, and then skip the country.
(Excerpt from Chapter 9)
There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-cross...