SANE AGITATION
Clough, Wilson O.
Sane Agitation The Muckrakers, 1902-1912. Edited by Arthur and Lila Weinberg. Simon and Schuster. 449 pp. $7.50. The Day of the Mugwump, by Lorin Peterson. Random House. 366 PP- $6. Reviewed...
...For these reasons, Peterson's study is close to the average citizen, whose very survival as an instrument in the democratic process may be at stake...
...The era it celebrates was brief, for World War I and a quick decay into sensationalism heralded the passing of the muckraker...
...Reviewed by Wilson O. Clough 11/fuCKRAKER and mugwump—these -I-" two half-facetious words encompass a lot of Twentieth Century American political and civic history...
...In any case, the mugwump tends to gravitate toward "progressive" solutions: city manager plans, civil service reforms, civic improvement studies, direct primaries, centralized accounting of public funds, studies of candidate qualifications, an aroused press...
...The Day of the Mugwump is not only historical documentation, but a remarkably lively study of twenty American cities and their political growing pains...
...Consequently, the problem is never solved, and the lesson is one of a perpetual alertness, an agitation that never rests...
...Such intelligent agitation is the essence of the continuation of the good society...
...the second—expert analysis of the ways of good government—is, in Peterson's thinking, the more sound...
...The term may not be the happiest for this book, though one finds it hard to propose a substitute...
...Again, most pertinent is the issue of our exploding cities as increasingly less lit places in which to live...
...In the end, both books offer encouragement...
...Of the two methods above, the first offers the more dramatic contest for public office...
...Yet there is in the residue still reason for hope...
...Nevertheless, several magazines discovered a new potency in publicity, and several names rose to national prominence—Ida Tarbell, Mark Sullivan, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair...
...Yet much came of the indignation behind the outbursts: a pure food and drug act, an Interstate Commerce Commission, improved conditions for workers, more responsible advertising, a public alertness to the link between organized vice and political corruption...
...Taken together, they remind the naive citizen that all has not been peace, purity, and propriety on the civic scene, and also that American citizens prefer to take their reform with only half seriousness...
...Peterson's book is rich in illustration of both corruption and reform...
...The authors, though avoiding editorializing, properly conclude that no protest against gross evils is wholly wasted...
...The Muckrakers, 1902-1912, edited by Arthur and Lila Weinberg, has a a book the advantage of historical reminiscence, especially for the older reader...
...The evils, to him, are the spoils system, bribery, corruption in office, alliances with vice, the lack of responsibility in public trust...
...and a general public apathy hangs as a cloak for corruption...
...The Day of the Mugwump would seem almost a must for classes in municipal government, and equally deserving of a wide and thoughtful reading among citizens concerned for the future of our cities...
...The major discouragement is public apathy...
...What is a mugwump...
...His book enlightens, comes right up to 1961, and conveys encouragement despite the record of setbacks...
...It was Teddy Roosevelt who first applied the term "muckrakers," in 1906, in an appeal for a middle ground of sanity in attack...
...These are both readable books...
...The assumption of national purity is denied by the evidence here gathered...
...It is the second, however, which emerges as of more than passing interest...
...Lorin Peterson's book, however, brings to the story an immediacy that stirs the reader to a participating interest...
...Such action, though immensely varied, takes one of two major forms: the effort to get good men in office, usually by means of a municipal party...
...It ends by signifying a citizen who is aroused by civic waste and corruption, and who acts in terms other than those of personal advantage...
...Men tend to grow old in office and habit, however dramatic their initiation in reform...
...or the slower, more solid method of bureaus of research and public information, a persistent study into the means and methods of good government...
...they show that resolute citizens need not be in a majority to command action and a following if the issues are made vivid...
Vol. 26 • February 1962 • No. 2
