Canada and the United States
jobs providing leadership. As a leader, she would not
remain silent in the face of discrimination, but neither
would she insist on full integration. From the model of
individual improvement, evident not only in Washington's ideas but also in the National Association of
Colored Women, Bethune became an advocate of
institutional change.
There is little inwardness to Hanson's study of
Bethune. This matters not just to satisfy a reader's
hunger for biography but also to account for Bethune's
intellectual receptiveness to ideas about social change
and her ability to integrate at least parts of them into
her schemes. Hanson views Bethune as a transitional
figure. Formed in the nineteenth century by the dominant voice of Washington and by convictions about
women's moral superiority, Bethune adapted to the
twentieth century by learning to value citizenship,
imagine politics as a place for women, and mobilize
her race for a long struggle. This is a useful insight, but
it is also one that begs for more attention to the
individual who could adapt and change with such skill.
ANN D. GORDON
Rutgers University
ROBERT MIRALDI. The Pen Is Mightier: The Muckraking
Life of Charles Edward Russell. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan. 2003. Pp. xiii, 328. $32.50.
Robert Miraldi has filled a gap in the historical
literature of the muckraking era (circa 1900-1914) in
American journalism history with his brisk-paced, factfilled narrative of the life of Charles Edward Russell,
an important reporter and editor of several of the
period's leading reform-minded metropolitan newspapers and magazines. Miraldi seeks to set Russell in his
rightful place among the pantheon of great reform
journalists that included contemporaries and acquaintances Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair,
and David Graham Phillips.
Very early in the volume, Miraldi states that Russell
was as recognized in his time as any of the aforementioned muckrakers for his breadth of work, his elegant
style, and the strength of his reform convictions. What
Russell lacked, which Miraldi feels led to his being
passed over by historians of muckraking, was a "signature" piece of muckraking journalism of the type
published by his better-remembered peers, such as
Steffens's Shame of the Cities (1902), Tarbell's History
of the Standard Oil Company (1902), Sinclair's The
Jungle (1906), and Phillips's "Treason of the Senate"
(1906).
Nevertheless, Russell's credentials as a journalist
were impeccable, and they placed him at the forefront
of his profession in his time. After breaking into the
big-time of New York City daily journalism as a
reporter with the Commercial Advertiser, Russell
quickly established a reputation as a facile writer and
a reporter who knew where to dig for the juicy scandal
and corruption stories that circulation-hungry metropolitan dailies in Manhattan sought in a competition-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
545
driven market that included more than two dozen
newspapers. He was plucked from the Advertiser by
James Gordon Bennett, Jr.'s New York Herald, where
he distinguished himself by being one of the first
reporters from the East Coast to reach flood-ravaged
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He rose to the position of
city editor for the Herald's Brooklyn bureau, where his
sharp news sense and firm guidance caught the eye of
one of the nation's premier publishers, Joseph Pulitzer, who lured Russell to join the staff of theNew
York World as city editor, literally becoming third in
the newspaper's chain of authority.
Before he moved on to establish a reputation as a
writer for the muckraking magazines, Russell was once
again lured by a major newspaper to jump into its fold,
William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. Although Russell said his job with the World was "the
best I ever had," he still left the paper when Hearst
dangled a substantial salary increase before his eyes.
Russell's journalistic output was marked by what
Miraldi describes as "prodigious research," which was
turned into engrossing, informative, and vivid newspaper and magazine stories. His typical targets of exposure involved political and corporate corruption and
the collusion between party bosses and industrial
barons that comprised the staple content of the muckraking magazines. But Russell was not just a journalist,
nor did he leave his political and social convictions in
his desk at his office. Russell became an activist and
was several times nominated for political office by the
Socialist Party. He remained a member of the party
until his pro-interventionist stance on World War I led
to expulsion. Russell also was known for his oratory,
especially as a political candidate, his love of music,
and his published poetry.
Miraldi is the author of several well-regarded books
on the muckraking journalists, and it is his welldeserved reputation that makes the annoying errors
and misstatements that crop up in the book hard to
understand. For example, in the first page and a half of
the prologue, there are two glaring errors: the second
sentence gives Russell's life dates as 1860-1941, but at
the end of the same first paragraph is found "when he
died in 1940." In addition, the footnote for the latter
reference states that Russell's obituary in the Washington Tribune, an African-American newspaper, was
published on April 26, 1901. There is a reference to a
"Samuel" Medill of the Chicago Tribune, when it
should have been Joseph Medill (p. 22). In discussing
the New York Herald, the author refers to Bennett as
"taking over the newspaper in the 1830s," when it is
common knowledge that he founded the Herald in
1835. Such flaws, of which there are more, detract from
the value of a book that brings out of the shadows an
important journalistic figure from a critical time in the
nation's history.
JOSEPH P. MCKERNS
Ohio State University
APRIL 2004