PRESS
mandate from the people; his attempt was unsuccessful,
and the Senate rejected the treaty.
Wilson’s efforts surrounding the World War I
peace settlement were a logical extension of the
changes in presidential authority that had been under
way for the previous 40 years. He used his constitutional authority over foreign policy and his status as
commander in chief to enmesh the United States in a
number of powerful international relationships.
Wilson employed his constitutional mandate to
enforce the laws to mobilize an expanded federal government and the American public for the war effort.
Congress was not yet willing to give up so much of its
authority, however, and the Senate successfully curtailed some aspects of presidential power by rejecting
the peace treaty. Presidents would continue to use the
Roosevelt Corollary in the 1920s, but they retreated
to a basic policy of noninvolvement in Europe. Not
until presidents could draw on the rhetoric of
“national security” and the need for secrecy in the
conduct of foreign policy—a development of the
World War II years (1941–1945)—did the president
become truly dominant over Congress.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Campbell, Ballard C. The Growth of American
Government: Governance from the Cleveland Era to the
Present. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Cooper, John Milton, Jr. The Warrior and the Priest:
Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983.
Headrick, Daniel R. The Invisible Weapon:
Telecommunication and International Politics,
1851–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
LaFeber, Walter. The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at
Home and Abroad since 1750, 2nd edition. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1993.
Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American
Diplomacy. New edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
Woolley, John T., and Gerhard Peters, eds. The American
Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/
(accessed June 6, 2009).
Nicole M. Phelps
PRESS
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the press moved from being a highly partisan
voice of the mainstream parties, to an independent
voice of reform, to being an indispensable tool in the
preservation of democracy. This transformation
occurred because of broader cultural trends, including the rise of consumerism and the public outcry
against the excesses of industrial capitalism. The press
of this period also shaped political ideology and contributed to the lasting imagery of the era.
Press in the Gilded Age
The American press that emerged out of the antebellum period was highly partisan, with party leaders and
editors working together to convey party positions
through ideologically slanted news accounts in local
newspapers. The majority of newspapers remained
partisan throughout the Gilded Age, but the number
of independent papers increased rapidly. This growth
was the result of a range of factors: journalism becoming increasingly professionalized, leading to more
objectivity and less dogma; the emphasis on profit
that swept business during the period prompting
newspapers to expand their readership beyond party
supporters; and the reform impulse in politics that
caused liberals—needing a voice for their reform sentiments—to revolt against the Republican establishment. This outlet became the independent press.
———. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American
Expansion, 1860–1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Yellow Journalism
Press, 1963.
As independent papers increased their share of public
discourse relative to the partisan press throughout the
Gilded Age, both outlets found new competition from
newspapers that focused more on human interest stories than politics—the so-called popular press. Joseph
Pulitzer is widely credited with starting the popular
Rosenberg, Emily S. Financial Missionaries to the World:
The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Imperial Presidency. New
edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
VOLUME FOUR: FROM THE GILDED AGE THROUGH AGE OF REFORM, 1878 TO 1920 291
PRESS
press in St. Louis in 1878 with his Post-Dispatch. A
onetime Liberal Republican who came to embrace the
Democratic Party, Pulitzer offered news in his papers
that looked a lot like that of the independent press—
stories on government corruption and growing class
disparity. He differed in that he included more popular
items such as cartoons, illustrations, and gossip to
increase his readership. This new type of paper took
the name “yellow journalism” after Richard Outcault’s
cartoon Yellow Kid in Pulitzer’s paper. Pulitzer
expanded his operations in 1883 when he took over
the New York World. The World grew rapidly as its
popular stories appealed beyond its original audience
of bourgeois men to the working class and to women.
Pulitzer’s intent was to promote democracy through a
more informed public, with professional journalists
checking the power of big business and corrupt government (he established the Columbia University Graduate
School of Journalism in 1912 toward this end).
However, this type of newspaper actually contributed to
a decline in popular politics by turning the focus on politics away from issues to human interest stories. Readers
focused on the drama of corruption rather than the
public policy that shaped their lives. Ironically, as more
people read the news they became increasingly less
informed. The popular press along with the independent press—whose more intellectual stories, geared to an
educated audience, turned away average readers—contributed to a decline in popular political participation at
the polls that began in the Gilded Age.
Pulitzer may have started the popular press, but
William Randolph Hearst gave it the sensationalism that
Rival publishers Joseph Pulitzer (The World, left) and William Randolph Hearst (New York Journal, right),
pioneers of “yellow journalism,” are depicted in this 1898 cartoon as “yellow kids” arguing over their
respective papers’ sensationalist approach to coverage of the Spanish-American War. (Library of Congress)
292 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF U.S. POLITICAL HISTORY
PRESS
earned “yellow journalism” a derisive meaning. Hearst
started his journalism career in San Francisco, but
gained wider attention when he bought the New York
Journal in 1895. Like Pulitzer, Hearst championed the
cause of average Americans against the ravages of plutocracy but endorsed more radical ideas like municipal
ownership of utilities, labor unions, and progressive taxation. The Journal copied many of Pulitzer’s popular
ideas, including advice columns, a sports section, and
large headlines over multiple columns.
In the circulation war that ensued, the World and
the Journal outdid each other in sensationalizing the
big story of the day: the 1895 Cuban revolt against
Spain in the lead-up to the Spanish-American War.
Pulitzer kept his pro-Cuban polemics on the editorial
page, but Hearst blared sensational headlines on page
one. The Journal’s reporting ranged from embellishment of facts to outright lies, for example, the “Cuban
Girl Martyr,” whose virginity was saved from the
advances of a Spanish officer by a Journal reporter.
The sensationalism of yellow journalism is perhaps
best summarized by the plight of Frederic Remington.
The famous Western artist was sent to Cuba to illustrate the Cuban revolt for the Journal, but lamented
that there was no war to draw. Hearst famously wired
Remington: “Please remain: You supply the pictures
and I’ll supply the war.” This circulation battle tinged
with sensationalism did not cause the SpanishAmerican War, but contributed to public opinion
pushing a reluctant government toward intervention.
Alternative Press
Pulitzer and Hearst represented a trend toward a
national media that would take hold in the twentieth
century; during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,
however, the majority of newspapers remained local.
Besides the partisan organs of the major parties and
the growing independent press, ethnic, radical, and
organization papers abounded. Immigration caused
ethnic enclaves to grow rapidly in American cities during the Gilded Age. These neighborhoods supported
newspapers in Old World languages with a mix of stories from their homeland, American politics, and local
affairs. Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant, began his
journalism career in St. Louis, writing for a German-
language paper. In 1900, no fewer than 17 Germanlanguage newspapers were published in Milwaukee and
6 Yiddish dailies circulated around New York City.
Often these papers agitated for radical political causes,
such as Vorwaerts! (Forward!), a German-language
socialist paper published in Milwaukee at the turn of
the century. Its editor, Victor Berger, later edited the
influential English-language socialist papers Social
Democratic Herald and Milwaukee Leader and served
multiple terms in Congress. The most influential
socialist paper was Appeal to Reason, a weekly published in Girard, Kansas, that boasted a circulation of
750,000 by 1912. Political organizations other than
parties circulated newspapers with great success,
including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s
Union Signal (1883)—which became the widest circulating women’s paper in the world with more than one
hundred thousand subscriptions—and the NAACP’s
The Crisis (1910), which became a significant voice in
African American politics. The Crisis continued a trend
in black activism that had resulted in the publication of
more than one thousand papers by black founders by
1900. America was awash in newsprint by 1910, with
an estimated twenty-six hundred dailies published that
year, the highest number in American history.
Muckraking
Newspapers were not the only outlet for the press.
Magazines, which rarely secured more than ten thousand subscriptions in the years following the Civil War
because of high per-issue prices, became more widely
circulated during the 1890s because improvements in
printing technology allowed publishers to charge less
per copy. Older magazines like The Atlantic Monthly
(founded in 1857) and The Nation (1865) took advantage, but new magazines like McClure’s (1893) also
entered the fray. Magazine editors such as S. S. McClure
followed the formula for success of Gilded Age newspapers: professional journalists, sensational stories, and a
nonpartisan approach. Of particular importance was the
advent of investigative journalism, often printed serially
in magazines like McClure’s, Everybody’s, and Collier’s.
Although investigative reporting could be found early
in the Gilded Age, the January 1903 issue of McClure’s
marked the beginning of muckraking, a derisive term
VOLUME FOUR: FROM THE GILDED AGE THROUGH AGE OF REFORM, 1878 TO 1920 293
PRESS
RELATED ENTRIES
THIS VOLUME
Muckrakers
OTHER VOLUMES
Media (vol. 6); Network Television and Newspapers (vol. 7);
Press (vol. 5); Press and Printers (vol. 1)
applied by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt who did not
appreciate journalists uncovering the seamier side of
politics. In that issue, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and
Ray Stannard Baker contributed articles on the nefarious business practices of Standard Oil, urban political
corruption, and labor racketeering, respectively.
Perhaps the best-known piece of muckraking, Upton
Sinclair’s novelized exposé of Chicago’s meat-packing
industry first appeared serially in Appeal to Reason in
1905 before being published as The Jungle in 1906.
The political consequences of muckraking were
significant, although hard to measure. The shocking
stories of the muckrakers helped galvanize the middleclass reform movement that came to be known as
“progressivism.” The lurid tales of political and industrial corruption helped legitimize to the middle class
what working-class Americans had questioned for
decades. The language of reform became a key ingredient in public political discourse. In terms of public
policy, the Hepburn Act (1906), which regulated railroads, the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), and the
Meat Inspection Act (1906), were all passed during
the height of muckraking. However, the issues behind
these measures all occupied a place on the political
docket well before the 1903 issue of McClure’s or
publication of The Jungle—making it difficult to ascertain the causative influence of muckraking on the passage of these measures or their timing. If nothing else,
muckraking came to symbolize the reform impulse of
the Progressive Era for later generations.
World War I
When war broke out in Europe in 1914, American journalists turned to debating the legitimacy of the war and
the question of U.S. involvement. The press covered
the war along ethnic and ideological lines, demonstrating the variety of press outlets at the time and a general
public sentiment for nonintervention. Once the United
294 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF U.S. POLITICAL HISTORY
States entered the war in April 1917, the Woodrow
Wilson administration hired progressive journalist
George Creel to head the Committee on Public
Information (CPI) to rouse patriotic fervor the same
way his muckraking compatriots aroused public indignation against political and industrial corruption. The
CPI succeeded: millions of pro-war pamphlets and
some seventy-five thousand “Four Minute Men”—volunteer speakers who gave short dramatic speeches
across the nation to engender support for the war—
used the techniques of popularization pioneered in the
printed press a generation earlier.
The propaganda campaign, however, included the
suppression of press outlets deemed to be seditious.
The Espionage Act (1917) and its extension, the
Sedition Act (1918), made illegal the spreading of
information that hurt the U.S. military cause or helped
the enemy; it also criminalized speaking out against
the government. Under these laws, many radical and
ethnic news sources were denied access to the U.S.
mail, which effectively put them out of business.
Publications affected included Berger’s socialist daily
Milwaukee Leader, the Industrial Workers of the World
journal Solidarity, the leading magazine for bohemian
radical intellectuals The Masses, anything printed in
German, pacifist publications, and Irish nationalist
publications. The effects of this suppressive legislation
on American politics and information availability were
enormous. The American radical left was silenced and,
in many respects, never recovered. The culture of fear
contributed to the Red Scare of 1919–1920 and can be
viewed as the opening salvos in the Cold War. The
American Civil Liberties Union (1920), which evolved
from the National Civil Liberties Bureau (1917), was
established in part to protect political dissent and
thereby uphold democracy. These responses began to
form the modern American understanding of “freedom of the press” as freedom of expression without
restraints imposed by government.
The press during the Gilded Age and Progressive
Era helped shape the public discourse about politics
by giving reformers and radicals a public platform and
voice for their ideas. Progressivism, a political outlook that shaped twentieth-century American liberalism, benefited from the works of journalists like the
PROGRESSIVE (BULL MOOSE) PARTY
muckrakers. The press also reflected the nationalization of American institutions. Just as locally owned
workshops gave way to national and international corporations, so, too, did local newspapers give way to
national media of various kinds. As America slowly
underwent modernization, popular politics was
affected paradoxically: cheaper papers, sensationalized
stories, and independent voices brought news to
more Americans, yet the loss of the local touch made
politics seem less relevant—thus contributing to a
decline in popular political participation in America.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Filler, Louis M. The Muckrakers. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976.
Fitzpatrick, Ellen F., ed. Muckraking: Three Landmark
Articles. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.
Kennedy, David. Over Here: The First World War and
American Society. New York: Oxford University Press,
1980.
McGerr, Michael E. The Decline of Popular Politics: The
American North, 1865–1928. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
Shore, Elliott. Talkin’ Socialism: J. A. Wayland and the
Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890–1912.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.
Spencer, David R. The Yellow Journalism: The Press and
America’s Emergence as a World Power. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 2007.
Thomas F. Jorsch
PROGRESSIVE (BULL MOOSE)
PARTY
Called into being by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 as a
result of the former Republican president’s quarrel
with the conservative, Old Guard wing of his party—
and then effectively killed by Roosevelt in 1916
when circumstances and priorities had changed—the
Progressive Party has usually appeared in historical
accounts as an extension of its initiator’s huge ambitions and personality. Still, the party’s strong start in
1912 nurtured hopes that it would become a fixture
in American politics. An impressive list of social and
political reformers rallied to the Progressives and
spent the next several years trying to turn the party into
a practical vehicle for reform in the states as well as at the
national level. The movement failed to fulfill activists’
hopes for a permanent reform party, but it did prove to
be a key episode in the formation of twentieth-century
liberal politics and in the shift of the Republican Party
toward an identity with conservatism.
Roosevelt and the Progressive Republicans
Reformers had come regularly to label themselves
“progressive” by January 1911, when Sen. Robert La
Follette (R–WI) organized the National Progressive
Republican League. La Follette’s immediate goal was
to challenge Old Guard Republicans who dominated
the party’s congressional leadership. La Follette also
aimed to block Pres. William Howard Taft’s renomination and, with luck, take Taft’s place. Republican
progressives saw Taft as having defected to the conservatives after running in 1908 as a moderate
reformer. The restless Roosevelt, meanwhile, began
to criticize publicly his handpicked successor upon
returning from a prolonged foreign trip in mid1910. A series of eloquent speeches outlining his
version of progressivism, the New Nationalism,
brought Roosevelt back into the limelight as a probable candidate for 1912. Borrowed from political theorist Herbert Croly’s 1909 pamphlet, The Promise of
American Life, the concept of New Nationalism
evoked Roosevelt’s commitment to an active role for
the federal government in dealing with the social,
economic, and environmental challenges posed by
the country’s transition into an urban, industrial
society with a formidable corporate business sector.
When La Follette’s candidacy for the Republican
nomination faltered in February 1912, Roosevelt
entered the race. Roosevelt attempted an unprecedented strategy of using victories in states that chose
delegates by direct primaries to pressure the party into
nominating him. Caucuses controlled by the party
hierarchy, however, still chose most convention delegates. When the Republicans held their convention in
Chicago in June 1912, Taft claimed a majority even
though Roosevelt was clearly the more popular candidate. Taft had used venerable techniques of party
management, similar to those Roosevelt himself had
VOLUME FOUR: FROM THE GILDED AGE THROUGH AGE OF REFORM, 1878 TO 1920 295