Summary

The missing third leg of the emerging stool of progressive politics appeared in the form of McClure's Magazine. Certainly by accident rather than human design, the triumvirate of Roosevelt, Taft and McClure's ushered in a new era or reform politics that permanently unsettled the status quo and opened the door to modern political parties. By mid-19th Century, the staggering inequities of wealth produced by industrialized capitalism became evident: factory owners grew obscenely wealthy while workers were expected to put in long grueling hours at their factory jobs, earning barely survival wages. In this time, labor unions became powerful forces for reform of wages and working conditions as well as safety issues.

In 1893 America experienced a serious depression that was a foreshadowing of the Great Depression of the 1930s: bank failures, massive unemployment, widespread homelessness born into this world of...