Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American writer, investigative journalist, biographer and lecturer. She was one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and pioneered investigative journalism. Born in Pennsylvania at the onset of the oil boom, Tarbell is best known for her 1904 book The History of the Standard Oil Company. The book was published as a series of articles in McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904. It has been called a "masterpiece of investigative journalism", by historian J. North Conway, as well as "the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States" by historian Daniel Yergin. The work contributed to the dissolution of the Standard Oil monopoly and helped usher in the Hepburn Act of 1906, the Mann-Elkins Act, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Clayton Antitrust Act.
Lincoln Austin Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called "Tweed Days in St. Louis", that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his leftist values.
Ray Stannard Baker was an American journalist, historian, biographer, and author.
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publications. The modern term generally references investigative journalism or watchdog journalism; investigative journalists in the US are occasionally called "muckrakers" informally.
McClure's or McClure's Magazine (1893–1929) was an American illustrated monthly periodical popular at the turn of the 20th century. The magazine is credited with having started the tradition of muckraking journalism, and helped direct the moral compass of the day.
Albert Alonzo "Doc" Ames was an American physician and politician who held four non-consecutive terms as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His fourth term was marked by multiple prosecutions for political corruption, extortion, and racketeering in a scandal which was publicized nationwide by muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens in a 1903 article in McClure's Magazine titled The Shame of Minneapolis. Ames was found guilty of corruption, but after a successful appeal and multiple mistrials the charges were dropped. Erik Rivenes, however, has called the downfall of Mayor Ames, "one of the greatest political scandals in Minnesota history."
Samuel Sidney McClure was an Irish-American publisher who became known as a key figure in investigative, or muckraking, journalism. He co-founded and ran McClure's Magazine from 1893 to 1911, which ran numerous exposées of wrongdoing in business and politics, such as those written by Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Lincoln Steffens. The magazine ran fiction and nonfiction by the leading writers of the day, including Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, William Allen White and Willa Cather.
The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major U.S. cities, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, though Steffens later claimed that this work made him "the first muckraker."
Samuel Howell Ashbridge was an American politician. He served one term as the mayor of Philadelphia from 1899 to 1903. He was one of the mayors excoriated in Shame of the Cities, a series by muckraker Lincoln Steffens on municipal corruption. A report by the Philadelphia Municipal League referred to his administration as “a crew of municipal pirates.”
Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mob, Kosher Mafia, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian Cosa Nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase Cosa Nostra into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
The New Orleans crime family was an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in the city of New Orleans. The family had a history of criminal activity dating back to the late nineteenth century. The family reached its height of influence under bosses Silvestro Carollo and Carlos Marcello. In the 1960s, due to Marcello’s stubborn refusal of inducting new members into the family, they dwindled down to a paltry 4 or 5 made men with hundreds of associates throughout the United States. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation believed there were a bit over 20 made men at the time, or 20+ associates so close to Marcello and to each other, that they were considered a formal part of the New Orleans’ family hierarchy. A series of setbacks during the 1980s reduced its clout, and law enforcement dismantled most of what remained shortly after Marcello's death in 1993. In spite of this, it is believed that at least some elements of the American Mafia remain active in New Orleans today.
The Hip Sing Association or HSA, formerly known as the Hip Sing Tong, is a Chinese-American criminal organization/gang formed as a labor organization in New York City's Chinatown during the early 20th century. The Cantonese name "Hip Sing" translates roughly to "cooperating for success." The Hip Sing Tong, along with their rivals the Four Brothers and the On Leong Tong, would be involved in violent Tong wars for control of Chinatown during the early 1900s. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Hip Sings were involved in drug trafficking operations with the Kuomintang (KMT) and later the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). They would later establish chapters in Chinese-American communities throughout the United States in major cities such as Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. Recently some branches have begun to transform back into the legitimate fraternal organization they started as over a century prior.
The culture of Minnesota is a subculture of the United States with influences from Scandinavian Americans, Finnish Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, Native Americans, Czechoslovak Americans, among numerous other immigrant groups. They work in the context of the cold agricultural and mining state.
Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota in the United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County.
George Barnsedale Cox (1853–1916) was a political boss in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, a member of the Republican Party, and associate of William Howard Taft.
Christopher Lyman Magee was a powerful political boss in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Along with William Flinn (1851–1924), his political partner, the two ran the Republican Party machine that controlled the city for the last twenty years of the 19th century.
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian-American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian-American criminal society and organized crime group. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original Mafia or Cosa nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia groups from Sicily operating in the United States, as the organization initially emerged as an American offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia formed by Italian immigrants to the United States. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily, and it eventually encompassed or absorbed other Italian immigrant and Italian-American gangsters and Italian-American crime groups active in the United States and Canada that were not of Sicilian origin. In North America, it is often colloquially referred to as the Italian Mafia or Italian Mob, though these terms may also apply to the separate yet related Sicilian Mafia or other organized crime groups in Italy or ethnic Italian crime groups in other countries.
The Union Labor Party was a San Francisco, California working class political party of the first decade of the 20th century. The organization, which endorsed the doctrine of nativism, rose to prominence in both the labor movement and urban politics in the years after 1901, electing its nominee as Mayor of San Francisco in 1909.
The following is a list of works about Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
The following is a timeline of race relations and policing in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, providing details with a history of policing in the Twin Cities in the U.S. state of Minnesota from the nineteenth century to the present day. The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, with its headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, is one of the "largest law enforcement agencies in Minnesota" with division and unit facilities throughout Hennepin County. Twin cities, Saint Paul and Minneapolis, have their own police departments, the Minneapolis Police Department, which was established in 1867 and the Saint Paul Police Department. A union for rank and file officers in Minneapolis—the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis —was established in 1917.
Steffens, Lincoln. The shame of the cities. New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904.
