The idea of Progressivism came with the belief that society was capable of improvement and that continued growth and advancement were the destiny of this great nation. The muckrakers were among the first people to promote this new and profound nationalistic spirit. Many were persuasive and crusading journalists who began to direct public attention and discretion toward the political, social, and economic injustices of the US during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They strove to expose scandal and corruption to the American public. Ellen Fitzpatrick's Muckraking: Three Landmark Articles, presents famous articles by Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker which appeared in the January, 1903 edition of McClure's Magazine. The articles examine political corruption, the emergence and behavior of giant corporations, and labor racketeering in industrial America.
             The article by Lincoln Steffens mostly focused on the problems and examples of corruption, as well as the challenge of reform. Steffens began to develop a somewhat paradoxical view of good and evil in city politics at a young age (Fitzpatrick, 20). This frame of mind led to his views in the article, The Shame of Minneapolis. The intertwined processes of urbanization, industrialization and immigration meant that American cites mushroomed in the late nineteenth century. "The city" became an increasingly complex organism, which required sanitation, water, building codes, zoning regulations, policing. But as the city administration expanded, so did opportunities to misuse government power. Throughout, the Progressive period calls for electoral reform and/or increased "efficiency" and "scientific management" in municipal affairs were paired with revelations of corruption in municipal politics and policing. Steffens agreed with these reforms all along as well as political thieve!
             Tarbell is using an historical example t
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