The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-25

cases.'' Once more the interviewer had to recall for himself several of the "other cases'' in which MT. Russell was the chief trouble-maker
 But where does the muckraker get his information?"
 'Oh, several sources. Principally there are the records of the courts. Every big corporation gets into court, now and then, and the minutes of the proceedings a are there. to- see. And they're fine pickings! Then there are the brokers down in Wall street. Not that they. tell anything of their own accord! But the tnuckraker knows for what interests this or that broker is the agent. He watches what stock they are buying or selling in his cue as to what the corporation be- hind them are doing. Again there are the soreheads and the victims of the big corporations who have been on the inside of deals, and who come to you and tell interesting things. But these you've got to discount what htye tell you"
 'Is there a whole tribe of muck rakers?"
 'fNo; just scattered handful"
 And what started most of you on your line?'
 Sheer accident, in most cases. For example, there had been an upheaval in Minneapolis-an orgy in municipal graft-and Mcclure sent Lincoln Stef- fens to write it up. He did and it went so we'll that he looked around for other cities to look into. He found them! Oh, he found them all, of Our cities series.''
 With some difficulty the interviewer got MT. Russell to tell how he found himself in undertaking.
 'Oh, well I was in Chicago peace fully writing a. book on the poet, asking me to look up a certain man who knew 8. lot about refrigerator cars, and to get him to write an ar- ttcle about the Car Trust that was behind them. The man wouldn't do it, so Ridgeway asked me to write it. told him I would, and started in to get my material. found myself on Trust, and up to my neck in material which would take whole series of ar ticles to embody, and would stir up any amount of mess. But had gone into it, so I went ahead-and here am. And the others got into the game in something Just as accidental
 What are the muckrakers doing now?"
 MT. Russell smiled slowly. "Oh, some are knocking woman suffrage. Some are doing labor news. Some are doing uplift' stuff. Any other old time muckrakers are writing best-sel- Ter magazine fiction
 And what made the magazines go Tn for nluckraking?''
 Well, you have got to go back lit tie to answer that. Consider what the Sunday newspaper of about twenty five years ago did. There was a great public reading the weekly story pa pers-saturday Night, The Family Story Paper, Golden Hours, and the like. Then the Sunday newspaper went out to capture that public and gave them the same stuff in their Sunday columns, only they built their stories more or less on a basis of what actually happened in the news-a good deal colored up, of course. Then monthly fiction magazine. And he went over the public that the Sunday paper had educated away from the weekly story paper, like a harvester. Other publishers seeing the success of Munsey's also started monthly maga- zines but gave the public still better type of fiction.
 ''But you can't satisfy people with sweets alone. So the Sunday news paper, the Munsey magazines, and the better magazines that followed it gave their readers stuff other than fiction-special feature articles. When muokraking proved to be in real de- mand the magazines took 1t up.''
 Has undertaking been tried else where than in this country?''
 'tNo-except perhaps, in England But don't you know what happened to Lord Northcliffe, the big magazine owner over there?'' And Mrs. Russell laughed most contagiously at the recollection
 'tNorthcliffe came to America and saw how tremendously popular muck raking was here. He decided to take it up in his own magazines. So he went back to England and looking around for some trust to muckrake he found the Soap Trust. Fine! He got out just one article on the Soap Trust and then-bang! the Soap Trust came down on him with a quarter of a million dollar libel verdict And before Northcliffe got through with that case he dropped a whole million! There was no more mucrak- ing in England after that!
 And what lesson have all muckrak- ing revelations taught you, Mrs. Rus seN?"
 'The futility of government regula- tion of privately owned public utili- ties. But that is another story, my son.