Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalisti ...

restrictions of trade, bribery of officials, and low pay and unsafe working conditions for railroad workers—were indicative of larger societal injustices. In particular, Baker was incensed with a privileged ownership class that had not, to him, received sufficient investigation by the press. He was appalled by the “luxurious, idle, degenerating rich people on one hand and poverty-stricken workers on the other.”² He believed that the remedy for the railroads’ destructive influence in America was “the economic facts and the dose is to be applied directly to the people, not to the legislators.”³

In his series “The Railroads on Trial,” which started in the November 1905 McClure’s, he crusaded against the special favors that the railroad pursued, and often obtained through various orchestrated persuasion campaigns. In the March 1906 issue, Baker’s piece “How Railroads Make Public Opinion” unmasked the power of railroad press agentry and lobbying. For decades, Baker revealed, the railroads had consistently sought to influence government policies regarding railroad rates. The industry often attempted to co-opt the press in an effort to amplify pro-railroad messages. Their publicity apparatus swamped newsrooms with releases, unleashed pamphlets and books upon the public, orchestrated letter-writing campaigns to government officials, and provided supposedly objective experts at congressional hearings. Noting all of this, Baker made clear his position about railroad advocacy: He had no problem with the industry’s making its case to the public because American democracy offered both individuals and institutions the right to engage in free speech. What Baker objected to was subterfuge. The industry offered information that had the veneer of objective accuracy, but was actually slanted. It provided experts to both the press and Congress who did not reveal that they were on the railroads’ payroll. Its facts drew portraits that reflected the visions of the railroad’s vested interest; the goals and intentions of those who provided the material were obscured by the apparent heft of the information.

All this was troubling to Baker. In the first paragraph of “How Railroads Make Public Opinion,” he proclaimed that citizens needed to know “where the information upon which we now base our thinking is coming from.” This was essential to ascertaining the validity of the railroad information that appeared in newspapers, books, pamphlets, and congressional