A Public Official
as a Muckraker
BRAND WHITLOCK
by NEIL THORBURN
One would not expect to find the name of
Brand Whitlock on a list of
"muckrakers." Yet, several
articles he wrote while mayor of Toledo and his
most successful novel, The Turn of
the Balance, are so typical of the muck-
raking literature popular in the first
decade of the twentieth century that
the resemblance cannot be a coincidence.
Whitlock thought of himself pri-
marily as an author, not a politician,
although today he is better remem-
bered for his eight years as mayor and
his exemplary service as American
Minister in Belgium during World War I.
He was a novelist of some poten-
tial, having already published several
books when he was first elected in
1905. Among his friends were writers
like William Dean Howells, the father
of American literary realism, Albert Jay
Nock of The American Magazine,
and the country's most famous
muckrakers, Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tar-
bell. These people had a direct influence
on Whitlock's work.1
Richard Hofstadter confirmed in The
Age of Reform Robert Cantwell's
assertion that the primary reason for
the muckraker's impact was their suc-
cessful use of the methods of literary
realism. Realists tried to paint, without
embellishment, a graphic picture of
contemporary society in the United
States. Characterization and setting
took precedence over the plot. This
America which emerged from the pages of
novelists like Hamlin Garland,
Frank Norris or Stephen Crane was
anything but pretty, but it was one that
its citizens could recognize. The
muckrakers, so runs this theory, became
popular because they wrote
An intimate, anecdotal,
behind-the-scenes history of their own
times . . . . They traced the intricate
relationship of the police, the un-
derworld, the local political bosses,
the secret connections between the
new corporations . . . and the
legislatures and the courts. In doing this
they drew a new cast of characters for
the drama of American society:
bosses, professional politicians,
reformers, racketeers, captains of indus-
try. Everybody recognized these native
types; everybody knew about
them; but they had not been
characterized before; their social functions
had not been analyzed. At the same time,
the muckrakers pictured stage
settings that everybody recognized but
that nobody had written about
--oil refineries, slums, the red-light
districts, the hotel rooms where po-
litical deals were made--the familiar,
unadorned, homely stages where
the teeming day-to-day dramas of
American life were enacted.2
NOTES ON PAGE 67