David Graham Phillips's "The Treason of the Senate," a series of articles published in Cosmopoli tan magazine, prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to attack the muckrakers. This excerpt comes from Phillips's profile of Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich, a Republican from Rhode Island:

The greatest single hold of "the interests" is the fact that they are the "campaign contributors" — the men who supply the money for "keeping the party together," and for "getting the vote". . . . Your candidates get most of the money for their campaigns from the party committees; and the central party committee is the national committee with which congressional and state.and local committees are affiliated. The bulk of the money for the "political trust" comes from "the interests." "The interests" will give only to the "political trust." And that means Aldrich and his Democratic (!) lieutenant, [Arthur P.] Gorman of Maryland...