Robert S. Abbott, the child of former slaves, founded the Chicago Defender on a shoestring budget in 1905. Its masthead carried the motto "American race prejudice must be destroyed!"

In his Chicago Record column "Stories of the Streets and of the Town," distinctively midwestern humorist and fablist George Ade immortalized the vernacular in such pieces as "The Fable of the Good Fairy of the Eighth Ward and the Dollar Excursion of the Steam Fitters."

Known as the "dean of American magazine editors," Henry Mills Alden reigned at Harper's from 1869 to 1919. He gave special attention to American writers and to burgeoning social problems, and Harper's became the most widely circulated periodical in the country.

One of the most famous muckrakers, Ray Stannard Baker wrote about industry and labor for McClure's, where he was associate editor from 1899 to 1905. His groundbreaking article "The Right to Work...