Framing discussions of morality in slum settings was very popular in the late 1800s. Many authors sought to make morality plays out of poverty living.

Other authors sought to stir the social conscience of the more affluent society to improve living conditions in the slums.

The Frenchman, Emile Zola, is often credited as the first important Naturalist writer, publishing L'Assommoir in the 1870s. Although there is no evidence that Crane had read Zola, the story lines between L'Assowmoirand Maggie are similiar.

A more likely source for Crane would have been the very popular sermons, published in all of the New York papers, by Thomas DeWitt Talmage. They covered the vices of drinking (the Johnson parents' problem passed down to Jimmie), the dissolute dance (the ever sleazier beer gardens), and the sweat shops (Maggie's sewing factory). In Talmage's sermons the vices are terrible but the lack of...