THE SOCIALIZATION OF MUCKRAKING
95
lay in the preservation of the system of monopoly capitalism upon
which they were both dependent, no matter how much waste, decep–
tion and exploitation in the production of consumer goods this
system embodied. What the New Dealers learned, or might have
learned from this experience, was that it was later than they thought
-too late, at least, for reformism on the consumer front; that they
were no longer dealing with a free economy; that the senile con–
stipation of monopoly capitalism can be relieved only by the strong
cathartic of force (state capitalism, which tends to become either
fascist, or "communist"). In theory at least a genuine socialism
would institute a different and a healthier metabolism.
As a free lance muckraker I did my best to rouse the country–
side during the Tugwell Bill agitation. But since I had at my dis–
posal only the penny whistle of the
Nation,
instead of sirens like
Good Housekeeping
and
Colliers,
I didn't get very far, nor did
anybody else.
Four years later, when I became interested in the economics
and politics of medicine my education concerning the status of
muckraking in our time was considerably advanced. I thought the
rise of the politico-economic dictatorship which Dr. Morris Fish–
bein had imposed upon the. American medical profession was an
interesting and significant story. Indeed, it had been a good story
for at least a decade. It had been documented by the report of the
Committee on the Costs of Medical Care and by the attack directed
at that report by Dr. Fishbein in 1932. It had been further docu–
mented by the symposium,
American Medicine
published by the
American Foundation. These foundation-subsidized enterprises in
fact-finding and opinion-measurement were notable examples of
the philanthropic, sociological
ersatz
which had largely displaced
commercial magazine muckraking during the post-war period; the
sociologists were much more thorough in their compilation of dat8,
but relatively timid and limited in their EJ.nalysis and synthesis of
findings.
If
the medico-economic conflict had matured during the early
nineteen hundreds, it would have been covered, one ventures to
say, by at least one and probably several of the mass magazines of
the period, especially after the social scientists had found the facts
-and buried them with the customary rituals of academic publica–
tion. As it was, I had to make shift with the
Nation, Common Sense,
