The first muckraking article up to bat, Lincoln Steffens ran this article in McClure's Magazine to call out the corruption racket squeezing the city, and not to report on St. Louis' menswear scene. The men on the city council were squeezing the city's coffers dry; lining their pockets while public buildings started to cut corners in the worst ways.

They wouldn't pass any ordinances, no matter how necessary, unless someone greased their palms first. Steffens targeted Mayor Ziegenhein as the ringmaster of this circus of grift and gave him the dragging of his life in the pages of McClure's.

It was sensational, telling sordid tales of political corruption in the style of the best crime novels. The combination of moral outrage and juicy gossip was able to pull people's ears, and other investigative journalists would take a page from Steffens' book in their own exposes. Teddy Roosevelt came along with his Muckrake speech, gave the journalists a name, and the rest was history.