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"Let me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye," said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muck-raker in his own. "As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two times in a man's life when he does this when he's dead broke, and when he's rich.
Daumier was the artistic progenitor of the Caran d'Aches, the Forains who was it that called Forain "Degas en caricature"? Willettes, and Toulouse-de-Lautrecs. He was a political pamphleteer, a scourger of public scamps, and a pictorial muck-raker of genius. His mockery of the classic in art was later paralleled by Offenbach in La Belle Hélène. But there were other sides to his genius.
I said we were ignorant of the conditions under which our properties were worked, we were a bunch of parasites and idlers. But you laughed at me, called me a crank, an anarchist, said I swallowed what any muck-raker fed me. So I said: 'I'll go to one of Percy's mines! Then, when he tries to argue with me, I'll have him! That was the way the thing started as a joke.
To tell the next day or two in detail would be to make many books about the mixed childishness and heroic fineness of Carl's partisanship; to repeat a thousand rumors running about the campus to the effect that the faculty would demand Frazer's resignation; to explain the reason why Frazer's charge that a Plato director owned land used by saloons was eagerly whispered for a little while, then quite forgotten, while Frazer's reputation as a "crank" was never forgotten, so much does muck resent the muck-raker; to describe Carl's brief call on Frazer and his confusing discovery that he had nothing to say; to repeat the local paper's courageous reports of the Frazer affair, Turk's great oath to support Frazer "through hell and high water," Turk's repeated defiance: "Well, by golly! we'll show the mutts, but I wish we could do something"; to chronicle dreary classes whose dullness was evident to Carl, now, after his interest in Frazer's lectures.
The muck-raker would do honour to the jeweller's show-cases. For the rest, our own Dung-beetles, though usually modest in their attire, also have a leaning toward luxurious ornament. One Onthophagus decorates his corselet with Florentine bronze; another wears garnets on his wing-cases.
"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order cavalry. "'Good-evening, gents, says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your horses? "The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover my whole front elevation.
The conservation movement cannot be checked by the baseless charge that it will prevent development, or that every man who tells the plain truth is either a muck-raker or a demagogue. It has taken firm hold on our national moral sense, and when an issue does that it has won.
You said that you wished we might settle down to sound and constructive work, and get rid of the "muck-raker." I agree with you that the muck-raker stands in the way of large plans for betterment. But it might be well to refresh our minds in regard to what is really meant by the man with the muck-rake. He is not the man who draws our attention to abuses which can be abolished by determined effort.
"You asked me about the onslaught upon the octopus, and I am happy to say that things are going as well as the most ardent muck-raker on the most active fifteen-cent reform magazine could wish. The suit has been put on the calendar for trial in Massachusetts, and in New York State the Superintendent of Insurance is causing more trouble than we ourselves could possibly have created.
The deep, even voice of Nathaniel North sounded through that terrible denunciation of unholy riches with a gravity of conviction far more impressive than the anger of the modern muck-raker. The hearts of the children, remembering their conversation, were disturbed and vaguely troubled. Then came the gentler words about patience and pity and truthfulness and the healing of the sick.
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