In the presidential campaign of 2004, George W. Bush's advisor Karl Rove repeated to journalists his long-standing explanation of why he admires William McKinley and expects Bush to reproduce what Rove regards as McKinley's successes. In 2003, Kevin Phillips, a Bush critic, wrote a book explaining how much he also admires McKinley. Eric Schlosser, a muck-raking journalist, saw his play Americans debut in London in the fall of 2003 to a theater full of Britons drawn to a play about the assassination of McKinley. Schlosser explains his interest in McKinley by invoking William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It isn't even past.” By saying so he raises anew the old question of how much our interest in present events ought to inflect our study of the past, but he also raises a question of peculiar interest to historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The McKinley of Rove, Phillips, and Schlosser—the McKinley whom Rove wants the President to emulate—may sound dimly familiar to us. But does the work of professional historians sustain this gloss on current affairs?

“Actresses as a rule know no more about making themselves beautiful than does the average woman; neither are they naturally more beautiful,” wrote actress Margaret Illington Banes in a 1912 article entitled “The Mad Search for Beauty.” “The truth of the matter is,” she continued, “that no actress—or any woman—can impart the secrets of beauty to another, any more than the rich man can impart the secrets of business success to some other man.” Disturbed by recent trends in the theatrical profession that required actresses to present themselves as “beauty specialists,” Banes sought to expose the constructed nature of their on- and offstage performances. Stage stars captivated audiences because they had numerous opportunities to appear onstage dressed in the height of style; “under the same circumstances,” she concluded, most women “would look quite as well.”

Peter Alexander Speek arrived in the United States in the fall of 1908 at the age of 35, “having in my pocket only 4c and knowing hardly more English words.” A leader of revolutionary activities against Russian rule in his native Estonia, Speek came to the U.S. a committed socialist intent on developing worker awareness and leading the class struggle. After two years in New York, Speek traveled to the West Coast, entered the graduate program i n economics at the University of Wisconsin, and worked two years as an investigator for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR). During his time with the CIR, Speek traveled widely across the United States, “visiting labor camps, cheap city lodging houses, gatherings of hoboes and tramps in so-called ‘jungles’, interviewing employers and various public agencies.” Speek wrote dozens of reports during these investigations that served as the foundation for official CIR policy recommendations and for a series of popular press articles on current migratory conditions. In doing this work, Speek became a recognized authority on migratory labor issues. Reference to Speek's reports can be found in studies of early-twentieth-century migratory labor conditions, but a specific evaluation of Speek and of his contributions has not been written. Speek's work for the CIR is of interest because of its subject matter and its comprehensive coverage. Speek's work is also of interest because it was during this period that Speek rejected his revolutionary socialism and became a structural reformer, accepting the basic U.S. economic and political system and working to improve the details of its institutions.