The Magazine Revolution and Popular Ideas in the Nineties.

The new 10-cent magazines, such as 'McClure's,' 'Cosmopolitan,' and 'Munsey's' constituted a revolution in magazine publishing and reading, resulting from new engraving processes, new advertising, and hard times. They appealed to middle-class desires for self-culture, reflected 'fin de siècle' optimism and expansionism, paved the way for later muck-rakers by literature of reform and exposure, and promoted national advertising for a mass audience in contrast to local newspaper advertising.