The Following Questions Refer to the Excerpt Below

The following questions refer to the excerpt below.
"Give us a business man [to] introduce business methods into politics and government"… yet politics remains corrupt… The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit,not patriotism;of credit,not honor;of individual gain,not national prosperity;of trade and dickering,not principle… "Business is business" is not a political sentiment,but our politician has caught it. He takes essentially the same view of the bribe… But there is hope…in the commercialism of our politics. If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants,they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government."
Lincoln Steffens,The Shame of the Cities,1904
-The passage above is most clearly an example of which of the following trends?

A) The consolidation of corporate power into trusts
B) The growth of nativist and discriminatory political practices
C) The expansion of the democratic process
D) The rise of journalists cooperating with reformers to call for change