What are Muckrakers Muckrakers Effects of Muckrakers A term coined by Theodore Roosevelt muckrakers were journalists that played a key role in alerting the public to wrongdoing in politics and business The term comes from a ID: 567376
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Muckrakers
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of MuckrakersSlide2
A term coined by Theodore Roosevelt, muckrakers were journalists that played a key role in alerting the public to wrongdoing in politics and business. The term comes from a
muckrake
(a rake or pitchfork used to clean manure and hay out of stables). While Roosevelt approved of the legitimate exposure of wrongdoing, he condemned those who “earn their livelihood by telling… scandalous falsehoods about honest men.” Even though some muckrakers did expose people just for the money, many were respected writers who identified and exposed serious abuses.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of MuckrakersSlide3
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of Muckrakers
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Other RakersSlide4
Impacts of muckrakers include: the end of the Standard Oil Company’s monopoly over the oil industry, the creation of child labor laws in the United States, the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act, and the exposion of bribery and corruption. As Fred J. Cook said, “ The effect on the soul of the nation was profound. It can hardly be considered an accident that the heyday of the muckrakers coincided with one of America’s most yeasty and vigorous periods of ferment. The people of the country were aroused by the corruptions and wrongs of the age- and it was the muckrakers who informed and aroused them. The results showed in the great wave of progressivism and reform cresting in the remarkable spate of legislation that marked the first administration of Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1917. For this, the muckrakers had paved the way.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of MuckrakersSlide5
Lincoln Steffens was the first to strike by publishing an article in McClure’s magazine titled “Tweed Days in Saint Louis.” In his article, Steffens exposed how city officials worked in league with big businesses to maintain power while corrupting the public treasury. After several more articles, Steffens published a book called “The Shame of Cities.” Soon the public demanded reforms from the government, giving strength to progressive ideas.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of Muckrakers
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Other RakersSlide6
One of the most well known muckrakers was Upton Sinclair. Sinclair hoped to illustrate the horrible effects of capitalism on workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. He wrote the book, “The Jungle,” which detailed workers sacrificing their fingers and nails by working with acid, losing limbs, catching diseases, and toiling long hours in cold, cramped conditions. Although Sinclair hoped to get worker reforms, the response to his book was louder for reforms in the production of public goods. With such bad health conditions as: rats climbing over warehouse meat and leaving excrement behind; skin, hair, stomach, ears, and nose were ground up and packaged as head cheese; and spoiled meat being covered with chemicals to hide the smell. These revelations brought about the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of Muckrakers
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Other RakersSlide7
One month after Lincoln Steffens launched his strike, Ida Tarbell began a series of articles that were also published in McClure’s magazine. The series was titled “History of the Standard Oil Company.” It outlined and documented the cutthroat business practices behind John Rockefeller’s meteoric rise. The reason that many believe Tarbell chose Rockefeller to expose was because her father had been driven out of business by Rockefeller.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of Muckrakers
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Other RakersSlide8
Once other writers saw what a rise muckrakers had on the public, many joined the movement to reform. Thomas Lawson brought the inner workings of the stock market to light in an article titled “Frenzied Finance.” John Spargo unearthed
the horrors of child labor in
“The Bitter Cry of the Children”
in 1906. That same year, David Phillips linked 75 senators to big business interests in “The Treason of the Senate.”
In 1907, William Hard went public with industrial accidents in the steel industry in the blistering “Making Steel and Killing
Men.” Ray Stannard Baker revealed the oppression of Southern blacks in “Following
the Color Line” in 1908.
What are Muckrakers?
Muckrakers
Effects of Muckrakers
Upton Sinclair
Lincoln Steffens
Ida Tarbell
Other Rakers