Raking Muck with the Muckrakers 

Literature Reformation

1902 At about 1902 people later known

as muckrakers began to publish the evils of the American industries.

1906 President Roosevelt called them

“muckrakers” in 1906 comparing them to the figure in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

A Muckraker Dug deep for the dirt the people

loved to hate. Editors provided money for

extensive research and encouraged aggressive writing from their reporters.

Muckraking Magazines Lincoln Steffens wrote a series of

articles in McClure’s called “The Shame of the Cities,” revealing the corrupt alliance between big business and the municipal government.

Muckraking magazines took a lot of time and money to check their material, for fear of legal reprisals.

Muckraking Magazines: McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s and Everybody’s.

Lincoln Steffens

Thomas W. Lawson

He wrote of the practices of his accomplices in “Frenzied Finance.”

These articles (1905-1906) rocketed the circulation of Everybody’s.

Lawson made many enemies among his rich associates.

David G. Phillips

He shocked the nation by his series “The Treason of the Senate” in Cosmopolitan.

Charged that 75% of the senators did not represent the people but the railroads and trusts.

The articles impressed President Roosevelt. Phillips continued his attack in novels and

was murdered in 1911 by a woman.

Muckrakers fire at Social evils

Social evils include the immoral “white slave” traffic in women, the rickety slums, and the appalling number of industrial accidents.

Following the Color Line by Ray Stannard depicted the suppression of America’s 9 million blacks.

The Bitter Cry of the Children by John Spargo portrayed the abuses of child labor.

Vendors of potent patent medicines were criticized.

They sold quantities of adulterated or habit-forming drugs while “doping” the press with lavish advertising.

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture reinforced the muckrakers attacks in Collier’s.

Caring for the Consumer Background in America:

Big meatpackers were being shut out of certain European markets because some American meat-from the small packinghouses were said to have been contaminated.

Foreign governments were even threatening to ban all American meat imports by throwing out the good beef with the bad botulism.

At the same time, American consumers hungered for safer canned products.

The Effects of Literature: This reform was encouraged by Upton Sinclair’s

novel The Jungle, published in 1906. Sinclair wanted his story to focus attention on

the plight of the workers in the big canning factories, but instead he appalled the public with his description of disgustingly unsanitary food products.

The book described in noxious detail the filth, disease, and decay in Chicago’s damp, ill-ventilated slaughterhouses.

Many readers, including Roosevelt, were so sickened that for a time they found meat unpalatable.

                 

     

Upton Sinclair

Results The president was moved to appoint

a special investing commission, whose report almost outdid Sinclair’s novel.

It related how piles of poisoned rats, rope ends, splinters, and other debris were scooped up and canned as potted ham.

Roosevelt passes Acts Backed by a nauseated public, Roosevelt induced

Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

It said that the preparation of meat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can.

Although the largest packers resisted certain features of the act, they accepted it as an opportunity to drive their smaller, fly-by-night competitors out of business.

At the same time, they could receive the government’s seal of approval on their exports.

As a companion to the Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was designed to prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals.

The End