The Muckrakers

We here in America can be thankful for the “muckrakers” of the early 20th century. A voracious reader with total recall, Roosevelt dubbed them “muckrakers.” Comparing them to John Bunyan’s “man with the muck rake” who was so preoccupied with the filth at his feet that he failed to reach for the celestial crown. The name stuck and was happily accepted by the new breed of journalists best represented by Ida M Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffen. In magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, and books both fiction and non fiction a generation of writers had began to attack the widespread abuses that was rampant in American business and politics.

Image via Wikipedia

Actually, the trend began with Twain and Warner in the “Gilded Age” but muckraking reached it’s height in the 20 century. In 1903 McClure’s began to serialize the articles written by Ida M Tarbell about Standard Oil. The result was a landmark investigation of the company. At the same time McClure’s was running a series by Steffen about urban corruption, collected in the book, “Shame of the Cities.” McClure also ran portions of Jane Addams book,”Twenty Years at Hull House.”

Image via Wikipedia

Addams founded Hull House as a place to help immigrants adjust to American life. 400 more of these houses sprung up across America. At first the houses provided education and health care that couldn’t be found anywhere else for the hundreds of thousands of poor immigrants in the inner cities. It was a time when government offered no assistance to the poor. Photographs and reports were exposing squalor, disease, and crime which was not spoken of before.

Image via Wikipedia

A new breed of writers were adapting these techniques to fiction as well. Stephen Crane in “Maggie a Girl of the Streets.” And William Dean Howells, “The Rise of Silas Lapham.” Most famous of all was Sinclair’s, “Jungle” a novel that exposed the disgusting conditions in the meat packing industry in Chicago. Read it and you will swear off meat even today. Publications of that book in 1906 cut American sales of meat overnight. And forced the industry to accept federal meat inspections and the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Image via Wikipedia

These were the muckrakers who jump started the country to educated consumerism. They were the forerunners of our own Ralph Nader, who is as unsparing of fraud, abuse, and industrial and political corruption as were the muckrakers.

http://www.triond.com/rw/6239 click here to write articles of your choice and earn income.

If you liked the above article you might want to read the following.

http://socyberty.com/history/1932-in-washington-dc/

http://socyberty.com/history/henry-ford-and-the-model-t/

http://socyberty.com/crime/organ-brokers/

http://newsflavor.com/world/usa-canada/a-freezer-full-of-cash/

http://socyberty.com/politics/baptist-and-bootleggers-make-strange-bedfellows/