The Role Of Muckrakers In The Progressive Era

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Muckrakers in the Progressive Era enormously influenced the changes in legislation regarding food and health. During the Progressive Era, there was corruption in the government that impeded change in legislation, and the government poorly enforced health laws, misleading medicines that promised to “cure all”, and careless manufactures who did not care about the dangers of the medicine made went unregulated. Muckrakers exposed all of these problems to make a legislative change. Samuel Adams is a muckraker that wanted change. He wanted to expose the fake medicines that were in the market. Adams was widely known for his literature regarding patent medicines (Fee). Adams wanted to show and warn people of these medicines. He wanted the government to make laws to monitor these medicines. Adam wrote 11 articles on patent medicines called “The Great American Fraud” (Fee). The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was enacted on the …show more content…

He helped expose the problems within the meat packing industry. He is mostly known for his book, “The Jungle”. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry. “Sinclair wrote that meat for canning and sausage was piled on the floor before workers carried it off in carts holding sawdust, human spit and urine, rat dung, rat poison, and even dead rats. His most famous description of a meatpacking horror concerned a man who fell into steaming lard vats”(Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'). Within his writings he described diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat, which shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws (Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'). After this, president Roosevelt was able to write a letter to congress and make the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'). This stopped any bad or mislabeled meat to enter the market for consumption (Upton Sinclair's 'The

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