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Muckrakers are journalists who played a major role in The Progressive Era. They were not just simple journalists, however, they attacked corrupt institutions and leaders. Along with that, they exposed industries. Their writings had large audiences in American socitey and many articles were even published in popular magazines for everyone to view. Theodore Roosevelt, also known as Teddy, was president of the United States during this Progessive Era. He was the first to use this term, nicknaming these investigative journalists after the adopted word from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. A rake was used to dig up dirt, filth, and muck. Comparing to these authors, they found and revealed the “dirt” politicians and industries kept hidden. His …show more content…
nickname caught on, and so these writers were proud of their new name. These individuals were more than just writers, they had an impact to the general public.
Successfully bringing Americas problems to light through the rapid growth and flourishing of cities, muckrakers created public awareness of corruption. Not many noticed the secrets our leaders and working companies kept from all civilians. Sensational and shocking news stories set ones sight on the abuses of power Uncovering the truth grabbed the public's attention and people were concerned. These news stories were not just to read, but gave American citizens prompt to take action of these problems. Composing these texts took on a very serious nature. The magazine editors often had to go to great extensive lengths to check the facts. Although, some of the muckrakers lived in the slums or worked in factories they investigated and wrote about. The factual nature of these articles rested believability to the messages authors were sending to the readers. Influential Muckrakers led individuals to recognition on America’s social, economic, and political problems. Revealing injustices, they opened the eyes to many to factory conditions and harsh …show more content…
labor. These men and women muckrakers made known some of the greatest crimes and abuses taking place behind closed doors. Nobody knew nor wanted to know what exactly goes into meat, but it wasn’t until Upton Sinclair published his book The Jungle in 1906. Then, people seemed to realize the underlying disgusting truths about what really goes on in meat packing industry. Sinclair mainly started his investigation because he was concerned about labor issues. Seven weeks of being undercover, he gathered information on the terrifying sanitation the Chicago meat packing industry practices. Sinclairs work was intended to expose the truth of workers at the stockyards, however his book instead focused on the disturbing lack of concern over cleanliness and conditions of the meat packing facilities. This experience led to the publication of the book, and his detailed descriptions shocked the nation world-wide. Excerpt from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair about meat packing facilities: “There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.” Sinclair’s reveal led to the creation of three acts, these in which include the Meat Inspection Act, The Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Food and Drug Administration. These three important acts are still relevant today, and especially the Food and Drug Administration, Most of us are familiar with this by FDA, every thing we eat and cinsume today is checked by the FDA. They are responsible for protecting our health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security. Sinclair did not expect the results of The Jungle didn’t lead to more concern over working conditions, but was still satisfied he made a difference to food industries across America. “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”, Upton Sinclair once said. Another famous muckraker to expose American industries is Ida Tarbell. She was the author of the book “The History of the Standard Oil Company.” Born in 1857, in Hatch Hollow, Pennsylvania, Turbell’s dream career was to be a scientist. Despite the fact that science was her aspiration, she instead pursued teaching. This was a profession that deemed more suitable for a woman. Science was a field largely closed to women in the 1950s and 1960s. It was until she met Dr. Thomas Flood, editor of the Chautauquan,in 1883. Chautauquan was a magazine published nearby Pennsylvania. He asked for the favor of Tarbell to assist him for a few months while he seeked for a successor, since he was about to retire his position. Not knowing writing was going to be her true passion, she ended up working at the Chautauquan as a writer and editor for six years long. Tarbell later on accepted an offer from Samuel Sidney McClure, another famous muckraker, who ran the McClure’s Magazine. This big offer was to work for his new project for the magazine, where she undertook her most famous work, her expose of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. McClure’s Magazine published it in 19 installments, beacuse her research of company’s practices of how it was built from Standard Oil into one of the world’s largest business monopolies took many years to complete. Tarbell thoroughly documented the aggressive techniques Standard Oil employed to outmaneuver other companies. Her composition was a sensation towards America, the installments even became a two-volume book. An excerpt from the book “The History of the Standard Oil Company”: “Frank Rockefeller gave a pretty complete story of the trials of an independent refiner.
He declared that at the moment, his concern, the Pioneer Oil Company, was unable to get the same rates as the Standard; the freight agent frankly told him that unless he could give the road the same amount of oil to transport that the Standard did, he could not give the rate the Standard enjoyed. Mr. Rockefeller said that in his belief there was a pooling arrangement between the railroads and the Standard and that the rebate given was “divided up between the Standard Oil Company and the railroad officials.” He repeatedly declared to the committee that he did not know this to be a positive fact, that he had no proof, but that he believed such was the truth. …Of course after this controversy the railroads were more obdurate than ever. The railroad men were active in securing the suppression of the investigations, and they soon succeeded not only in doing that but in pigeon-holing for the time Mr. Hopkins's Interstate Commerce Bill. The oil men began to seek an independent outlet to the sea. The first project to attract attention was the Columbia Conduit Pipe Line, begun by Dr. David Hostetter of Pittsburgh. He had conceived the idea of piping it to Pittsburgh, where he could make a connection with the Baltimore and Ohio road, which up to this time had refused to go into the oil pool. Now at that time the right of eminent domain for pipes had been granted in but eight counties of Western
Pennsylvania. Allegheny County, in which Pittsburgh is located, was not included in the eight, a restriction which the oil men attributed rightly, no doubt, to the influence of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the State Legislature. That road could hardly have been expected to allow the pipes to go to Pittsburgh and connect with a rival road if it could help it.” Rockefeller was engaging in unethical practices, like predatory pricing and colluding with railroads to eliminate his competitors, which was a major violation. One result coming from Tarbell’s work was a Supreme Court decision in 1911. It found Standard Oil in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act was to destroy monopolies that were using their power to harm society and other companies. The Court found that the Standard Oil Company was an illegal monopoly and was ordered to break into 34 separate companies. Ida Tarbell was not like the other muckrakers, she did not like the label muckraker at all. She once said, “This classification of muckraker, which I did not like. All the radical element, and I numbered many friends among them, were begging me to join their movements. I soon found that most of them wanted attacks. They had little interest in balanced findings. Now I was convinced that in the long run the public they were trying to stir would weary of vituperation, that if you were to secure permanent results the mind must be convinced.” She wrote this in her article “Muckraker or Historian” in which she justifies her efforts in exposing the oil trust. When President Theodore Roosevelt used the phrase “muckraker” in a speech in reference to Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and other journalists writing and about the tremendous power of big business, she immediately objected the term. She felt like it belittled work she believed to be of historical importance.
Being a conscientious journalist, Ida Tarbell is known for the inauguration of muckraking. President Theodore Roosevelt had given the term ‘muckraking’ to this type of investigative journalism done by Ida Tarbell. Roosevelt did not fully support her work because of its "focus and tone." The President got this name from a c...
Using Leon Czolgosz as a platform from which to examine the ills of 1900’s society, Rauchway expounds upon their implications for America’s immediate future, and how they, in combination with McKinley’s murder, helped set the stage for Theodore Roosevelt and his administration. Why would a man like Leon Czolgosz have assassinated the president? How did this reflect and affect public sentiment, and how did the tier of American society that Czolgosz represented– the unhappy, alienated and downtrodden working class– provide Roosevelt with the opportunities he needed to make drastic change? Rauchway offers answers to each of these questions, while illustrating along the way that Czolgosz was neither insane nor truly an anarchist, Roosevelt was not quite the spontaneous, apolitical figure he pretended to be, and McKinley’s murder, tragic though it was, was in some ways a necessary evil.
None of the competition knew what the rates were for the rebates or the rates that Rockefeller was paying the railroad. This made it hard for the competition to keep up with the Standard Oil Company. The consequences led to many oil companies being secretly bought out by Rockefeller. All in all, 25 companies surrendered to Rockefeller's relentless expansion, which was 20% of the oil industry in America.... ...
During the 1800’s, business leaders who built their affluence by stealing and bribing public officials to propose laws in their favor were known as “robber barons”. J.P. Morgan, a banker, financed the restructuring of railroads, insurance companies, and banks. In addition, Andrew Carnegie, the steel king, disliked monopolistic trusts. Nonetheless, ruthlessly destroying the businesses and lives of many people merely for personal profit; Carnegie attained a level of dominance and wealth never before seen in American history, but was only able to obtain this through acts that were dishonest and oftentimes, illicit. Document D resentfully emphasizes the alleged capacity of the corrupt industrialists. In the picture illustrated, panic-stricken people pay acknowledgment to the lordly tycoons. Correlating to this political cartoon, in 1900, Carnegie was willing to sell his holdings of his company. During the time Morgan was manufacturing
Many people consider Rockefeller a robber of industry because of his forcible ways of gaining his monopolies. Rockefeller was fond of buying out small and large competitors. If the competitors refused to sell they often found Rockefeller cutting the prices of his Standard Oil or in the worst cases, their factories mysteriously blowing up. Rockefeller was obsessed with controlling the oil market and used many of undesirable tactics to flush his competitors out of the market. Rockefeller was also a master of the rebate game. He was one of the most dominant controllers of the railroads. He was so good at the rebate that at some times he skillfully commanded the rail road to pay rebates to his standard oil company on the traffic of other competitors. He was able to do this because his oil traffic was so high that he could make or break a section of a railroad a railroad company by simply not running...
Muckrakers were early twentieth-century reformers whose 1 mission was to look for and uncover political and business corruption. The term muckraker, which referred to the "man with a muckrake" in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, was first used in a pejorative sense by Theodore Roosevelt, whose opinion of the muckrakers was that they were biased and overreacting. The movement began about 1902 and died down by 1917. Despite its brief duration, however, it had a significant impact on the political, commercial, and even literary climate of the period.
Taking place in the jungle of meat packing factories during the early 1900s in Chicago, a journalist by the name of Upton Sinclair dissects the savage inner workings of America’s working class factory lifestyle. Sinclair portrayed the grim circumstance that workers faced and the exploited lives of factory workers in Chicago. He became what was then called a mudrucker; a journalist who goes undercover to see first hand the conditions they were investigating. Being in poor fortune, Sinclair was able to blend into the surrounds of the factory life with his poor grimy clothing. The undercover journalist would walk into the factory with the rest of the men, examine its conditions, and record them when he returned home. It is the worker’s conditions
Cities and industry grew in growth on the first of January in 1900 which created an influx of the high classes. Andrew Carnegie is a factory owner who was about to sell his steel company, but ended up becoming one of the richest man in the world. However, there was an underside of this whole excitement to earn money and the hope of the American dream. Average earnings were less than $500 a year, but in the unskilled southern workers earned an average of $300 a year. The work hours were 60 hours a week, wages were strained, and horrible child labor. The question is what was the most important problems in America during the early 1900s that needed to be addressed by The Progressive Movement. There are three main reasons: the struggling child labor, women’s voting rights, and
Muckraking was a powerful journalistic force, whose supporters made it so. Muckraking was the practice of writers and critics exposing corrupt politicians and business practices. President Theodore Roosevelt made the term "muck-raker" popular. He once said The man with the muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward with the muck-rake in his hands; who was offered a celestial crown for his muckrake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake himself the filth of the floor. Some, like Roosevelt, viewed methods of muckrakers such as Ida Tarbell, Ray S. Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair as these types of people.
During the late 19th and early 20th century both the Populist Party and Progressive movement wanted to preserve some things, while also addressing the need for reform. Although many of the ideas and goals of these “Third parties” were initially not legislated and considered far-fetched, many of these ideas later became fundamental laws throughout American history. The Populists and Progressives were both grass roots movements, and addressed the needs of the poor and powerless, for the Populists it was farmers and for the Progressives it was urban lower and middle class workers. These two movements attempted to bring the powerless peoples issues to national politics. The Populists and Progressives wanted to preserve some American ideals of the past, such as a sense of community and the ability for farmers and workers to live happily without economic strains. Populists were more oriented to the plight of the farmer while the Progressives included women's rights, and protection of the consumer and labor.
The Progressive Era ( 1890’s- 1920’s) was a period of political reforms and social activism within politicians, and radical groups. Some politicians were also known as “Political Progressives”, this group made great changes in the effort to sooth the anger of many industrial workers, and to make their jobs a little less rigorous, however the changes put into effort by political progressives would do little to aid the concerns such as those of the radicals groups (women, blacks, Mexican-Americans).
The Progressive Movement The progressive movement of the early 20th century has proved to be an intricately confounded conundrum for American historians. Who participated in this movement? What did it accomplish, or fail to accomplish? Was it a movement at all? These are all significant questions that historians have been grappling with for the last 60 years, thus creating a historical dialogue where in their different interpretations interact with each other.
Rockefeller was America’s first billionaire, and he was the true epitome of capitalism. Rockefeller was your typical rags-to-riches businessman, and at the turn of the twentieth century, while everyone else in the working class was earning ten dollars max every week, Rockefeller was earning millions. There has been much discussion as to whether Rockefeller’s success was due to being a “robber baron”, or as a “captain of industry”. By definition, a robber baron was an industrialist who exploited others in order to achieve personal wealth, however, Rockefeller’s effect on the economy and the lives of American citizens has been one of much impact, and deserves recognition. He introduced un-seen techniques that greatly modified the oil industry. During the mid-nineteenth century, there was a high demand for kerosene. In the refining process from transforming crude oil to kerosene, many wastes were produced. While others deemed the waste useless, Rockefeller turned it into income by selling them. He turned those wastes into objects that would be useful elsewhere, and in return, he amassed a large amount of wealth. He sold so much “waste” that railroad companies were desperate to be a part of his company. However, Rockefeller demanded rebates, or discounted rates, from the railroad companies, when they asked to be involved with his business. By doing so, Rockefeller was able to lower the price of oil to his customers, and pay low wages to his workers. Using these methods,
During the Progressive Era, occurring from 1890 until 1920, progressives attempted to make many changes at a national level and were characterized by support for economic, social, and political reforms. By realizing the rapid industrial growth, poor class, and immigration, progressive’s goals were to relieve these issues and create laws that gave the common people more power. Progressive reformers gave significance to issues of black rights and also to women suffrage, however these issues had proved to be forgotten by Woodrow Wilson, whom of which was the president during this time. Although the reformers were not successful with these two issues, they seemed to be successful in improving much of the other negativity that had occurred during this era including the working conditions of the meat industry, child labor laws, and by changing the competition from large companies. In the end, all of these proved that the reformers turned out to be very successful in bringing reform to a national level. Along with these issues that the progressives tried to stop competition, they also fought many groups that tried to eliminate social classes along the way. Progressives were able to be successful in restoring economic competition, making the government more efficient, and stemming the tide of socialism.
Numerous families living in small town America lost their income because of Standard Oil and forced hardship upon many. The legacy of John D. Rockefeller shall always live on as he has permanently shaped how this country looks. He has funded huge advancements in the fields of education and medicine along with starting the events to end lassiez-faire economics. The petroleum industry changed greatly during his career thanks to his research and completely new business methods were thought up of by him, some still in practice today.