Muckraker

racially biased judges and juries. Ida B. Wells attempted to change this unfair system through her journalism, which brought awareness to the horrors of lynching and humanizing its victims; it was in a way similar to the journalism of Upton Sinclair, a muckraker during the Progressive Era who we learned about. He used his writing to document the appalling conditions of…

Antebellum (pre-Civil War) America to contemporary (modern) America Starting from the pre-Civil war years between 1820 and 1860, America underwent the most chaotic experience in its history. During this period, the nation saw its people being developed from underdeveloped farmers and frontiersmen into becoming members of an urbanized economic powerhouse (Layson, 2014). America therefore in this period experienced five major trends in their life as the agricultural south became more separated…

Investigative journalists or muckrakers helped bring reform issues to the attention of the public by exposing problems in American society. Specifically, writer and photographer Jacob Riis used photojournalism to capture the dismal and dangerous living conditions in working-class tenements…

Progressive Era reformers and the federal government were able to bring a significant amount of reform during the years of 1900 to 1920. Although mostly conservative, the reforms made during this time period paved the way for future development. The federal government mainly worked on reforms for trusts and child labor laws, while Progressive reformers focused on the rights of the people, specifically women and African Americans. The reforms that were made did not hold a great impact in society,…

Despite hating progressive “muckrakers”, exposés by public overseers like Upton Sinclair educated Roosevelt and pushed the congress to enact the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, Meat Inspection Act of 1906, and to form the Food and Drug Administration in an attempt to enforce the regulations…

As some journalists strove to change working conditions, the term sweatshop came to refer to a broader set of workplaces whose conditions were considered inferior. In the United States, investigative journalists, known as Muckrakers, wrote exposés of business practices, and progressive politicians campaigned for new laws. Notable exposés of sweatshop conditions include Jacob Riis' photo documentary How the Other Half Lives and Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle about the meat…

market products that could be unsafe. The change was significant as before, people were getting sick off of the rotten meats, weakening the nation. These illnesses and most things corrupt about the meatpacking industry are shown by the important Muckraker, Upton Sinclair in her book “The Jungle” which aimed to reveal the bad practices of the meatpacking industry. Sinclair once said, “I aimed for the public's heart, and hit it in the stomach,” Sinclair changed what she had before seen by changing…

Do you really know what is in the meat that we eat? Eric Schlosser has written a book on the process of meat packing plants that begs the question (Fast Food Nation). His work bears a remarkable similarity to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle written almost one hundred years ago. Schlosser wrote his book from a different approach but contains shocking information of how our meat is still processed today. He is rightly known as the Upton Sinclair of today. Schlosser went on a meat packing tour and…

bribery of public officials was a commonplace occurrence. If you wanted to be a teacher in Philadelphia you would end up paying the political machine $120 of the first $141 you earned just to secure the position (“The Progressives Respond” 224). As muckraker David Graham Phillips said during the early 1900s “the senators are not elected by the people, they are elected by the “interests””. Big businesses would fund political candidate’s election and in return the candidate would vote in the…

These workers typically worked seven days a week, twelve hours each day, some enduring 24 straight hours of intense labor. After looking closely at Document B, Neill-Reynolds, a muckraker who investigated and gave nationwide publicity to accidents and unsafe conditions. The report was basically about poor conditions in the meat packing industry and violation of international agreements promising a safe workplace. The factory conditions were poor: light source was natural light, few windows,…