¶ … Muckrakers
A group of journalists emerged, during the early twentieth century, who were committed to exposing the social, economic, and political ills of industrial life, and in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt dubbed them the "muckrakers" (Muckrakers pp). The name comes from John Bunyan's story, Pilgrim's Progress, which told of a man with a "muck-rake in his hand" who raked filth rather than look up to nobler things (Muckrakers pp).
Muckraking emerged from two developments of the era, a changing journalism and the impulse of reform (Muckraking pp). Distinct from earlier journalist who wrote polemical, sensationalized news, muckrakers were a new class of educated reporters who saw themselves as scientists objectively reporting the conditions and ills of modern industrial society (Muckrakers pp). They focused their articles on business and political corruption, such as Standard Oil, scandals in city and state politics, the horrors of the meat-packing industry, insurance and stock manipulation, the exploitation of child labor, slum conditions, and racial discrimination (Muckrakers pp). During the years from 1902 to 1912, well over a thousand such articles were published in magazines that specialized in the genre, such as McClure's, Everybody's, and Collier's (Muckrakers pp). These articles sparked moral indignation among middle-class Americans, and rallied public support for several federal regulatory measures, including the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Hepburn Act (Muckrakers pp).
Although there had been recurrent efforts at reform in government, politics, and business for several decades, it was not until the appearance of national mass-circulation magazines that the muckrakers were provided with sufficient funds for investigations and a large enough audience to arouse nationwide concern (Muckrakers1 pp). A few of these famous journalists included, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair (Muckrakers1 pp).
Work Cited
Muckrakers. The Reader's Companion to American History. Retrieved August 18, 2005 from:
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_062000_muckrakers.htm
Muckrakers1. The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 18, 2005 from:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/mu/muckrake.html
nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century was a time of hardship for many Americans, and a time of extreme injustice for several groups, as well. African-Americans were strictly segregated and subjected to institutional racism by the state and local governments in the South and by cultural sentiments, and Native Americans continued to be pushed into ever-smaller reservations and subjected to a host of other injustices,