Muckrakers

What is a Muckraker? A muckraker is an individual who seeks to expose or reveal corruption of businesses or government to the public. Wrote about: Urban life and poverty Anti big business Corruption

Origin of the term “Muckraker” “The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.“ Teddy Roosevelt Muckraker—one who cleans up manure

Modern Muckrakers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffVJshHn-1w

Muckrakers Ida Tarbell Wrote articles and History of Standard Oil attacking Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company Changed forever the role of investigative reporter by digging for facts in hundreds of documents Negative exposé of the business practices of Rockefeller and trusts.

- Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company “Very often people who admit facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘it’s business’. That is, ‘it’s business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, and special privileges.” - Ida Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company

Hine Cont’d Photojournalism Sought Social Reform National Child Labor Committee to document child labor/expose corruption.

Lewis Hine

Hine Cont’d

Glassmakers

Thomas Nast Father of the American Political Cartoon Exposed political corruption in NYC (Boss—William Tweed) Brings about Tweed’s downfall Harper’s Weekly

Muckrakers and Reform Efforts “Let’s stop them damned pictures,” the Boss supposedly said. “I don’t care so much what the papers write about – my constituents can’t read – buy damn it, they can see pictures.” – Boss Tweed Muckraker: Thomas Nast, cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly Reform: - Tweed was arrested - “Good government” leagues were formed to replace corrupt leaders.

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis Pioneer of photo journalism Exposed corrupt living arrangements in the tenements of NYS – “How the Other Half Lives”

Upton Sinclair Responsible for criticizing the meat industry’s safety and quality Wrote the book The Jungle which highlighted meat industry practices through a fiction story

……the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest--that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.

“Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor,--for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,--sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!”