Muckraker+(Upton+Sinclair)

The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States. There work grew out of the yellow journalism of the 1890s, which whetted the public appetite for news arrestingly presented, and out of popular magazines. Mostly associated with the Progressive Era period of American history. Muckrakers comes from the word muckrake. Muckrake was used by President Theodore Roosevelt during a speech in 1906 where he was agreeing with many of the charges of the muckrakers but asserted that some of their methods were sensational and irresponsible.

The difference between yellow journalism and muckrakers is that yellow journalism makes things up just to sell papers and muckrakers tells the truth in concern of helping people out. The most famous muckrakers are Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Upton Sinclair. The muckrakers would write things so grave that it make the blood of Americans run cold. The first muckraker to strike was Lincoln Steffens. He wrote about how city officials worked in league with big business to maintain power while corrupting the public treasury.

Ida Tarbell struck next with her McClure’s series entitled “History of the Standard Oil Company”. She wrote these one month after Lincoln struck. Edwin Markham published an article exposing child labor. Ray Stannard Baker examined the sad state of race relations in America. Samuel Hopkins Adams won fame from his muckraked exposes of the paten medicine industry. There were so many more stories too that made Americans so angry and upset.

