muckrakers

muckrakers name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th cent. attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term derives from the word muckrake used by President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech in 1906, in which he agreed with many of the charges of the muckrakers but asserted that some of their methods were sensational and irresponsible. He compared them to a character from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress who could look no way but downward with a muckrake in his hands and was interested only in raking the filth. Since the 1870s there had been recurrent efforts at reform in government, politics, and business, but it was not until the advent of the national mass-circulation magazines such as McClure's, Everybody's, and Collier's that the muckrakers were provided with sufficient funds for their investigations and with a large enough audience to arouse nationwide concern. All aspects of American life interested the muckrakers, the most famous of whom are Lincoln Steffens , Ida Tarbell , David Graham Phillips , Ray Stannard Baker , Samuel Hopkins Adams , and Upton Sinclair . In the early 1900s magazine articles that attacked trusts—including those of Charles E. Russell on the beef trust, Thomas Lawson on Amalgamated Copper, and Burton J. Hendrick on life insurance companies—did much to create public demand for regulation of the great combines. The muckraking movement lost support in about 1912. Historians agree that if it had not been for the revelations of the muckrakers the Progressive movement would not have received the popular support needed for effective reform.

Bibliography: See L. Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (1939); J. M. Harrison and H. H. Stein, ed., Muckraking (1974); W. M. Brasch, Forerunners of Revolution (1990).

Muckrakers Name given to US journalists and other writers who exposed corruption in politics and business in the early 20th century. The term was first used by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Muckrakers. Theodore Roosevelt first applied the term “muckrakers” to a group of journalists and writers who exposed corruption in business and government in the early twentieth century. Roosevelt intended the term, borrowed from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, to be somewhat pejorative, but the muckrakers were very influential for a time and provided strong impetus to the ongoing Progressive Era reform movement.

Around 1902, a number of prominent magazines, including McClure's, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Everybody's, and the Arena, began featuring crusading exposés or “muckraking” articles. Some of these pieces were later expanded into full‐length books. Among the best‐known were Ida Tarbell's History of the Standard Oil Company (1902); Lincoln Steffens's The Shame of the Cities (1904), documenting corruption in municipal government; Samuel Hopkins Adams's The Great American Fraud (1906), lambasting the patent‐medicine industry; and Ray Stannard Baker's Following the Color Line (1908), a pioneering exposé of American racism.

A few muckrakers made their case in works of fiction. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906), a fictionalized account of the Chicago meatpacking industry, was the best known of the genre, but David Graham Phillips was perhaps the most prolific of the muckraking novelists. Among his numerous works were Lightfingered Gentry (1907), on the insurance industry; Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1908, published in 1917), on prostitution; and many others.

The muckracking spirit also influenced some of the major novelists of the time, although usually in less tractarian form. Frank Norris's The Octopus (1901) and The Pit (1903); Theodore Dreiser's The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914); and Jack London's Iron Heel (1908) all address the social consequences of unregulated capitalist expansion.

After about 1912, the muckraking movement abated. The public tired of the exposés, some of which seemed sensationalized and overly sordid. But muckraking already had exerted a major impact on the reform movement and would influence the policies of President Woodrow Wilson. Indeed, Ray Stannard Baker became an aide to Wilson and later edited a six‐volume collection of Wilson's public papers (1926–1927). Assuming many different forms, the muckraking impulse continued to influence American journalism as the twentieth century wore on.
See also Capitalism; Industrialization; Literature: Civil War to World War I; Meatpacking and Meat Processing Industry; Prostitution and Antiprostitution; Urbanization.

Bibliography

J.M. Harrison and H.H. Stein, eds., Muckraking, 1974.
Walter M. Brasch , Forerunners of Revolution, 1990.

George H. Douglas