Muckraking Reformation At the turn of the twentieth century a new part of America’s political culture was beginning to emerge due to the country’s advances in technology and specifically in the creation of mass magazine publications. These publications were able to reach largely the country’s growing middle class. These journalists soon noticed that their readers yearned for magazine articles that investigated the numerous dilemmas that plagued the American society at that time. The ground breaking journalists were labeled as “muckrakers” by President Roosevelt and often became a source of controversy within America’s political culture. Most muckrakers used their skills of descriptive writing to paint vivid and disturbing pictures of the …show more content…
One common theme that the journalists drew upon for sympathy was that children were losing their time of childhood. During this time children were being drawn into the labor force at an alarmingly young age to perform dangerous tasks. In John Sprago’s work he stated, “Some of them had never been inside of a school; few of them could read a child’s primer.” (Sprago source 3). The author was encouraging readers to give sympathy to these poor boys who had given up their opportunity to go to school in order to work in coal mines. In Sprago’s work the children are giving up their childhood in order to work, but in Riss’ article the children are having their childhood ripped away from them. Riss describes the fate that many children’s childhood met by living in the horrid tenement buildings. According to Riss, “Life in the tenements in July and august spells death to an army of little ones whom the doctor’s skill is powerless to save…little coffins are stacked mountains high on the deck of the Charity Commissioners’ boat,” (Riss Source 1). Riss’ appealed to the sympathy of his readers by describing the dreadful amount of children that were dying due to the inhumane living conditions present in the tenement buildings. The muckrakers tried to gain their reader’s sympathy for the Americans who were suffering in this …show more content…
One muckraker openly criticized an institution for causing many of the country’s problems and all he done was give the institution a fictional name in his work. This can be seen in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” where he models the fictional company Dunham’s after the real Armour Meat Company. Sinclair stated, “It was stuff such as this that made the embalmed beef that had killed several times as many United States soldiers as the bullets of the Spaniard’s;” (Sinclair Source 2). Sinclair is blaming the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers on the poor quality of meat product being produced by Dunham meat company. Sinclair describes in horrific detail the conditions that many Americans were having to face by working in these meatpacking industries. Other muckrakers targeted big businessmen as people to hold responsible for the country’s problems. Lincoln Steffens is an example of a muckraker that believed that businessmen were the ones that needed to be held accountable for the problems that were prominent in the country. Steffens stated, “The typical businessman is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a big businessman and very busy, he does not neglect, he is busy with politics, oh very busy and very businesslike.” (Steffens Source 4). Steffens is supporting the thought that every businessman and big businessman is involved in the corruption of the