Response to Upton Sinclair’s “The Brass Check”
Benjamin J. Gautreaux
Nicholls State University

Abstract
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The term then became commonly used to describe journalist who were, like a muckrake, which scrapped the filth from floors, scraping up the dirtiest of America’s hidden (or not so hidden) secrets to publish for the world to see.
Sinclair (1919) stated that the most famous muckrakers of this time period were Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and Ray Baker. Steffens is most recognized for writing several articles exposing the massive amounts of corruption in several cities such as St. Louis and Pittsburgh, and contrasted them with what he considered honorable, or good, cities like Chicago and New York. This collection of articles eventually received publishing and became known as The Shame of the Cities. Tarbell’s investigative journalism and ensuing publishing of The History of The Standard Oil Company ultimately would help lead to the disbanding of Standard Oil in 1911. Baker is most recognized for writing the book Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy, in which his account goes in to deep details regarding racial relations, tension and division between White and African-American Southern townspeople. Sinclair himself is also to be found within this band of famous muckrakers, most notably for his 1906 book titled The Jungle. The Jungle is comprised of the original 1905 serial run, which appeared in the newspaper “Appeal to Reason”. It gave …show more content…
This is not vastly different then how the news was owned during the progressive era. There were a few big players that owned a significant portion of the newspaper outlets. Along with that they also had a few outlying newspapers published by less wealthy people or groups. These smaller papers tended to often fall under the term “Yellow Papers” or Yellow Journalism”. Yellow Journalism was, and still is, often comprised of eye-popping headlines and uninformed articles that did not give them the highest credentials. Quite often though, the truth was so outrageous and egregious that only the yellow papers would print it. This is still true to this day where we often find that small tabloids actually broke news often times ahead of these larger