What was the primary goal of progressive era muckrakers?

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Alternate titles: muckraking journalism

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Last Updated: Dec 9, 2022 Article History

Table of Contents

What was the primary goal of progressive era muckrakers?

Lincoln Steffens

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Key People:Upton Sinclair Lincoln Steffens Ida Tarbell Henry Demarest Lloyd Edwin Markham...(Show more)Related Topics:American literature...(Show more)

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Top Questions

Where does the term muckraker come from? (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

The name muckraker was pejorative when used by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech on April 14, 1906; he borrowed a passage from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress that referred to “the Man with the Muckrake…who could look no way but downward.” But muckraker came to take on favourable connotations of social concern and courageous exposition.

What does the term muckraker mean?

A muckraker was any of a group of American writers identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé writing. 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.

Who was the first muckraker?

Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida M. Tarbell are considered to have been the first muckrakers, when they wrote articles on municipal government, labour, and trusts in the January 1903 issue of McClure’s Magazine. The muckraking writing trend grew out of the yellow journalism of the 1890s, which whetted the public appetite for news arrestingly presented, and out of popular magazines, especially those established by S.S. McClure, Frank A. Munsey, and Peter F. Collier.

muckraker, any of a group of American writers identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé literature. 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. The name muckraker was pejorative when used by U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in his speech of April 14, 1906; he borrowed a passage from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress that referred to “the Man with the Muckrake…who could look no way but downward.” But muckraker also came to take on favourable connotations of social concern and courageous exposition.

What was the primary goal of progressive era muckrakers?

The muckrakers’ work grew out of the yellow journalism of the 1890s, which whetted the public appetite for news arrestingly presented, and out of popular magazines, especially those established by S.S. McClure, Frank A. Munsey, and Peter F. Collier. The emergence of muckraking was heralded in the January 1903 issue of McClure’s Magazine by articles on municipal government, labour, and trusts, written by Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida M. Tarbell.

What was the primary goal of progressive era muckrakers?

Ida Tarbell

What was the primary goal of progressive era muckrakers?

Upton Sinclair

The intense public interest aroused by articles critical of political corruption, industrial monopolies, and fraudulent business practices rallied journalists, novelists, and reformers of all sorts to sharpen their criticism of American society. Charles Edward Russell led the reform writers with exposés ranging from The Greatest Trust in the World (1905) to The Uprising of the Many (1907), the latter of which reported on methods being tried to extend democracy in other countries. Lincoln Steffens wrote about corrupt city and state politics in The Shame of the Cities (1904). Brand Whitlock, who wrote The Turn of the Balance (1907), a novel opposing capital punishment, was also a reform mayor of Toledo, Ohio. Thomas W. Lawson, a Boston financier, provided in “Frenzied Finance” (Everybody’s, 1904–05) a major exposé of stock-market abuses and insurance fraud. Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) exposed the corrupt practices used to form a great industrial monopoly. Edwin Markham’s Children in Bondage was a major attack on child labour. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906) and Samuel Hopkins Adams’s The Great American Fraud (1906), combined with the work of Harvey W. Wiley and U.S. Sen. Albert J. Beveridge, brought about passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. David Graham Phillips’s series “The Treason of the Senate” (Cosmopolitan, 1906), which inspired Pres. Roosevelt’s speech in 1906, was influential in leading to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provided for popular senatorial elections. Muckraking as a movement largely disappeared between 1910 and 1912.

What was the primary goal of Progressive Era?

The Progressive Era (late 1890s – late 1910s) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States focused on defeating corruption, monopoly, waste and inefficiency.

What was the muckrakers goal quizlet?

The main goal of the Muckrakers was to raise awareness of social injustices, inequality, corruption and the abuse of political power in order to bring about reform.

What was the main goal of the Progressive movement and the muckrakers who supported it?

The major goals of the progressives were to promote the ides of morality, economic reform , efficiency and social welfare. The Progressives had many different methods and ideas on how to solve social problems. The Muckrakers were a group of people that informed about wrongdoings in the face of society.

Why were muckrakers important during the Progressive Era quizlet?

Why were muckrakers important during the Progressive Era? They helped to increase the public's awareness of troubling issues in society.