Ms. Jerome
A muckraker is an individual who seeks to expose or reveal
corruption of businesses or government to the public.
 The term originates from writers of the Progressive
movement in America who wanted to expose corruption and
scandals in government and business.
 American Progressive Era—unearth corruption
 Wrote about:
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 Urban life and poverty
 Anti big business
 AKA UPTON SINCLAIR!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pCaK0a
ASE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzdyMil
AdcE
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“The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to
the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop
raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown
above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are
beautiful things above and round about them; and if they
gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but
muck, their power of usefulness is gone." TR
Muckraker—one who cleans up manure
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Investigative journalism
Wrote The History of Standard
Oil Company (1904)
#5 Top 100 works of journalism
of the 20th century NYT
Wrote for McClure Magazine
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Negative exposé of the
business practices of
Rockefeller and trusts.
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http://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=5Yog7Fy
AFyA
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Photojournalism
Sought Social Reform
National Child Labor
Committee to
document child
labor/expose
corruption.
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Father of the American Political Cartoon
Exposed political corruption in NYC (Boss—
William Tweed)
Brings about Tweed’s downfall
Harper’s Weekly
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The best example of a City boss was Boss
Tweed
Tweed helped immigrants get jobs and gave
them turkeys a Christmas and year after
year immigrants voted for Tweed.
Muckrakers and Reform Efforts
“Let’s stop them damned pictures,” the Boss supposedly said.
“I don’t care so much what the papers write about – my
constituents can’t read – buy damn it, they can see pictures.”
– Boss Tweed
Muckraker: Thomas Nast, cartoonist for Harper’s
Weekly
Reform: - Tweed was arrested
- “Good government” leagues were formed to
replace corrupt leaders.
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Journalist
Exposed corrupt living arrangements
How the Other Half Lives—18 page article
 1889
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Became a book How the Other Half Lives,
subtitled "Studies among the Tenements of
New York“
Pioneer in photography
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Written in 1906 (The Progressive Era)
Individual who seeks to expose or reveal
corruption of businesses or government to
the public.
Result of this book: Pure Food and Drug Act
 (present day Food and Drug Administration –FDA)
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A family from Lithuania comes to America for
opportunity.
The character of Jurgis embodies American
idealism—the hope for a good life based on
hard work.
Jurgis and Ona are married as the book
begins.
The family lives in Packingtown. A section of
Chicago.
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“Give me your tired,
your poor,
Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of
your teeming shore.
Send these, the
homeless, tempesttossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the
golden door”
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The immigrant experience
The American Dream (or lack there of)
The female in the workplace
Urbanization
Socialism as a cure for the failure of
Capitalism
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Misfortunes define Jurgis’s life in America
 His new home is a swindle
▪ “There seemed never to be an end to the things they
had to buy and to the unforeseen contingencies”
p. 115
 Injury and chronic job loss
▪ “In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he
had gotten a job the first day; but now he was secondhand, a damaged article, so to speak. And they did not
want him” p. 142
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Ona’s health troubles after childbirth
 “and so she was always chasing the phantom of
good health, and losing it because she was too
poor to continue…” p. 124
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Working in the fertilizer plant:
 “…in suffocating cellars where the daylight never
came you might see men and women and children
bending over whirling machines and sawing bits
of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing their
lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die,
ever one of them, within a certain definite
time”
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Ona’s “fall” from grace
 Phil Connors and Miss Henderson’s house p. 172
 Jurgis’s attack on Phil Connors and arrest
▪ “Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud
in his fury, lifting his victim and smashing his head upon
the floor.” p. 174
 Ona dies in childbirth p. 215 Chapter 19
 Jurgis continues to drink
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Chapter 21-22:
 “He went—out to play…we couldn’t make him stay in. He must
have got caught in the mud!” p. 241
 Jurgis becomes a hobo:
▪ “He stood and watched it [the railroad]; and all at once a wild
impulse seized him, a thought that had been lurking within him,
unspoken , unrecognized, leaped into sudden life. He started down
the track, and when he was past the gate-keeper’s shanty he
sprang forward and swung himself on to one of the cars” p. 241
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Jurgis is reduced to a life on the streets, a
beggar:
 “He had lost in the fierce battle of greed, and so
was doomed to be exterminated; and all society
was busied to see that he did not escape the
sentence”
 Gets $100 from Freddie Jones, only to have to
have it stolen by a bartender. (Chapter 24)
 Jurgis finds himself back in prison after the bar
“riot”
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A life of crime with Jack Duane:
 Chapter 25: the mugging of an insurance agent.
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Marija’s fall from grace:
 “Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of
stockings; yet she proceeded to dress before
Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble to
close the door. He had by this time divined what
sort of place he was in; and he had seen a great
deal of the world since he had left home, and was
not easy to shock—and yet it gave him a painful
start that Marija should do this” p. 330
 Stanislovas—horrific death by rats
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Capitalism has destroyed Jurgis
The Beef Trust vs. the working man
Continual misfortunes
 “They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to
look about them and learn something; to be
decent and clean, to see their child grow up to be
strong. And now it was all gone—it would never
be! They had played the game and they had lost”
p. 156
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The American dream is for the rich, the few.
Capitalism fosters greed and class divisions
 It favors the wealthy elite.
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Chapter 28. Page 345
“I have known what it is to dare and to aspire,
to dream mighty dreams and to see them
perish…”
To the worker “…the shackles will be torn
from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of
thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at
last!” (Marx??!!)
Identifies with their pains
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Communism is an extreme form of Socialism
Socialism: The means of producing and distributing
goods is owned collectively or by a centralized
government that often plans and controls the economy
Rejects class-based society
Socialists share belief that capitalism unfairly
concentrates power and wealth among a select few.
 This select few controls capital and derives its wealth through
exploitation.