Brittany R. Clark
WARNING:
TODAY’S LECTURE CONTAINS GROSS IMAGES.
 Huge economic growth
 Unequal distribution of wealth
 Industry expanding into new areas
 More work in factories, on railroads. Less on farms.
 Mechanization of industry
 Cheaper methods of production
 Unskilled labor and a foreman
 Immigration boom
 From Eastern Europe instead of Western Europe
 Search for the American Dream through unskilled work
 Overcrowding tenements as poverty rises
 Industrial cities filled with working class people
 Donated large portions of their
wealth
 But earned wealth it on the backs of
the poor
Vanderbilt –
Railroads
Rockefeller –
Oil
Carnegie –
Steel
Morgan –
Finance
 Accused of:
 Overworking employees and paying
low wages
 Squashing competition by any
means necessary
 Paying off high level government
officials
 Widespread social activism and political reform
 Laissez faire capitalism isn’t working out for everyone
 Out of control monopolies
 Income inequality
 Reform movements spring up:
 Labor unions
 Sherman Anti-Trust Act
 17th Amendment
 Women’s Suffrage
 Before 1890 newspapers largely
owned by political parties
 Easier to get your message across if
you own a newspaper
 Easier to sell papers with a built-in
audience
 Run by party members who were
then granted favorable government
appointments
 Around this time owners realized
there was more money in being less
partisan
 Opposing newspaper
owners
 Either would had a
monopoly without the other
 Who can sell more papers?
 Hearst undercharges
 Sensationalism and yellow
journalism
 Finally: who can tell the story
better?
VS
.
 Investigative journalism
aimed at exposing the ills of
society
 A response to yellow
journalism
 Still used sensationalism to
get the word out
“I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident
hit it in the stomach.”
– Upton Sinclair
 Sinclair goes undercover at a meatpacking plant
 Dedicated to “The Workingmen of America”
 Sinclair meant it to expose poor working conditions
 Public more concerned with the production of the meat
 In response, President Teddy Roosevelt:
 Passes the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act
 Creates the Bureau of Chemistry – today called the Food and Drug
Administration
 Today we can more clearly see the worker’s rights issues
There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor,
in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped
and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and
the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark
in these storage places to see well, but a man could run
his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls
of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and
the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they
would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into
the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke;
the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who
did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even
when he saw one--there were things that went into the
sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a
tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their
hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a
practice of washing them in the water that was to be
ladled into the sausage."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvYsAZrcLsY
2012 – ABC News
does a report on
the “pink slime”
in processed beef
2010 – Celebrity Chef
Jamie Oliver produces
Jamie Oliver’s Food
Revolution
2011 and
2013 –
Chipotle
releases
commercials
demonstratin
g that they
get their
meat from
organic
farms