The Muckrakers
The Age of Naturalism
• Many muckraking pieces are examples
from the Age of Naturalism (from 18951920)
• Not a rebellion against the Age of Realism
• More of an off-shoot of realism
• A new kind of realism, a natural and logical
extension of realism – more intense,
honest, and graphic, and darker mood
• Examined the bleak and gloomy underbelly of human
society
• Naturalist fiction often concentrated on non-Anglo,
ethnically marked inhabitants of the growing American
cities, many of them immigrants and most belonging to
a class-spectrum ranging from the destitute to the
lower-middle class
• Literature of degradation portraying exploitation and
human defeat by the forces of nature, society, and
modern economics
• Realists put their characters on a stage and let them
work out their own destinies, while Naturalists denied
their characters any free choice and made them “straws
in the wind”
The Muckrakers
• Among the first to articulate the new spirit of
reform … good ole crusading journalists
• In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many writers
focused on exposing corruption and exploitation
• Known as “muckrakers” after Theodore Roosevelt
accused one of raking up muck through his
writings
• Muckraker target … big business
• Some muckrakers worked on journalism and
straight documentary, while others worked in
fiction
• By the turn of the
century, many muckrakers
turned attention to
government
• McClure’s Magazine –
leading outlet for
muckraking articles
Founded by Samuel
McClure in June 1893
• Intention: To expose social and economic
scandals in the hope of promoting reform
• Reached their peak of influence in the first
decade of the twentieth century
• Investigated governments, labor unions, and
corporations
• Explored the problems of child labor, immigrant
ghettos, and prostitution
• Denounced waste and destruction of natural
resources, subjugation of women, and
occasionally the oppression of African Americans
• Muckrakers’ exposés reflected one important
aspect of emerging progressive sentiment … a
sense of outrage at social and economic injustice
Muckrakers raised awareness of the
exploitation of workers in the “machine age”
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906)
– Exposed the horrors of the meatpacking
conditions in Chicago
– Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
– Meat Inspection Act (1906)
• The History of the Standard Oil Company by Ida
Tarbell
– Ran in McClure’s in 1902
– Supreme Court dissolved the Standard Oil Trust in
1906
More muckrakers
• Wealth Against Commonwealth by Henry
Lloyds
– Attacked Standard Oil (1894)
• How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (1890)
– Photographed NYC slums
• The Bitter Cry of Children by John Spargo
(1906)
– Detailed sweatshops and child labor
conditions
The Octopus
• Frank Norris
• March 5, 1870-October 25, 1902
• Originally wrote “The Octopus”
and intended it to be the first of a
trilogy titled “Epic of the Wheat”
• “The Octopus” would describe
the producer, “The Pit” would
describe the distributor, and “The
Wolf” would describe the
consumer (never written)
The Jungle
• Upton Sinclair
• Sept. 20, 1878-Nov. 25, 1968
• Most of his characters are
victims – vehicles he uses to
illustrate the social inequities
that concern him
• His novels strongly infused with
pessimistic determinism of
literary naturalism, seek to
expose the subjection capitalism
imposes on working people