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The Muckrakers
A significant factor inspiring the reforms of the Progressive Era was the emergence
of muckraking, a type of investigative journalism that exposed waste, corruption, or
abuse in politics, industry, and society.
Key Points
Muckraking involved investigating journalism where reporters would immerse themselves in the industry or
activity they were trying to expose. Through that, they would report on abuses to gauge public uproar and
initiate change.
Muckraking articles usually appeared in magazines such as McClure Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Munsey's.
Muckraking literature sprung as well, beginning with Upton Sinclaire's The Jungle which exposed the
meatpacking industry. This lead to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Much of the time, muckraking resulted in progressive legislation, laws that improve society. Woodrow Wilson's
administration saw many sweeping legislation passed due to muckraking efforts.
Muckrakers were journalists who exposed waste, corruption, and scandal in the highly influential new medium of
national magazines, such as McClure's Magazine. Ray Stannard Baker, George Creel and Brand Whitlock were
active at the state and local level, while Lincoln Steffens exposed political corruption in many large cities; Ida Tarbell
went after Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Samuel Hopkins Adams in 1905 showed the fraud involved in many
patent medicines, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) was a novel that gave a horrid portrayal of how meat was
packed, and David Graham Phillips unleashed a blistering indictment of the U.S. Senate in 1906. Roosevelt gave
these journalists their nickname when he complained they were not being helpful by raking up all the muck.
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines,
continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued
to be influential until World War I, when through a combination of advertising boycotts, dirty tricks and patriotism, the
movement, associated with the Progressive Era in the United States, came to an end.
Before World War I, the term "muckraker" was used to refer in a general sense to a writer who investigates and
publishes truthful reports to perform an auditing or watchdog function. In contemporary use, the term describes either
a journalist who writes in the adversarial or alternative tradition or a non-journalist whose purpose in publication is to
advocate reform and change. Investigative journalists view the muckrakers as early influences and a continuation of
watchdog journalism.
The term is a reference to a character in John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, "the Man with the Muck-rake" that
rejected salvation to focus on filth. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in
a 1906 speech.
While a literature of reform had already appeared by the mid-19th century, the kind of reporting that would come to be
called "muckraking" began to appear around 1900. By the 1900s, magazines such as Collier's Weekly, Munsey's
Magazine and McClure's Magazine were already in wide circulation and read avidly by the growing middle class. The
January 1903 issue of McClure's is considered to be the official beginning of muckraking journalism, although the
muckrakers would get their label later. Ida M. Tarbell ("The History of Standard Oil"), Lincoln Steffens ("The Shame of
Minneapolis") and Ray Stannard Baker ("The Right to Work"), simultaneously published famous works in that single
issue. Claude H. Wetmore and Lincoln Steffens' previous article "Tweed Days in St. Louis", in McClure's October
1902 issue was called the first muckraking article.
The muckrakers would become known for their investigative journalism. Investigations of corruption and social
problems had already been introduced into the newspapers of the late 19 th century by publishers and journalists
during the eras of "personal journalism" and yellow journalism.
Just as the muckrakers became well known for their crusades, journalists from the eras of "personal journalism" and
"yellow journalism" had gained fame through their investigative articles, including articles that exposed wrongdoing:
The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice. In response
to yellow journalism, which had exaggerated facts, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times
under Adolph Ochs after 1896, turned away from sensationalism and reported facts with the intention of being
impartial and a newspaper of record. The growth of wire services had also contributed to the spread of the objective
reporting style. Muckraking publishers like Samuel S. McClure, also emphasized factual reporting, but he also wanted
what historian Michael Schudson had identified as one of the preferred qualities of journalism at the time, namely, the
mixture of "reliability and sparkle" to interest a mass audience. In contrast with objective reporting, the journalists,
whom Roosevelt dubbed "muckrakers", saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged.
Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement as the muckrakers were
associated with Progressive reforms. While the muckrakers continued the investigative exposures and sensational
traditions of yellow journalism, they wrote to change society. Their work reached a mass audience as circulation
figures of the magaziness rose on account of visibility and public interest.
Magazines were the leading outlets for muckraking journalism. Samuel S. McClure and John Sanborn Phillips started
McClure's Magazine in May 1893. McClure led the magazine industry by cutting the price of an issue to 15 cents,
attracting advertisers, giving audiences illustrations and well-written content and then raising ad rates after increased
sales, with Munsey's and Cosmopolitan following suit.
After President Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, he began to manage the press corps and to do so he
elevated his press secretary to cabinet status and initiated press conferences. The muckraking journalists who
emerged around 1900, like the muckraking Lincoln Steffens, were not as easy for Roosevelt to manage as the
objective journalists, and the President gave Steffens access to the White House and interviews to steer stories his
way.
While he may never have used the term himself, the origin of the "muckraker" is attributed to President Theodore
Roosevelt, who, during a speech delivered on April 14, 1906, and on the occasion of dedicating the U.S. House of
Representatives office building, drew on a character from John Bunyan's 1678 classic, Pilgrim's Progress, saying:
"... you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward with
the muck-rake in his hands; Who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor
regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor. "
While cautioning about possible pitfalls of keeping one's attention ever trained downward, "on the muck," Roosevelt
emphasized the social benefit of investigative muckraking reporting, saying:
The muckrakers themselves proudly adopted the label. The term eventually came to be used in reference to
investigative journalists who reported about and exposed issues such as crime, fraud, waste, public health and safety,
graft, illegal financial practices. A muckraker's reporting may span businesses and government.
Some of the key documents that came to define the work of the muckrakers were: Ray Stannard Baker published
"The Right to Work" in McClure's Magazine in 1903, about coal mine conditions, a coal strike, and the situation of
non-striking workers (or scabs). Many of the non-striking workers had no special training or knowledge in mining,
since they were simply farmers looking for work. His investigative work portrayed the dangerous conditions in which
these people worked in the mines, and the dangers they faced from union members who did not want them to work.
Lincoln Steffens published "Tweed Days in St. Louis", in which he profiled corrupt leaders in St. Louis, in October,
1902, in McClure's Magazine.
Ida Tarbell published The Rise of the Standard Oil Company in 1902, providing insight into the manipulation of trusts.
One trust they manipulated was with Christopher Dunn Co. She followed that work with The History of The Standard
Oil Company: the Oil War of 1872, which appeared in McClure's Magazine in 1908.
Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, which revealed conditions in the meat packing industry in the United
States and was a major factor in the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Sinclair wrote the book with the
intent of addressing unsafe working conditions in that industry, not food safety. Sinclair was not a professional
journalist but his story was first serialized before being published in book form. Sinclair considered himself to be a
muckraker.
Many other works by muckrakers brought to light a variety of issues in America during the Progressive era. These
writers focused on a wide range of issues including the monopoly of Standard Oil; cattle processing and meat
packing; patent medicines; child labor; and wages, labor, and working conditions in industry and agriculture. In a
number of instances, the revelations of muckraking journalists led to public outcry, governmental and legal
investigations, and, in some cases, legislation was enacted to address the issues the writers' identified, such as
harmful social conditions; pollution; food and product safety standards; sexual harassment; unfair labor practices;
fraud; and other matters. The work of the muckrakers in the early years, and those today, span a wide array of legal,
social, ethical and public policy concerns.
Other changes that resulted from muckraker articles include the reorganization of the U.S. Navy (after Henry
Reuterdahl published a controversial article in McClure's). Articles like David Graham Phillip's "Treason of the Senate"
were used to change the way Senators were elected by the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Curse of California
G. Frederick Keller's "The Curse of California", which appeared in The Wasp on August 19, 1882, is the
likely origin of the depiction of the Southern Pacific Railroad monopoly as an octopus
Illustration of Theodore Roosevelt and Jacob Riis walking the beat in
NYC in 1894 when Roosevelt was New York City Police
Commissioner, 1901
Riis walks the beat in New York City behind his friend and fellow
reformer, NYC Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt (1894 Illustration from Riis's autobiography)