occurred during this time.

Consumers had very limited protection before the Progressive Era. Because of Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, laws were passed regulating the handling and sale of meat.  Laws also were passed to protect consumers from falsely labeled food and medicine. Consumers were helped a great deal by these laws.

Muckrakers had a big impact on the Progressive Era.

Muckrakers were journalists of the Progressive Era (late 19th early 20th century) who wrote articles in major magazines exposing corruption in business, government, even the stock market. They were given the name "muckraker" by Theodore Roosevelt from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in which Bunyan described a man who could only look downward with a muckrake in his hands. A muckrake is a rake used to clean muck--a combination of straw and excrement--from horse stables. Theodore Roosevelt said of them

the muckrakers are indispensable to . . . society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.

Among the more notable muckrakers:

• Jacob Riis who wrote How the Other Half Lives, a description of the horrible living conditions in New York City, particularly those areas occupied by immigrants.
• Ida Mae Tarbell wrote A History of the Standard Oil Company. It was not a true "history" but rather a polemic of the ruthless business practices of John D. Rockefeller.
• Henry Demarest Lloyd: Wealth against Commonwealth, a description of large corporate concerns who answered to no one and even corrupted governments when it suited their purposes.
• Upson Sinclair: The Jungle which was written as a Socialist Manifesto, but is more famous for describing the squalid conditions in Chicago's meat packing industry. Sinclair once said of the book,

I aimed for the nation's heart, but I hit it in the stomach.

Most muckrakers were better at pointing out problems rather than suggesting solutions; however The Jungle did lead to major reform. Theodore Roosevelt read the book, and sent inspectors to meat packing plants to see if the conditions described in the book were true. It turns out they were. The inspectors wrote:

We saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculous and other diseased workers

As a result, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the pure food and drug act.

The muckrakers of the Progressive Era paved the way for political reforms by alerting people to conditions that, in the muckrakers’ eyes, needed fixing.   This made the people put pressure on the government for reforms.

In our democratic system, things do not tend to change unless the people do not like the status quo.  If one group thinks something is a problem, but no one else is paying attention, the problem will probably not get addressed. Therefore, if you think something is a problem, you need to publicize it so that everyone else will think it is a problem as well.  This is what the muckrakers did.  Jacob Riis made people aware of the terrible conditions in which poor immigrants lived. Upton Sinclair made people aware of what the slaughterhouses were like.  Other muckrakers exposed problems like the monopoly of Standard Oil. By making people aware of these problems, they allowed the people to put pressure on the government, thus paving the way for political reforms.

In United States history, the term “muckraker” is used to refer to a member of a group of journalists from the Progressive Era who were concerned with uncovering bad deeds and bad conditions in society.  The muckrakers wanted to let the public know about the bad things so that pressure could be put on the government to do something about them.

During the Progressive Era, reformers were interested in trying to fix what they saw as the ills of society.  They were unhappy about things like the power of monopolies, the conditions in which workers worked, the quality of the food that was being sold by large companies, the conditions in which poor people lived, and many other issues.  They believed that the government should get involved in putting an end to these ills.  The muckrakers were a group of journalists who wrote magazine articles, books, and other things to try to expose the problems.  One example of a muckraker was Upton Sinclair, who wrote the fictional novel The Jungle to expose the poor treatment of workers in the meatpacking industry and the unsanitary conditions in which the meat was processed and packed.  Another muckraker was Jacob Riis, who took photographs and wrote articles that detailed the plight of the urban poor. 

The muckrakers got their name from a derisive reference by President Theodore Roosevelt.  He thought they concentrated too much on the bad and ignored the good.  Therefore, he compared them to a character in John Bunyan’s religious classic The Pilgrim’s Progress.  That character was so obsessed with muck and filth that he never looked up and noticed that he could have all the glories of Heaven.  Roosevelt thought the muckrakers were too interested in the “muck” and that they needed to know when to stop turning it over.

The muckrakers are typically credited with being a major force in the Progressive Era.  Historians say that the muckrakers made Americans more aware of the problems in their society.  This led them to put more pressure on the government to fix those problems through the reforms of the Progressive Era.

Muckrakers were American journalists in the Progressive Era (the 1890s–1920s) who sought to expose corruption, primarily in politics and business. The name is a reference to Paul Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; there is a character within the story referred to as the "The Man with the Muck Rake," who abandoned a chance at salvation in order to turn to filth. Similarly, muckrakers used their investigative skills (rakes) to dig through the polished outer appearance of politicians and big businesses (the muck), thus launching an entire movement of journalism that has yet to slow down.

The most influential people behind the muckraker movement were Lincoln Steffens, Ida M. Tarbell, and Ray Stannard Baker. Lincoln Steffens published what is now considered the first muckraking article, "Tweed Days in Minneapolis," in 1902 regarding the corruption of local politicians. These politicians were working in tandem with big businesses in order to maintain their power and influence the city's treasury.

Ida M. Tarbell's article, "The History of Standard Oil," was published one month after Lincoln Steffen's work. In the article, she revealed unfair business practices behind John Rockefeller's success.

Soon after, Ray Stannard Baker's article, "The Right to Work," exposed the violence that non-striking union members all too often faced when they disagreed with union officials who used their positions in attempts to force agreements.

These three people began the muckraking movement, a movement that is still prevalent in modern journalism. Muckraking is now referred to as "investigative journalism," but its importance in reporting unsavory practices by those in positions of power has not diminished with time.

The muckrakers were a group of American journalists who worked in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  They were dedicated to exposing what they saw as negative conditions in American society.

During this time period, America was changing rapidly as immigrants flooded the country and businesses became bigger and more industrialized.  These changes brought with them some very negative impacts.  The muckrakers wanted to expose those problems (like slum housing, bad working conditions, and the excessive power of monopolies) so that people would demand change.  By doing this, the muckrakers helped to build support for the Progressive movement.