Muckrakers contributed to the rise of progressivism in the early years of the twentieth century by

Muckrakers were a group of writers, including the likes of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, during the Progressive era who tried to expose the problems that existed in American society as a result of the rise of big business, urbanization, and immigration. Most of the muckrakers were journalists. Theodore Roosevelt gave the muckrakers their creative name. He compared them to someone stirring up the mud at the bottom of a pond.

Progressives in Ohio and elsewhere used muckrakers' writings to inspire and promote reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They fought political corruption in urban areas resulting from the power of city bosses like George Cox of Cincinnati through the use of city managers. Progressives determined that Standard Oil was a monopoly and used the courts to force its dissolution. Urban reformers established settlement houses to provide services for immigrants and other poverty-stricken city dwellers. Muckraker reports also led to the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Both of these pieces of legislation increased the federal government's ability to protect consumers from unsanitary products.

McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York, NY: Free Press, 2003.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1963
Tarbell, Ida. History of Standard Oil. New York, NY: Arno Press, 1976.

Muckrakers were journalists and novelists of the Progressive Era who sought to expose corruption in big business and government. Their work influenced the passage of key legislation that strengthened protections for workers and consumers.

In this context, “raking the muck” refers to the practices of investigative journalists and activists who brought the unpleasant “muck” of corruption in government and big business to the surface.

The term “muckraker” was popularized in 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech suggesting that “the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the wellbeing of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck…” In this context, “raking the muck” refers to the practices of investigative journalists and activists who brought the unpleasant “muck” of corruption in government and big business to the surface.

Some of the most famous Progressive muckrakers were women. Journalist Ida Tarbell published a series of articles in McClure’s Magazine in 1902 that depicted Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller as a greedy, miserly monopolist. These articles became the foundation for her book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, which quickly became a bestseller and established Tarbell as an early pioneer of investigative journalism.

Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist and suffragist, was another influential muckraker. She was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, and in the 1890s became involved in anti-lynching activism. She exposed lynching as a barbaric practice used by whites in the South to intimidate, oppress, and murder Black people who sought equality. In 1892, she published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, which detailed the systematic disenfranchisement of Southern Black people and even some poor Whites. Wells was very influential in the early movement for civil rights, and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.