Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle , revealing the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry. Ida Tarbell wrote about the monopolistic practices of John D.
Their reporting generated concern among members of the public and lawmakers, and in some cases, led to laws that addressed the problems they were covering. In other cases, problems were exposed but the groundswell of emotion led to little change. The investigative techniques of the muckrakers included poring over documents, conducting countless interviews, and going undercover. This differed from yellow journalism, where some leading newspapers sensationalized stories using imagination rather than facts.
In several cases, muckrakers became activists themselves and spent years speaking throughout the country about their work and the need for reform. The term muckraking was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt in , describing the crusading journalists who wrote stories in late nineteenth-century publications.
Roosevelt criticized journalists he thought focused too much on exposing corruption in business and government and not reporting on more positive news. Journalists of the time largely took the term as a compliment and adopted it as a badge of honor for exposing misconduct. Ida Tarbell was born on the oil frontier of western Pennsylvania in The law stated that children 14 years or younger could not work in factories, children 16 years or younger could not work in mines, and a work day could not exceed 8 hours, start earlier than 6 a.
Although initially promising, the restrictions would not last long: just a couple of years later, the act was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. These laws reduced the number of children in the workforce and for the first time set a national minimum wage and maximum hour standards.
Below, take a look at the shocking Lewis Hine photographs that helped America finally take action to crack down on child labor, now a part of the U. National Archives collection:. National Archives. In Dunbar, Louisiana, Hine met an 8-year-old oyster shucker named Rosy.
He discovered she worked steadily from 3 a. March Nine-year-old Minnie Thomas showed off the average size of the sardine knife she works with. August This young worker, Hiram Pulk age 9, also worked in a canning company. The Capitol Visitor Center remains closed.
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One day, the commissioners witnessed a slaughtered hog that fell part way into a worker toilet. Workers took the carcass out without cleaning it and put it on a hook with the others on the assembly line.
The commissioners criticized existing meat-inspection laws that required only confirming the healthfulness of animals at the time of slaughter. The commissioners recommended that inspections take place at every stage of the processing of meat. They also called for the secretary of agriculture to make rules requiring the "cleanliness and wholesomeness of animal products. President Roosevelt called the conditions revealed in the special commission's report "revolting.
Roosevelt overcame meat-packer opposition and pushed through the Meat Inspection Act of The law authorized inspectors from the U. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering interstate and foreign commerce. This law greatly expanded federal government regulation of private enterprise.
The meat packers, however, won a provision in the law requiring federal government rather than the companies to pay for the inspection. Sinclair did not like the law's regulation approach. True to his socialist convictions, he preferred meat-packing plants to be publicly owned and operated by cities, as was commonly the case in Europe.
Passage of the Meat Inspection Act opened the way for Congress to approve a long-blocked law to regulate the sale of most other foods and drugs. For over 20 years, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, had led a "pure food crusade. The uproar over The Jungle revived Wiley's lobbying efforts in Congress for federal food and drug regulation. Roosevelt signed a law regulating foods and drugs on June 30, , the same day he signed the Meat Inspection Act.
The Pure Food and Drug Act regulated food additives and prohibited misleading labeling of food and drugs. The two laws ended up increasing consumer confidence in the food and drugs they purchased, which benefitted these businesses. The laws also acted as a wedge to expand federal regulation of other industries, one of the strategies to control big business pursued by the progressives. The Jungle made Upton Sinclair rich and famous. He started a socialist colony in a room mansion in New Jersey, but the building burned down after a year.
In , his wife ran off with a poet. He divorced her, but soon he remarried and moved to California. During his long life, he wrote more than 90 novels. King Coal was based on the massacre of striking miners and their families in Colorado. Boston was about the highly publicized case of Sacco and Vancetti, two anarchists tried and executed for bank robbery and murder in the s.
None of these novels, however, achieved the success of The Jungle. Several of Sinclair's books were made into movies. In , Hollywood released a movie version of The Jungle. Recently, his work Oil! During the Great Depression, Sinclair entered electoral politics. He ran for governor of California as a socialist in and as a Democrat in In the election, he promoted a program he called "End Poverty in California.
The Republican incumbent governor, Frank Merriam, defeated him, but Sinclair still won over , votes 44 percent. After the death of his second wife in , Sinclair moved to New Jersey to be with his son.
He died there in at age People still read The Jungle for its realistic picture of conditions in the meat-packing industry at the turn of the 20th century. Why did the existing inspection system fail to guard the safety of meat for human consumption? Why was Upton Sinclair dismayed about the public reaction and legislation that followed publication of The Jungle?
Mattson, Kevin.
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