Ms. Jerome. A muckraker is an individual who seeks to expose or reveal corruption of businesses or...

Ms. Jerome

A muckraker is an individual who seeks to expose or reveal corruption of businesses or government to the public.

The term originates from writers of the Progressive movement in America who wanted to expose corruption and scandals in government and business.

American Progressive Era—unearth corruption Wrote about:

Urban life and poverty Anti big business AKA UPTON SINCLAIR!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7pCaK0aASE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzdyMilAdcE

“The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone." TR

Muckraker—one who cleans up manure

Investigative journalism Wrote The History of

Standard Oil Company (1904)

#5 Top 100 works of journalism of the 20th century NYT

Wrote for McClure Magazine

Negative exposé of the business practices of Rockefeller and trusts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yog7FyAFyA

Photojournalism Sought Social

Reform National Child

Labor Committee to document child labor/expose corruption.

Father of the American Political Cartoon

Exposed political corruption in NYC (Boss—William Tweed)

Brings about Tweed’s downfall Harper’s Weekly

The best example of a City boss was Boss Tweed

Tweed helped immigrants get jobs and gave them turkeys a Christmas and year after year immigrants voted for Tweed.

Muckrakers and Reform Efforts

“Let’s stop them damned pictures,” the Boss supposedly said. “I don’t care so much what the papers write about – my constituents can’t read – buy damn it, they can see pictures.” – Boss Tweed

Muckraker: Thomas Nast, cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly

Reform: - Tweed was arrested

- “Good government” leagues were formed to replace corrupt leaders.

Journalist Exposed corrupt living arrangements How the Other Half Lives—18 page

article 1889

Became a book How the Other Half Lives, subtitled "Studies among the Tenements of New York“

Pioneer in photography

Written in 1906 (The Progressive Era) Individual who seeks to expose or

reveal corruption of businesses or government to the public.

Result of this book: Pure Food and Drug Act (present day Food and Drug

Administration –FDA)

A family from Lithuania comes to America for opportunity.

The character of Jurgis embodies American idealism—the hope for a good life based on hard work.

Jurgis and Ona are married as the book begins.

The family lives in Packingtown. A section of Chicago.

“Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

The immigrant experienceThe American Dream (or lack there

of)The female in the workplaceUrbanizationSocialism as a cure for the failure of

Capitalism

Misfortunes define Jurgis’s life in America His new home is a swindle

▪ “There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to the unforeseen contingencies” p. 115

Injury and chronic job loss▪ “In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and

he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak. And they did not want him” p. 142

Ona’s health troubles after childbirth “and so she was always chasing the

phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue…” p. 124

Working in the fertilizer plant: “…in suffocating cellars where the

daylight never came you might see men and women and children bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die, ever one of them, within a certain definite time”

Ona’s “fall” from grace Phil Connors and Miss Henderson’s

house p. 172 Jurgis’s attack on Phil Connors and arrest

▪ “Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud in his fury, lifting his victim and smashing his head upon the floor.” p. 174

Ona dies in childbirth p. 215 Chapter 19 Jurgis continues to drink

Chapter 21-22: “He went—out to play…we couldn’t make him stay

in. He must have got caught in the mud!” p. 241 Jurgis becomes a hobo:

▪ “He stood and watched it [the railroad]; and all at once a wild impulse seized him, a thought that had been lurking within him, unspoken , unrecognized, leaped into sudden life. He started down the track, and when he was past the gate-keeper’s shanty he sprang forward and swung himself on to one of the cars” p. 241

Jurgis is reduced to a life on the streets, a beggar: “He had lost in the fierce battle of greed,

and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all society was busied to see that he did not escape the sentence”

Gets $100 from Freddie Jones, only to have to have it stolen by a bartender. (Chapter 24)

Jurgis finds himself back in prison after the bar “riot”

A life of crime with Jack Duane: Chapter 25: the mugging of an insurance

agent.

Marija’s fall from grace: “Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a

pair of stockings; yet she proceeded to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble to close the door. He had by this time divined what sort of place he was in; and he had seen a great deal of the world since he had left home, and was not easy to shock—and yet it gave him a painful start that Marija should do this” p. 330

Stanislovas—horrific death by rats

Capitalism has destroyed JurgisThe Beef Trust vs. the working manContinual misfortunes

“They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone—it would never be! They had played the game and they had lost” p. 156

The American dream is for the rich, the few.

Capitalism fosters greed and class divisions It favors the wealthy elite.

Chapter 28. Page 345 “I have known what it is to dare and to

aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish…”

To the worker “…the shackles will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at last!” (Marx??!!)

Identifies with their pains

Communism is an extreme form of Socialism Socialism: The means of producing and

distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy

Rejects class-based society Socialists share belief that capitalism unfairly

concentrates power and wealth among a select few. This select few controls capital and derives its

wealth through exploitation.