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1.Standard Oil forcefully bought out other competitors as well as resources to aid the development of the monopoly John D. Rockefeller created. 2.To do this they would temporarily undercut the prices of competitors until they either went out of business or sold out to Standard Oil.

3.Standard Oil eve n bought up the components needed to make oil barrels in order to prevent competitors from getting their oil to customers.

4.Dispatched thugs who used threats and physical violence to break up the operations of competitors who could not otherwise be persuaded.

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Video: The Muckrakers of the Progressive Era: Definition and Influence

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Video: The Muckrakers of the Progressive Era: Definition and Influence

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The Muckrakers of the Progressive Era: Definition and Influence - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Muckrakers were investigative journalists during the Progressive Era who reported sensational news articles that exposed scandalous social,…

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This shows how crowded tenements were in the city. A whole family had to fit in a small room demonstrating the overcrowding.

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Stamp, Jimmy. "Pioneering Social Reformer Jacob Riis Revealed "How The Other Half Lives" in America." Smithsonian. Smithsonian, 27 May 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2015. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/pioneering-social-reformer-jacob-riis-revealed-how-other-half-lives-america-180951546/?no-ist>.

Lapsansky-Werner, Emma J. "Chapter 4: The Progressive Era 1890-1920."Prentice Hall United States History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008. 102. Print.

Simkin, John. "McClure's Magazine." Spartacus Educational. N.p., Aug. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Marrone, Jesús. "1902: HISTORY OF STANDARD OIL (McCLURE'S MAGAZINE)." The Powerof the Front Cover. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Danzer, Gerald A. "Unit 3: Modern America Emerges 1890-1920." The Americans. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 327. Print.

Lapsansky-Werner, Emma J. "Chapter 4: The Progressive Era 1890-1920."Prentice Hall United States History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008. 102. Print.

"Happy Birthday, Lincoln Steffens, One of the First Muckrakers." Happy Birthday, Lincoln Steffens, One of the First Muckrakers. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Cohen, Adam. "Editorial Observer; 'The Shame' That Lincoln Steffens Found Has Not Left Our Country." The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Apr. 2004. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Shmoop Editorial Team. "Politics in Muckrakers & Reformers."Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Schultz, Kevin M. "Chapter 20: The Progressive Era." Hist. Vol. 2. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012. 344. Print.

Danzer, Gerald A. "Unit 3: Modern America Emerges 1890-1920." The Americans. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 327. Print.

"Muckrakers." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

"THE "MUCKRAKERS" AND THE "SOCIAL PROBLEM"" N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

"The Shame of the Cities." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.

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When the book came out Sinclair was upset that the people reacted to outrage towards the filth but not about the plight of the worker

Roosevelt passed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 as a result

the U.S. department of agriculture was able to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering into commerce

passed the Pure Food and Drug Act which regulated food additives and prohibited misleading labeling of food and drugs

Although these reforms greatly improved health and sanitation Jurgis was still unsatisfied

Sinclair was a socialist who believed that there should be a peaceful revolution in which Americans would vote for the government to take ownership of big business.

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Sinclair began to write The jungle which was centered around the life of a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkis got a job as a “shoveler of guts” at a meat packing plant.

Jurgis found out that

the company sped up the assembly line to get more work out of the workers

Cheated workers out of money because they didn’t pay them for part of an hour

Many workers with skin disease and tuberculosis worked with the meat

workers with tb spit blood and coughed near/on the meat

used toilets near where the meat was processed without washing their hands

diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat was processed, doctored with chemicals, and mislabeled so it could be sold to the public

processed them after hours when no meat inspectors were around

meat for canning and sausage was left on the floor before picked up in carts with things like sawdust, rat dung, urine, dead rats, and spit.

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Upton Sinclair and the Meat-Packing Industry

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Upton Sinclair and the Meat-Packing Industry

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The meat-packing industry was controlled by four major companies that together raised prices.

Armour, Swift, Morris, and the National Packing industries

Meat packing was centralized in a couple of cities

Chicago was one of these cities and called Packingtown

Immigrant men worked in dark unventilated rooms

Most workers earned just pennies per hour and worked 10 hours per day, six days a week

The workers went on strike but the big four meat-packing companies broke it up

The editor of Appeal to Reason suggested that Sinclair should write a novel about the conditions there

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PRIMARY SOURCE FROM HISTORY OF STANDARD OIL

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PRIMARY SOURCE FROM HISTORY OF STANDARD OIL

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“Mr. Hanna had been refining since July, 1869. According to his own sworn statement he had made money, fully sixty per cent. on his investment the first year, and after that thirty per cent. Some time in February, 1872, the Standard Oil Company asked an interview with him and his associates. They wanted to buy his works, they said. "But we don't want to sell," objected Mr. Hanna. "You can never make any more money, in my judgment," said Mr. Rockefeller. "You can't compete with the Standard. We have all the large refineries now. If you refuse to sell, it will end in your being crushed." Hanna and Baslington were not satisfied. They went to see Mr. Watson, president of the South Improvement Company and an officer of the Lake Shore, and General Devereux, manager of the Lake Shore road. They were told that the Standard had special rates; that it was useless to try to compete with them. General Devereux explained to the gentlemen that the privileges granted the Standard were the legitimate and necessary advantage of the larger shipper over the smaller, and that if Hanna, Baslington and Company could give the road as large a quantity of oil as the Standard did, with the same regularity, they could have the same rate. General Devereuxsays they "recognised the propriety" of his excuse. They certainly recognised its authority. They say that they were satisfied they could no longer get rates to and from Cleveland which would enable them to live, and "reluctantly" sold out. It must have been reluctantly, for they had paid $75,000 for their works, and had made thirty per cent. a year on an average on their investment, and the Standard appraiser allowed them $45,000” (History of Standard Oil CH.2)

Portrays Rockefeller as this evil, thieving baron forcing others to submit to him and sell their business for the standard oil to grow

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In 1900 Theodore Dreiser published a novel called Sister Carrie

He described in the book how bad environment can produce bad people as well as cause a good person to turn bad

BAD ENVIRONMENT=BAD PEOPLE

Dresier claimed it wasn't the individual’s fault of how they are but rather the environments fault.

He claims all people are products of the environment.

Liberals argued that IF this premise was true, then it was important to try to improve social environments.

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The History of Standard Oil

Outlined and documented the cutthroat business practice behind John Rockefeller’s meteoric rise.

Tarbell’s motives may have been personal as her father got driven out of business of refining and producing oil by Rockefeller’s massive monopoly.

She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade.

Ida Tarbell managed to expose the unfair practices of the Standard Oil Company leading the a U.S Supreme Court decision to break its monopoly.

In Standard Oil v. U.S. (1911), the company was declared a monopoly and broken up.

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Man in his Tenement Living quarters, 1891 Jacob Riis

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Man in his Tenement Living quarters, 1891 Jacob Riis

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This picture Riis demonstrates the filth and squalor people in the city lived in.

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Jacob Riis was a photographer for the New York Evening Sun

Between 1890 to 1903 he published several works showing the horrendous conditions the poor lived in with several works such as his famous How the Other Half Lives

Demonstrated the crowded, filthy, unsafe tenements the urban poor lived in

Since there was such a large influx of people coming into cities

overcrowding

governments could not provide basic services fast enough

street cleaning

garbage collection

schools

There was an uproar against the filthy and poor living conditions in the urban setting which spurred reforms.

Roosevelt closed down the worst of the lodging houses and city officials began to enforce the city's housing policies more.

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Lincoln Steffens and The Shame of the Cities

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Lincoln Steffens and The Shame of the Cities

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a collection of articles on political corruption

exposed how govt of Philadelphia let utility companies charge customers excessively high fees.

,showed how corrupt politicians won elections by bribing + threatening

revealed how political corruption affected all aspects of life in a city

discussed issues with child labor, prisons, religion, corporations, and insurance companies

blurring of the line between business and government => public corruption

party loyalty should be in the past

that voters should cast ballots on the true merits of individual candidates rather than allegiance to parties

Primary source:

“The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet of the polls, but they are at the box and they are there to see that the [Republican political] machine’s orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to vote without “ intimidation” on the names they, the police, have supplied. The editor of an anti-machine paper who was looking about for himself once told me that a ward leader who knew him well asked him into a polling place. “I’ll show you how it’s done,” he said, and he had the repeaters go round and round voting again and again on the names handed them on slips…. The business proceeds with very few hitches; there is more jesting than fighting. Violence in the past has had its effect; and is not often necessary nowadays, but if it is needed the police are there to apply it.” - Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (1904)

The people were often forced to vote for the political machine that aided them and the machine often forced people to vote for them over and over to increase their numbers in the vote.

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est. by Samuel McClure

recruited Steffens as editor and Tarbell as staff writer

known for uncovering social problems

published exposes of business and govt corruption

articles collected into two books The Shame of the Cities and The Struggle of Self-Government

Primary Source:

“The visitor [to St. Louis] is told of the wealth of the residents, of the financial strength of the banks, and of the growing importance of the industries; yet he sees poorly paved, refuse-burdened streets, and dusty or mud-covered alleys; he passes a ramshackle firetrap crowded with the sick and learns that it is the City Hospital.... Finally, he turns a tap in the hotel to see liquid mud flow into [the] wash basin or bathtub.” - Lincoln Steffens and Claude Wetmore, “Corruption and Reform in St. Louis,” McClure’s Magazine, October 1902

This passage from an issue of the magazine illustrates a vivid image of society's poor conditions that contradict people's original perception,

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Author of History of Standard Oil

American teacher, author and journal

One of the leading "muckraker" during the progressive era

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traces the downward journey of an innocent country girl who is corrupted by urban pleasures and becomes a prostitute.

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Socially conscious journalists dramatized the need for reform in the 1900s. Roosevelt called them Muckrakers because they always looked at the ugly side of things. Investigative writers who revealed the miserable conditions in American factories, political corruption, and financial deceits of corporations. Influenced city dwellers into becoming more active in taking action to flush out immorality and these poor conditions. Shock factor.