Remake of Muckrakers by

Muckrakers

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

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.

Ida Tarbell

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

Lincoln Steffens

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

Lincoln Steffens and The Shame of the Cities

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

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
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.
party loyalty should be in the past
- argued that voters should cast ballots on the true merits of individual candidates rather than allegiance to parties

Ida Tarbell and The History of the Standard Oil Company

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

American teacher, author and journal
One of the leading "muckraker" during the progressive era
The History of the Standard Oil Company outlined and documented the cutthroat business practice behind John Rockefeller’s meteoric rise.
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.
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 evil, thieving baron who forcied others to submit to him and sell their business for Standard Oil to grow.

PRIMARY SOURCE FROM HISTORY OF STANDARD OIL

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

“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. [When they ask the railroads for the same rates that Rockefeller gets, they are told that they do not ship as much oil as he does]...

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)

PRIMARY SOURCE FROM THE SHAME OF THE CITIES

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

“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)

Cover of The Shame of the Cities

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 00:47:26 UTC

Cover of History of Standard Oil

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-21 21:14:36 UTC

gregory_roberts1 — 2021-02-24 16:47:13 UTC