Muckraking In The Progressive Era

The term “muckraker” was originally coined in a speech in 1906 accredited to President Theodore Roosevelt.  It was alluding to the man with the Muck-Rake in Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Process.  The Man with the Muck rake seeks material advances by raking filth.  Roosevelt defined this term as "one who inquires into and publishes scandal and allegations of corruption among political and business leaders".   Muckrakers in the Progressive Era, a time from 1820 until 1920 when America quickly industrialized, pushed for reform and have altered the way we live today.  These reformers brought about the awareness and tackled women’s rights, economic concentration, corporate power, poverty, food safety, and political corruption.

Florence Kelley, in her 1905 speech to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, condemns that “while we sleep,” labor practices in the United States force young children into cruel, inhumane working conditions. Kelley illuminates the harsh reality of child labor by utilizing shocking statistics, creating forceful emotional appeals to detail a bleak visual of the grueling working conditions, and juxtaposing both the way girls spend their time and the current laws between states. Kelley’s purpose is to inspire women to fight for the right to vote, believing that enfranchisement will lead to improvements in society, including the reformation of child labor practices. Kelley’s ostensible audience is the voting class of America because she closes her speech by offering to “enlist the workingmen voters” to join the fight against child labor in an enraged and persuasive tone.

When their work do not affect their “health and personal development or interfere with their schooling,” they do not fit the negative notion of child labor (ILO, 1996). Children sometimes assist their parents with housework and take a part in building family businesses without their working hours affecting primary education. This is indeed a beneficial experience for children, because they learn to be productive within their communities. On the other hand, ILO (1996) applies the term child labor when work “is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling by; depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.” When child labor is engaged in enslavement, separation from families, and misplacement of children on the streets, ILO experts refer to it as the most extreme forms of child

In America, there used to be unfair laws and regulations regarding labor. Children are put to work in harsh conditions, conditions often deemed difficult even for adults, and are forced to work ridiculous hours. Florence Kelley gave a speech at the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905. In her speech, Kelley uses repetition, pathos, imagery, logos, and carefully placed diction to express how child labor is morally wrong and inhumane.

Florence Kelley is a social worker and reformer who fights for child labor laws and better working conditions for women. At the National Assembly Women Suffrage Association in Philadelphia on July 22, 1905, Kelley recites a speech about the issue of child labor laws. She uses rhetorical strategies such as repetition of the many negative aspects of child labor through specific examples, criticism of state policies, and emotional appeal. A combination of figures, logic, evidence, and emotional appeal will help convince her audience that child labor is a problem.

Florence Kelley, an active social worker and reformer of the 20th century, rants over the horrendous working conditions kids must endure. She presents this in her speech before National American Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, which provides context and credibility for her argument. Kelley argues clearly of the terrible conditions and work hours kids suffer to bring about her message of, “enlisting the workingmen voters.” This is essentially to free the kids from the disastrous issue through her usage of credibility, empathetic tone to strike the audience, and her usage of examples of their conditions and state rules to support her message and purpose.

When one hears the term “Child Labor”, an image of children making low quality clothing in some dingy third world sweatshop inevitably comes to mind. While this imagery is unfortunately founded in fact, the third world is not the only area complicit with this heinous practice. Truthfully, we, as a nation are also guilty of propagating this heinous practice. For over a century, this nation’s youth were subjugated to exploitation and abuse at the hands of captains of industry in the hopes of extracting every ounce of profit they could. Fortunately, sympathetic individuals recognized the children’s need for advocacy and rose to their defense in the form of organized dissent that appealed to the highest powers of this country to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. In this paper, we will look at what exactly child labor is, the circumstances that gave rise to the widespread acceptance of child labor usage, what working condition these children experienced, and how the United States eventually made its use illegal.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary a muckraker is someone who “searches out and publicly exposes real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business” (“Muckraker”). During the 1890s to the 1920s, muckrakers were a group of American journalists who exposed the corruption in society and informed the public about important social issues. The term muckraker originally came around when President Roosevelt gave a speech about reporters who exposed political and corporate corruption ("Who Are the Muckrakers?”). There have been so many muckrakers in American history whose works have been the cause of new laws and changes; some of the most important and famous of these muckrakers were Upton Sinclair, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Jacob Riis.

The road to fair and equal child labor laws was definitely not an easy one, nor was it a quick one. Throughout the 1800’s, it was normal to see school aged children working 50-70 hour weeks, leaving out the time to get an education, socialize,

As Alexis Herman once said, “If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor, then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.” This quote means that in order for this nation to move forward, the people of the United States would all need to agree on the basics, like getting rid of child labor.

Muckrakers – Among the first people to articulate the new spirit of national reform. Crusading journalists who began to direct public attention toward social, economic, and political injustices. They were committed to exposing scandal and corruption. Their first major targets included the trusts and also the railroads. They were given this name after Theodore Roosevelt accused them of raking up muck through their writings. Their actions helped lead to the development of the “Social Gospel.”

2. Muckrakers were writers who exposed corruption and abuse in politics, meatpacking, businesses, child labor, and many more problems. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle were he described the unsanitary conditions of the slaughterhouses which many wok and the sale of rotten meat to the public. Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie were she talked about a young woman’s corrupt morals in Chicago’s rough urban environment. Lincoln Steffens published The Shame of the Cities which showed how political corruption profited business leaders and party leaders. Ida Tarbell exposed Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company over its arrogance and economic machinations.

In the early 1900s American journalism began to change before everyone's eyes. Muckrakers, or journalists that exaggerated and denounced the truth behind government and business organizations, began to appear in newspapers and magazines across the nation. It seemed as though that exposing the government for the lies they told became one of the biggest fads of the 1900s. A muckraker’s form of writing is considered to be yellow journalism, or the exaggeration of events taking place in the world. This form of writing was meant to stir up opinions and cause controversy between individuals in the nation, and stir up controversy it did.

Historically, the world is in constant need of a labor force to supply its goods. In measures of greed however, the acquisition and implementation of laborers has not always been as well as it is now in the U.S. Upon the first century of America's founding, many people and corporations have used children unjustly in order to achieve moderate production and monetary benefits, that is until the advent of government prevention measures. Even though corporations may argue, that in modern times, child labor has been entirely eliminated, labor laws of the past are not being fully enforced as they should be. In the Gilded Era of the U.S, the implementation of labor laws laws such as the FSLA, or the Fair Standards Labor Act, as well as the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, helped shape the country for the benefit of the people, by stopping cruel abuse of children for the workforce, the actions that were taken then and the laws that were implemented, must still be enforced today to prevent the United States from falling back into the slavery like conditions of it past.

This essay sketches not only differences, but also unbalances that arise when analyzing IJ in contemporary Latin America in comparison to unlikely muckraking traditions. Under a political economic perspective of how IJ has spread across the world since the 1990s and 2000s, I pay special attention to IJ’s funding strategies and main sources and how this also contributes to certain conceptualization and operationalization of what IJ means. I also discuss some Latin American exposés, specific outlets, and diverse experiences doing muckraking that contributes to better understand the problematic relationship between democracy and journalism. Finally, I focus in the lessons to drive from the Latin American experiences in performing, supporting,