The Muckrakers 1902-1917

 The tradition of the Investigative reporter uncovering corruption was established early in the 20th century  by the writers known as MUCKRAKERS.  The term was Coined by Teddy Roosevelt

Ida Tarbell
"The History of Standard Oil" exposed the ruthlessness which John D.Rockefeller had turned his oil business into an all-powerful monopoly.Her writing added force to the trustbusting reforms of the early 20th century.

Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair's chief aim in writing The Jungle was to expose the shocking conditions that immigrant workers endured.The Jungle prompted a Federal investigation that resulted in Passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906

Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist and suffragist, was another influential female muckraker. She had been born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, and in the 1890s became involved in anti-lynching activism. In 1892, she published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, which detailed the systematic disenfranchisement of Southern blacks and even some poor whites. Wells was very influential in the early movement for civil rights, and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.

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