Muckraking
Muckraking became to be known as Journalism exposing economic, social, and political evils, so named by Theodore Roosevelt for its “raking the muck,” of American society. “The Shame of the Cities,” (1902) a series by Lincoln Steffen, revealed the widespread graft at the center of American Urban politics. He demonstrated how powerful-city chiefs constantly worked together with businessmen seeking lucrative municipal agreements for gas, water, electricity, and mass transit. In “History of the Standard Oil Company,” (1904) Ida Tarbell wrote how John D. Rockefeller ruthlessly squeezed out competitors with unfair business practices. Standard Baker wrote detailed portraits of life and labor in Pennsylvania coal towns. In a series for Cosmopolitan called, “The Treason of the Senate,” David Graham Phillips argued that many conservative U.S. senators were no more than mouthpieces for big business.
Between 1902 and 1908, magazines were full of articles exposing insurance scandals, patent medicine frauds, and stock market swindles.
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