Muckrakers during the Progressive Era

Muckrakers during the Progressive Era:

Muckrakers were reporters who exposed the injustices middle and lower-class people faced daily. 

PART A

Instructions: Read the following excerpt from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and answer the questions.

Sinclair hoped to illustrate the horrible effects of capitalism on workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. His bone-chilling account, THE JUNGLE, detailed workers sacrificing their fingers and nails by working with acid, losing limbs, catching diseases, and toiling long hours in cold, cramped conditions. He hoped the public outcry would be so fierce that reforms would soon follow.

Excerpt A

There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there
would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected,
and that was moldy and white—it would be dosed with borax [a white powder
made from boric acid, used in detergents, flame retardants, and disinfectants] and
glycerine [a chemical compound used in foods and medicines], and dumped into
the hoppers [containers for mixing], and made over again for home consumption.
There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust,
where the workers had tramped and spit. . . . There would be meat stored in great
piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands
of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well,
but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls
of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put
poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat
would go into the hoppers [containers] together. This is no fairy story and no
joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling
would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things
that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. 

There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner,
and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled
into the sausage. . . . Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage—but as
the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their
chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to
make it brown. . . .

Excerpt B

Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might
have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the
acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who
used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again
the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the
knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss- crossed with cuts, until you could no
longer pretend to count them or to trace them. They would have no nails, – they had worn them
off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There
were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by
artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply
was renewed every hour.
There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the
refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore
out the most powerful men in a few years…There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to
pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted
with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare
hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned
meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood
poisoning. 

PART B

Instructions: Analyze the two primary source photos and answer the questions that go along with them.

In the late 19th century, progressive journalist Jacob Riis photographed urban life in order to build support for social reform. Riis also wrote descriptions of his subjects that, to some, sound condescending and stereotypical.

Meet the photo. 

Quickly scan the photo. What do you notice first?  Title of the photo: “Five cents a spot - unauthorized immigration lodgings in a Bayard Street, 1890 Location: New York City

Observe its parts. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph and then examine individual items.  Next, divide the photo into quadrants and study each section. List the people, objects, and activities you see. 

Write one sentence summarizing this photo: 

Try to make sense of it. Answer as best you can.

Where is it from? 

When is it from? 

Why was it taken?

Use it as historical evidence. 

What did you find out from this photo that you might not learn anywhere else? 

Meet the photo. 

Quickly scan the photo. What do you notice first? Title of the photo: “Tramp in Mulberry Street Yard, 1887-1888” Location: New York City

Observe its parts. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph and then examine individual items.  Next, divide the photo into quadrants and study each section. List the people, objects, and activities you see. 

Write one sentence summarizing this photo:

Try to make sense of it. Answer as best you can.

Where is it from? 

When is it from? 

Why was it taken?

Use it as historical evidence. 

What did you find out from this photo that you might not learn anywhere else?