(2014). I’ve had two friends who crafted fiction about the working class: Tillie Olsen, the author of Yonnondio: From the Thirties (1974), who wrote poetically, but produced very little work; and Alexander Saxon the author of Grand Crossing (1943), who was better at history than the novel. The influence of the muckrakers began to fade during the more conservative presidency of William Howard Taft. In 1915, he edited and published The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of Social Protest with an introduction by his comrade, Jack London. I live today in a changed America. The Jungle, novel by Upton Sinclair, published serially in 1905 and as a single-volume book in 1906. There was a lot to know, though Sinclair often guarded his privacy and didn’t like it when the mass media pounced on him. He defended the book and himself. Upton Sinclair was called a "muckraker." Apropos Upton Sinclair, Clem Whitaker said, “we had one objective: to keep him from becoming Governor.”. The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who exposed established institutions and leaders as corrupt. The muckrakers played a highly visible role during the Progressive Era. After I read it, I couldn’t look at a frankfurter without seeing rats and rat shit. Upton Sinclair, in full Upton Beall Sinclair, (born September 20, 1878, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died November 25, 1968, Bound Brook, New Jersey), prolific American novelist and polemicist for socialism, health, temperance, free speech, and worker rights, among other causes. The Great American Fraud (1905) by Samuel Hopkins Adams revealed fraudulent claims and endorsements of patent medicines in America. But beneath his he-man physique, London was a sick man. While a literature of reform had already appeared by the mid-19th century, the kind of reporting that would come to be called "muckraking" began to appear around 1900. Sinclair won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for Dragon’s Teeth, the third novel in the series, which describes the Nazi takeover in Germany. Still, Sinclair thought he would win. Some of the key documents that came to define the work of the muckrakers were: Ray Stannard Baker published "The Right to Work" in McClure's Magazine in 1903, about coal mine conditions, a coal strike, and the situation of non-striking workers (or scabs). His protagonist, Lanny Budd, the son of an American arms manufacturer and his gorgeous mistress, grows up in affluent pre-World War I Europe and becomes a sophisticated socialite. It took the bee as its symbol, issued “Sinclair Dollars,” staged a play written by the candidate himself titled “Depression Island” and adopted an official campaign song, “End Poverty in All America” with the subtitle, “And Upton Sinclair will Show the Way.” Sinclair’s running mate, Sheridan Downey, a lawyer, a member of the Democratic Party and a loyal supporter of FDR. Muckrakers: Differing Styles in Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser June 4, 2019 by Essay Writer The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser are two extremely different books about the same topic: the American food industry. Sinclair was too influential a writer and too much of a no holds barred, rabble-rouser, to ignore today. Claude H. Wetmore and Lincoln Steffens' previous article "Tweed Days in St. Louis" in McClure's October 1902 issue was called the first muckraking article. Muckrakers: Differing Styles in Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser. [24] In a speech on April 14, 1906 on the occasion of dedicating the House of Representatives office building, he drew on a character from John Bunyan's 1678 classic, Pilgrim's Progress, saying: ...you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward with the muck-rake in his hands; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.[25]. Even before The Jungle was published serially in Appeal to Reason, the author was hailed as “a genius.”. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech; Roosevelt acknowledged that "the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck."[4]. At the beginning of the 1900s, writers became involved in social issues. While the muckrakers continued the investigative exposures and sensational traditions of yellow journalism, they wrote to change society. Sinclair was convinced ".... through art one could cause change." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently described Bernie Sanders as a European-style social democrat and not a real socialist. [30] Manufacturers sold it at an obscene price and hence made immense profits. How did the public react to his novel? Others must have done the same. Sinclair endured wars, revolutions and depressions, but climate change, Donald Trump, drones, and state terrorism could be a bit too for his own blood that was stepped in the nineteenth-century and that found the first 60 or so years of the twentieth-century rough going. Playwright and Fabian Socialist, George Bernard Shaw, explained that, when asked to describe what happened in his own lifetime, he recommended the Lanny Budd books. [citation needed] In response to yellow journalism, which had exaggerated facts, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times under Adolph Ochs after 1896, turned away from sensationalism and reported facts with the intention of being impartial and a newspaper of record. It can hardly be considered an accident that the heyday of the muckrakers coincided with one of America's most yeasty and vigorous periods of ferment. Sinclair wanted to cut retail taxes and distribute land to hungry people so they could grow their own food and sustain themselves. Burlington, Vermont, Harbinger of Change? The Jungle also turned me off to Sinclair’s work because he piles tragedy on the tragedy from exploitation and prostitution to food poisoning, death in childbirth and more. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The Jungle (1906), which was published two decades before Boston, and which is dedicated “to the Working men of America,” has simple declarative sentences, a vocabulary suitable for teens, plus characters and scenes that translate into a kind of comic book that plays up the grotesque. The modern term generally references investigative journalism or watchdog journalism; investigative journalists in the US are often informally called "muckrakers". McClure sought out and hired talented writers, like the then unknown Ida M. Tarbell or the seasoned journalist and editor Lincoln Steffens. They contributed to the Progressive Movement by … Not many, especially those under the age of say, 40, though “U.S.,” to borrow his iconic initials, created a commotion with his muckraking novels and enjoyed a long-running career as one of the most popular American writers in the United States and around the world. Read over 400 magazine and newsletter back issues here, Make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation and enjoy access to our Subscriber Area. [37][38] During his heyday, it was impossible not to comment on his dramatic comings and goings, from New York skyscrapers to Colorado mines and to sunny southern California. McClure led the magazine industry by cutting the price of an issue to 15 cents, attracting advertisers, giving audiences illustrations and well-written content and then raising ad rates after increased sales, with Munsey's and Cosmopolitan following suit.[20]. Muckracking journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Upton Sinclair garnered fame for his 1906 novel “The Jungle" about the American meatpacking industry. What was established as a direct result of the public outcry from this novel? Sinclair himself supported U.S. entry into World War I on the side of the British and the French and insisted that it was essential to destroy German militarism, which he saw as the major threat to the cause of world peace. The term eventually came to be used in reference to investigative journalists[citation needed] who reported about and exposed such issues as crime, fraud, waste, public health and safety, graft, illegal financial practices. disbelief and distrust of Sinclair's claims. SpartacusEducational.com. The book exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry. [19] Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement as the muckrakers were associated with Progressive reforms. smithosonianmag.com "The Woman Who Took On a Tycoon.". Local historian and Napa Valley College Professor Lauren Coodley wants to change that with a new book she has edited -- "The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California" -- … The paper emphasized his creativity as a writer and listed twenty-nine of his 50 or so books. The book The Jungle was a major turning point in Sinclair's life. Muckraking investigations were used to change the way senators were elected by the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and led to government agencies to take on watchdog functions.[33]. He received nearly 900,000 votes, but incurred the wrath of Hollywood studios, the ire of agribusiness, the scorn of the pulpit and the hatred of newspaper editors. Roosevelt used the press very effectively to promote discussion and support for his Square Deal policies among his base in the middle-class electorate. (1997) Spartacus Educational. [27] The prominence of the article helped lawyer Joseph Folk to lead an investigation of the corrupt political ring in St. Louis. This work was a keystone in the creation of the Seventeenth Amendment which established the election of Senators through popular vote. Sinclair put himself at the heart of the campaign, which worked both for him and against. Subscribe. Wells's book The Red Record. What they had in common was socialism, whiteness, antipathy to Jews and African-Americans, and an inability to create complex women characters. Calling the campaign “EPIC” didn’t make it so. EPIC gave them a cause and a future in which they could believe. [13] This later led to the publication of the book A Mad World and Its Inhabitants (1876). One trust they manipulated was with Christopher Dunn Co. She followed that work with The History of The Standard Oil Company: the Oil War of 1872, which appeared in McClure's Magazine in 1908. “I’m afraid I always was an extremist,” he wrote in John Barleycorn, a memoir about his bouts with alcohol. A muckraker's reporting may span businesses and government. After V. I. Lenin’s widow, Krupskaya, read Sinclair’s novel, Jimmie Higgins (1919), she wrote to Louise Bryant— John Reed’s lover and comrade— and asked, “Is he a Communist?,” and “Has he written other books?” It’s not difficult to understand why Sinclair’s novel piqued Krupskaya’s interest. One of the biggest urban scandals of the post-Civil War era was the corruption and bribery case of Tammany boss William M. Tweed in 1871 that was uncovered by newspapers. He adds, “We never recovered.”. In The Iron Heel, his 1907 dystopian novel, he predicted the coming of fascism, and in The Scarlet Plague he chronicled the arrival of a pandemic that kills millions of people. Chris Bachelder features him in U.S.!, a satirical novel in which Sinclair’s career is emblematic of the failures of the American left. Which of these is an example of muckraking disguised as a work of fiction? They typically had large audiences in popular magazines. Together Sinclair and Downey were known as “Uppie and Downie.” EPIC could be too cute for its own good, but it attracted loyal supporters and famous people. “To you, Upton, there is only one tiger in the forest,” Reed wrote. Amazingly, his descriptions of how the meat was handled and packaged brought legislative change. At 755-pages, it looked insurmountable. “The Jungle” is a work of fiction. [3], In contemporary American usage, the term can refer to journalists or others who "dig deep for the facts" or, when used pejoratively, those who seek to cause scandal. Lincoln Steffens published "Tweed Days in St. Louis", in which he profiled corrupt leaders in St. Louis, in October 1902, in McClure's Magazine. Associated Press. Upton Sinclair was a progressive era muckraker. At the top of Upton Sinclair’s Wikipedia page, readers are advised, “Not to be confused with his contemporary, Sinclair Lewis, another American novelist.” For much of the twentieth-century it would have been nearly impossible for a reader to confuse the author of muckraking works of fiction like The Jungle, and King Coal (1917)— a love story set against the backdrop of the Colorado mining industry— with the novels by the Minnesota-born author of Main Street, Babbitt and Arrowsmith who was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature. In Oil, American presidents, Wilson, Harding and Coolidge, come and go. [21] Other titles of interest include Chatauquan, Dial, St. Nicholas. Jimmie Higgins traces the life of an American Everyman who, like his creator, considers himself a pacifist. Who recognizes his name? Indeed, he points out that the author of The Jungle “was tone deaf to white supremacy and institutional racism,” and that he ignored the writings of Frederick Douglass, John Brown and Harriet Tubman. Not too long after, the Meat Safety Act became a law. Muckraking publishers like Samuel S. McClure, also emphasized factual reporting,[17] but he also wanted what historian Michael Schudson had identified as one of the preferred qualities of journalism at the time, namely, the mixture of "reliability and sparkle" to interest a mass audience. This article shed light on the many false claims that pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers would make as to the potency of their medicines, drugs and tonics. [30] These writers focused on a wide range of issues including the monopoly of Standard Oil; cattle processing and meat packing; patent medicines; child labor; and wages, labor, and working conditions in industry and agriculture. They felt betrayed that Roosevelt would coin them with such a term after they had helped him with his election. Best known for exposing horrific practices in the meatpacking industry with his novel, “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair was more than just a muckraker. Some today use "investigative journalism" as a synonym for muckraking. Biographers and cultural historians have not been kind to him. Before they met face-to-face, Sinclair wrote “The Author” when asked to autograph copies of his books. He died at the age of 40 in 1916, burned up and burned out. The Octopus by Frank Norris. 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