The Progressive movement flourished during the first two decades of the twentieth century. A diverse group of thinkers, journalists, legislators, and middle-class citizens (the Progressives) grappled with the dramatic social and economic transformations produced by the Industrial Revolution. They opposed Gilded Age abuses and promoted salutary reforms. In a rapidly changing world, they took the side of the exploited and the weak and sought to make political institutions more responsive to popular will. The most well-known group among Progressives were the journalists who through their graphic and sometimes sensational reporting opened Americans’ eyes to dangerous working conditions in factories. Upton Sinclair was one such journalist. Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, was published in early 1906 and created an international sensation with his expose of the unsafe and unsanitary inner workings of the meat packing industry. Ironically, the socialist Sinclair had set out to write a “consciousness raising” novel about the miserable lives of factory workers—the “wage slaves of the Beef Trust”—hoping to do for wage slavery what Harriet Beecher Stowe had done for chattel slavery. But readers largely ignored the story of his workers and seized on the graphic descriptions of the disgusting things that went into their meat. Sinclair was disappointed at the public’s reaction. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he later said, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Although President Theodore Roosevelt was a proud Progressive, he had mixed feelings about journalists, as he made clear in a speech known as “The Man with the Muck-Rake.” On the one hand he praised the virtues and benefits of hard-hitting investigative journalism, when it is necessary to expose scandal, corruption, or other evil; but on the other, he found such journalism problematic when it besmirched the good character of public figures and undermined faith in public institutions. After reading Lewis’s novel, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an investigation. The result, he said, was “hideous” and he threatened to publish the entire “sickening report” if Congress did not act. Meat sales plummeted in the United States and Europe. Demand for reform grew. Alarmed, the meatpackers themselves supported a reform law. A second measure the Pure Food and Drug Act had been championed by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the chief chemist of the Department of Agriculture. Over the years, to bring conditions to the public attention, Wiley had organized a volunteer group of young men called the Poison Squad who tested the effects of chemicals and adulterated foods on themselves. The sensation caused by the novel, echoed by newspaper reports by Sinclair and others and backed up with President Roosevelt’s threats to release his report, overwhelmed opponents of the bills in the House. On June 30, 1906, two bills were passed: the Meat Inspection Act which set rules for sanitary meatpacking and government inspection of meat products, and the Pure Food and Drugs Act, which banned foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products. Wiley, who had written the latter act, was appointed to oversee the administration of both laws through the Bureau of Chemistry, later renamed the Food and Drug Administration in 1930. The federal government was now permanently in the business of protecting American consumers from unsafe food and drugs.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the fiery journalist, lecturer and civil rights militant, is best known for her tireless crusade against lynching and her fearless efforts to expose violence against blacks. Catapulted emotionally into the cause after three of her friends were lynched in Tennessee, and after the destruction of her presses, Wells-Barnett never stopped fighting for justice. Her published reports of lynching and her constant agitating helped to bring an international awareness to this inhumane practice. The purpose of Lynch Law in Georgia, as were other reports written by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, was "to give the public the facts, in the belief that there is still a sense of justice in the American people, and that it will yet assert itself in condemnation of outlawry and in defense of oppressed and persecuted humanity." She encouraged church groups and women's clubs to be more aggressive in demanding political and civil rights and helped to create a number of national organizations-including the Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People--that would strengthen awareness of racial issues.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett Wells-Barnett continued to write for several black newspapers utilizing her news sources and her first-hand investigative information to show that lynching was more often used as a way to instill fear in and exert power over all blacks. Wells-Barnett interviewed witnesses at lynchings and looked at events immediately preceding the act to gain an understanding of the act of lynching in individual cases. What she uncovered was that lynchings were not for acts of sexual violence, but for attempting to register to vote, for being too successful, for failure to demure acceptably to whites, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In addition, she showed that lynchings were not the act of out-of-control whites horrified over a grievous act. Rather, lynchings were often planned several days in advance and had police support. Not only were men lynched, but women and children were, too. Wells-Barnett's work uncovered the thin veneer which was used to justify lynching. She was also a strong proponent for women's rights, and organized the first suffrage club for black women. Wells-Barnett spoke out strongly for the need of black women to work for anti-lynch laws. As a community activist, when she discovered that the YMCA excluded black men, she organized the Negro Fellowship League to provide lodging, employment assistance and social activities. Her efforts led to the overthrow of the YMCA's racist policies of exclusion. Wells-Barnett was also a co-founder of the Niagara Movement, which later became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
African American Odyssey Introduction | Overview | Object List | Educational Materials Library of Congress Help Desk (12/10/98) |
What inspired the more aggressive form of journalism known as muckraking in the early 1900s?
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