A group of writers and journalists known as the "Muckrakers" contributed the Progressivism. They were members of the respectable middle class, and they popularized and disseminated their reform ideas. Along with the muckrakers was a group of writers called the naturalists, the naturalist school of writers because they wrote in the naturalistic style. Most of this writing occurred between 1890 and 1910. The Naturalist school or style in literature and the muckrakers overlap.

1. In 1890 Jacob Riis wrote How The Other Half Lives. He described the deplorable conditions of the urban slums in New York, with overcrowded, unsanitary tenements. It was not unusual for people in tenements to share a single bathroom on an entire floor of the apartment building. People threw garbage and trash into the streets or alleys. This made a popular audience aware of the poverty in the cities.

2. Meanwhile, in 1893, Stephen Crane published a novel called Maggie, a Girl of the Streets. In it Maggie is driven to prostitution by poverty, and ultimately to death.
 
 

3. In 1900 Theodore Dreiser published a novel called Sister Carrie. In contrast to Maggie, Carrie sins without shame or remorse, or punishment. Indeed, she has illicit love affairs and goes on to success. But both Crane and Dreiser in their writings seemed to suggest that people start out good and decent. But bad environments can cause a good person to become bad. Bad environments produce bad people, and can corrupt good people. It was not the individual's fault that he was bad. He was the product of his environment. His environment had made him that way. Liberals argued that IF this premise was true, then it was important to try to improve social environments.

4. In 1901 writer Frank Norris published The Octopus. It described greed and corruption in the railroad industry. His work suggested that rampant greed and materialism deformed a person's character. Whereas hard work and struggle was good for character and the soul, luxury and money corrupt people.

5. In 1903 the journalist Ida Tarbell began publishing installments of The History of Standard Oil Company, in Mc Clure's Magazine. She exposed that Rockefeller had induced the railroads to give him rebates, and other questionable or so-called "sharp" business practices by big business. She was the Connie Chung of her time, and her writing aroused public indignation against the monopolies and trusts. This fanned the flames of public opinion against big business, and fed the impression that big business was guilty of abuses and excesses.

6. The next year Lincoln Steffens published his famous book The Shame of the Cities. He exposed graft, corruption, and kickbacks in politics. He described the buying of votes, especially by ward bosses and political machines that sought the votes of the immigrants. He also described the poverty and overcrowding.

7. Two years later, in 1906, Upton Sinclair published his novel called The Jungle. He described how the social environment victimized the poor. Thus book created a sensation because it described filthy and unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry in Chicago. It described a young worker in a meatpacking plant losing a finger in the machinery and it being ground up with the meat and sent off to the grocer's. President Theodore Roosevelt read this book and sent undercover agents to Chicago to see if the account had any truth. They discovered that there were indeed unsanitary conditions, and Roosevelt and the Congress quickly took action. This is the most dramatic example of how journalistic and literary exposes stimulated public opinion and succeeded in bringing about reform. This was one reason why the Progressive efforts succeeded where the Populists did not.

8. Let me also mention that it was Teddy Roosevelt, in 1906, who called these writers "muckrakers." The term is derived from a character in a book by Bunyan called The Pilgrim's Progress. (main character, Christian). In this book there is a character who sweeps up garbage and slime --or muck--off the floor with a rake. TR applied this term "muckraker" to the journalists because it seemed to him that they delighted in following others around and exposing every little thing that was wrong. Thus they accentuated the negative, and possibly blew things out of proportion and distorted the truth. They were senationalistic. In any event, the phrase was meant to be a putdown or pejorative. Nevertheless, it stuck, and today the phrase muckraker has become respectable and refers to someone who gives a journalistic or literary expose, or it can refer to a whistle-blower.

9. These writers succeeded in raising public awareness, and public consciousness, and public opinion and concern about something called the "social problem." It is difficult to say exactly what this PERCEPTION of a social problem was. But at its core was a concern with bad environments that produce bad people or corrupt people who started out good. Poverty, overcrowding, unsanitary living and health conditions, child labor, prostitution, alcoholism were all aspects of the social problem. And this problem was especially associated with the city.