The Progressive Era 533
LINCOLN STEFFENS
Lincoln Steffens is usually named as a leading figure of the muckraking movement.
He published exposés of business and government corruption in McClure’s
Magazine and other magazines. These articles were then collected in two books:
The Shame of the Cities and The Struggle for Self-Government. Below is a sec-
tion from an article Steffens wrote to expose voter fraud in Philadelphia.
The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet of the polls, but
they are at the box and they are there to see that the
[Republican political] machine’s orders are obeyed and that
repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to vote
without “intimidation” on the names they, the police,
have supplied. The editor of an anti-machine paper who
was looking about for himself once told me that a ward
leader who knew him well asked him into a polling
place. “I’ll show you how it’s done,” he said, and he
had the repeaters go round and round voting again
and again on the names handed them on slips. . . . The
business proceeds with very few hitches; there is more
jesting than fighting. Violence in the past has had its
effect; and is not often necessary nowadays, but if it is
needed the police are there to apply it.
—Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (1904)
UPTON SINCLAIR
Upton Sinclair’s chief aim in writing The Jungle was to expose the shocking conditions
that immigrant workers endured. The public, however, reacted even more strongly to the
novel’s revelations of unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry. Serialized in
1905 and published in book form one year later, The Jungle prompted a federal investi-
gation that resulted in passage of the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.
Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle
would often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with
[baking] soda to take away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on
free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of chemistry which
they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole
or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. . . .
It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into
the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolu-
tions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no
odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. 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 and
glycerine, and dumped into
the hoppers, and made over
again for home consumption.
—Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
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THINKING CRITICALLY
THINKING CRITICALLY
1. Comparing and Contrasting State the main idea of
each of these selections. What role do details play in
making the passages convincing?
SEE SKILLBUILDER HANDBOOK, PAGE R8.
2.
Visit the links for American Literature: The Muckrakers
to learn more about the muckrakers. What topics did
they investigate? How did they affect public opinion?
What legal changes did they help to bring about? Write
a summary of the muckrakers’ impact on society.
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