HIST 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Upton Sinclair, Meat Packing Industry, Jacob Riis
Document Summary
The role of journalism: journalism, especially mass circulation magazines, played a vital role in advocating for. Most middle class americans were literate and had enough money to subscribe to at least one periodical or newspaper: mcclure"s magazine was the leading progressive journal. Three of the most famous muckrakers: jacob riis a danish immigrant, who came to the u. s. at age 18, became a police reporter in nyc and befriended tr, who was police commissioner. Riis traveled the slums of new york taking pictures of the poor (many of them children). His book how the other half lives remains a classic. Ida tarbell saw john d. rockefeller drive her father out of the soil business and sought revenge. Her book, history of the standard oil company exposed. Standard oil was eventually broken up by the courts: upton sinclair wrote the novel the jungle in which he exposed corruption in the meat packing industry.
