Muckraking and the Journalism of Exposure

“Who you callin’ yeller?”

Key Developments

• photography• Civil War correspondents• foreign journalists came to US to cover war• telegraph – Associated Press wire…• news syndication• first bldgs. in NYC bigger than churches were

the newspaper buildings

• “Muckraking” and Progressive movement.

• Industrialization, immigrant influx; conditions are ripe for exploitation

• rich feel threatened by immigration and growth

• slums, crowding, foreigners…OH MY!

• Progressives: education + civics instruction + language skills = it’s all good

• attack on political machines• anti-corruption campaigns…politics of

principle!• economic reform…higher wages + better

conditions = it’s all good• attack on human vice – gambling,

prostitution, drinking, etc.

• Who’s going to take on Tammany and Boss Tweed? If gov’t. isn’t going to do it, who will?

• news moved toward investigation and observation…

• “Progress is possible if facts can be known!”• “Muckraking” furthered by new magazines…

Atlantic, Harper’s, Scribner’s. Cheap and with high circulation

Old Immigrants v. New

Old Immigrants v. New

• Charles Elutherius Egan

• Bright-eyed optimism

• Nicola Pavia• Tissues in sleeve

Jacob Riis

Danish-American photographer,

journalist, and social reformer

(May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914)

New York City in 1870

1870-1900 ~ 12 million immigrants 70 % entered through New York City 700 % increase in urban populations Personal experience motivates him

to work for social change

Muckrakers [Referring a character in John Bunyan's 1678

work Pilgrim's Progress:]....the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; 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.

There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. 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."

From Roosevelt’s speech in 1906:

Jacob Riis: Career, con’t

First American photographer to use flash

Began giving lantern-slide lectures in 1888

1889 Scribner's Magazine published Riis's photographic essay on city life

This becomes How the Other Half Lives

How the Other Half Lives:

Studies Among the Tenements of New

York(Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890)

“Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate, of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.“

~ from Riis’s Introduction

Riis’s strategy: appeal to the middle class, Victorian

conscience Neighborhoods Dwellings Mothers and children

Emphasized humanity of poor Presented poor as capable of responding

to reforms De-emphasized the individual in favor of

total setting Not sentimental

Mulberry Bend, New York

Bandit's Roost

Dens of Death

A Seven-Cent Lodging

House, Pell Street

Mulberry Street Police Station, Waiting for the

Lodging to Open

1892

One of four pedlars who slept in the cellar of 11 Ludlow

Street

Ready for Sabbath Eve in a Coal Cellar

Five Cents Lodging, Bayard Street

1889

In Poverty Gap, an English Coal-Heaver's Home

In a Sweat Shop

It Costs a Dollar a Month to Sleep in These Sheds

Women's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street

Station - 1892

Playground in Poverty Gap

Children Sleeping on

Mulberry Street