Group One’s Vocabulary Term: “Laissez Faire”Upton Sinclair: The Jungle

Perhaps no muckraker caused as  great a stir as Upton Sinclair. An avowed Socialist, Sinclair hoped to illustrate the horrible effects of capitalism on workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. His bone-chilling account, The Jungle, detailed workers sacrificing their fingers and nails by working with acid, losing limbs, catching diseases, and toiling long hours in cold, cramped conditions. He hoped the public outcry would be so fierce that reforms would soon follow.

Six publishers rejected Upton Sinclair before Doubleday agreed to publish The Jungle, Sinclair’s exposé of the filth and misery of Chicago’s meat packing industry. Eventually, the book had as much impact as Uncle Tom's Cabin had decades before.

The Jungle (an excerpt)“I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed!” This quote from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle shows his true intention: to highlight the miserable conditions of workers in a meatpacking factory.

Group Two’s Vocabulary Term: “Courting” (*not romantically)

Other Muckrakers

John Spargo's 1906 The Bitter Cry of the Children exposed hardships suffered by child laborers, such as these coal miners. "From the cramped position [the boys] have to assume," wrote Spargo, "most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men ... "

Once other publications saw how profitable these exposés had been, they courted muckrakers of their own. In 1905, Thomas Lawson brought the inner workings of the stock market to light in Frenzied Finance. John Spargo unearthed the horrors of child labor in The Bitter Cry of the Children in 1906. That same year, David Phillips linked 75 senators to big business interests in The Treason of the Senate. In 1907, William Hard went public with industrial accidents in the steel industry in the blistering Making Steel and Killing Men. Ray Stannard Baker revealed the oppression of Southern blacks in Following the Color Line in 1908.

Group Three’s Vocabulary Term: Monopoly (*not the game!)

Tarbell vs. Standard Oil

IdaTarbell, one of the first female muckrakers, began her McClure's series entitled "History of the Standard Oil Company." She outlined and documented the cutthroat business practices behind John Rockefeller's meteoric rise. Tarbell's motives may also have been personal: her own father had been driven out of business by Rockefeller.

Miss Tarbell's reports about the Standard Oil Company are considered more important than any of her other writings.  Her nineteen-part series was called “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. McClure's Magazine published it beginning in 1902.

Her reports showed that Standard Oil used illegal methods to make other companies lose business.  One method was to sell oil in one area of the country for much less than the oil was worth.

This caused smaller companies in that area to fail.  They could not sell their oil for that low a price and still make a profit.  After a company failed, Standard Oil would then increase the price of its oil.  This kind of unfair competition was illegal.

Miss Tarbell had trouble discovering information about the Standard Oil Company.  She tried to talk to businessmen who worked in the oil business.  At first, few would agree to talk. They were afraid of the Standard Oil Company and its owner, John D. Rockefeller.  He was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.Miss Tarbell kept seeking information.  She was told by one man, that Rockefeller would try to destroy McClure's Magazine.  But she did not listen to the threats.  She soon found evidence that Standard Oil had been using unfair and illegal methods to destroy other oil companies.  Soon many people were helping her find the evidence she needed.

Ida Tarbell's investigations into Standard Oil were partly responsible for later legal action by the federal government against the company.  The case began in nineteen-oh-six.  In nineteen eleven, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Standard Oil because of its illegal dealings.  The decision was a major one.  It forced the huge company to separate into thirty-six different companies.John D. Rockefeller never had to appear in court himself.  Yet the public felt he was responsible for his company's illegal actions.  The investigative work of Ida Tarbell helped form that public opinion.  That investigative work continues to be what she is known for, even though some of her later writings defendedAmerican business.  She died in nineteen forty-four.

Group Four’s Vocabulary Term: Tenement

Jacob Riis

Through photos and writings documenting poverty in New York City in the late 19th century, a Danish immigrant became a famous campaigner against slum housing. Two new books tell the story of Jacob Riis, a social reformer and natural showman.

Imagine it's 1888. New York City. The Lower East Side is the most densely populated place on Earth: Block after block of tenements house the working-poor immigrants of the city, including Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, Czechs and Chinese.

Imagine the darkness of an unlit corridor in one of those tenements, a corridor that opens onto windowless rooms, 10 feet square, where entire families live and might even work — sewing, or rolling cigars.

Out of the darkness, a door opens. A man with a Danish accent leads a team of amateur photographers, who are accompanied by a policeman. They position their camera on a tripod and ignite a mixture of magnesium and potassium chlorate powder. A flash explodes, illuminating their squalor.

So-called rear tenements, built behind other tenements, would have no access to light or air, and all the rooms were interior rooms. A court decision from that era essentially said there is no right to light or air for a renter or an owner.  The idea that you have a right to a window or the right to some breathing space was not a legal right that anyone recognized until much later, with new housing and building codes that sprang from Muckrakers’ work.

Group Fives’s Vocabulary Term: Corruption (in the social and political context).

Muckrakers,  a name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th century. They attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term derives from the word muckrake used by President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech in 1906, in which he agreed with many of the charges of the muckrakers but asserted that some of their methods were sensational and irresponsible. He compared them to a character from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress who could look no way but downward with a muckrake in his hands and was interested only in raking the filth. Since the 1870s there had been recurrent efforts at reform in government, politics, and business, but it was not until the advent of the national mass-circulation magazines such as McClure's, Everybody's, and Collier's that the muckrakers were provided with sufficient funds for their investigations and with a large enough audience to arouse nationwide concern. All aspects of American life interested the muckrakers, the most famous of whom are Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Upton Sinclair. In the early 1900s

magazine articles that attacked trusts—including those of Charles E. Russell on the beef trust, Thomas Lawson on Amalgamated Copper, and Burton J. Hendrick on life insurance companies—did much to create public demand for regulation of the great combines. The muckraking movement lost support in about 1912. Historians agree that if it had not been for the revelations of the muckrakers the Progressive movement would not have received the popular support needed for effective reform.

Direction sheet (check each step off as you complete)

_____ Once you are in your groups, take the dictionary I have given to your group and look up the vocabulary term listed on your muckraker packet.  When I call your group’s representative to the board, he or she will write the term and definition on the board.

_____ Once all representatives have put their terms on the board, we will watch a short video.

_____ Next, read your mini-articles silently.

_____ When you are finished, talk amongst yourselves and fill out the graphic organizer for the mini-article only.

_____ When I give the prompt, you will direct your attention to the images above the articles, filling out your graphic organizers together, sharing ideas.

_____  When I give the prompt, please return to your seats and wait for further instruction.

Brainstorm/Thought Guide Graphic Organizer for Image + Mini-article Packet

Group One’s Vocabulary Term: “Laissez Faire”Upton Sinclair: The Jungle

Perhaps no muckraker caused as  great a stir as Upton Sinclair. An avowed Socialist, Sinclair hoped to illustrate the horrible effects of capitalism on workers in the Chicago meatpacking industry. His bone-chilling account, The Jungle, detailed workers sacrificing their fingers and nails by working with acid, losing limbs, catching diseases, and toiling long hours in cold,

cramped conditions. He hoped the public outcry would be so fierce that reforms would soon follow.

Six publishers rejected Upton Sinclair before Doubleday agreed to publish The Jungle, Sinclair’s exposé of the filth and misery of Chicago’s meat packing industry. Eventually, the book had as much impact as Uncle Tom's Cabin had decades before.

The Jungle (an excerpt)“I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed!” This quote from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle shows his true intention: to highlight the miserable conditions of workers in a meatpacking factory.

Group Two’s Vocabulary Term: “Courting” (*not romantically)

Other Muckrakers

John Spargo's 1906 The Bitter Cry of the Children exposed hardships suffered by child laborers, such as these coal miners. "From the cramped position [the boys] have to assume," wrote Spargo, "most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed like old men ... "

Once other publications saw how profitable these exposés had been, they courted muckrakers of their own. In 1905, Thomas Lawson brought the inner workings of the stock market to light in Frenzied Finance. John Spargo unearthed the horrors of child labor in The Bitter Cry of the Children in 1906. That same year, David Phillips linked 75 senators to big business interests in The Treason of the Senate. In 1907, William Hard went public with industrial accidents in the steel industry in the blistering Making Steel and Killing Men. Ray Stannard Baker revealed the oppression of Southern blacks in Following the Color Line in 1908.

Group Three’s Vocabulary Term: Monopoly (*not the game!)

Tarbell vs. Standard Oil

IdaTarbell, one of the first female muckrakers, began her McClure's series entitled "History of the Standard Oil Company." She outlined and documented the cutthroat business practices behind John Rockefeller's meteoric rise. Tarbell's motives may also have been personal: her own father had been driven out of business by Rockefeller.

Miss Tarbell's reports about the Standard Oil Company are considered more important than any of her other writings.  Her nineteen-part series was called “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. McClure's Magazine published it beginning in 1902.

Her reports showed that Standard Oil used illegal methods to make other companies lose business.  One method was to sell oil in one area of the country for much less than the oil was worth.

This caused smaller companies in that area to fail.  They could not sell their oil for that low a price and still make a profit.  After a company failed, Standard Oil would then increase the price of its oil.  This kind of unfair competition was illegal.

Miss Tarbell had trouble discovering information about the Standard Oil Company.  She tried to talk to businessmen who worked in the oil business.  At first, few would agree to talk. They were afraid of the Standard Oil Company and its owner, John D. Rockefeller.  He was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.Miss Tarbell kept seeking information.  She was told by one man, that Rockefeller would try to destroy McClure's Magazine.  But she did not listen to the threats.  She soon found evidence that Standard Oil had been using unfair and illegal methods to destroy other oil companies.  Soon many people were helping her find the evidence she needed.

Ida Tarbell's investigations into Standard Oil were partly responsible for later legal action by the federal government against the company.  The case began in nineteen-oh-six.  In nineteen eleven, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Standard Oil because of its illegal dealings.  The decision was a major one.  It forced the huge company to separate into thirty-six different companies.John D. Rockefeller never had to appear in court himself.  Yet the public felt he was responsible for his company's illegal actions.  The investigative work of Ida Tarbell helped form that public opinion.  That investigative work continues to be what she is known for, even though some of her later writings defendedAmerican business.  She died in nineteen forty-four.

Group Four’s Vocabulary Term: Tenement

Jacob Riis

Through photos and writings documenting poverty in New York City in the late 19th century, a Danish immigrant became a famous campaigner against slum housing. Two new books tell the story of Jacob Riis, a social reformer and natural showman.Imagine it's 1888. New York City. The Lower East Side is the most densely populated place on Earth: Block after block of tenements house the working-poor immigrants of the city, including Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, Czechs and Chinese.

Imagine the darkness of an unlit corridor in one of those tenements, a corridor that opens onto windowless rooms, 10 feet square, where entire families live and might even work — sewing, or rolling cigars.

Out of the darkness, a door opens. A man with a Danish accent leads a team of amateur photographers, who are accompanied by a policeman. They position their camera on a tripod and ignite a mixture of magnesium and potassium chlorate powder. A flash explodes, illuminating their squalor.

So-called rear tenements, built behind other tenements, would have no access to light or air, and all the rooms were interior rooms. A court decision from that era essentially said there is no right to light or air for a renter or an owner.  The idea that you have a right to a window or the right to some breathing space was not a legal right that anyone recognized until much later, with new housing and building codes that sprang from Muckrakers’ work.

Group Fives’s Vocabulary Term: Corruption (in the social and political context).

Muckrakers,  a name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th century. They attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term derives from the word muckrake used by President Theodore Roosevelt in a speech in 1906, in which he agreed with many of the charges of the muckrakers but asserted that some of their methods were sensational and irresponsible. He compared them to a character from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress who could look no way but downward with a muckrake in his hands and was interested only in raking the filth. Since the 1870s there had been recurrent efforts at reform in government, politics, and business, but it was not until the advent of the national mass-circulation magazines such as McClure's, Everybody's, and Collier's that the muckrakers were provided with sufficient funds for their investigations and with a large enough audience to arouse nationwide concern. All aspects of American life interested the muckrakers, the most famous of whom are Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, David Graham Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Upton Sinclair. In the early 1900s magazine articles that attacked trusts—including those of Charles E. Russell on the beef trust, Thomas Lawson on Amalgamated Copper, and Burton J. Hendrick on life insurance companies—did much to create public demand for regulation of the great combines. The muckraking movement lost support in about 1912. Historians agree that if it had not been for the revelations of the muckrakers the Progressive movement would not have received the popular support needed for effective reform.

Direction sheet (check each step off as you complete)

_____ Once you are in your groups, take the dictionary I have given to your group and look up the vocabulary term listed on your muckraker packet.  When I call your group’s representative to the board, he or she will write the term and definition on the board.

_____ Once all representatives have put their terms on the board, we will watch a short video.

_____ Next, read your mini-articles silently.

_____ When you are finished, talk amongst yourselves and fill out the graphic organizer for the mini-article only.

_____ When I give the prompt, you will direct your attention to the images above the articles, filling out your graphic organizers together, sharing ideas.

_____  When I give the prompt, please return to your seats and wait for further instruction.

Brainstorm/Thought Guide Graphic Organizer for Image + Mini-article Packet