The truth EXPOSED

Question 1

Muckrakers

Answer 1

Name given to journalists, novelists, and critics who wrote about corruption in business and politics. Famous Muckrakers included Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffers, Jacob Riis, and Upton Sinclair.

Question 2

Upton Sinclair (The Jungle)

Answer 2

Upton Sinclair wrote the revolutionary piece called ‘The Jungle’. It is a famous piece of literature depicting the horrible living and working conditions of immigrants in the United States and promoting socialism over capitalism as a way to address the problems in society.

Question 3

Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives)

Answer 3

How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future “muckraking” journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes.

In the 1890s many people in upper- and middle-class society were unaware of the dangerous conditions in the slums among poor immigrants. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant who himself could not originally find much work, hoped to expose the squalor of the 19th-century Lower East Side of Manhattan. After a successful career as a police reporter, he published a photojournal documenting these conditions using graphic descriptions, sketches, photographs, and statistics. Riis blamed the apathy of the moneyed class for the condition of the New York slums, and assumed that as people were made more aware of these conditions they would be motivated to help eradicate them.