Muckrakers DBQ. 2. In the first paragraph, the phrase new crimes is used. What is that referring too?

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1 Document 1: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Muckrakers DBQ If seemed as if every time you met a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been worth while for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on "whisky-malt," the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called "steerly" - which means covered with boils. 1. What is this text about? 2. In the first paragraph, the phrase new crimes is used. What is that referring too? 3. What do you think about when you read the second paragraph? What visual images come to mind? Document 2: Upton Sinclair s Letter to President Theodore Roosevelt I saw with my own eyes hams, which had spoiled in pickle, being pumped full of chemicals to destroy the odor. I saw waste ends of smoked beef stored in barrels in a cellar, in a condition of filth which I could not describe in a letter. I saw rooms in which sausage meat was stored, with poisoned rats lying about, and the dung of rats covering them. I saw hogs which had died of cholera in shipment, being loaded into box cars to be taken to a place called Globe, in Indiana, to be rendered into lard. "My education as a physician teaches me that disease follows the same law whether in animals or human beings. An accurate post mortem requires close inspection of all the internal organs together with the use of the microscope before a physician can say there is no disease present. 1. Describe the condition of the meat which is mentioned in this letter. 2. What kind of emotions would a letter like this draw from a person?

2 Document 3: Teddy Roosevelt s Letter to Upton Sinclair But while I agree with you that energetic, and, as I believe, in the long run radical, action must be taken to do away with the effects of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist, yet I am more than ever convinced that the real factor in the elevation of any man or any mass of men must be the development within his or their hearts and heads of the qualities which alone can make either the individual, the class or the nation permanently useful to themselves and to others. But all this has nothing to do with the fact that the specific evils you point out shall, if their existence be proved, and if I have power, be eradicated. 1. This excerpt is in response to Sinclair s letter to Roosevelt. How did Roosevelt take the letter that was sent to him? 2. What did Roosevelt say about the issues raised by Upton Sinclair? Document 4: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, It seemed that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef for canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men with great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken to the cooking room. When they had speared out all they could reach, they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet they set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever; and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat! 1. A synonym of refuse is waste or garbage. What happened to that garbage? 2. Where in the meat packing factory did all of this take place? 3. How do you think people reacted to reading this?

3 Document 5: The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That is shall be unlawful for Columbia any article of food or drug which is adulterated or misbranded, within the meaning of this Act; and any person who shall violate any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and for each offense shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed five hundred dollars or shall be sentenced to one year's imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court, and for each subsequent offense and conviction thereof shall be fined not less than one thousand dollars or sentenced to one year's imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. Sec. 3. That the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor shall make uniform rules and regulations for carrying out the provisions of this Act, including the collection and examination of specimens of foods and drugs manufactured or offered for sale in the District of Columbia, or in any Territory of the United States, or which shall be offered for sale in unbroken packages Sec. 4. That the examinations of specimens of foods and drugs shall be made in the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, or under the direction and supervision of such Bureau, for the purpose of determining from such examinations whether such articles are adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of this Act; Sec. 5. That is shall be the duty of each district attorney to whom the Secretary of Agriculture shall report any violation of this Act, or to whom any health or food or drug officer or agent of any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia shall present satisfactory evidence of any such violation, to cause appropriate proceedings to be commenced and prosecuted in the proper courts of the United States, without delay, for the enforcement of the penalties as in such case herein provided. 1. How did the government respond to the outcries of the muckrakers? 2. What regulations did the government put into place in this Act? 3. How does this Act impact your life today?

4 Document 6: Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives Bottle Alley is around the corner in Baxter Street; but it is a fair specimen of its kind, wherever found. Look into any of these houses, everywhere the same piles of rags, of malodorous bones and musty paper, all of which the sanitary police flatter themselves they have banished to the dumps and the warehouses. Here is a flat of parlor and two pitch-dark coops called bedrooms. Truly, the bed is all there is room for. The family tea-kettle is on the stove, doing duty for the time being as a wash-boiler. By night it will have returned to its proper use again, a practical illustration of how poverty in the Bend makes both ends meet. One, two, three beds are there, if the old boxes and heaps of foul straw can be called by that name; a broken stove with crazy pipe from which the smoke leaks at every joint, a table of rough boards propped up on boxes, piles of rubbish in the corner. The closeness and smell are appalling. How many people sleep here? The woman with the red bandanna shakes her head sullenly, but the bare-legged girl with the bright face counts on her fingers five, six! Six, sir! Six grown people and five children. Only five, she says with a smile, swathing the little one on her lap in its cruel bandage. There is another in the cradle actually a cradle. And how much the rent? Nine and a half, and please, sir! he won t put the paper on. He is the landlord. The paper hangs in musty shreds on the wall. Well do I recollect the visit of a health inspector to one of these tenements on a July day when the thermometer outside was climbing high in the nineties; but inside, in that awful room, with half a dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay the dying baby alongside the stove, where the doctor s thermometer ran up to 115! Perishing for the want of a breath of fresh air in this city of untold charities! Did not the manager of the Fresh Air Fund write to the pastor of an Italian Church only last year 2 that no one asked for Italian children, and hence he could not send any to the country? 1. List evidence that the people being described here are poor: 2. List at least 3 things that you find gross or disgusting in the above passages:

5 Document 7: Ida Tarbell s Article in McClure Magazine The great human tragedies of the Oil Regions lie in the individual compromises which followed the public settlement of For then it was that man after man, from hopelessness, from disgust, from ambition, from love of money, gave up the fight for principle which he had waged for seven years. "The Union has surrendered," they said, "why fight on?" This man took a position with the Standard and became henceforth active in its business; that man took a salary and dropped out of sight; this one went his independent way, but with closed lips; that one shook the dust of the Oil Regions from his feet and went out to seek God s Country, asking only that he should never again hear the word oil. The newspapers bowed to the victor. A sudden hush came over the region, the hush of defeat, of cowardice, of hopelessness. 1. How is John D. Rockefeller portrayed by this document? 2. What did his actions lead to with the Standard oil Company? 3. How might this article, get the government s attention? Document 8: A Timeline of Muckraking 1. What can you learn from looking at this image?