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The Muckrakers PBL Am.

Lit-US History Smoovley Muckrakers- socially conscious journalists who investigated the ills of American society calling for reform. A muckrake is a tool used to clean manure and hay out of animals stables.
1. How does the tools definition describe the goal of muckraking journalists?

Frank Norris wrote The Octopus: A Story of California about the rise of the Southern Pacific Railroad
If I were to name the one crying evil of American life, Mr. Derrick, it would be the indifference of the better people to public affairs. It is so in all our great centres. There are other great trusts, God knows, in the United States besides our own dear P. and S.W. Railroad. Every state has its own grievance. If it is not a railroad trust, it is a sugar trust, or an oil trust, or an industrial trust, that exploits the People, because the people allow it. The indifference of the People is the opportunity of the despot. It is as true as that the whole is greater than the part . . . The People have but to say 'No' and not the strongest tyranny, political, religious, or financial, that was ever organized, could survive one week. Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California 2. What is indifference? What role does the indifference of society play in the injustices of society?

3. Norris argues that a simple response by the people will stop all the evils. What is that response? Do you think hes right?

Ida Tarbell wrote The History of Standard Oil about the rise of John D. Rockefeller and his company Standard Oil. The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else -- men, guns, ammunition. Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists -- with it all things are possible. 4. Are businesspeople at war with each other? Who wins?

5. Interpret Tarbells quote about imagination. What does it mean to you?

Lincoln Steffens wrote The Shame of the Cities, a collection of magazine articles about political corruption in city politics across the country.
Now, the typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a big business man and very busy, he does not neglect, he is busy with politics, oh, very busy and very businesslike. . . He is a self-righteous fraud, this big business man. He is the chief source of corruption, and it were a boon if he would neglect politics. But he is not the business man that neglects politics; that worthy is the good citizen, the typical business man. He too is busy, he is the one that has no use and therefore no time for politics. When his neglect has permitted bad government to go so far that he can be stirred to action, he is unhappy, and he looks around for a cure that shall be quick, so that he may hurry back to the shop.

6. What is Steffens opinion regarding businessmen?

Jacob Riis wrote a book about the tenements of New York called How the Other Half Lives.
Long ago it was said that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. It did not know because it did not care.

7. Is this a true statement today? Why or why not?

8. Give names for the two halves

The poor were the victims rather than the makers of their fate. 9. What does this mean?

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