During the late 19th century, citizens sought more direct action from government. As the Progressive Era ushered in, the abuses of the Gilded Age were addressed through a new honesty. Muckraking became a popular form of journalism that contributed to the many aggressive reform agendas to sweep the nation. It began with Jacob Riis’s publication of How The Other Half Lives, one of the first muckraking exposés to capture the public eye. He revealed the tenement life of the poor for others to see in a visually striking way, increasing awareness of the societal ills that plagued urban society. When Theodore Roosevelt became president at the turn of the century, many of his proposed reforms were inspired by Riis’ photojournalism, which gathered enough …show more content…
The journalist sought to create a piece of political fiction that would induce reform and spread the ideas of socialism, an emerging concept of the time. Sinclair meticulously describes the horrors of Chicago’s meatpacking industry as seen through an immigrant worker’s perspective. By detailing the story of an immigrant chasing the broken American dream, he successfully related the novel to the large working class that had long suffered in the capitalist society. The most wrenching part of Sinclair’s writing was the filthy conditions of the meat plants. Not only was sanitation an issue, separation of family and lack of sufficient pay were also themes of the The Jungle. President Theodore Roosevelt read Sinclair’s novel and sought to implement change once he realized that his words were, in fact, all true. He later signed the Food and Drug Act in 1906 that granted the federal government a new ability to monitor the activity within the food industry. The law allowed for regular inspections of plants and analysis of all carcasses and drugs to be marked safe for transport and consumption. This was one of many intrusions that large businesses despised …show more content…
The purpose of How the Other Half Lives was to demonstrate the squalid conditions the working class--primarily immigrants--suffered in and introduce better housing policies. Riis’ work did generate sympathy but it did not advocate a new attitude towards the people who seemed to threaten the social scene of the time. With the idea of global communism spreading, the United States feared the possibility of radical immigrants causing disruption. Massive quotas were placed to limit arrival from foreign countries, especially those of Southern and Eastern Europe, effectively reduced the population of seemingly radical immigrants. The culmination of the nation’s xenophobia resulted in the phenomenon of the Red Scare. During the Red Scare, Attorney General Palmer conducted a series of raids against suspected anarchists, deporting 550 Russians and jailing 5,000 in total. The peak of the second Ku Klux Klan came after the film, Birth of a Nation, popularized the barbaric image of the black man. It served as propaganda for fundamentalists to justify their immoral actions in keeping America traditional. Consisting of poor, white, Protestant fundamentalists, the clan targeted people not solely based on race and class, but also religion (Jewish and Catholic). It sought to regain control over political matters and despised the urbanization that much of the