Muckrakers: Early Twentieth-Century Reform

Muckrakers were early twentieth-century reformers whose 1

mission was to look for and uncover political and business corruption.

The term muckraker, which referred to the "man with a muckrake"

in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, was first used in a pejorative

sense by Theodore Roosevelt, whose opinion of the muckrakers was

that they were biased and overreacting. The movement began about

1902 and died down by 1917. Despite its brief duration, however, it

had a significant impact on the political, commercial, and even literary

climate of the period. 2

Many popular magazines featured articles whose purpose was 3

to expose corruption. Some of these muckraking periodicals included