Nellie Bly - "Behind Asylum Bars" (1887)
In 1887, intrepid reporter Nellie Bly pretended she was crazy and got herself committed, all to help improve conditions in a New York City mental institution.
“The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.”
Those words, describing New York City’s most notorious mental institution, were written by journalist Nellie Bly in 1887. It was no mere armchair observation, because Bly got herself committed to Blackwell’s and wrote a shocking exposé called Ten Days In A Madhouse. The series of articles became a best-selling book, launching Bly’s career as a world-famous investigative reporter and also helping bring reform to the asylum.
“The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.”
Those words, describing New York City’s most notorious mental institution, were written by journalist Nellie Bly in 1887. It was no mere armchair observation, because Bly got herself committed to Blackwell’s and wrote a shocking exposé called Ten Days In A Madhouse. The series of articles became a best-selling book, launching Bly’s career as a world-famous investigative reporter and also helping bring reform to the asylum.
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John Riis - How the Other Half Lives (1890)
How the Other Half Lives, a pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, focused on the plight of the poor in the Lower East Side, and greatly influenced future "muckraking" journalism. Riis mostly attributed the plight of the poor to environmental conditions, but he also divided the poor into two categories: deserving of assistance (mostly women and children) and undeserving (mostly the unemployed and intractably criminal). He wrote with prejudice about Jews, Italians, and Irish, and he stopped short of calling for government intervention. Still, the catalyst of his work was a genuine sympathy for his subjects, and his work shocked many New Yorkers.
How the Other Half Lives | |
File Size: | 30 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Theodore Dreiser - Sister Carrie (1900)
Theodore Dreiser was the outstanding American practitioner of naturalism. He was the leading figure in a national literary movement that replaced the observance of Victorian notions of propriety with the unflinching presentation of real-life subject matter. Among other themes, his novels explore the new social problems that had arisen in a rapidly industrializing America. In his novel Sister Carrie, eighteen-year-old Carrie travels from her home in Wisconsin arriving in Chicago. She soon embarks on a quest for work to pay rent to her sister and her husband and takes a job running a machine in a shoe factory. Before long, however, she is shocked by the coarse manners of both the male and female factory workers, and the physical demands of the job, as well as the squalid factory conditions, begin to take their toll.
Sister Carrie | |
File Size: | 43 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle (1906)
Uptown Sinclair is most known for his novel, The Jungle, and his investigation into the meat packing industry. Some refer to him as the “King of Muckrakers.” This was because he went undercover for 7 weeks in the Chicago meat packing industry and ultimately changed society’s perspective on the dangers and health risks of the food industry. Initially, Sinclair wanted to focus on researching the struggles of the lower and immigrant class and the obstacles they had to endure while working in the meat packing industry. Instead, he exposed the health risks in the industry. Gruesome details were revealed in his book. For example, Sinclair documented when rats were put into sausage grinding machines, or when the inspectors ignored the risk of slaughtering diseased cows for beef. Sinclair’s findings played a great role in the creation of Food and Drug Administration after President Theodore Roosevelt read his novel. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906 was ultimately enacted because of his investigation and muckraking efforts to expose the dangers of the industry. He stated, "“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit the stomach."
The Jungle | |
File Size: | 33 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Jane Addams - Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
Jane Addams was a social worker who founded the Hull House in Chicago in 1889 as a “settlement home” – a residence for the poor which also offered work and education opportunities. Modeled on a settlement house Addams had visited in London’s East End, Hull House offered night classes to adults that eventually became the prototype for junior college programs. In Twenty Years at Hull House, Addams gives her observations on the role education and culture play in lifting people out of poverty. Her settlement homes were enormously successful, and her pioneering social work led the Illinois State Legislature to pass landmark child labor and compulsory education laws in 1903. The federal government followed suit and passed a law in 1916 that regulated the age, hours, and type of work children could perform. Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
jane_addams_-_hull_house.doc | |
File Size: | 26 kb |
File Type: | doc |