Who were muckrackers, and what contributions did they make?

Muckrakers were journalists of the Progressive Era (late
19th early 20th century) who wrote articles in major magazines exposing corruption in
business, government, even the stock market. They were given the name "muckraker" by
Theodore Roosevelt from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in which
Bunyan described a man who could only look downward with a muckrake in his hands. A
muckrake is a rake used to clean muck--a combination of straw and excrement--from horse
stables. Theodore Roosevelt said of them

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the muckrakers are indispensable to . . .
society, but only if they know when to stop raking the
muck.

Among the more notable
muckrakers:

• Jacob Riis who wrote How
  the Other Half Lives, a description of the horrible living conditions in New
  York City, particularly those areas occupied by
  immigrants.


• Ida Mae Tarbell wrote A History of
  the Standard Oil Company. It was not a true "history" but rather a polemic of
  the ruthless business practices of John D.
  Rockefeller.


• Henry Demarest Lloyd: Wealth
  against Commonwealth, a description of large corporate concerns who answered
  to no one and even corrupted governments when it suited their
  purposes.


• Upson Sinclair: The Jungle
  which was written as a Socialist Manifesto, but is more famous for describing the
  squalid conditions in Chicago's meat packing industry. Sinclair once said of the
  book,

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I aimed for the nation's heart, but I hit it in
the stomach.

Most muckrakers
were better at pointing out problems rather than suggesting solutions; however
The Jungle did lead to major reform. Theodore Roosevelt read the
book, and sent inspectors to meat packing plants to see if the conditions described in
the book were true. It turns out they were. The inspectors
wrote:

We saw
meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room
to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering
dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculous and other diseased
workers

As a result, Congress
passed the Meat Inspection Act and the pure food and drug act.