Today we continued to present on Chapter 9. I presented on my topic which was Muckrakers.What/who were muckrakers and what impact did they have on our country?A Muckraker tried to expose businesses that tried to form monopolies or tried to get rid of other businesses with bad practices. Teddy Roosevelt was the one who got the term to stick with people because in a speech he called them Muckrakers after a character in a Paul Bunyan story. Ida Tarbell was a muckraker who wrote a book about the Standard Oil Company. She wrote about how he got rid of competition by using terrible practices. Lincoln Steffens wrote an article about corruption in cities, such as the political machines. Upton SinClaire wrote a book called The Jungle. It was about the conditions that immigrants had to work in at the meat packing facilities. It also talked about what was going into the meat and what people were actually eating. They educated the people about what was really going on in our country, and what they did led to many laws that helped the country grow.What did businesses do to bring better efficiency to their business?I learned that before the Progressive Era it took a lot of time to make products because they had to use small handtools, which took a very long time. I also learned that during the Progressive Era the companies started to use assembly lines, which made work a lot easier. Another thing I learned was that Henry Ford started the $5 work day because he didn't want employees to quit because if they quit new people would have to be trained a new job. Today a lot of companies use technology and computers to become more efficient.
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