The
Progressives employed two major tactics when it came to effecting substantive social change. The
first thing they sought to do was to shine a light on the social problems of the day. They had
their own newspaper publications, such as McClure's, and investigative
reporters, known as muckrakers, went into disenfranchised communities to research and write
about what they discovered. Photojournalists, like Jacob Riis, took his camera into the
tenements to show the public the human side of poverty. Like the journalists, authors, such as
Upton Sinclair, wrote popular books aimed at exposing the horrid conditions of working-class
Americans and the ineptitude and callousness of the politicians that allowed for such squalid
conditions. With these images and descriptions, it became impossible for the public to ignore
the conditions of the poor in the United States.
The next step was to lobby
politicians for new Progressive laws. Coalitions of activists put pressure on politicians,
usually at...
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