Muckrakers In The Progressive Era

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Muckrakers of the early 20th century are the main reason why today we have laws that regulate our food, drugs, and cosmetics. They are a big influence to changes of laws. One of these Muckrakers was a gentleman named Samuel Hopkins Adams. He has contributed a lot to the formation of new laws which helps us have better regulated medicines and medicines that have to be truthful. “In the Progressive Era (1890-1920) and before there were a lot of medications being sold from unreliable sources.”(Wood). Today there are some medications that you can get over the counter while there are others where you have to get a prescription from a professional doctor. However in the Progressive Era anyone could claim that they had a medicine that could cure you even if they didn’t know what the ill person actually had. As we know today we are not allowed to use someone else’s prescription nor can we make our own. We just don’t have access to medicines that require a prescription. …show more content…
He joined this magazine company in 1905 he wrote 11 articles on “The Great American Fraud” which is the patent medicine business. In the beginning of his article he mentions that “Gullible America will spend a combined seventy-five million dollars in patent medicines. Most of which have a lot of drugs and narcotics and are bad for your liver” (Adams Pg. 3). Because of unregulated drugs and no ingredients list, the sellers of the drugs can do whatever they want and people have no choice, but to buy them. People took attention to what he was writing and it had a big affect on the people buying this