Progressive Reforms
Bly's goal of leading the public to amend injustices was achieved by means of information conveyed through her muckraking articles.
Nellie Bly used her articles to lead people to enact social reforms. More information on the effects of these reforms can be found on the Short Term Effects page.
"I had always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly...to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly."
-Bly from Ten Days in a Madhouse
"Ten Days in a Madhouse"
By experiencing abusive conditions, Bly showed her readers that the conditions in Blackwell's Asylum necessitated reforms.
"Nellie Bly Buys a Baby"
Bly gave the helpless a voice by revealing an industry that took advantage of babies.
"Slavery exists today in New York in a more repulsive form than it ever existed in the South. White slaves, baby slaves--young, innocent, helpless baby slaves-bought and sold every day in the week!" |
"In Trinity's Tenements"
Corruption ran rampant in wealthy businesses, such as the Trinity corporation, and Bly took it upon herself to expose the poor's suffering.
Bly wrote this article five years before Jacob Riis published his famous tenement pictures.
Bly wrote this article five years before Jacob Riis published his famous tenement pictures.
"With the Prison Matrons"
In order to ensure that even prisoners were cared for with respect, Bly unearthed the improper conditions under which they lived.
"Mrs. Stack...has only one little corner at the foot of the iron stairs...the prison is damp, dark, and cold. The only heat which comes from the furnace below is so filled with gas that the inmates find freezing preferable to it." |