Samuel Hopkins Adams

Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York. In 1891, he graduated from Hamilton College. From 1891 to 1929, he was a reporter for the New York Sun and then joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. I...

Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York. In 1891, he graduated from Hamilton College. From 1891 to 1929, he was a reporter for the New York Sun and then joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States. In a series of eleven articles he wrote for Collier's Weekly in 1905, "The Great American Fraud", Adams exposed many of the false claims made about patent medicines, pointing out that in some cases these medicines were damaging the health of the people using them. The series had a huge impact and led to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. In 1911 the Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition of falsifications referred only to the ingredients of the medicine. This meant that companies were again free to make false claims about their products. Adams returned to the attack and another series of articles in Collier's Weekly, Adams exposed the misleading advertising that companies were using to sell their products.