When Muckracker meets Journalist. Meet, Samuel Hopkins Adams

John Samuel Hopkins. He is well known for his extraordinary line of work as an investigative Journalist.  To gain that knowledge, he attended Hamilton College. He was just one of the many so called, "muckraker" journalists, that would many of the times go undercover, all in the work to expose a  lie being hidden by the government. 

From 1891 to 1929, he was a reporter for the New York Sun and then continued his Journalism career by joining McClure's Magazine. It was within this 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.

Adams series of articles on this subject, compelled the Supreme Court in 1911, to rule 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.

In addition to his line of work for well-known media outlets, Adams also wrote short-stories and novels. They were the following:

•  The Health Master (1913)
• The Clarion (1914)
• The Unspeakable Perk (1916)
• Square and the People in It (1917)
• Success (1921) 
• Siege (1924)
• The Gorgeous Hussy (1934) 
•  Maiden Effort (1937). 
• biography of Warren Harding entitled, Incredible Era (1939). 
• One short story, Night Bus, was turned into a film, It Happened One Night
•  Canal Town (1944)
•  a biography of Alexander Woollcott (1945)
• The Pony Express (1950)
• The Santa Fe Trail (1952) 
• The Erie Canal (1953) 
•  Grandfather Stories (1955)

Samuel Hopkins Adams long Journalism career came to an end when he died at Beaufort, South Carolina, on 15th November, 1958. The cause of death is stated.