In the early 1900¹s many new changes were made in an effort to improve the business practices and social problems of the time. One of the many changes was the formation of the food and drug administration. It issued the first pure food and drug laws, which are federal regulations created to protect the consumer from contaminated or otherwise harmful food, drugs, and cosmetics. These laws were needed because the methods of preparing and shipping foods at the time were dangerouse to everyones health. For example, the meat packing industry often packaged meat which had fallen on the floor or which carried harmful bacteria and germs. They outlawed interstate transportation of contaminated foods, and prohibited the mislabeling of foods and drugs.

             One of the main reasons this problem was brought to public attention was by muckrakers, who were journalists with the cause of making the truth known to the public. They dragged up all the dirt, or raked up all the muck, on an industry, way of life, or anything, and exposed the underlaying truth. The two most instrumental muckrakers in the realization of the food and drug administration were, Samuel Hopkins Adams and Upton Sinclair. Samuel Hopkins Adams was an American journalist and novelist who wrote articles on public health and medicine which were printed in McClure's and Collier's magazines. These articles helped very much to bring about the Pure Food and Drug. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a particularly graphic example of "muckraking". The book explains the life of a Lithuanian immigrant who finds work in the Chicago stockyards. It documents the unsanitary and unhealthy working condition practiced in the stockyards. The novel caused a public outcry when published and is believed to have been instrumental in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

             The laws were successfull in some ways and they failed miserably in others. By 1906 very little use had been made of advertising, other than the claims made on the label of the product.