Answer:
One of the details that may have shocked readers of the time was that "when last spring some workmen, while moving a pile of lumber on a North River pier, found under the last plank the body of a little lad crushed to death, no one had missed a boy, though his parents afterward turned up." The boy's parents did not even notice that their boy went missing, until the workmen found his body. The muckrakes sought to shock their audience to influence people to reform the conditions of the poor.