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Analyzing The Evils Of Children In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Recommended: Impacts of Child Labor and other negative effects during the Industrial Revolution

Starting in 1880, the evils of child labor were increasing fast. Children weren’t just working on their family’s farm; they were slaving in mills, sweatshops, and factories. Children were not only losing a chance at an education, but they were becoming ill, injured, and some were even being killed because of the dangerous working conditions they were slaving in. The dangers of children in the workforce are well-known, and many U.S. people disagree with the fact that children, most younger than eight, are able to work in such evil conditions. “That the evil exists; that certainly hundreds of thousands and more, probably over one million, children are even now either being killed or utterly destroyed for that citizenship on which this free …show more content…

After many things go wrong, including illness striking the family, them getting cheated out of their wages, and the disappearing of Jonas, the family decides to have their two sons go to work selling newspapers. The two sons came back empty after their first day of trying to sell newspapers, and continued for a few days. Finally, the boys got the hang of how the selling and trading game worked and were able to come back with money the next time. (“The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair; Chapters 7,12, and 13.)
“Credit constraints facing poor households result in excessive child labor and reduce children’s human capital. Child labor necessarily reduces children’s human capital. Human capital is determined by children’s study time as the only input in their human capital accumulation.” Basically, if children are out slaving in the workforce, then they cannot gain any human capital because they aren’t able to attend school and get an education. [ix]Fan, C. Simon. "Relative Wage, Child Labor, and Human Capital." Oxford Economic Papers 56.4 (2004): 687-700.

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“With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great Packingtown swindles” (par.1). This statement from Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, introduces trust from a family because of their own personal knowledge . The Jungle, features an immigrant family trying to survive in 1900’s Chicago meat packing district. In the story, Sinclair’s goal is to expose the miserable life of immigrants who work in factories.

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Florence Kelley uses many rhetorical devices and strategies to convey her message about child labor and working conditions for women in the early 1900’s. Kelley uses each device effectively to produce a very powerful strategy. This strategy convinces the reader about her view and persuades them to take action. The beginning of the speech starts with a statistic, “two million children under the age of sixteen years are earning their bread.”

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Work is required to earn the money to provide the necessities of life, but this duty should never be given to children. In her speech, Florence Kelley uses logos, pathos, and a shift to voting rights to build her argument of why child labor laws need to be enforced nationwide. The first way the author builds her argument is through logos, a logical appeal. Kelley utilizes an assailment of facts and statistics to lead her assertion. This is effective because of the shockingly large number of children working absurd and miserable hours.

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The story of "The Jungle" happened in September 1904 in Chicago slaughter house strike, Sinclair wrote an article sympathy for the workers for the strike workers in a magazine called "Call of Sense", Widely welcomed by workers. Afterwards, this magazine sponsored him for $ 500, allowing him to spend some time in the slaughterhouse. Sinclair spent seven weeks with the workers at the Chicago slaughterhouse and saw and heard many sensational things. When he got back to his home in New Jersey, he spent nine months writing "The Jungle" exposing the disgusting production environment and processing of the meat processing industry. The enormous media pressure caused by this book has forced the U.S. Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drugs Act and the

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In Florence Kelley’s speech, through her use of parallel structure and detailed description to describe the conditions of child labor, anecdotes that relay its prominence, appeals to emotion and motherhood, she conveys an effective message that child labor is unjust. Kelley illustrates a sweaty, brutal environment in which children are responsible for the production of many items that people use daily. According to Kelley, “Under the sweating system, tiny children make artificial flowers and neckwear for us to buy.” Words like “tiny children” and “sweating system” describe an environment that no one will feel comfortable in.

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In her speech addressing the National American Woman Suffrage Association on the topic of child labor, Florence Kelley bases her argument, through the use of logos, cacophony, and rhetorical questions on the ethical merit against child labor. Establishing her main arguments, and introducing the topic at hand, Kelley provides statistical evidence by which she conveys the pandemic of child labor. By stating that, “We have, in this country, two million children who are earning their bread,” she establishes the idea that child labor is widespread throughout the union and further notes the idea by describing the alarming trend of low wage-earning children growing as a demographic. She also notes it is especially common for girls between the ages

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After reading Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, child labor, urbanization, industrialization and immigration are problem quite sore during 1880-1910 period. Firstly, the future of the world depends on the child. However, the lives of children today are causing people to worry about. According to the Labor Law, provisions on workers be aged 16 years or older, able to work, working under labor contracts, paid and subject to the management and administration of the employer.

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The Jungle, a novel written in 1906, by Upton Sinclair is a harsh and very real account of what child labor looked like during the time of the Industrial Revolution. This work particularly looks at the lives of Lithuanian immigrants funneling into the United States and the work they are forced to do to maintain their meager existences. The immigrants are in such a degraded state that so many are forced to have their children employed to help the family survive. The key word for these immigrants and their children was survival. Sinclair states throughout the novel that education for these immigrant children was purely a bonus, as so many had to give up schooling to help the family make ends meet.

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As the rate of industrialization in America grew during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, child labor became more and more common. The rapid growth of the economy and the vast amounts of poor immigrants during the Industrial Age in America justified the work of children as young as the age of three. By 1900, over two million children were employed. However, the risks of involving child labor greatly outweighed the positives; child labor was inhumane, cruel, and caused physical deformities among children. Children typically worked in coal mines, mills, and factories which contained many life-threatening hazards.

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1. How do these testimonies present the realities of child labor? Give specific examples. The testimonies give us a brief snapshot of the condition in which children worked.

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