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John Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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The Jungle is one of the best-known pieces of the muckraker movement.The novel is responsible for bringing the working and sanitary conditions of Chicago's slaughterhouses to light.The jungle a brilliant story that bring to light a lot of the trues people didn't consider.It show that the working conditions for the immigrants and their living condition to ;as well as the condition of the food the people are eating. Americans were horrified to learn about the terrible conditions which their meat products were packed and were disgusted that rotten and diseased meat was sold without consideration for public health. They were more horrified to learn that the labels listing the ingredients in meat products were full of lies. The meat containing …show more content…

Sinclair explains how the immigrants had to work in unsafe, unsanitary conditions. " let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh". He goes on to describe the diseases that each of the different jobs. Meat packing plants employed children to do even the most dangerous. Kid at the age of 14 could work but the restriction was upheld ,so kid at the age of 8 worked too. On top of that Chemicals were used in just about every part of the process ,and the worker did not wear protective gear nor glove. The factories would get really hot, which meant the place reeked of bad meat and sweating workers because the factories had no ventilation. Workers were required to clock in for six days a week, ten hours per day. Most of workers only received a few cents per hour for their work. If you were to convert it to today’s amount it would be about 1.50 $. In those time getting hurt on the job didn't mean any extra money. It just meant that you could lose your job or worse. Real estate agents would raise rates so that they can kick out families whose husbands or wives has been injured on the job. Women worker that were disprite were used as play thing for the boss’s of the

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485 Words | 2 Pages

One side of the controversy is the agreement that the meat industry was indeed unsanitary and a risk to an individual’s health. While Sinclair’s novel only gave a glimpse of the issue, it brought the problem to light with many critics speaking and commenting on the unethical methods used in slaughter houses. Kauffman explains how the issues may be “because… inspections program [were] underfunded, there [most likely was] not

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1317 Words | 6 Pages

How did Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” Impact the Meat Factories during the Progressive Age? During the late 1800s and early 1900s a new stage in the United States began, called the Progressive Era. Over the years, America developed into an industrial working country although, like every country the social and economical problems were becoming an issue. Those who were on top were corrupted and vile while those who did the majority of the work took long hours and low pay.

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466 Words | 2 Pages

Women and children were the ones mostly risking their lives working in a factory. “In a factory in Japan, the women had to pull threads off silkworm cocoons and put them into a hot water basin” (Doc A). These silkworm cocoon threads were then threaded together to make clothing. This process might’ve been long and tiring as well as dangerous because they could get easily burned while working with these unsafe equipments. This is negative because the workers could’ve worked with equipments that weren’t as unsafe.

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573 Words | 3 Pages

The unsanitary factories were also home to rats, rat poisons, germs, dust, and dirt. The workers put contaminated meat into the meat choppers. Moldy and otherwise inedible meat was doused in chemicals and ground into sausages. When the public found out about these scandals, many were repulsed and demanded immediate government action. The government responded with the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

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601 Words | 3 Pages

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners.

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637 Words | 3 Pages

The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, is about a Lithuanian family that travels to Chicago in pursuit of the American Dream. When writing this novel, Sinclair sought to build support for the Socialist Party and the working class. In preparation for writing The Jungle, Sinclair spent weeks in Chicago’s meat packing plants to study the lives of its stockyard workers. When the novel was first published, readers were more concerned with the health standards and conditions in which the meat was processed rather than the socialist message that Sinclair intended. The Jungle is also often associated with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act both in 1906, the year the novel was published (Source A).

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314 Words | 2 Pages

Sinclair, a socialist writer, was a struggling writer. An editor recommended that Sinclair investigate the strike that was happening in Chicago because of the unfit conditions of meat packers. Sinclair followed his suggestion. In 1904, at the age of 26, he went to Chicago to examine the conditions of the workers in the meat packing industry and figure out why the workers were on strike. Sinclair interviewed not only the workers involved in the meat packing industry but families, lawyers, doctors, and social workers.

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1060 Words | 5 Pages

Thus, Sinclair’s purpose of writing The Jungle failed to bring readers to advocate for the rights of workers trapped in the low wages, unsafe working conditions, and long hours of meatpacking factories, but rather, succeeded in opening the country’s eyes to the meatpacking practices that went on behind closed doors and the establishment administrations to protect the public from these unscrupulous

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440 Words | 2 Pages

The reason for this is because The Jungle described how the meat packing industry produced spoiled meat that they covered with chemicals, had rats inside their warehouses that left piles of excrement everywhere, and skin, hair, stomach, ears, and nose were ground up and packaged as cheese. Within months of Sinclair’s book being published, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act to stop these shocking and appalling

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570 Words | 3 Pages

The Jungle had very strong imagery and was designed to get the public’s sympathy towards these workers. Instead the people became disgusted at the sanitation of the meat packing industry and appalled about how their food was processed. Upton Sinclair said: “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Sinclair identified that the meat packing industry created a significant amount of true risk. The poor sanitation conditions increased the probability that people would get sick.

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763 Words | 4 Pages

Additionally, hot dogs have been labeled as junk food, unhealthy, and even “cancer-causing” by some organizations (Aylward, "About hot dogs."). While it is understandable that hot dogs, associated with questionable practices of meat processing and “mystery meat” ("Hot dogs: without (too much) guilt."), are perceived negatively with their track record, the hot dog and sausage making industry has fought long and hard since then to win back the hearts of

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1899 Words | 8 Pages

Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tension in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through his novel “The Jungle”. He used the story of a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, to show the harsh situation that immigrants had to face in the United States, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions in the meatpacking plants, as well as the tension between the capitalism and socialism in the United States during the early 1900s. In the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrants move into the United States, and most of them were from Europe. The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, like many other immigrants, have the “America Dream” which they believe America is heaven to them, where they can

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584 Words | 3 Pages

Seeing how harsh workers were treated in the excerpt, Sinclair took advantage of this time period to push forward awareness. The Jungle helped advance the argument of exploitation of workers in this era. Since they are living in a time of progressivism, they might as well tackle every little industry that directly affected the general public. Socialism was the dominant driving factor during this time and that helped Sinclair’s point of view on the meatpacking industry as it brought the public together to fight for what is

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939 Words | 4 Pages

The Jungle portrays the horrifying struggle of life in highly populated cities and the unsafe factory conditions that came along with the city that chapter 19 of the textbook discusses. During the time of industrialization,

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1523 Words | 7 Pages

During the late 19th century, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle where he romanticized the notion of American culture. This exaggeration enticed immigrants to travel to America in an effort to start a new life as exemplified by Jurgis Rudkus and his family. Immigrants traveled due to their high hopes and expectations for finding more opportunities and climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. They allowed unrestrained capitalism to take advantage of them which ultimately led to inhumane living and working conditions. With its abuse of the immigrant workers, the system of capitalism was a major downfall in society.

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