Rapid Industrialization And Urbanization In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

a. Inadequate inspection practices best illustrate the issues caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

b. Insufficient and dilapidated housing is also another event from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that does a great job of illustrating the issues caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization.

c. Horrible working conditions is one of the best illustrations of the issues that were caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization that is written about in The Jungle.

2. Now for each point above, explain why this example illustrates these issues.

a. In The Jungle, there are multiple instances where Upton Sinclair shows how the inspection process is lacking. The inspectors are spread too thin due

With the rapid growth and urbanization, there wasn’t sufficient housing available to the poor and middle class. In The Jungle Upton Sinclair describes some of the living conditions in the cramped tenements. He states that there were multiple families to small rooms as well as some other uninvited guest such as vermin and germs. Upton Sinclair writes of massive migrations of people that would take place in the meat packing areas. There wasn’t enough housing due to this rapid migration and people would sleep in the streets to get a chance at getting a job.

c. Horrible working conditions were one of the largest issues that Upton Sinclair wrote about in The Jungle. Upton Sinclair spoke of people losing limbs and other tragic accidents that occurred in the meat packing industry. The most tragic accidents that Upton Sinclair described involved not only the workers but also the customers that would be receiving the tainted goods due to workers falling into rendering tanks and the goods being processed for shipment. During this time of rapid growth, work hygiene wasn’t of significant importance.

3. Finally, place each point above into the historical context (this means to make direct connections of this point to other specific information you have learned about the era from the other course

From a Historical standpoint, the way in which Upton Sinclair wrote of the inspection process was fairly accurate. During our class lectures, we talked about how the inspection process had many holes and that The Jungle brought about many changes to the inspection process. Shortly after the book was written the government signed a meat inspection act. During our class lectures, it was discussed that Upton Sinclair wrote the book to make people think with their minds but instead he hit them in their stomachs.

b. Historically speaking Upton Sinclair did accurately portray the living conditions of the time in The Jungle. In our class lectures, we went over how there were horrible living conditions for the poor in these rapid industrialized areas. The Jacob Riis pictures we looked at of the dumbbell tenements showed very cramped spaces. There would be multiple families using one toilet and instead of taking the trash out to a garbage dump these families would dump the trash outside, let it build up to the windows. This inadequate sanitation caused rats and other pests to