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The Meat Packing Industry In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1043 Words5 Pages

“The Jungle” written by Upton Sinclair shares with readers the journey of the life of an immigrant Jurgis Rudkos who works in the meat packing industry. This historic novel greatly affected the food industry in America, Sinclair exposed the true evils of the food industry. Sinclair showed us how the meat packing industries worked, in humane conditions employees worked in, and the horrific products being produced from the plants. In the early 1900’s the meat packing factories were places where immigrants came to work so they could have jobs and provide for their families. They were set to one job and got paid low wages for what they did. Many of the conditions they worked in were not ideal and dangerous. Due to the lack of regulations many …show more content…

These conditions caused many to get wounded and bleed, even some people fell into the lard where then the bodies would mix into the next batch they created. On top of these bad food conditions there’s more, a lot of the animals that were used for packing very ill, and they also used rotten old meat that was in no condition good for eating, but they packed it anyway. As the bad, rotten food that they packed got shipped out and bought by the common people of the city the number of deaths and illnesses grew. People all over ate these packed food not knowing any better which got them sick and caused many to lose their lives. In the food industry today the packing plants are required to be safer and relatively “clean” in terms of health code so the food wouldn’t be affected in any sort of way. Before the food leaves the packing plant it must be tested and has to pass health codes and criteria so that they know it is safe to eat and buy from the shelves of the stores. All of the animals have to be cleared as healthy to use for packing and if not then they cannot be used to pack and send off to the stores. The government cracked down on the producing of food so when we look at the labels now we can tell that the chicken we bought is actually …show more content…

Upton Sinclair showed the reader how the extremely poor quality of life of immigrants, but also the corruptness of capitalism. Although capitalism may sound great in theory to some, in reality it comes with a great deterioration of human values and greed. Jurgis and his family came to this country to find better life and a better opportunity to live and support his family, however the opposite happens when they settle in Packingtown. The immigrants were taken advantage of and they lived as low class citizens of the nation, many didn’t have enough money to even feed their family and if they couldn’t work they were fired. Today this can remind the reader a lot of how our government works and how the work force is today, and in this sense the food industry has not gotten better. Although the food industry has somewhat safer conditions for their workers, fair wages all around and, safer food, many people don’t see what the companies are doing behind closed doors. A lump sum of the jobs all around the nation are being out sourced to undocumented workers, who get paid significantly less than minimum wage. Many companies do this to these undocumented workers who are trying to find jobs, and who gets punished for it? The workers. The industries rarely get in trouble for hiring these workers knowing they cannot work legally. This is a problem with the food industry that has not yet been

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People in positions of authority were largely inflictors of poverty, because they took advantage of immigrants and their lack of familiarity with their surroundings, as well as paying them far less than was required for a decent lifestyle. Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle depicted each of these issues with great detail and clarity, as well as many other issues that plagued immigrants. The book takes place in the Chicago Packingtown district, the heart of the meatpacking industry. This is a rough line of work to be in, and the lives of those immigrants who kept the industry afloat were often miserable.

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