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The Struggle Of Immigrants In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

630 Words3 Pages

This tragic story about the struggle of immigrants in Chicago both conflict and accommodates the popular notion of the “American Dream.” This book begins as an outstanding example of following the “American Dream.” Jurgis Rudkus and his soon-to-be-wife Ona, came to the United States of America from Lithuania, in search of better jobs, a better place to live, and an overall better impact on their entire lives. Jurgis’ famous words are also an impeccable example of the American Dream as he states, “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money – I will work harder.” (61) These words, which continue to resonate throughout the book, are the very epidemy of the American Dream: Everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, as long as people …show more content…

This is largely because it showed the middle class the travesty that was happening down in the meat packaging plants. Poor housing, immense poverty, horrible conditions, dangerous work environments, and unsanitary packing plants caused the middle class to be disgusted by all of the real-life events that was transpiring. However, the middle class was mostly concerned with what chemicals, feces, and poisons might be in their food (1). This caused the middle class to become outraged and frightened, which furthered the popularity of Sinclair’s book among people of that time, causing it to still be read even …show more content…

Sinclair, while attempting to show the benefits of socialism, simply shows all of the limits of progressivism. It suggests that the government cannot control or fix all of the social issues that exist within a country. The horrible conditions and actions in the meat packing industry that went unnoticed proves that. However, once this was brought to President Roosevelt’s attention, he directed the Department of Agriculture to investigate Chicago meatpacking (12). This led to the meatpacking industry being closely regulated, leading to a few Federal laws. Even though progressivism did much good in the United States, there were still many places left

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Summary Of Stories That Changed America By Carl Jensen

1184 Words | 5 Pages

Sinclair worked undercover in a meatpacking plant to gather information firsthand, before he began writing the book. Its influence on the labor practices and regulations governing the food industry cannot be understated. It tackles subjects as varied as the poor living conditions of the immigrants, exploitation of cheap labor by industrialists, and the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago. The descriptions of the disgusting processes that were conducted in the meatpacking plants made for shocking reading and turned the book into a bestseller. The President Teddy Roosevelt ordered an investigation into the lack of sanitation in meatpacking plants and caused the creation of legislation governing the food industry in the form of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906.

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The Jungle Analysis: Meat Packing Plants

651 Words | 3 Pages

Some troubles that surface during this time in the meat packing plants are the use of spoiled, dirty or rotten meat, poor wages for the workers there and the conditions of the working area. In the meat packing plants, there were no laws or rules to abide by for the cleanliness of the food. This caused several businesses to overlook what they thought was adequate for the consumers and sold them perished or rotting meat. In Upton Sinclair’s

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Sinclair Compares Slavery To Immigrant Workers Of Packingtown By Upton Sinclair

84 Words | 1 Pages

Sinclair compares slavery to immigrant workers of Packingtown. The immigrants lose their power of agency and self-sufficiency because of economic powersthat they cannot control. Corrupt capitalists and politicians control the economy. They pay low wages and then con immigrants out of these wages with poor quality goods and overpriced services. immigrants often do not understand the culture or language, they have no way to guard themselves against such abuse.

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Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: The Food Industry

129 Words | 1 Pages

Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle is a novel, which affected the food industry in 1900’s but also in America today. People have learned over the years the truths about the food industry, revealed through Sinclair’s detailed evidence. Sinclair meant to aim at the public’s heart but instead he shot straight at their stomachs. One would easily be convinced to never again buy or eat meat again. Fortunately, people have seen changes from 1906 and have been currently trying to repair the Food Industry.

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The Food Process In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1261 Words | 6 Pages

In “ The Jungle”, the author Upton Sinclair states that “ I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”. This means that Sinclair wanted to muckrake the Meat Packing Industry to seek attention for the workers, but instead food became a bigger concern. The characters Jurgis, Ona, and Marija with fellow family members are Lithuanian immigrants who came to PackingTown in hope for a better future, however they came to realize that the whole town is run by capitalist. Although Sinclair intentionally uses metaphors and similes to depict the characters struggle in the horrible living and working conditions in Packingtown, his purpose is undermined and overlooked by his use of realism to depict the food process.

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The Unfair Treatment Of Immigrants In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

427 Words | 2 Pages

The Unfair Treatment of Immigrants in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Imagine going somewhere new, far away and ending up in a bad situation with no way out. That’s how Jurgis and his family felt when they left their home country of Lithuania to come to America to pursue their dreams of wealth. Their world was quickly turned upside down when they realized that the deck was stacked against them in Chicago’s unfair system, which was designed to leave them trapped. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair will bring you into the world of manipulation and poverty in Chicago during the 1900s.

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Progressive Era Dbq

786 Words | 4 Pages

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Progressive reformers worked to improve the social, political, and economic problems in American society. Throughout this time, muckrakers helped reformers by revealing injustices to Americans through journalism, books, campaigns, photographs, and political cartoons. Poor working conditions, low quality of consumer products, and inferior democracy were present in American life during the Progressive Era; reforms such as state actions, the Meat Inspection Act, and Direct Primary helped to eliminate these corruptions. An issue society faced during the Progressive Era was poor working conditions. In Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, he writes that if a person found anyone who uses knives in this factory,

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Anzia Yezierska's Short Story 'The Lost Beautifulness'

634 Words | 3 Pages

The life of immigrants living on the Lower East Side in the late 1800s early 1900s was tough. Coming to a new country itself is difficult. Immigrants didn’t have much to begin with. Most of them had jobs that allow them to barely live. Anzia Yezierska’s short story “The Lost ’Beautifulness’” depicts the immigration experience.

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Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1060 Words | 5 Pages

However, readers at the time were not very concerned about the petty immigrants living on the lower rung of society. Rather, they cared about what affected them most: the condition of the meat they were eating-- and had been eating-- for years, that were produced by some of the very factories mentioned in Sinclair’s novel. For the majority of The Jungle’s readers, the fact that poor immigrants were being exploited was not bothersome. Instead, the fact that the food that readers had been eating for years contained the power to kill them seemed shocking, pushing the nation into a worried frenzy. Readers were disgusted by the facts they were reading, catalyzing the creation of administrations like the FDA.

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The Economic Tension In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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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Working Conditions In The Jungle

634 Words | 3 Pages

The Bosses squeezed and drained the life of those men. In the book The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair he described the life of a struggling family try to work and stay alive in the filth. The working conditions in the factories were unsafe, unsanitary and people made little. The purpose of this book was for people to become socialist other than capitalist.

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Progressivism Dbq

1361 Words | 6 Pages

Between 1880 and 1910 progressivism was the improvements and progress of the United States of America by the expansion of democracy and achieving economic and social fairness. During that period of time progressivism was an opportunity for the government to create reforms at national and international measures. Such as: Child Labor Law of 1887 and the prohibition. The strength of progressivism came from farmers, politicians, and middle class workers. Progressivism is truly how the government regulated, got involved, and changed aspects to improve the country.

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Slavery In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

570 Words | 3 Pages

In his novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair describes, “Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery” (Sinclair 113). Sinclair compares new immigrants to slaves and their employers to slave owners, because the immigrants’ survival basically depended on the men in power, who treated them like the cattle they slaughtered in the packing houses. In the early twentieth century, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle as a response to the atrocious working and living conditions of immigrants, especially those who labored in the Chicago packing houses. Packingtown’s meat

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Poverty In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

1445 Words | 6 Pages

Families that are poor or have a low income are more likely to commit crimes for the purpose of their own needs to survive. “It is a fact that neighborhoods where the poor are concentrated are more prone to high crime rates, and poor residents are the most common victims of crimes” (1). The best explanation for this is that poorer people have the same needs as a regular middle-class citizen. The poor citizens need certain things to help him or her live a healthy life, such as healthcare, food stamps, and more employment options. One may argue that healthcare is too expensive and that food stamps have been taken away from many people.

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How Do People Achieve The American Dream?

532 Words | 3 Pages

The American Dream, a concept that one is bound to achieve success in America if one works hard enough to seek it, stands as a prevailing, almost fairy-tale like, idea across the globe for people who yearn for a better life. These people have various motives: some wish to be more financially stable, some may be in desperate need to escape persecution in their home country, and many have other reasons. However, it is not always the case that people immigrate willingly; in fact, a portion of the immigrant population in the United States constitutes people who had no say in moving to America. This situation is mostly observed in undocumented children and teens who were brought by their parents or relatives when they were still very young. Although they did not

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