1906 would see the publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, pushing through major reforms of the meatpacking industry and eventually causing the government to take actions to protect the health of its people; almost fifty years later, the publication of Rachel Carson's novel Silent Spring would invoke a similar, but changed response to the threat of DDT. Although both would lead to government legislation creating major changes, the original intentions of the authors themselves differed, as well as their satisfaction of the results. However, both still leave a legacy for today, as legislation still stands that reflects the widespread reform that ensued. Both Silent Spring and The Jungle, would have wide reaching influences, but with different motivations and different goals in mind.
Although Silent Spring and The Jungle would both create similar reforms, their authors would have much different motivations for writing them. Rachel Carson, before publishing Silent Spring, would major in marine zoology at Pennsylvania Women's College, where she would develop her interest in the naturalism and conservation going on at the time (Lear, 23). After graduating, she would take a job at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, where she would write about different issues concerning the environment at the time. After writing several books to some success, she would begin work on Silent Spring, as it she would find her naturalist causes to be her impetus. She even later on in her life write to her friends, What I discovered was that everything which meant most to me as a naturalist was being threatened, and that nothing I could do would be more important."(Carson, 17) On the contrary, however, Sinclair would not find his motivation...
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.... Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. Boston. Random House, 2006.
Carson, Rachel. Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman 1952-1964 An Intimate Portrait of a Remarkable Friendship. New York. Beacon Press, 1995
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York. Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Henry Holt, New York, 1997, Owl Books paperback 1998
Murphy,Priscilla Coit. What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring, Amherst. University of Massachusetts Press. 2005
Reed, Lawrence W. "Of Meat and Myth," The Freeman. November 1994
Sinclair, Upton Jr. The Jungle. Mass Market Paperback. New York. Reprinted 2004, 1906.
Young, James Harvey, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Meat Inspection Amendments of 1906," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1985.
The novel follows a family of immigrants from Lithuania working in a meatpacking factory, and as the novel progresses, the reader learns of the revolting conditions within the factories. Sinclair’s The Jungle illustrates the concept of Bitzer’s “Rhetorical Situation” and Emerson’s quote quite effectively. For instance, the horrendous safety and health conditions of the packing factories were the exigencies that Upton Sinclair was making clear to the reader. The rhetorical audience that Sinclair aimed to influence with his novel was Congress and the president, as both had to agree in order to establish health and safety bills to better the conditions within factories. Sinclair’s efforts did not go unnoticed as in 1906 both the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug act were approved by both Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt (Cherny,
However, that was not the case. When The Jungle was presented to the public, readers were astonished by the disgusting and unsanitary state in which the meat was being processed in. The community was more concerned with the meat conditions than they were with the horrific conditions the workers were faced with. So while the popularity of Sinclair’s work was not his original intentions, it still accomplished stages of reform. It can be assumed that Roosevelts initial reluctance to accept Sinclair’s novel was in part, directly connected to his disbelief that the Federal government had become so disconnected and oblivious to American industry and the complete lack of Federal oversight. This “disconnect” did not last long as The Pure Food and Drug Act, as well as, the Meat Inspection Act were both directly set in to place mere months after Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle was published. This type of reform supported progressive philosophy by preventing corporate owners from remaining above government regulation and started a trend in the way government regulators began to deal with corporate monopolies and trusts. The Jungle, along with other “muckrakers” began a series of Federal oversight reforms and regulatory guidance that soon began to take hold in other industries. Big industry would soon realize that they were not above the
Sinclair agreed to "investigate working conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants," for the Socialist journal, Appeal to Reason, in 1904. The Jungle, published in 1906, is Sinclair's most popular and influential work. It is also his first of many "muckraker" pieces. In order to improve society, muckrakers wanted to expose any injustice on human rights or well-being. Therefore, it was Sinclair's goal to expose the harsh treatment of factory workers through The Jungle. The improvement on society, that he hoped would follow, was the reformation of labor.
After the clean-up, U. S. meat is imported by many countries, opening fresh markets for the packers. Upton Sinclair is supposed to be. to have said that he aimed at the public's heart, and by. accident. He hit it in the stomach.
Cohesively, the chosen primary sources from the early 1900’s all show the negative connotations that were associated with Upton Sinclair, whether or not the writers manifested through that is a different layer. Today the American people see Upton Sinclair as a muckraker and activist with little attachment to the great knowledge he attained. We attribute Upton Sinclair to one book he wrote, The Jungle, when he wrote numerous books that were widely publicized and talked about during his day. The articles from his time appeared to include his overall literary importance. The single thing that has differed from the way he is viewed now as opposed to how he was portrayed during his time is that we removed the negative assessments of him based on his political and social beliefs. American people currently recognize how beneficial he was to our history.
From respectable authorities on the subject, and the 1906 Food and Drugs Act itself, gave paticual understanding of the events effecting that time period, a understanding of certain points in the novel “The Jungle”, and how the government went about solving the nation’s going problem, has lead myself to agree that Upton Sinclairs’s
In 1906, socialist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book he hoped would awaken the American people to the deplorable conditions of workers in the meat packing industry. Instead, the book sent the country reeling with its description of filthy, rat infested plants, suspect meats processed and sold to consumers, and corrupt government inspectors. President Roosevelt became seriously concerned by the charges brought forth by Mr. Sinclair and determined the only way to protect consumers from unscrupulous business and unsafe food was to enforce regulation.
One the key pieces of legislation that was a prime example of the progressive era, was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This law came about due to muckraking, and also because of public and political interests. Muckraking, such as Upton Sinclair’s piece, “The Jungle”, helped in the timing of the adoption of this legislature. This piece of legislature, allowed for the regulation of processed food items in United States food markets. The Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Department of Agriculture under the Bureau of Chemistry (Law, 2004).
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” he exposes corruption in business and government and its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. The novel follows immigrant Jurgis Rudkus as he struggles against the slow ANNIHILATION of his family and is REBORN after discovering that socialism as a cure away to all capitalism’s problems. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the DANGEROUS, INHUMAINE conditions that workers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
Griffin, Susan. Excerpts from Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. Toronto: Harper & Row Perennial, 1978. 14 30
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
The people who read it were so appalled by the disgusting filth, and the actual ingredients of the processed meat. The book provided the final drive for way for the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act and truth in labeling all passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Also in the story, Sinclair concerns the readers with the abuse of immigrant workers, both men and women. This is partially why he uses the story of the man moving from Lithuania to America.
In 1962, the publication of Silent Spring Rachel Carson captivated the American public. Carson wrote about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides in the environment, and her writing was very reflective of the events occurring at the time. There is a strong connection between Carson’s writing and the Cold War. In fact, if it were not for the war, the American public may not have responded in the same way to Carson’s writing. Carson used tone and content as methods of getting her point across to the public. Silent Spring shined a light on the damage done to the environment as a result of the Cold War, and this issue was finally being recognized by American public.
Teresa, Mother. A gift for God / Mother Teresa of Calcutta &endash; 1st U.S. edition, New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Through her book, Rachel Carson spoke out against the use of pesticides and technology to control nature. At the time, her book was revolutionary and her words had the power to cause a shift in public awareness about the environment. This one person speaking out helped start the environmental movement that impacts so many areas of our life today.