Sainclair The Jungle Summary

The jungle was written to expose the brutality faced by the workers in the meatpacking industry. He wanted to show people what was really going on in the factory because few people were informed about these companies work conditions .He wanted to show the public that meat was diseased, rotten, and contaminated. This revelation shocked the public which later led to the creation of the federal laws on food and safety.Sainclair strongly shows the failure of capitalism in the meatpacking industry which he viewed as inhuman, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent. (Middlebury) How does this fit with everything else?

Sinclair was an American writer born in Baltimore. He was struggling to live a basic life, he started reading about socialism.

He believed that America would vote for peaceful negations so, the government will take ownership of its business. He then joined the socialist party in 1903, He began to write for the company “Appeal To Reason” which was a socialist magazine. The meat packing company workers went on strikes, the strikes broke quickly because the company replaced the workers, which kept the line running and the other family went on poverty real quick. After this incident the Appeal to Reason suggested him to write about the strikes at the age of 26. He went to Chicago to research about the conditions of the workers and he personally interviewed them . Later his writing became very famous and contained obvious basis. The effect of these books led Roosevelt to initiate change- the law required to stop sending bad meats in the country and they said it has to be inspected. Sinclair did not like the concept of meat packing, but Roosevelt signed the meat inspection law. Sinclair also signed the law regulating food and drugs. Later they created the FDA, Food and Drug Administration.
By early 1900, in the time of the industrial revolution, there were four major meatpacking corporations. One of the largest one was in Chicago. They build these stockyards, feedlots, slaughterhouses, and meat-processing plant was nearby. the worker mostly lived. The place was known as the packing town of Chicago. Before Henry Ford adapted the automobile production, they had developed an assembly line. It worked more like a disassembly line because there were 80 separate jobs in one line in the whole process of getting the meat ready. The immigrants did the most dangerous jobs, they worked in no heat in winter and the hot dark room in the summer.
People have no idea what occurs in the canning room at Durham’s. The chemists advertise mushroom catsup. In reality, the men who made these don’t even know what they look like. They would put animal's body parts that humans wouldn't eat the canned food. "De-vyled" ham was made out of the waste ends of smoked beef that was too small to be sliced by the machines; also tripe, dyed with chemicals so, that would not show white, and trimmings of hams and corned beef, and potatoes, skins and all. Finally the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the tongues, had been cut out. (cite) mixing all these things they created a mixture which stated like something, then sold which would produce them a great amount of wealth. Many things that occurred, there were a tuberculous desist on the cattle which they were feeding and making them, gain weight quickly. They were putting the horses in the canned food but, later banned because the newspaper exposed them. Now it is against the law.
There were many interesting facts about peoples' work conditions. Many of the things they made were from dead bodies of animals. The worker in each had their own disease from working with these animals. Those who were cooking smelled so bad that they were not shown to the visitor because they would be disgusted by the smell. Those men who worked in the tank room. Were working with full of steam with open vat. They were outlooked, therefore;they would all be on the terms pure leaf lard machines and later ended up in the people's food.

Another main focus should go to the trimming beef in a cannery because whenever they found out the meat was spoiled or rotten that they can't earn a profit. They Would chop it off into sausage or they can make more profit. In the pickles, lots of crazy things happen like Jonas said: “ they used every part of the pig beside the squeal” (cite).The company puts the meat in pickles and takes it out where the meat has a sour taste. They would then rub the meat on the soda to take away the bad odor that came out of the meat. Their chemistry experiment that they made all kinds of meat like flavored, whole, fresh, salted, and many others. Pickling of the hams, they injected big needles on the meat and then used his foot to fill the hams with pickles which will take less time. After all this, their hams would still be spoiled and rotten and smelled so bad that a human can barely stay in the room for the even shorter amount of time. To change this a second and much stronger picker to remove the bad smell from it. All the meat that went bad even after smoking they sold it as a “ number 3 trade” but later, this new device invented where they extract the bone which was damaged on the meat and insert a whole in rot. After this there was no number one, two, or 3 grade there was only number one grade, which was the scheme of boneless ham, which they created by all the extra parts of the pork which were stuffed into a casing.
There were so many problems that were never paid attention to, while the process of making hams occurred.

One of these issues was where did the sausage come from or what was inside of the hams. Did the people know that came all the way from Europe, which they only sent the rejected meat? The meat inside was a mold and white and would be dosed with borax and glycerine (cite) The meat had all kinds of germs in them because meat that was in the dirt, People would spit on the meat, and walk over it. Another thing was how the product was stored?it was in great giant piles in a dark storage room where you can barely see what's going on. The meat was stored there, therefore; the water from the roof was leaky which got into the meat, thousands of rats would be on top of the meat. The most horrifying part is that they don’t clean up the rats inside the meat and it goes on with the men in the

cart.
The worker had no place to wash their hands before dinner.

“ Another main topic he brings up is the waste barrels. In the waste barrels, there were such things like the butt end of the smoked meat, scraps of corn beef and many others waste of the plants were dumped in the barrel in the cellar left there to rot. (cite) These waste barrels were used in such inhumane ways. This was one of the jobs they did only once, which they get paid for cleaning the dust barrels. In the barrels, there would be such things like dirt, old nail, rust and stale water, after it was loaded It would be dumped into the hoppers with the fresh meat and then sent out to public breakfast. Some of it would be made into smoked sausage, but it took longer and would take lots of finances.They would instead just send it to their chemistry department to make brown with special chemicals such as borax and gelatine. All of this sausage came out of the same bowl people would wrap it and called it special and added extra money on

it.
The meat packing company had no care for its people or the product being produced, all they cared about was the wealth they were receiving from this meat. All the inhumane and brutal act that occurred inside the company people would never know of. All of these problems Sinclair talks about directly come from capitalism the idea of free market economy. Talking about the failure of capitalism Sinclair wants us to use socialism to solve this issue because this is a better alternative. The companies always made them look like as if they were helping but actually they were not really helping. His writing has caused many social reforms, not only that the big thing that was created like the FDA. Now we can eat safer food. No one should be able to eat such nasty food or work in such conditions which would take their life. We all deserve better working conditions.