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The American dream in 1920
Why food safety is important
The American dream in 1920
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In “The Jungle” Sinclair describes the road taken as an immigrant through the eyes of a newlywed couple and their family and friends in Chicago during the 1900’s. The point is to show just how tough it was for immigrants in working, living, and anything else back in the 1900’s. Life was hard and they had to try many different ways to survive. Having decent working and living conditions were what they strived for and towards the end of the reading they realized that for themselves and began to fight for their rights. The main idea of the book is the immigrant experience and the idea of the American Dream. Sinclair uses the family to show the immigrant experience. The family he uses is the perfect family to explain all aspects of different people. He shows the women, men, and children’s struggles of providing for the family. Reasons that immigrants fled to America or even just Chicago was for, what they perceived as, the American Dream. They thought the American Dream was obtaining land, working to gain financial success and even just self-satisfaction. Sinclair stresses on the idea of the family working hard, being a family and how much they are struggling to show just how hard it was for an immigrant family. The following quote by Sinclair shares Sinclair’s idea of immigrant’s and how they relate to slavery: Here …show more content…
I don’t think that this was the maid goal of Sinclair writing this book, but when writing it and someone reading it, it’s something that raises many red flags. Sinclair talks about the rotten meat and the handling of meat in slaughter houses. He shows just how serious this issue can be when one dies from the rotten meat in the story. The Pure Food and Drug Act is the process to remove bad products of meat and regulate the traffic of meat and drugs in stores. This is important because many people’s lives resulted in death from meat
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
The public’s reaction created unintended consequences from the author’s original intent. Sinclair himself writes "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Publishing the novel led to new federal food safety laws such as the Pure Food and Drug act and the Meat Inspection Act. During his job Jurgis noticed the meat factory was a place “...where men welcomed tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding...”(112). As it would fatten them up and the factory could sell disease ridden meat. Moreover, on the killing floor, they would butcher “slunk calves” for meat. Slunk calves are born prematurely and is against the law to process this cow meat for
In 1900, there were over 1.6 million people living in Chicago, the country's second largest city. Of those 1.6 million, nearly 30% were immigrants. Most immigrants came to the United States with little or no money at all, in hope of making a better life for themselves. A city like Chicago offered these people jobs that required no skill. However, the working and living conditions were hazardous and the pay was barely enough to survive on. This is the bases for Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle.
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.
Capitalism underwent a severe attack at the hands of Upton Sinclair in this novel. By showing the misery that capitalism brought the immigrants through working conditions, living conditions, social conditions, and the overall impossibility to thrive in this new world, Sinclair opened the door for what he believed was the solution: socialism. With the details of the meatpacking industry, the government investigated and the public cried out in disgust and anger. The novel was responsible for the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. With the impact that Sinclair must have known this book would have, it is interesting that he also apparently tried to make it fuction as propaganda against capitalism and pro-socialism.
In today's society, relationships of all different kinds become more and more accepted each day. However, when it comes to interracial relationships, people still hold opposing viewpoints on the matter. For the most part, peoples' viewpoints all boil down to two beliefs; the traditional belief and the popular culture belief. People who follow the traditional belief are seen as more proud of and loyal to their culture/heritage and tend to be more segregated than others. They feel that when someone of their own culture dates someone outside of their own culture, he or she is "wanting to escape" from his or her cultural identity. On the other hand, popular culture belief sees people not by the color of their skin nor by their culture, but rather
Businesses did whatever they could do to food to produce as much of it as cheaply as possible, adding chemicals to make it taste or look better. Sinclair described how every part of the animal was used, saying that companies used “everything of the pig except the squeal.” This included using the rotten meats, selling them to the public as “Number Three Grade” meats.10 Those who were unfortunate enough to eat the meat were poisoned, including one of the immigrant children in the novel, Kristoforas, who died from a poisoned sausage. Sausage was probably the most dangerous of the meats, because they were the moldy cuts Europe had sold to America, because no one there wanted them, and they were “doused with borax and glycerine” to remove any odor or foul taste. The meats would be in piles on the floor where the dirt laid, the roof leaked, the workers spit, and the rats crawled.12 Workers put poisoned bread by the meat piles to kill off the rats, so in the pile there were the dead rats and their dung.12 All of this including the poisoned bread would become part of the sausages. Not only were the meats bad, but the other foods the immigrant family would buy were doctored with chemicals. Sinclair described the pale-blue milk the immigrant family bought was watered down and was "doctored with formaldehyde,” and that other foods such as tea, coffee, sugar and flour had also been altered. The canned peas they
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.
When he was little, he was smarter than most kids his age. He was a brilliant man who used his skills and talents to form America the way he felt it needed to be. When Sinclair joined the Socialist group, he made the life changing decision to research a meat-packing plant. This allowed him to become a heroic figure for others. Sinclair was able to write a novel called The Jungle. This was a novel that showed the pain, tragedy, and suffering of the meat-packing industry. He discovered the unhealthy tendencies in these factories and revealed them to the public. Shocking everyone, President Theodore Roosevelt made two laws called the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. These assured safety for the employees of these factories, along with easing the minds of people eating these meats. With this accomplishment on his long resume, he was able to buy a Socialist community and provide for his fellow Socialists. When this community burnt down, he carried on with his life, marrying three women. Even though Sinclair died shortly after marrying his third wife, his talent and abilities have lived on to show people today the importance of exposing the
A major theme of The Jungle is socialism as a remedy for the evils of capitalism. Every event that takes place in the novel is designed to show a particular failure of capitalism. Sinclair attempts to show that capitalism is a "system of chattel slavery" and the working class is subject to "the whim of en every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers"(Sinclair 126). Sinclair portrays this view through Jurgis, a hardworking Lithuanian immigrant and his family. Sinclair uses the hardships faced by this family to demonstrate the effect of capitalism on working people as a whole. Jurgis' philosophy of "I will work harder" is shown not to work in this system. No matter how hard Jurgis worked, he and his family were still stuck in the same squalor. These characters did not overcome the odds and succeed. That would defeat the purpose of the novel; to depict capitalism as an economic and social system that ignores the plight of the working class and only cares for the wealthy, as well as furthering his socialist agenda.
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 Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
During the Progressive era, consumer safety was a hot issue. In Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, there were many disturbing things the American people learned about the meat packing industry. After people saw that their meat had dead rats and tuberculosis many did not want to buy any meat. People were disgusted by the things that they could buy without knowing what it was. This brought about stricter health codes and made the consumers have a little more peace of mind.
The concept of the American Dream has always been that everyone wants something in life, no matter if it is wealth, education, financial stability, safety, or a decent standard of living. In addition, everyone will try to strive to get what they want. The American Dream, is said to be that everyone should try and get what they hope they can get in life. In the play A Raisin in the Sun the author Hansberry tells us about a family where each has an American Dream, and Hughes in the poem “ Let America be America Again “is telling us to let America be the America that was free for us to obtain The American Dream. Hansberry and Langston see America like as a place to find the dream desired, although they also see limitation to obtain the American Dream, such as poverty, freedom, inequality, racism and discrimination.
Each character in the novel has their own interpretation of the ‘American Dream – the pursuit of happiness’ as they all lack happiness due to the careless nature of American society during the Jazz Age. The American Dreams seems almost non-existent to those whom haven’t already achieved it.