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Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle undoubtedly functions as an exposé of the meatpacking industry as well as a revelation of the mistreatment of immigrants in America. By tracing the journey of an immigrant family to America and telling of the family members’ experiences in America, Sinclair highlights the immoral activities of American businesses. Aware of the corrupt business expenditures, the government practiced laissez faire as it had formed trusts with each industry in order for the government workers to make money off of the business malpractices. While The Jungle is most known for its focus upon the meat trust, Leslie Levin contends that Sinclair’s intent is to elucidate the flaws of capitalism. Then, once the reader is aware of the problems …show more content…
of capitalism, Sinclair proposes socialism as a remedy (“One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison”). Working towards the purpose of converting readers to socialism, Upton Sinclair uncovers the sticky web of government corruption in various industries, specifically the meatpacking industry, and he reveals dishonest business practices used to finagle immigrants. From the outset of the novel, Sinclair portrays the financial burden upon which Jurgis and his family must endure. Jurgis expects that he will be able to support his family through hard work; this idea stems from the American dream. However, Jurgis and his family find out that America is not as full of opportunities and wealth as the American dream details. Jurgis and his family purchase a house after seeing an advertisement listing the cost at twelve dollars per month along with a three hundred dollar down payment; the price of the house would only be three more dollars per month than their current rent. Unfortunately, the house, which the advertisement stated was new, is old and the outside was repainted after the foreclosure of the home from a family who could not afford to make the payments on the home. As the neighbor Majauszkiene reveals, the house was “built by a company which existed to make money by swindling poor people” (Sinclair 72). The company “used the very flimsiest and cheapest material” to construct the house; the company built the house for less than 500 dollars and sold it for 1,500 dollars (Sinclair 72). The house was constructed without sewage, so underneath the home was a cesspool of germs. Worst of all, the actual monthly payment was almost twice what was disclosed at the purchase due to interest and various other hidden fees. Not only were the expenses higher in America but due to corrupt business practices the wages were lower than expected. To lower the wages and maximize profits, the meatpacking plants would dispatch “agents into every city and village in Europe to spread the tale of the chances of work and high wages at the stockyards” (Sinclair 73).
Hearing about the American dream and lofty wages, immigrants flocked to America. Upon the arrival of new immigrants, the meatpacking plants would release the old workers and pay the new immigrants less than the old workers. Once the new workers arranged a strike or slowed down, the meatpackers would repeat the process. Not only did the meatpackers abuse and misuse their workers but also they wronged their …show more content…
consumers. To further maximize profits, the meatpackers sold rancid, diseased meat to oblivious consumers.
The spoiled meat was disguised by workers who would “either… can it or… chop it up into sausage” (Sinclair 147). In addition, the meatpackers did not care about sanitation; the meat would be stored in rooms full of rats with leaky roofs. To combat the rats, “the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together” (Sinclair 149). While the practices in the meatpacking plants were illegal, the police did nothing about it because the “agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often than not they were one and the same person” (Sinclair 280). Sinclair attributes this corruption to capitalism, and he offers socialism as the solution.
Leslie A. Levin argues that The Jungle was not written as a caveat to the public about the gross negligence of the meatpacking industry. Rather, Levin contends that Sinclair wrote The Jungle “to awaken the nation to the exploitation of immigrant workers in Chicago’s Packingtown and to advocate the workers’ conversion to Socialism” (“One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison”). Although the majority of the book discusses the horrors of the meatpacking industry, Levin claims that Sinclair merely offers this imagery to capture the attention of the
nation. Upon realization that Sinclair plans to indoctrinate the audience with the socialist ideals, the reader’s perspective is changed. The strategic setup of the book eases the reader into a lull of agreement with the narrator. Sinclair begins the novel with talk of the abuses of workers and immigrants; the reader almost automatically agrees with that these abuses are wrong and should be remedied. Sinclair does not provide a solution yet; rather, he shifts to discussion of corruption within the industrial corporations. Next, he highlights the corrupt arrangements between illegal business expenditures and the police. Finally, Sinclair declares socialism can solve all these issues that capitalism causes. By building assent with the reader, Sinclair is able to disguise his true purpose of writing The Jungle through themes of mistreatment of immigrants and corruption. Through this method, Sinclair sneakily convinces the reader that socialism is a realistic replacement for capitalism.
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,
Upon his 1906 publishing of The Jungle, Sinclair was coined as an avid “muckraker” when President Roosevelt addressed an audience in April of that year. When asked whether or not the novel provided a realistic account of workers conditions within the Chicago meat packing industry, Roosevelt accused Sinclair of being a liar in an attempt to discredit him. A large part of this was credited to Roosevelt’s personal distaste for Sinclair’s apparent link to the Socialist party but, Roosevelt was also unaware that Sinclair had worked undercover at the plant to gather first hand and accurate accounts. The Jungle shined light on the poor working conditions of workers in a meat packing facility. Throughout the novel, Sinclair gave gruesome examples of what workers went through each and every day. Each department of the facility was faced with its own risks and challenges, “There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
The difficult living situations for many people in the early 20th century were discussed in the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair. The book describes an immigrant family’s struggle to survive after moving to America. The family experiences unsafe working conditions, dangerous child labor and poverty. Sinclair uses these images to shed light on some of America’s troubles, to disparage capitalism and to promote socialism.
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.
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.
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.
The Jungle, the 1906 exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry. The novel focuses on an immigrant family and sympathetically and realistically describes their struggles with loan sharks and others who take advantage of their innocence. More importantly, Sinclair graphically describes the brutal working conditions of those who find work in the stockyards. Sinclair's description of the main character's
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
At the beginnings of the 1900s, some leading magazines in the U.S have already started to exhibit choking reports about unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other offenses; which helped their sales to soar. In this context, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposé on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declared“ I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To get a direct knowledge of the work, he sneaked into the packing plants as a pretended worker. He toured the streets of Packingtown, the area near the stockyards where the workers live. He approached people, from different walks of life, who could provide useful information about conditions in Packingtown. At the end of seven weeks, he returned home to New Jersey, shut himself up in a small cabin, wrote for nine months, and produced The Jungle (Cherny).
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.
The enormous rush of European immigrants encountered a lack of jobs. Those who were lucky enough to find employment wound up in factories, steel mills, or in the meat packing industry. Jurgis Rudkus was one of these disappointed immigrants. A sweeper in slaughter house, he experienced the horrendous conditions which laborers encountered. Along with these nightmarish working conditions, they worked for nominal wages, inflexible and long hours, in an atmosphere where worker safety had no persuasion. Early on, there was no one for these immigrants to turn to, so many suffered immensely. Jurgis would later learn of worker unions and other groups to support the labor force, but the early years of his Americanized life were filled, with sliced fingers, unemployment and overall a depressing and painful "new start."
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.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.