The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was an attempt to regulate the meatpacking industry and to assure consumers that the meat they were eating was safe. In brief, this act made compulsory the careful inspection of meat before its consummation, established sanitary standards for slaughterhouses and processing plants, and required continuous U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of meat processing and packaging. Yet, the most important objectives set by the law are the prevention of adulterated or
The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 The year 1906 brought about a new era in governmental legislation that helped to shape the way privately owned producers of consumable goods would conduct themselves in the future. President Theodore Roosevelt, a man known for his tenaciousness when tackling the issues of the people, pursued these legislative changes, refusing to back down to the lobbyists who stood in his way. One such industry brought to its knees was the meat packing industry, a thriving group
a seven weeks investigation of the mistreatment of the poor immigrants in the meatpacking industry. The Jungle was an expose in the then Chicago stockyards. The novel raised sharp public concern over the low quality of meat and the number of impurities present in the processed meat by the company. He brought into public these menaces making his write up to be
payment of the workers who toiled day in and day out to make the trusts’ money. The Progressive Era brought attention to the corruption of these large monopolies and with the exposure came laws to bring these trusts under control. The Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 was passed in an attempt to break up large, corrupt trusts. Bringing down these corrupt money making machines became known as trust busting, and was a large part of president Teddy Roosevelt’s career. Trust busting was a big part of the progressive
Muckraker chapter inadvertently directed everyone’s attention to the meat industry. While evaluating Chapter IX of The Jungle, it is evident that Sinclair’s most prominent purpose for writing this novel is to raise awareness for the situations immigrants to America are exposed to. It is apparent that this novel left an impact on American society due to the raised awareness of immigrant’s treatments and the passing of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclar may be named one of the most significant books in American literally history. The book is remarkable not only because of its esthetic features but also (or mainly) due to its impact and honesty in revealing brutality of meat packing industry and cruelty of capitalism. The Jungle is a muckraking novel, a type of novel significant and popular in the United States during Progressive Era. The main aim of this type of journalism is revealing truth about companies and industries
Upton Sinclair’s novel. The Jungle, had not been published in 1906. In his reality-based novel, Sinclair depicted the extremes of american capitalism run amok. The book contained a section about a meat packing plant in which overworked and underpaid laborers were mistreated. It described spoiled and filthy meat being ground into sausage, along with insects and rodent parts. inclair had intended the novel to be a plea for socialism, but The Junglequickly turned sentiments toward legislation that protected
some of the most well-read in the past century. The Jungle, now hailed as a literary masterpiece, is credited with being the reason for the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act of the early 1900’s (Ewers). Though Sinclair’s story is revered for supposedly helping to reform a corrupt industry, research of both the current day meat packing industry and life of the twenty-first century immigrant proves that the story actually had very little consequence. In addition, research about Sinclair
the corruption of politics and businesses. Although The Jungle may not have served Sinclair purposes for social reform, it brought reform to the way food is handled. Without the enlightening view of the meat-packing business, even if false, the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act may never have been created. We still see examples of muckraking today from Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me to magazines like People, Time, Cosmopolitan, and National Geographic. Muckraking is one of the
slaughterhouses in Chicago and assess the accuracy of Sinclair's claims.”3 What they found was far from ideal and directly contradicted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s conclusions. Ramped disease and filthy conditions comprised the usual areas where rotten meat was kept, cut, packaged and combined with acid to cover rancid stenches. Plainly, the major executives that ruled the American free market of the time executed a strategy to cut corners and costs at every possible opportunity in order to stockpile
read what is in the product because of the label; the FDA requires every ingredient to be listed. Along side of the FDA was the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This put strains on and required the slaughterhouses to clean up. Sanitation became a big issue, and the slaughterhouses were now inspected for cleanliness. Also, every animal carcass to be inspected and pass inspection before it could be processed and used any further; it had to be cleared of infection and diseases. These changes did not happen
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
From the start of the Civil War until the 1920's Chicago was home to the countries largest meat packing facilities; Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Nelson Morris. As much as 85 percent of consumer meat in the US came from Chicago's vast packing plants. Behind the companies were around 25,000 employees, making up almost half of the entire US meatpacking work force. Most of the employees were underpaid immigrants who spoke little to no english and made a meager one cent an hour. The highest an
intended to create sympathy for the exploited and poorly treated immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry, the novel instead aroused widespread public indignation at the low quality of and impurities in processed meats and thus helped bring about the passage of federal food-inspection laws. As Sinclair commented at the time, ‘I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,’” ( ) He used the profits from The Jungle to cofound the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905 and
while they were working and manipulating the products. This lack of hygiene measures brought a large amount of diseases that easily spread out around the country through the food these factories sold. Sometimes costumers could find hair or even eat meat where someone had sneezed on it. Because of the excess of power that monopolies had believed they could treat their employees however they wanted. To achieve better hours, better wages, and better working conditions the government passed several laws
to the mistreatment of workers and animals, he wrote about gruesome and upsetting topics that even caught the attention of the government. Because of Sinclair’s novel, the Food and Drug Administration(1906), the Federal Meat Inspection Act(1906), and the Pure Food and Drug Act(1906) were created. However, despite the good it has done for the safety of the people regarding consumption, the book is banned from many schools and libraries for the “violence” it contains. Because of this, many people
in the 1920’s, ‘the business of America is business,’ what did this mean for individuals, their rights and expectations? The Jungle appeared in January of 1906. It is completely understandable to me that the reading public responded to details on meat production and plant sanitation instead of the conditions of workingmen or Sinclair’s Socialist message. In turn, The Jungle helped to do something completely different than what the book’s author meant for it to do. The Jungle helped to push the Pure
Upton Sinclair tried to unveil the reality of eastern European immigrants that worked in the meatpacking industry. Sinclair was part of a new type of journalism—during the early 1900’s—called Muckraking. Eric Foner, professor at Columbia University, describes Muckraking as the “use of journalistic skills to expose the ills of industrial and American life” (Foner 546). Muckraking plays an important role during the 1900’s because individuals were hoping to bring “significant change in American and
Derrick, Scott. “What A Beating Feels Like: Authorship, Dissolution, and Masculinity in Sinclair's The Jungle.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 23, no. 1, 1995, pp. 85–100., doi:10.1353/saf.1995.0007. This critical article review will focus on Scott Derrick analyzing the use of naturalism in The Jungle in regards to highlighting the gender presence in the novel. Derrick considers that the “figure of the author and the structure of authoring are crucial to an understanding of the operation of gender”
...xtures of rotten meat, saw dust, dead rats and possibly even human body parts and urine. Shortly after reading the excerpts, President Theodore Roosevelt assigned a special commission to investigate Chicago’s slaughterhouses. This eventually resulted in new federal food laws that would maintain the sanitation of canned meat. Yet this reaction was all to Sinclair’s dismay. The public forced action towards the sanitation of the industry but ignored the conditions of the meat industry workers, which