Cutting Into The Meatpacking Line

Employers of these plants provided very little for their workers and paid them merely a fraction of what American citizens were originally paid. In fact, Sinclair wrote that “There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage.” Sinclair’s observance depicts employers as careless when it comes to how they treat their workers and how they run their businesses. There was also nowhere to eat in the factories, so workers were forced to either eat in the stench from which they work or they had to eat at the liquor store to escape the potent smells of the workplace. Injuries were also very common in the meat-packing plants. Fatigued workers became carless and since they were working with sharp knives, they often sliced off parts of their fingers. Most of the time, steam filled the air and men were running rampant with sharp objects, so Sinclair thought that it was “a wonder that there were not more men slaughtered than

Mike Rose has spent most of his life watching those defined as “blue-collar” workers with much appreciation. He would watch his mother, Rosie, and his uncle, Joe, work to their fullest potential with skills he had never really seen anywhere else except in their “blue-collar” world. Mike believes that the way his family worked, as well as others considered “blue-collar”, are intelligent in their own ways and are underappreciated compared to the way he sees them.

The journal article begins by introducing an African American couple who resided in Russellville, Kentucky. James Wright held an occupation as a corn cutter while his wife Gladys worked as a cook in a white home. The time span of their journey occurred at the beginning of the great depression all the way through World War II. Seeking better employment opportunities, James traveled to Louisville. Although, his first couple trips were in vain. His resilience and determination eventually lead to a job working for International Harvester. During an era of many trials and tribulations, James found a way to support himself and his family by migrating from a rural to an urban area. By sharing this anecdote the author establishes a mood of hardship

Broadway, Michael; Cut to the Bone; How changes in meatpacking have created the most vulnerable worker in Alberta; Published in Vol 15, No 4, May 2012, pgs 36-41. Retrieved from

Despite almost a century separating two publications on the meat industry in the United States, the works of Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser contain eerily similar accounts in attempt to expose the dangers behind our food. These shocking revelations exposed by Sinclair and Schlosser have forever changed the way our nation views its food. Sinclair 's The Jungle and Schlosser 's Fast Food Nation discuss the topics of factory conditions and their safety, prevalence of immigrant workers, the conditions of animals and their health, and the corruption behind large corporations and the federal government. These overwhelming similarities have caused Schlosser to be compared to his predecessor Sinclair. Although each reading contains many similar elements, Sinclair and Schlosser had different intentions for the public reaction to their works.

Workers in Packingtown were subject to conditions similar to slavery. Sinclair describes the situation explaining that “they were tied to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life” (Sinclair 94). Most of the workers could not escape the grasps of the Beef Trust, a monopoly on the beef industry that was above even the law. They were forced to work in dangerous and filthy conditions, earning barely any compensation for their work. All of the workers were seen as “cogs in the great packing machine,” replaceable and cheap (Sinclair 74). By objectifying their workers as simply moving parts to a machine, employers could find moral high ground in the poor and inhumane working conditions, and they could replace old and damaged “parts” with new ones without so much as thinking about what they had done for that worker. Sinclair hoped to promote Socialism with these depictions, spending the last few chapters of the book detailing how Socialism could fix all of the problems detailed in the beginning. His ideas of “‘Communism in material production, anarchism in intellectual’” were never realized in the United States (Sinclair 291). He believed that people should be given equal resources and then allowed to have as much intellectual gain as they wanted. The general public did not respond to this argument. They saw the problem in a different perspective, blaming not capitalism but

While “All men are created equal,” the “tramp,” in American history, has been the subject of particular animosity. The Chicago Times suggested solving the tramp problem by “putting a little strychnine or arsenic in the meat and other supplies furnished to tramps” as “a warning to other tramps to keep out of the neighborhood.” Transient workers were certainly not an invention of post-Civil War 1870’s America; that era’s tramp army was created by the confluence of the “Panic of 1873” (a first ‘Great Depression’,) industrialization and “Gilded Age” corporate excesses. Established society created a myth of the transients’ freedom and ease, and treated them with a mixture of fear and loathing. In 1870’s California, Henry George paints a barren and

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a graphic and affecting account of the meat processing and butchering production in the 1900’s. The Jungle is a knowledgable analysis on the social, political, and economic affairs of the food industry and the quickly expanding capitalist society of the 20th century. Sinclair uses a impoverished immigrant family looking for a finer life to highlight the social and economic imbalances of work in the food system caused by capitalism. Even over a century later, The Jungle stays relevant as a reminder to customers and policymakers about the complex food system and the likelihood for exploitation of animals and workers. The collection of food manufacturing formed over a century ago built the bases of the present-day

Chicago has a powerful history in aiding United States workers in their efforts in obtaining a more satisfactory work condition. Liz Cohen’s, Making a New Deal, tells the struggles of men and women working jobs in factories, mines, agriculture, whatever they could take to make it in the land of opportunity in the early 1900’s. In her book, Cohen explains just why these men and women who were working just to get by acted politically in terms of strikes, rallies, and negotiations. Cohen dedicates her book in to explain just how it was possible for workers to succeed politically in the 1930’s following their defeats ten years prior. Cohen argues that any worker, regardless of race and social status, can come together and fight for their rights

Growing up on a small family wheat farm in southwestern Oklahoma, I have experienced the harsh conditions of farming firsthand. The job that used to employ the largest amount of people in the United States has lost the support and the respect of the American people. The Jeffersonian Ideal of a nation of farmers has been tossed aside to be replaced by a nation of white-collar workers. The family farm is under attack and it is not being protected. The family farm can help the United States economically by creating jobs in a time when many cannot afford the food in the stores. The family farm can help prevent the degradation of the environment by creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the people producing the food and nature. The family farm is the answer to many of the tough questions facing the United States today, but these small farms are going bankrupt all too often. The government’s policy on farming is the largest factor in what farms succeed, but simple economics, large corporations, and society as a whole influence the decline in family farms; small changes in these areas will help break up the huge corporate farms, keeping the small family farm afloat.

(Eva is sitting down to breakfast in the Casa Rosada reading the morning newspaper informing her and the audience that the meat packers union is striking for a 20% increase in wages. Juan enters and kisses Eva’s forehead)

Low-wage workers in America are not being afforded the basic labor protections that skilled workers enjoy. This neglect of low-wage workers is a personal trouble as much as it is a public issue. According to C. Wright Mills, troubles are personal problems that take place within the individual and their relations to others (1959). Issues, on the other hand, expand far beyond the individual’s personal characteristics and onto institutions in a particular historical time period (Mills 1959). Mills indicates that personal troubles can be easily detected by pointing at an individual’s characteristics, public issues on the other hand cannot be easily identified in that manner (1959). To develop a personal and social understanding if individual troubles and societal issues, Mills uses the sociological imagination (1959). Wage-labor, under the sociological imagination, can be identified as a socially constructed issue and not just an individual’s inability to be employed in something better. By looking at wage-labor in a narrow sense, it becomes easy to blame the individual for their troubles. Policies are then established to punish individuals and not the structural causes of their troubles.

Like some diseased snake chewing and spewing filth, writhing its way through the forest’s underbelly, the murky Rouge River cuts a dark path through the greater Detroit area providing power to dusty columns of derelict factories that, admittedly, need the cheap juice no longer. Turn back the clocks half a century, however, and a different scene emerges. The year is 1957 and a chrome-clad leviathan clangs its way down the assembly line in Ford’s Detroit River Rouge Complex. A 2,000 acre sprawl of chimneys and spires, the concrete behemoth that is the Rouge was once the largest industrial facility in the world (National Park Service). At its height the Rouge employed 100,000 hardy workers who could roll a new Crown Victoria or Skyliner off the line every 49 seconds (“The Henry Ford”). I find it hard to picture the sweat-beaded factory man whose hands clang away at that metal monstrosity limbering down the line. Physically his face is obvious of course—leathery and rugged. But from my 21st century perspective, this blue-collar worker’s status in 1950s America seems bizarre. Completely integrated socially and politically. A card-carrying member of America’s middle class. In 1950 this man would have counted himself among the nearly 35 percent of Americans employed in manufacturing jobs, by far the largest sector that era (Halle and Romo). So—what happened? How did these manufacturing men die off? More importantly,

After learning about his father’s new job, who is forced to partake in the unethical and illegal activities of the meatpacking industry, Jurgis also finds that his job has similar horrors. He realized that the company does not care about people’s health or the quality of the meat. The company only want money from the consumers by being a knave. Suddenly, Jurgis think that people back in Lithuania might be right about the downfall of the American

The unions that were created were to prove themselves, and to show that they deserved better working conditions, higher pay, and less hours. In The Jungle the unions are portrayed as and secretive and you had to pay to join one. However, Jurgis was skeptical and he thought that as long as he had a job and got paid. Then, one day a man slipped and hurt his leg and Jurgis had to cover what that man had usually done. He found what he saw disturbing, calf fetuses, cows with broken legs, and animals that have died of disease packed with the rest of the meat. He soon realizes why people might have laughed at him for having so much faith in America. Meatpacking was a very dangerous job and “...even the best-placed wage earners , the new workplace could be unhealthy, even dangerous. Meatpacking produced its own hazards--the dampness of the pickling room, the sharp blade of the slaughtering knife, and the noxious odors of the fertilizer department.” (Faragher et al. 2008, 416) The Jungle shows how often people got hurt and how the people were upset with these type of workplaces. Also, the American machines ran faster than anywhere else in the world, so if the workers couldn’t keep up or end