Uptons Sinclairs The Jungle from 1906 is a fictional book from the progressive era. Even though The Jungle is a fictional novel, it described conditions that were real during the progressive era, such as working class poverty and harsh working conditions. The novel was written as a way to exploit the real lives of working citizens at home and at work.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a vivid account of life for the working class in the early 1900s. Jurgis Rudkus and his family travel to the United States in search of the American dream and an escape from the rigid social structure of Lithuania. Instead, they find a myriad of new difficulties. Sinclair attributes their problems to the downfalls of capitalism in the United States. While America’s system was idealistic for Jurgis and his family at first, the mood of the story quickly transforms to assert that capitalism is evil. This theme drives the author’s message and relay of major issues throughout the entirety of the novel. The idea of capitalism and social Darwinism is to
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.
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.
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
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
The Jungle is a novel that focuses on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. The novel was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into the Chicago stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. However, the details of the story ended up launching a government investigation of the meat packing plants, and ultimately regulation of food products. It gave an informative view of what life was like in America at the time. Important topics like immigration, working conditions and sanitation issues of the time were all addressed well in the novel.
. A. Upton Sinclair wrote, “The Jungle”, to expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry.
As Upton Sinclair addresses in The Jungle, industry workers were refused the basic human rights
Most of the industry environment was really dangerous and labor pay was really low. The treatment with the labor was unfair. First of all, the technology back then wasn’t as steady, so how can the working environment be safe? Safety wasn’t a big issue in the 19th century. For example, Rockefeller maintains his oil prices low, so he couldn’t pay his workers a lot, otherwise he wouldn’t be as big how he was. These practices were unacceptable and the workers should have been given their rights but then men were only doing this to boom the American
Most famous people inspire authors to write books written about their achievements, however Upton Sinclair Junior did it backwards. Some of his ninety novels including an autobiography, and in particular The Jungle, changed America forever by using fictitious stories to depict the present issues at that time. Upton Sinclair was an author and activist in the early to mid 1900’s who was passionate about issues involving women 's rights, working conditions, and the unemployed. He wrote over ninety books in his lifetime, as well as countless articles and other works of journalism. As Sinclair grew up, he was exposed to both a lifestyle of poverty and wealth that shaped his world as well as his political views as a socialist, or someone who advocates the vesting of the control of the means of production and distribution, of capital or land in the community as a whole. Upton Sinclair was a controversial author who took a stand in history by vastly impacting the food industry, becoming politically active, and forecasting solutions to social problems.
Written at the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle took place in an era of unprecedented advancement in civilization where the American economy had risen to become one of the wealthiest on the planet. However, Sinclair asserts that the rise of capitalist America resulted in the virulent corruption and competition that plighted society into an untamed “jungle.” Shown by the corruption of the Chicago meatpacking industry, Sinclair highlights the repulsive filth of human greed that was created as a byproduct of the economic boom. The effects of industrialism and the rise of untamed capitalism is what raped the superfluity of workers, like Jurgis Rudkus, of the opportunity to uncover prosperity in America. Not only does The Jungle capture the brutality and acceleration of corrupt capitalism and ruthless Darwinism during the Progressive Era, it also prompts resistance and displacement of the existing political system in favor of a socialist revolution. Through the novel, Sinclair demonstrates how the deterioration of the American Dream was exacerbated by the capitalist greed and corruption that eventually drove Jurgis and his family into mental degeneration and despair.
Not only were the workers not treated well, the building was also very unsanitary and unsafe. They worked on top of each other in cramped spaces where there were just lines and lines of sewing machines. The exit doors were locked in order to stop the workers from leaving to go to the bathroom. Only the foreman had the keys to unlock the doors.There were four elevators that had access to the factory floors but only one of them were in working condition. In order to get to the working elevator, the workers had to go down a long narrow hallway. This elevator was only able to hold 12 people at a time. Factory floors had no sprinkler system and the entire building only had one fire escape that was not big enough for all of the people in
“People were forced to work in harsh, dangerous conditions in order to be able to provide for their families” (Document 8). Although most people were grateful to have a job, the conditions that they were forced to work for in order to provide for their families were unfair to them, and their families. Just because they obtained a job one day, doesn’t mean they would have it the next day, for example, if an employee was sick, or injured and had to miss a day of work the employee wasn’t guaranteed to continually have the job after they finally recovered. “I am at work in a spinning room tending four sides of warp which is one girl’s work” (Document 1) working conditions such as these are very harsh for the employees, not only do they have to keep up with the work of four people. Not only do the employees have to keep up with the sea of work, they also have to attempt not to get injured with the very harsh conditions lots of employees did in fact end up with serious injuries. “5 in the morning till 9 at night…” (Document 7) Those were the harsh working hours according to twenty-three year old Elizabeth Bentley. Long hours such as those were very common for factory workers, which made life hard for employees. Not only was harsh working conditions bad, but also the worst consequence that came about through the Industrial Revolution was child
The working conditions in the factories were awful. In William Cooper’s Testimony, document #1, William tells the truth about the working environments. William stated that he worked 16 hours a day with one 40 minute break. He didn’t have time for an education and to stay awake he got whipped. In the video, Dear America, if you were sick, you still had to work. Most people got sick from the factories, so going back would make it worse and possibly lead to death. The video also says that people got little pay and had to work for long dangerous hours. Sometimes people even lost