The Jungle Corruption

Readers were not concerned with the treatment of workers, as portrayed by The Jungle, because they really didn't care for the working class, or more specifically, immigrants. However, readers were shocked when they discovered exactly how their meat was processed and prepared. Sinclair used just as much, if not more, gruesome detail in describing the products the American public was consuming, as he did when describing the workplace, living conditions, politics, society and Chicago's scenery. In a futile attempt to build up the readers' sympathy toward the wage-slaves, Sinclair also details the process in which foods not related to the meat-packing industry are prepared. For example, he writes, "their pale blue milk...was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde."

Tulia, a small town in Texas of just under five-thousand people, is a frightening example of how the judicial system is governed solely by racism as well as one corrupt man’s word. In 1999, nearly ten percent of the town’s African American population was arrested in a single drug bust. Of the forty-six people arrested, thirty-eight were African-American, furthermore all were convicted. The remaining seven arrested where know to associate more with the black community than the white in Tulia as well. With the towns income levels averaging at or below the poverty line, most arrested could not afford to hire a good attorney that cared or had the time to care, left therefore with one provided by the state. Consequently, convictions were up to ninety years in jail for allegedly selling three and a half grams, more commonly known as an eight ball, of cocaine in drug-free zones. In was only on appeals, that the convictions where revoked on insubstantial evidence.

Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” is a classic story of greed, corruption, and misfortune following Jurgis Rudkis and his love interest/eventual wife, Ona Lukosazite, and their two families. The novel shows off the complexity of and fickle nature of life and all that within it that we all take for granted. The characters feel very human and their troubles are very sympathetic as well. One begins to feel delight as well as anguish at the author’s non-existent mercy.

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.

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

The government did this through the Pure Food and Drug Act was one reform which helped public health by stopping the manufacturing of spoiled or misbranded items. Another successful reform which expanded consumer protection was the Meat Inspection Act passed in 1906. This act increased public health greatly and was passed due to Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle. The book brought forth the hidden secrets of how meat was processed and kept. Neill Reynolds Report shows how really bad the meat processing business was. The meat was usually rotten and was just placed on the dirty floor, where it was barely washed. (Document 2) His report tried to get the attention of the public and the government. It showed the horrors of how the meat packing industry was. The Meat Inspection Act was successful because it forced the meat packing industry to change its ways to meet the health conditions of the

Upton SInclair’s novel, The Jungle, is a novel based on the “Gilded Age” in american history. It is the life of a working man named Jurgis Rudkus and as the story progresses, it shows the corruption and dishonesty of the people during this time period, as well as their reasoning behind their actions. Also as the novel continued, it showed the author's inspiration for the title of this novel. Throughout the book, Upton Sinclair had scattered metaphors as to why Capitalism is corrupt and why Socialism is better. With subtle hints to social classes and how Jurgis progresses through them through corruption.

Factories did not have to meet any safety guidelines, causing the United States to have the worst working conditions out of any other country. Also the factories were definitely not the cleanest places to work. Since there was no one inspecting the meat at the time, low skilled laborers were forced to package meat that was spoiled or contaminated. This did not go well with human consumption.

In chapter four, it is said that from colonial times to the 1950’s when it was overtaken by beef, pork was the major source of meat for Americans. Pioneers kept hogs as free-range animals that foraged for their food. Corn-fed pigs grew faster and bigger, so it was common practice to round up surplus hogs and corn-feed them in the weeks before they went to market (value is weight-based). In 1818, the first meatpacking plant in Cincinnati was opened and became the dominating entity in pork production until the civil war,

From 1865 to 1910, the Industrial Age was an interesting time of great economic growth and prosperity for the United States as a whole, however the American citizens who worked to push this positive chain of success paved the way and paid the cost for that very occurrence. In The Jungle, a family from Lithuania travels to the United States in order to gain a better living than what they had in their home country. During their time of adjustment to life within the United States, some members of the Rudkus and Lukoszaite family especially Jurgis Rudkus, experienced extreme hardship while attempting to develop their lives into a better state for the sake of their family’s wellbeing. Upton Sinclair opens a small window into the lives of hopeful and hardworking immigrants to reveal how America’s Industrialization Age hindered many from true freedom. This was due to a lack of care for employees and their wellbeing in the workplace, poor sanitary conditions that led to unhealthy living conditions for workers, and political corruption which was held over certain citizens in order to allow corruption to thrive, making workers remain powerless.

It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of mean and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go in the hoppers together.”# There was nothing the packers would not do to make a profit, if meat went bad they would pickle it or make sausage out of it, “there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.”# The Packers took no responsibilities for the sickness that these meats caused. It was not uncommon for people to die from sickness they had gotten from eating bad meat, this is also an issue in “The Jungle” when a young family member suddenly dies one morning, “it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning-which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned unfit for export.”# Disease was also a factor for the workers, as quoted from the book “Meat and Men “Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world.”# It was also not uncommon for people to fall into the vats and become lard. “The public revolted at the

The Rudkus family arrived from Lithuania to find Chicago as "a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in the pit, in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption." (Pg.165) The city, during the time span of the novel, was truly a jungle-like society in which Upton Sinclair found much fault and great room for improvement. Sinclair perceived the problem in American society to be the reign of capitalism. In The Jungle, he presented the reader with the Rudkus family; who encountered a great deal of

Written by Upton Sinclair, The Jungle explores the sheer, harsh conditions of the living and working environment in the Chicago stockyards. The title is significant because it represents the realities of the labor force and depicts a wild, brutal environment that benefited the wealthy, while leaving the inferior working class fighting to survive. In Particular, the The Jungle denotes the life of Jurgis and his family in Packingtown and their hardships they face in the Chicago stockyards. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle has a significant title because through corruption and capitalism, the weak and poor suffer, while the strong and wealthy flourish.

The novel, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair depicts the lives of poor immigrants in the United States during the early 1900’s. Sinclair is extremely effective in this novel at identifying and expressing the perils and social concerns of immigrants during this era. The turmoil that immigrants faced was contingent on societal values during the era. There was a Social Darwinist sentiment

The jungle by Upton Sinclair has made me realize how history shaped what america is today. It was in this book that raised the spotlight on many topics including: meat handling, minimum wage, workers compensation, sexual harassment, child labor and most importantly the right to express one's thoughts. Now we live in a country that not only honors our freedom but respects and looks over our health. The jungle takes place in the 1900s when over 9 million immigrants were flocking to America searching for what was known as the American dream. So was this particular lutheran family that came to America for just that. Not knowing that in the end they would be contributors of the awareness and importance of checking meat handlers.