Upton Sinclair's The Food And Drug Act

In the “the Jungle” the author Upton Sinclair uses ethos,pathos and imagery to expose the meat packing industry of its disgusting ways to the public’s eye. The first pathos the rhetorical device responsible for getting people into their feeling more than in their thoughtful minds. For example Mr. Sinclair takes full advantage of this when explains the meat packing plant products are not what you think they are. In this quote “there would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.”

“The Jungle” showed that the immigrants were taken advantage of, and the main protagonist was Jurgis, whom he and his family moved to Chicago thinking about the American Dream. Jurgis and his

It is an obvious safety hazard at the fault of the company, yet, he does not receive compensation. He is forced to beg for his job back. Marija loses her job drawing advertisements at a canning company when she joins a union. Ona’s boss, Phil Connor, harasses her. When Jurgis learns of the assault, he attacks the man and goes to jail. “They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink—why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside—why could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?” (Sinclair, 184-185). This quote shockingly illustrates that the prison is actually an environment far preferable to the cruel, filthy world of Packingtown. Sinclair’s famous descriptions of the repugnant meatpacking plants is meant to enhance the plea for better physical conditions. There are endless examples where Sinclair addresses the lack of rights for the working class. He suggests socialism as a possible remedy where the social classes would be even, but stresses the necessity of labor unions to maintain wages, workers’ compensation claims, and a safe and healthy work environment free from exploitation.

This policy paper is going to analyze and show the strategic use of public policy. The law is called the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which is a law to protect consumers from purchasing adulterated or mislabeled food or drug products. This law also led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. In my policy paper, I will be providing a comprehensive history of Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 in the next section to give a general and brief description regarding to the background of this Act, and see why the law is necessary. Next, I will be trace the implementation of Pure Food and Drug Act, and its code and agency to provide an insight of how the law was passed. For decades, this law has made a huge impact on the business and society, and many progressive food, drug manufacturers, and the general public worked actively to support the law. Lastly, I will be conducting a policy analysis of this law to observe the strengths and weaknesses of this policy, and formulate some recommendations for further improvement of this act.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair details the life of a Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis, in the late 1800’s. In the novel, Jurgis and his family immigrate to America in order to find prosperity and follow the “American Dream”. However, upon reaching reaching America, they face many trials and tribulations. Foremost, no one in the family is able to speak English, as well as being poor immigrants that are easily taken advantage of by society. Initially, Jurgis tries to keep his head up and tries through his own work to succeed, but as the events of the novel unfold, we see him tore down and corrupted. The moral corruption of Jurgis can be seen as a reflection of the environment in which he lived. In the end, Jurgis believed that the capitalistic society that he lived in was against the common man. The Jungle illustrates how greed and unchecked capitalism can have devastating effects on people.

Sinclair spent time undercover studying the conditions of meat-packing companies. The novel revealed that these factories mistreated it’s employees and were even infested with rats. Sinclair wrote, “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 into hoppers together.” This line explains how rats, poisoned bread, and the meat that people eat are all being cooked together. As the novel grew popular, people were appalled when they read about the conditions their food was being packed in. Because of this, the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug Act were created to ensure consumers the products they receive are

As Sinclair’s standpoint for Socialism proves not to be as convincing as what was hoped, the style of writing proves to be successful in exposing the truth of the meatpacking industry. A combination of the reporter-style third person narrative and the abundance of factual information dug up by Sinclair gives the book the shocking reputation that it has earned. “To this part of the yard [the fertilizer room] came all the ‘tankage’ and the waste products of all sorts; her they dried out the bones,--and in suffocating cellars where the daylight never came you might see men and women and children bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all

Jurgis and his family in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle come to America in search of higher wages and a successful life. They are quickly met with disappointment and despair as Jurgis tries to establish himself in America. The crime and corruption ridden city of Chicago and the meatpacking industry take advantage of Jurgis’s family, inflicting death and poverty upon them. The Jungle’s portrayal of immigrant life in Chicago exposes the “American Dream” as a capitalistic exploitation of immigrants. Universally praised character traits help place the entirety of the blame for the incidents on the environment that Jurgis and his family are forced into.

Many believe the path to success isn’t easy, but with hard work, drive, and passion, it is possible to attain the American Dream. However, when a person thinks of the American dream they are standing from the outside looking in and fail to see the struggle that comes with it. In the Jungle, Upton Sinclair portrays how difficult it is to obtain this fantasy by showing the journey of a Lithuanian immigrant family coming to America. They came to America because they heard that “any man willing to work an honest day would make a living and could support his family.” Jurgis Rudkis, the main character of the jungle, is a vigorous, motivated, and honorable Immigrant whose vision is quickly destroyed by poverty, disappointments, and corruption. "I will work harder," is Jurgis 's motto and his answer to every setback he encounters. While this attitude brings Jurgis closer to the American dream, the harder he works the more obstacles he seems to face. Cheated in the worst ways possible, Jurgis tries to push forward through everything, hoping he will eventually gain the dream he had heard of in the past. "I will work harder" only helps Jurgis so much in his quest to achieve the American Dream. However, it could work in today’ America.

This hard working, yet naïve immigrant leads his family from Lithuania to the one word of English he knows, Chicago. In the beginning of the novel, Jurgis believes a good, strong work ethic is the foundation for what any person needs to be successful in America, even opposing the very idea of a union. Upton Sinclair affirms this idea by writing, “But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as this- he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn’t do it, let them go somewhere else” (Sinclair, 43). But throughout the novel, it is exposed that greedy businessmen take advantage of unskilled workers by lowering wages and extending working hours because of the abundance of immigrants willing to work for less. For example, business leaders employed women and children at a fraction of the pay rate compared to men, which promoted institutionalized poverty and highlighted the lack of government influence in this economic period. Everyone is willing to undercut each other just to survive the machinery of capitalism, as evident by the title The Jungle, a cut throat competition for survival. Just like the cattle and pigs lined up to be slaughtered in Packingtown, wave after wave of immigrants lined up to be worn down and abused by the non-stop grind of dehumanizing conditions. Sinclair shows that the painful and toxic evils of capitalism are the driving force which keeps hard working immigrants like Jurgis from leaving their socio-economic

In an eye opening novel entitled The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the author tells a story in which exposes the gut wrenching and shocking facts of what actually goes on in these food processing and meat packing factories in an urban Chicago during the early 1900s. Sinclair does a wonderful job at exposing what actually happened behind these factory doors and informs the reader of the unsanitary process in which animals were transformed into meat products. However when reading this novel one must take into consideration that Sinclair’s main concern was not only the disgusting products produced but the employees that produced them as

The Jungle’s purpose is to illustrate just what happens when the American Dream does not come true. It is not for a lack of determination that its protagonist does not succeed with abundance -- nor ethic or spirit; he merely falls victim to a system in which those at the top succeed with abundance at the severe expense of those left with nothing at the bottom. The book’s author, Upton Sinclair, sought to show America the cost of its capitalist system. Born into a poor family with wealthy relatives, Sinclair was aware of social and economic disparity in America from a young age (The Jungle v). The Jungle is the result of Upton Sinclair working undercover for seven weeks in Chicago’s meatpacking industry in 1904, as well as the socialist

Upton Sinclair’s classic novel, The Jungle, strongly illustrates the negative consequences of capitalism through the harsh conditions immigrants faced living in America in the early 1900’s. In the novel, the reader is introduced to Jurgis Rudkus and his family who emigrated from Lithuania to the States in hope for a better future. Although many issues arose in the novel,

With respect to those inspectors, Sinclair is at times blatant in his disapproval, but is other tomes subtle as he shows life through the still-rose-colored glasses of Jurgis, "If you were a social person, [the inspector] was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaine's which are in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you, you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing by untouched (41). Ofcourse, the inspectors were being paid off by the packers not to inspect. From politics to inspections to unions, Sinclair shows nothing but corruption and inhumane cruelty. With respect to the immigrants and their working and living conditions, the author shows nothing but suffering and exploitation.

Sinclair came from an old money out of Virginia. His family’s wealth and land were wiped during the civil war leaving his father to become a liquor salesman then during him into an alcoholic. When Sinclair was 26 he went to Chicago to research the strike and conditions the meat-packers had. He interviewed the families, lawyers, doctors and social workers. What he observed was appalling conditions inside the meat-packing factories. Chicago was one of the biggest meat-packing industries at the turn of the century in the U.S. He wanted to show how the immigrants lived and the conditions they had to put up with. Sinclair shares a powerful fictional story of an immigrant family that was fooled tactics that took the little they had. Sinclair gave the readers a very vivid image from Jurgis’s point of view. But not everything that Sinclair illustrated was true to the