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The Jungle Analysis: Meat Packing Plants

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The Jungle Analysis: Meat Packing Plants Several problems are revealed in the Industrialization Period through Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. One of them is the the things that go on behind the walls of the food industry. The conditions here during this time were particularly awful in several ways and for many reasons. Some troubles that surface during this time in the meat packing plants are the use of spoiled, dirty or rotten meat, poor wages for the workers there and the conditions of the working area. In the meat packing plants, there were no laws or rules to abide by for the cleanliness of the food. This caused several businesses to overlook what they thought was adequate for the consumers and sold them perished or rotting meat. In Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, he mentions that the workers would use this spoiled meat by making it into sausage. This truly reveals how the owners of these businesses didn’t care about how they made their money, but would make as much of it as possible, causing them to instruct their employees to not throw out the bad pork, but to utilize it and grind it up into a sausage. He documented how the …show more content…

"And, for this, at the end of the week, he will carry home three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour,” (Sinclair 85) shows that the employees-- typically new immigrants at the plants-- were hardly provided for and were not paid at all that much. They were exploited; working for long hours for this little pay. Jurgis, the main character in The Jungle, struggled throughout part of Sinclair’s novel because of his lack of income from the meat packing plant he worked at, Durham’s. Many people in this time did as well, like Jurgis, having trouble seeking a home, food or clothing fit enough to purchase with the little they were provided with from their

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