Industrialization In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

The book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a book that tells about the working conditions of the meat packing industry located in Packing Town, a district in lower Chicago USA. In the book a family emigrating from Lithuania, and coming to America to start a new life, encounter hard times. James Braddock is an Irish emigrant who comes to America to start a life, He becomes a boxer and fights his way to the top. After the Depression hits, he is hit just as hard as everyone else is; he works in ports to make little to no money just to survive. At the end of The Jungle, Jurgis is a worker who finds his way once more and makes good money.

When Jurgis was sweeping the floors in the factory a steer got loose in the factory. Sense there are no safety precautions put in for the workers. Jurgis fell into one of the traps on the floor and sprained his ankle. This shows the corruption of the workplace and how dangerous they were and the employers did not even

The Jungle is a story that revolves around the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his family, the Lithuanian immigrant who came to America to lead a better life and worked at meatpacking plants of early 20th century Chicago. The story showcases the hardship that they underwent due to the harsh and bad working condition, poverty, starvation and being cheated by unjust people agents, eventually losing all their money. The Jungle provides us ways to look at the unfettered capitalism that prevailed in the early 20th century. This book also exposes the corruption, inequality, unjustness, sickness and slavery that existed in the society.

While he sought to change the system of labor in the United States with his novel, The Jungle, he instead impacted the food industry, which saw changes in the food and production process. Fortunately for Sinclair, I have discovered why he failed. Unfortunately for Sinclair, I am forty-nine years too late. Sinclair fails to make labor changes through his novel because

In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Jurgis and his family attempt to survive in a malicious society. In this jungle of a town, rotten meat is being packaged in order to save money. Throughout the novel, the immigrants are faced with greedy capitalists who take advantage of the family’s ignorance and naivety in order to make money. The symbols of corruption, a jungle-like setting, and the tension between family and a work-based lifestyle transparently contribute to the unifying theme of anti-capitalism. In other words, this book is not art; this book is propaganda.

The workers were often subjected to sweltering heat in the summer and frigid conditions in the winter. But, that was not it, at the time there were no laws in place that required businesses to ensure their employees' safety, and this regularly lead to many injuries and fatalities in the workplace on a daily basis. There was not a single work place that did not have injured or mutilated employees, and this was due to the unsafe working conditions of the factories, “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; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one… There were men who worked in the cooking rooms… in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour.” (109).

Working in Packingtown, Chicago was a nightmare because 99% of the jobs were very deleterious. Finding jobs were very scarce and there were not a lot of jobs that were great, so people had to take anything they could get. These jobs had no safety precautions or safety rules; employees got seriously injured daily and death would happen occasionally as an effect of on the job accidents. Some of the jobs were just detrimental to the employees’ health even without the accidents. The main character Jurgis took a job at a fertilizer mill and he started getting sick on the first

In early 1900, specifically, 1906, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written. This novel told the story of a Lithuanian immigrant who worked in a filthy Chicago meatpacking plant. It exposed the meatpacking industry by stating their vile practices not only towards their meat but their workers as well. This was a result of the combination of many immigrants in the United States to pursue a better life, and the fact that many big industries were looking for ways to maximize their profit.

In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair explains how horrible working conditions were for people in the meatpacking industry. Have you ever wondered what effect Upton Sinclair had on American industry? The Jungle is about the poor working conditions and the very poor sanitation in 1906. We will also be talking about the backstory behind Upton Sinclair. Upton Sinclair discovered how bad working areas were.

Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tension in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through his novel “The Jungle”. He used the story of a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, to show the harsh situation that immigrants had to face in the United States, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions in the meatpacking plants, as well as the tension between the capitalism and socialism in the United States during the early 1900s. In the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, there were massive immigrants move into the United States, and most of them were from Europe. The protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, like many other immigrants, have the “America Dream” which they believe America is heaven to them, where they can

A Time for Struggle and Change Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, depicts the struggles of Lithuanian immigrants as they worked and lived in Chicago’s Packingtown at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The United States experienced an enormous social and political transformation; furthermore, the economy, factories, and transportation industry grew faster than anyone had ever seen. Immigrants and migrants were attracted to city life for its promise of employment and their chance at the American Dream. The poor working class had little to no rights, and they grappled with unfair business practices, unsafe working conditions, racism, Social Darwinism, class segregation, xenophobia, political corruption, strikes, starvation, poor housing,

Furthermore the citizens lived in overcrowded areas that were very dirty and filled with pollution. Unfortunately the workers were subjected to horrible and even dangerous working conditions. They worked as much as six days a week and ten to fourteen hours a day. There were many safety hazards including dangerously high temperatures, along with numerous accidents and a scarce amounts protection against

As industrial strength grew and technology advanced, labor in America changed. Machines replaced many of workers’ old duties and some skilled laborers who had been previously valued became easily replaced. Immigrants who were willing to work under poorer conditions flooded into the United States, big businesses grew, and political machines whose interests were not that of the people occupied the government. Laborers worked ten hour shifts, six-day workweeks, and started work as children. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, he describes the painful and vigorous work in the meat-packing industry, saying, “The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them...

Camila Casanova U.S. History 1302: S67 Mr. Isaac G. Pietrzak February 9, 2018 Critical Review: The Jungle Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003.

The Bosses squeezed and drained the life of those men. In the book The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair he described the life of a struggling family try to work and stay alive in the filth. The working conditions in the factories were unsafe, unsanitary and people made little. The purpose of this book was for people to become socialist other than capitalist.