Meatpacking Research Paper

Daniel H. Pink explains that “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.” It is this empathy that allows people to care about others and feel for them as they go through suffering and sorrow. The excerpts from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” create different emotions in readers. Poets such as Robert Frost leave the meaning of their works up to the interpretation of the reader, but novelists such as Upton Sinclair evoke more empathy in readers than poets by stating events clearly.

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners.

Even though corporations do not wish to cause harm to consumers, they have in fact all too often done so when the drive to maximize profit or survive in the marketplace has taken priority over concern for consumer safety. An massive range of consumer products including many foods, drugs and medical devices, vehicles, domestic products, and cosmetics have been acknowledged as dangerous to various degrees. Around 70,000 Americans are suspected to die yearly from product-related accidents, and millions more suffer incapacitating injuries at a cost of over $100 billion in property damage, lost wages insurance, litigation, and medical expenses. Even though certain products are intrinsically dangerous, much evidence suggests that corporations, in their almost single-minded pursuit of profit, have been negligent- sometimes criminally- in their disregard for consumer safety.

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.

The Muckrakers, were investigative journalist who succeeded to exposed the social ills of citizens and corruption of both corporation and politics, and they had a huge impact on the success of the Progressive movement. Without the muckrakers the progressive movement would have not achieved the well-known status they had. These crusading journalists exposed bribery and corruption at city and state level, as well as in Congress. They called attention to the exploitation of child labor, the revulsion truth of lynching, and the cruel business practices employed by capitalists. The muckraker’s journalism resulted in legislations and reforms that had long-lasting effects. Magazines were the leading channels for muckraking. Samuel S. McClure and John Sanborn Phillips started the bestselling McClure's Magazine in May 1893, which stood up against corporate monopolies and crooked politicians, while exposing the terrible working and living

is to expose the conditions of the meatpacking industry and how it was harmful not only to the workers,

Big corporations and businesses have been thriving in America since the late nineteenth century. The definition of the term “Big business” is “an economic group consisting of large profit-making corporations especially with regard to their influence on social or political policy”(“Big Business”).

The progressive reforms during the period of 1890-1915 in the areas of urban life, industrial conditions and politics were mixed successes, with some reforms working well and others not, but were overall largely successful. Industrial conditions, urban life, and politics were all big contributors in the progressive reform period. With these failures occurred in these areas too. Success wasn’t always the direction they were going.

Uptown Sinclair’s book The Jungle was originally written to expose the working conditions within the meat packing industry. Sinclair shocked millions as he bore what it was really like behind the scenes. Employees worked with contaminated and rotting meat, which was not a health violation at the time. This eventually led to new food and federal safety laws.

It is difficult to say if the conditions were better then or now, simply because both good and bad changes have occurred in the past century, which causes the pros and cons to balance out. Sadly, the working and living circumstances are nearly too horrendous to exist. In fact, it is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. Despite the amount of changes in the industry, working in the meat packing factories proved to be a repulsive job, both in the 1900s and today. Thankfully, these works have inspired millions of citizens to stand up and promote change in this gruesome and cruel

One of the main issues of the working industry that came to light was the terrible state of the meat packing industry. It wasn't just the conditions that they worked at that was the main issue, but rather the fact that the meat itself was unhealthy and possibly coated in bacteria due to the little care it received to stay clean.Neil Reynolds gave a summary of the conditions : "In a word, we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculosis and other diseased workers," (Document B). The condition of the meat packing brought about an issue of welfare for the nation. So, in return to this matter, the Pure Food and Drug Act and The Meat Inspection Act were created to prevent further contamination of the meat.

The condition of the cities during the 20th century, were terrible. Due to the extreme amount of people coming to cities looking for work they were crammed. There was limited housing causing people to live on the street. The streets were filled with waste and nastiness due to people not disposing of garbage and human waste properly. Also, garbage was not picked up off the streets often, nor were the streets cleaned. This made the odor bad as well as a health risk. Private monopolies in utility companies were created. This resulted in a law to regulate the rate a utility company could charge. The cities did not have safe water or sewer systems.

In the nineteenth century, rates of immigration across the world increased. Within thirty years, over eleven million immigrants came to the United States. There were new types of people migrating than what the United States were used to seeing as well. Which made people from different backgrounds and of different race work and live in tight spaces together; causing them to be unified. Not only did they immigrate to the United States, there were cities all over the world attracting all sorts of individuals. In this essay, I will discuss the variety of people who migrated, why so many people leaned towards immigration, and why the majority of immigrants populated the cities instead of rural areas like their homelands.

The article discusses the role of food as an instrument of identity and a channel of contact through cultures. This is discussed drawing from three cases of Italian food culture hybridization spanning from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 2000s: the role of Italian food in Italian-American identity as depicted in Leonardo Coviello’s work; the meeting of Southern and Northern food cultures following the Italian internal migrations in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the food practices of international migrants in the context of the global flows of people and commodities in present day Italy. In this regard, food plays an essential role in the rebuilding of a familiar context in which migrants can feel temporarily

The term ‘processed food’ applies to any food that has been changed from its natural state in some way, either for safety reasons or convenience. Some foods need processing to make them safe, such as milk, which needs to be pasteurized to remove harmful bacteria. Other foods need processing to make them suitable for use, such as pressing seeds to make oil.