Social, Political, And International Repercussions Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
Isabelle Wilson Carey, Hour 1 14 January 2015 Social, Political, and International Repercussions of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” They were called floorsmen, trimmers, beefboners, or butchers. Stuck with the dirty work, these men hacked and sliced, severing jowls from shoulders from ribs. Backs hunched, they repeated the same motions, preparing these unidentifiable creatures for consumption. The danger of their labor was clear to them from the horrifying accidents they had all witnessed, however they had a job, so no one was complaining. Their hands were unsightly, criss-crossed with mazes of cuts and scars, reminders of previous incidents. Fingers were mutilated, barely distinguishable, and one would rarely find intact, functioning fingernails. …show more content…
It sold nearly 1 million copies in the year after its release. Despite Sinclair’s original intentions, most readers were more largely concerned with the health codes being violated in the meatpacking industry. It was meant to be “the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of wage slavery” (Cohen). Sinclair remarked, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” People made such an immense uproar about the contaminated foods that they were being sold, that it actually brought about changes on a congressional level. Just months after The Jungle was published, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were signed by president Roosevelt. Upton Sinclair’s exposé, The Jungle, lead to public outrage, to the government stepping in to ensure safe, sanitary food, and to international …show more content…
The Meat Inspection Act required livestock to be inspected prior to slaughter, carcasses to be inspected postmortem, sanitary standards to be established in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be allowed routine inspections of slaughter and processing operations. More than 1300 inspectors were hired by the Bureau of Animal Industries’ Meat Inspection Division to execute inspections in 163 institutions. Consumers benefitted from the enhanced quality of meats and knowledge of the foods they were purchasing. Very soon after it’s publication, The Jungle began to make impacts on an international level. For instance, the German Butchers’ Association composed a petition in order to prevent the German government from signing a treaty with the U.S. This treaty would have allowed increased imports of American beef into Germany. According to Michael Hussey of Emporia State University, the New York Times article, ”Argue Against Our Meat: German Butchers Quote “Accusations of Lax Inspection Methods,", stated that the German petition contained “copious extracts from Upton Sinclair’s The
Is Theodore Roosevelt Considered A Growing Economy During The Gilded Age
549 Words | 3 PagesDuring the end of The Gilded Age, technology and innovation expanded, and the United States was thought of as becoming a growing empire. With this growing empire came a lot of changes, trends and differences in opinions. Theodore Roosevelt, Ida M. Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair, sat down to discuss the continuing problems that started with the Gilded Age. Theodore Roosevelt was an astounding opinion leader and was someone people considered to be as the prominent head of the Progressive Era.
How Did Upton Sinclair Protect The Meat Packing Industry
580 Words | 3 PagesUpton Sinclair was part of the group of people who wanted to improve the meat packing industry. He started to protest after going to investigate the Chicago Packingtown strike. Upton’s investigation led him to find that there were poor working conditions, and poor sanitation in the factory. There was diseased and rotten meat, and later, it was found that there was chemicals that are harmful to humans put into the meat. Also, it was found that many products were mislabeled.
Is Theodore Roosevelt Considered A Growing Economy During The Gilded Age
550 Words | 3 PagesDuring the end of The Gilded Age, technology and innovation, expanded, and the United States were thought of as becoming a growing empire. With this growing empire came a lot of changes, trends and differences in opinions. Theodore Roosevelt, Ida M. Tarbell, and Upton Sinclair, sat down to discuss the continuing problems that started with the Gilded Age. Theodore Roosevelt was an astounding opinion leader and was someone people considered to be the prominent head of the Progressive Era.
Awarness Of Conditions In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
1385 Words | 6 PagesThis awareness motivated the actions of reformers and civilians, which therefore fueled Progressivism. In The Jungle by Sinclair, he 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 the hoppers together, (79). Sinclair also described the contamination of meat by factory workers, the rotting of meat, and the generally unsanitary conditions of a meatpacking plant (79). While The Jungle’s main purpose was to highlight and raise awareness of the terrible working conditions of employees, public outrage was mainly focused on passages like these. Sinclair said, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” in reference to the misunderstanding.
Metaphors In The Jungle
853 Words | 4 PagesUpton Sinclair purposely tries to shock the reader by explaining the corruption in the meat industries in detail. Sinclair says “In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death,” (58) later in the book, he also describes the meat industries by saying “there were whole cellars full of it (animals)... In yet other rooms they were putting up meat in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper.” (82) The extra description of the meat industries was really unnecessary because it can disgust the reader, but at the same time shock them which is Sinclair’s goal.
Progressive Era Dbq
786 Words | 4 PagesThe book, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection describes how Upton Sinclair stated how he had hoped to draw his readers’ attention to “the conditions under which toilers get their bread,” and how there are, “corrupt federal meat inspectors, unsanitary slaughter houses, tubercular cattle, and the packers’ unscrupulous business practices”(Document 4). The authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle are expressing how meat factory workers are making terrible, unsanitary food. They’re pointing out that not even the meat inspectors care for the condition the meat is in. In other words, just as long as they’re making a profit, the inspectors could care less about the meat’s quality. However, consumer products soon took a turn for the better when the Meat Inspection Act was finally passed.
Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair
1387 Words | 6 PagesSinclair wrote this book to get people to realize the harsh conditions, so there would be a change in America's society and that is what he did. Sinclair showed readers how badly wage was decreasing for laborers and the lives of the working that couldn't get any worse. Due to the needy families needing the income of their children, which was as needed as much as their own income, lead to an awful outcome which was that families could not stop working their children neither could the government because these families were in need of their children's income just so that they could survive enough to put food on the table. Jobs were decreasing due to the rush, which was causing the wage of laborers to decrease.
Who Is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle?
1621 Words | 7 PagesUpton Sinclair, a socialist, and muckraker rallied public outcry for labor equity, he launched a consumer movement through the midst of a harsh stockyard strike from unfairly payed wage workers, socialist writer. He is best known for his novel, The Jungle which underlined the devastating exposé of Chicago’s meat-packing industry. A protest novel he published in 1906, the book as a result was quite the shocking revelation of incomprehensible labor practices and unsafe working conditions that were held in Chicago stockyards. The description’s spoken in Sinclair’s book issued the truths about diseased and spoiled meat processes that were not regulated until he exposed them. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited
Changes During The Progressive Era
1167 Words | 5 PagesThe book the jungle written by Upton Sinclair 1906 documents the meat processing industry. A quote from the book reads "there was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage… The rats, [poisoned] bread and meat would go into the hoppers together" This quotation shows that there is radical change because it showed what the food industry was like before the reforms occurred and were put into place. It alerted quite a few people of the many unsanitary conditions and actions that placed consumers at risk of disease. Later that year, in 1906 the meat inspection act was passed by Congress.
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle And The Meatpacking Industry
601 Words | 3 PagesThe Jungle was released to expose meatpacking industries’ ways of treating workers and meat. With this release, changes occurred. President Roosevelt urged Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. This act required the Department of Agriculture to inspect every hog and steer whose carcass state lines. In other words, it required companies to pay to get their facilities and practices checked by an inspector to assure everything was being done correctly.
1900's Meat Packing Industry
665 Words | 3 PagesAlthough it may seem that the meat packing industry is still in turmoil because of their unwillingness to make known what foods have Genetically Modified organisms present, the meat packing industry was much worse during the 1900’s because of the unsafe working conditions, and uncleanliness of the food. Body 1: The meat packing industry’s working conditions were much worse in the 1900’s than they are today. In the novel The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, working conditions were horrible for immigrants who were employed in these factories. People in these factories were worked very hard and used up till they could not work anymore. In the novel Jurgis broke his ankle because of the unsafe
The Economic Tension In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
1899 Words | 8 PagesUpton 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
How Did The Meat Inspection Act Of 1906
538 Words | 3 PagesFebruary 26, 1906, Upton Sinclair published his novel titled “The Jungle”, which informed its readers about the unsanitary practices and health violations that occurred in the meatpacking industry in America. Due to the information that Americans were receiving about what went into their packaged meat, citizens demanded that something must change. The FDA, or Food and Drug Administration, was almost a direct result of Upton’s novel. They made sure that the events going on in the factories would not continue, so the FDA passed various laws and regulations regarding the meatpacking industry.
Rapid Industrialization And Urbanization In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
1073 Words | 5 Pagesc. Horrible working conditions were one of the largest issues that Upton Sinclair wrote about in The Jungle. Upton Sinclair spoke of people losing limbs and other tragic accidents that occurred in the meat packing industry. The most tragic accidents that Upton Sinclair described involved not only the workers but also the customers that would be receiving the tainted goods due to workers falling into rendering tanks and the goods being processed for shipment. During this time of rapid growth, work hygiene wasn’t of significant importance.
How Did The Jungle Affect People
396 Words | 2 Pages“Chapter 14“of The Jungle had many powerful and political effects, resulting in many Acts and food problems. Before The Jungle, many people were blind about what was happening in the meat factories. The Jungle impacted an audience resulting in the Pure food and Drug Act by exclaiming what the food really consist of, the factories, and knowledge of the workers. First, The Jungle affected people lives because many people did not know what the food really consisted of. In paragraph 3, it exclaims, many or the barrels were dirty, rusty, and full of nails and stale water that the meat would be put into to be sent to the public.
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