Summary Of Child Labor In The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

The industrial revolution was a time of immense progress. It marked an era of technological advancements and a changing society, yet also a period smeared with unfair and unsafe working conditions. The history is filled with stories of people suffering, being injured, and even dying, all in the process of creating goods for the changing consumer culture. Thousands looked past the suffering, condoled themselves with the goods they purchased at economical prices all at the expense of the working class, a class that had no other choice than to work in the dark, dangerous factories to feed their family. While the consumer culture in this time could look past the anguish of those in the working class, progressives could not. They watched children

Starting in 1880, the evils of child labor were increasing fast. Children weren’t just working on their family’s farm; they were slaving in mills, sweatshops, and factories. Children were not only losing a chance at an education, but they were becoming ill, injured, and some were even being killed because of the dangerous working conditions they were slaving in.

The novel The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair is a fictional story based during the twentieth century on the lives of immigrants living in Chicago and the harsh conditions they went through. I think that Sinclair named his book the jungle because Packingtown, the meat-packing district of Chicago, mimicked a jungle. The conditions were terrible, the labor and work those workers were put through were extremely harsh. Everyone, including Jurgis Rudkus and his family, had to fight for their survival everyday. It was the survival of the fittest and if you let your guard down or didn’t do your job right, you would be replaced.

After reading Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, child labor, urbanization, industrialization and immigration are problem quite sore during 1880-1910 period.

The early 1900s came with an abundance of changes. There were multiple waves of immigration causing increased social separation. There was also increased industrialization. The increase in industrialization provided many jobs for the incoming immigrants. However, these immigrants took on a lot more than just a new job when they came to America. Immigrants faced harsh living and working conditions, racial strife, poverty, as well as social class issues. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explores many of these hardships immigrants had to face through the lives of Lithuanian Immigrants. Throughout his novel, Sinclair focuses on poverty and thoughts of what America was supposed to be like to portray hardships immigrants faced when coming to America.

Upton Sinclair is recognized today as one of the most influential writers during the birth and largest period of industrialization in America: The Industrial Revolution. He is known most by his incredible, life-changing novel, The Jungle, which was written and published in 1906. The book was written to explain the amount of power and control that big businesses had during this era over the average workingman. “The novel’s story of the destruction of an immigrant Lithuanian family by the forces of corporate greed and poverty is a tale of horror almost beyond tragedy”(1110). Throughout the novel, Sinclair shows a series of unfortunate events that the Lithuanian family encounters once they move to America in hope of finding a life of living the “American Dream.” Although his writing influenced

The 1906 novel The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair rendered the sickening work condition of immigrants in the industrialized city of Chicago. The early twentieth century was the time when Europeans were migrating to the United States many of the immigrants lived in an overcrowded urban area, and immigrants worked for low and unfair wages for American factories and businesses. At the time the city of Chicago had one of the worst poor living conditions in the United States. The Lithuanians faced the American businesses who ruthlessly manipulated them, experiencing the horrendous working conditions, and the harsh exploitation of the labor of women, men and children.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair begins with Jurgis’s and Ona’s wedding day at Chicago’s meat packing building. The beginning of the book is based on flashbacks for the couple, such as from when they meet in Lithuania to deciding to move to the United States in hopes of a better life. Not only does the newly wed couple decide to go but other family members decide to go too. Once they arrive to Chicago they realize that America is not exactly how they envisioned it to be. Not long after hunting for a job they all finally find one. However, not long after one of their family members dies and the others become unemployed, therefore making it very difficult for them to make ends meet.

In Florence Kelley’s speech, through her use of parallel structure and detailed description to describe the conditions of child labor, anecdotes that relay its prominence, appeals to emotion and motherhood, she conveys an effective message that child labor is unjust.

Upton Sinclair wrote a book from the early 1900’s called The Jungle. The book is centered around a family who immigrated to America. The family goes through a lot of hardships and troubles during the industrialization era. Life back then was hard for the average person. Most people did not have much money to buy food and necessities, and many lived in rural areas, mostly immigrants. Industrialization upgraded machines, but downgraded people’s health due to more pollutants getting put into the air. Along with this there were very poor working conditions that decreased people’s health. Upton Sinclair showed that industries should have safer and more sanitary working conditions before employing people to work and distributing their product, in order to decrease the amount of injuries and illnesses, in The Jungle.

Child labor was a great problem in the Industrial Revolution. Factory owners usually hired women and children rather than men. They said that men expected higher wages, and they suspected that they were more likely to rebel against the company. Women and children were forced to work from six in the morning to seven at night, and this was when they were not so busy. They were forced to arrive on time and they couldn’t fall behind with their work because if they did they were whipped and punished. Child labor was a great concern in the Industrial revolution but very few people did something to stop it.

People should be able to get paid the right amount on their harsh working conditions, despite their race, culture, ethnicity, gender, and or religion. For example, in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, he addressed the harsh working conditions through his depiction of the workplace and low wages.

Since his childhood, Upton Sinclair suffered through poverty in the United States. Through writing, he payed for his college education at age fifteen, where he learned about socialist philosophy. This philosophy influenced his writing. In his book, The Jungle, Sinclair explores the unfairness of a capitalist society through the story of an immigrant family. To show the evils of capitalism, Sinclair writes about the Rudkus family, who endure through the corruption and brutality of America after emigrating from Lithuania.

In 1906, Upton Sinclair released a novel relating the frantic race of hopeless survival of European immigrants in America. The Jungle vents the often overlooked trials and baffling tribulations of Lithuanian newcomers. Upton Sinclair, a well known political activist for the Socialistic party writes this story as a glance into the events happening during his life-span. At the time of The Jungle's publication, Sinclair was twenty-eight years old, and he used the profits from his book to run for Congress. During this time of his life, many things were happening in America: the Industrial Age was at its peak, child labor was running rampant, Immigration through Ellis Island boomed, and the Communistic Witch-Hunt began. All of these time-markers

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (The Progressive Era), there was an influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans into the United States. A majority of these immigrants were uneducated and illiterate, but because of the lack of immigration laws, naturalization became fairly easy for them. In the book The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, Sinclair portrays the strenuous life of an immigrant family from Lithuania. The main character, Jurgis, comes to America with his father, Antanas, his wife, Ona, and a couple other people from Ona’s family. The book serves to portray the horrible life of low class workers and to denounce capitalism. Throughout the book, Sinclair subtly depicts the flaws in capitalism, and attempts to persuade the