ipl-logo

Summary Of The Jungle By 1906 Upton Sinclair

686 Words3 Pages

Identify an historical event that influenced the creation of social welfare policy. In 1906 Upton Sinclair published his novel The Jungle, which ended up shedding light on two concerns Americans were dealing with. The main concern in Sinclair’s novel was about the horrendous living and working conditions of many poor Americans, particularly immigrants, however Sinclair discussed how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were managed, modified by chemicals, and mislabeled for sale to the public (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). President Roosevelt referred to the conditions exposed as "revolting” and further declared to Congress that a law would be needed that will allow the Federal Government to inspect and supervise all aspects of the meat food product (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). Ultimately Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, assisted in passing new federal food safety laws. (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008) What was the social concern that was being addressed? Sinclair’s novel was centered on a young man who had …show more content…

Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, had lobbied for over 20 years for federal food and drug regulation as he had tested chemicals added to preserve foods and found many were dangerous to human health (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). The tumult over The Jungle, strengthened Wiley's lobbying efforts in Congress and on June 30, 1906, President Roosevelt was able to push through the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2008). The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 authorized inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering market. The Pure Food and Drug Act regulated food additives and outlawed misrepresentative labeling of food and drugs. Does that policy exist today? If yes, why do you think it is still in place, and if no, what do you think happened that the policy no longer

Show More
Related

  • Pros And Cons Of Sinc Since Upton Sinclair

    1585 Words  | 7 Pages

    UNSAFE PRODUCTS 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.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Stories That Changed America By Carl Jensen

    1184 Words  | 5 Pages

    Jordan Whitmore History 121 December 1, 2015 Carl Jensen’s Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century Carl Jensen was an author, newspaper reporter, advertising executive, and professor at Sonoma State University. He also founded Project Censored in 1976, a research project on news media censorship, and acted as the director of the program which has remained an important part of the University’s journalistic curriculum since its inception. The techniques used by Jensen to teach journalism have been accepted and used by colleges throughout the country based upon their exceptional quality and standards. Jensen was a strong advocate of the idea of freedom of speech and expression espoused in the First Amendment of the U.S.

    Read More

  • Upton Sinclair's 1906 The Jungle

    314 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sinclair, a socialist writer, was a struggling writer. An editor recommended that Sinclair investigate the strike that was happening in Chicago because of the unfit conditions of meat packers. Sinclair followed his suggestion. In 1904, at the age of 26, he went to Chicago to examine the conditions of the workers in the meat packing industry and figure out why the workers were on strike. Sinclair interviewed not only the workers involved in the meat packing industry but families, lawyers, doctors, and social workers.

    Read More

  • Who Is Upton Sinclair Successful In The Progressive Era?

    573 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Progressive era was a time when reformers wanted to improve American life. Among these reformers were investigative journalists called muckrakers, who sought to expose social problems. In 1906, Upton Sinclair wrote a novel that changed America for the better. Sinclair, a muckraker, wanted to expose the evils of the meatpacking industry, especially with respect to working conditions. Sinclair went undercover into the factories to gain first-hand information on the scandals of the meat industry.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

    610 Words  | 3 Pages

    Around seventy percent of Americans claim to hate their job, but The Jungle by Upton Sinclair puts into perspective how fortunate they really are (Adeline). This novel goes into detail about what was actually happening in the meat packing plants of 1906 and how it affected the employees’ mental and physical health. The workers in the meat packing plants had it much worse than those seventy percent today. They described their job with many negative words such as “agony”. The use of the word “agony” in The Jungle proves that the so-called employees were actually just slaves.

    Read More

  • Progressive Era Dbq

    786 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Progressive reformers worked to improve the social, political, and economic problems in American society. Throughout this time, muckrakers helped reformers by revealing injustices to Americans through journalism, books, campaigns, photographs, and political cartoons. Poor working conditions, low quality of consumer products, and inferior democracy were present in American life during the Progressive Era; reforms such as state actions, the Meat Inspection Act, and Direct Primary helped to eliminate these corruptions. An issue society faced during the Progressive Era was poor working conditions. In Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, he writes that if a person found anyone who uses knives in this factory,

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Muuckraker Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    834 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the early 1900s, food safety was an incredibly unfamiliar and overlooked part of America’s food industry. Written by muckraker Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, was a controversial novel that depicted the harsh living and working conditions of immigrants working in the food industry. After the release of The Jungle, thousands of meat-eating Americans were horrified at what had been happening in factories. Disgusting yet accurate details presented in The Jungle were the basis for the creation of laws to stop food production from becoming so unsanitary.

    Read More

  • Upton Sinclair The Jungle Summary

    599 Words  | 3 Pages

    Undeniably, this book led to a public outrage as the public reacted shockingly about the awful unsanitary conditions as well as falsely labeled meat packages. As a consequence, meat sales declined sharply. If the book’s story was untrue, the public outrage could never be experienced. What is more, the government inspection program that existed during the time was approved in 1891 and was not adequate to guarantee the safety and health of the country's meat supply. More specifically, the 1891 act only mandated inspection of meat planned for export, thereby leaving the US consumers at health

    Read More

  • The Meat Inspection Of The Meat Industry In Theodore Roosevelt's After The Facts

    537 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I first read Chapter Ten of “After the Fact”, by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, I was shocked at the methods meat factories use in preparing their products. I was especially shocked seeing as now; we have so many food regulations that most people don’t think twice about the food that is going in their bodies. I am now thinking, do these things still appear in our lives today? It was nice to know that Theodore Roosevelt took action in an attempt to fix these major problems. He became aware of the poor conditions of the meat industry through the book “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.

    Read More

  • Women's Problems During The Progressive Era

    831 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Progressive Era was a period of time, from 1890 to 1920, that people start believing that the society problem could be faded by providing a safe environment, good education and an efficient workplace. The people who wanted changes in the society were called Progressives. Most of them were well educated, journalist, they went to college. There were a lot of problems that people tried to fix them or improve them, most of them were fixed but other we are still trying to fix them. During this period there were a lot of issues and problems but there were some prominent ones, like: Women Suffrage, Temperance or Food and Health.

    Read More

  • Social And Economic Problems In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1037 Words  | 5 Pages

    How would you feel people would feel knowing that they were ingesting contaminated foods? This was the case in the late 18th hundred and early 19th hundred many social and economic problems came to be in the United States. For example, one of the many problems that arose during these years were the sanitation conditions in the companies. To be more precise, food companies were getting away with many of the inspections the government would act on. Meat packing industries were becoming more unsafe everyday.

    Read More

  • The Economic Tension In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1899 Words  | 8 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Upton Sinclair The Jungle Sparknotes

    1569 Words  | 7 Pages

    They provided a voice for the American people providing an accurate picture of living conditions in communities. Upton Sinclair was as famous writer that wrote a novel called The Jungle that provided an accurate description of the living conditions of immigrants in Chicago and the industrial industry. The novel caused a heightened concern for safety from consumers and public officials and also targeted concerns of sanitary issues and packaging violation in the meatpacking industry. Upton Sinclair was considered a muckraker journalist that was responsible for inspiring public outrage which, cause numerous political movements in the early 1900’s. Sinclair’s novel, the Jungle exposed the inhumane living conditions and treatment of immigrants while also exposing the unsanitary conditions of the meat packaging industry.

    Read More

  • Social, Political, And International Repercussions Of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1522 Words  | 7 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Meatpacking Workers In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

    1060 Words  | 5 Pages

    However, readers at the time were not very concerned about the petty immigrants living on the lower rung of society. Rather, they cared about what affected them most: the condition of the meat they were eating-- and had been eating-- for years, that were produced by some of the very factories mentioned in Sinclair’s novel. For the majority of The Jungle’s readers, the fact that poor immigrants were being exploited was not bothersome. Instead, the fact that the food that readers had been eating for years contained the power to kill them seemed shocking, pushing the nation into a worried frenzy. Readers were disgusted by the facts they were reading, catalyzing the creation of administrations like the FDA.

    Read More

More about Summary Of The Jungle By 1906 Upton Sinclair

Open Document