Comparing The Upton Sinclair And The Jungle

Immigrants and other impoverished workers still to this day have an extremely hard time keeping their jobs. This statistic also contributes to a lack of reported injuries that the workers make because they have a fear of losing out on their highly competitive job. The worker also may not report it as there as incentives from supervisors not to. With a number so high Upton Sinclair is rolling over in his grave, shouting socialist messages. Even with all the technological advances in the 21st century, there are still people getting their index fingers chopped off while cutting cows apart day in and day out.
Before the meatpacking and food industry as a whole was subjected to muckraking, they expected that what the public didn’t know about the
Sinclair decided almost as an afterthought to include a chapter about the things that went on after the factories closed for the day. He wrote that workers would process dead, injured, and diseased animals after regular hours when none of the meat inspectors were around. Sinclair explained how pork fat and beef scraps were canned and labeled as "potted chicken". This is an extremely illegal act that highlights how loosely the food safety was monitored during the time. Anything could be put into a can and as long as it had a good looking label it would hit the shelves of any local store. Dead and diseased animals were supposed to be thrown away and not used because of the hazards it could have on a person's health, but none of that concerned the wealthy owners. Sinclair wrote that meat for canning and sausage was piled on the floor before workers carried it off in carts holding sawdust, human spit and urine, rat dung, rat poison, and even dead rats. Something that any health monitor would see again reinforces the idea that any federal or state laws regard food safety were being ignored. The health standard for these factories was about the same of any sewage system during the time. The description of such an unsanitary process left millions of americans gagging, demanding for reform. The most gripping of all Sinclair’s writing about the treacherous
The White House was bombarded with mail calling for reform of the meat-packing industry after The Jungle was published, and after reading The Jungle, President Roosevelt invited Sinclair to the White House to discuss it. The president then appointed a special commission to investigate Chicago's slaughterhouses. Although TR did not like Sinclair due to his Socialist views, he could not avoid the tornado of complaints by Americans to rectify the food safety situations going on all around the country. The reaction to the book/series of articles was so profound that it was clear early the effect The Jungle would have on the meatpacking industry would be serious. The Food and Drug Safety Act was created in 1906, the same year The Jungle was published. This act, which the Bureau of Chemistry was charged to administer, prohibited the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs under penalty of seizure of the questionable products and/or prosecution of the responsible parties. The basis of the law rested on the regulation of product labeling rather than pre-market approval. The idea that products now must be labeled with exactly what went into it had a direct correlation to the accusation made by Sinclair of the after hours practices in the Chicago factories. The act was also established in 1906,