The Jungle

The Jungle shows how America is a land for opportunity for immigrants. It explains how harsh the conditions were for the working class in the early 1900s. How families of immigrants would travel to America just for a fresh start to a new life. It also shows how hard it was to keep a job because if you were sick for a day you could lose your job. It shows how easy it was for American business men to rip off an immigrant who could not read English.
Many of the social problems were new problems with the beginning of urbanization and industrialization. Instead of everybody having a piece of land and the ability to grow their own food, multitudes of people were stuck in large urban centers, living in tenement housing and spending their entire lives in close proximity to one another. The cities were dirty and many people lived in poverty. Working conditions were horrible and most people hated the work that they had to do. People would be pushing pennies and saving as much money as they could just to try to survive from paycheck to paycheck. Many children had to give up childhood to go to work just to help support their family. As you read in the jungle it becomes clear that a family could not support itself off of one paycheck so eventually the family realized they needed three or four to even be able to live in their house.
In the early 1900s there was a very big push for political reform. American businesses had turned to laissiez - fair which took government out of business and so bussineeses turned to trusts which was a way for someone to buy into a business and run it. The presidential election of 1900 created the impression that business was clearly on the side of the Republican Party and that rural and agricultural interests were in the Democrats' camp. The Republicans came under the sway of the "insurgent," or progressive, wing, led by a new generation of reformers, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette. A moderate in 1901-1904, Rovelt moved to the left of center during his second term. He sowed the seeds of party disintegratioosen during the 1908 election campaign, when he personally selected his successor, the more conservative William Howard Taft. While Roosevelt implied that Taft would continue his policies, Taft did not agree with Roosevelt on the legal powers of the chief executive, and his different approach disappointed the insurgents and brought him closer to the conservatives in the party. Both major parties had to concern themselves with the growing influence of the Socialists. The Democrats and the Republicans alike had to remain accountable to the workingman. The main economic problem; in the early 1900's were the trusts. A trust is a combination of firms or corporations for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices throughout a business or an industry. By eliminating competition, trusts could charge whatever price they chose. Corporate greed, rather than market demands, determined the price for products. And so companies became monopolies. Teddy Roosevelt believed the offending corporations needed to be regulated, not destroyed and thus began the anti-trust movement. Also during this time Roosevelt was pushing for the creation of Panama canal which was an endless money pit for America.