Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

The Jungle Review
The Jungle is a perfect example of an effective form of muckraking journalism that affected the masses and catalyzed the reform movements of the Progressive Era. The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was a story that not only focused on the unfortunate life of a Lithuanian family headed by a man named Jurgis, searching for the American dream, but also the corruption and reform attempts of the Chicago government and Packingtown. Even though Sinclair discusses the corruption, bribery, and union system that control the working class, it is left to the reader to decide whether Sinclair’s accounts are accurate depictions of Chicagoan society. In comparison to historical facts and documents discussed in class, the stories of reform
and corruption amongst the classes in The Jungle are accurately depicted as truthful to an extent. Upton Sinclair uses each chapter of this book to convey the working class’ failures in the economic and social system of Chicago. His story centers on Jurgis, a Lithuanian national and the family he brought to America to search for freedom and prosperity. Their plight represents the struggle of the working class in capitalist America. 1 Throughout the novel, Jurgis and his family have a high belief that their hard work and strong ethics will set them up for a successful and happy future, but in each chapter there is something that makes this goal virtually unobtainable. For example, Jurgis is prideful of his new job at the slaughterhouse, but many of the other workers say that over time, Jurgis will grow to hate his jobs and conditions they work in just like the rest.2 Later on, Marija, Jurgis’ wife’s cousin, is fired for being in a union that goes on strike.3 This situation was common amongst other historical strikes by unions. These unions would fight for higher wages and better conditions, but they would lose many of the strikes because laws gave the companies all of the power. Many times the union workers are replaced with cheaper labor, an example being Marija’s situation. Another situation that shows the lack of worker’s rights of that era, is when Jurgis gets injured and the company wont hire him back, when it is the company’s poor conditions and long hours that made him weak and useless.4 First reluctant to join the union, Jurgis sees the upside to being part of a group that has the potential to better their situation. However, his new job doesn’t last long, as the factory is closed down due to demand, this raises the question, what does it matter if the employers are nice people, if their business fail because of it, leaving everyone broke?5 In the Jungle, Jurgis, who represents the working class, is influenced by many middle class figures.
He is influenced by their corruption and their good deeds, switching both sides many times. First, when Jurgis and his family move to America, he is helped out by a friend that moved to America previously and made a decent middle class living as an owner of a butcher shop.6 After a run of bad look for Jurgis and his family, he meets a woman that is keen on improving their situation. As the wife of a factory owner, she uses her connections to get Jurgis a good paying job. However nice this woman is, the fact is that she still uses unethical ways by threatening her husband to give Jurgis the job, even if it is the right thing to do.7 Later on after Jurgis gets injured, he turns to the corrupt connections of a political machine to make quick money. This part of the middle class, more corrupt than the other more honest people he has met, ask him to do things that don’t always better the workers rights and conditions, when that’s what he used to care about.8 These political machines made certain working class men into middle class men with power and were able to influence their constituents to vote for the politician that would provide better benefits for workers and the corrupt members of the political machine. It was important for these political machines to gain the power of the masses in the working class, because that gave them power in our modern government system of democracy. One point that Sinclair exaggerates though to help make the novel have more meaning, is that these political machines were not always as corrupt and wild as stated, there were some such as New York’s Tammany Hall organization, that was well structured and at times improved urban infrastructure, but this case is rare and more of an exception rather than the rule.9 However fortunate Jurgis was to have this position, his life always got worse, this is scene as a way for Sinclair to demonstrate
the failure of the capitalist system throughout the book, corrupt or fair. These examples of unions’ attempts at reform, as well as corrupt attempts show that the middle class was influential to the working class in almost every aspect. As mentioned before political machines played important roles in every aspect of reform and this brings the book to its ultimate argument that capitalism is system that has flaws in every class and should be changed. The government system that is being advocated, using Jurgis horrifying reality as an example of the flaws associated with American capitalism, is socialism. Throughout the book, it is evident that the government and the one-sided laws are in need of reform. While Sinclair doesn’t touch on the great efforts of reform in the book, he does advocate for them. This book was written to advocate for a socialist movement in America that would end the poverty and suffering of the masses and bring new vision to America. However the point that many got away from it because of the lack of education for the masses, was more towards the horrible conditions of these factories. So while this book did create change, it was not in the way Sinclair, a socialist, had intended. His story was able to start reform movements in the middle class that tried to end corrupt business practices, improve workers’ lives, and fight political machines. The book portrays capitalism as an evil responsible for ruining the lives of children, creating massive shortcuts in business ethics and he uses Jurgis’ story to illustrate a most horrifying image of the American dream. Sinclair proposes through the story that socialism is the cure for Jurgis’ and the rest of the working class’s problems. He attempts to show that Jurgis’ life is turning around because of his support for Socialism; this is an example of propaganda in favor of socialism.10 By making Jurgis’ life improve at the end of the book, it is Sinclair’s attempt to leave the reader thinking that socialism fixed his problems and therefore everyone needs socialism. There are points that Sinclair makes that are correct, however while The Jungle was effective in providing reform in the working class, middle class, and government and social system, it did not spread the acceptance of socialism as intended. Why is that? The main point of this book, to spread socialism, was not accepted by the masses because as Sinclair said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”11 This means that his attempt to show an appeal to socialism was ignored due to the intense graphic nature of the story. No while it didn’t spread the socialist movement to a powerful empire as wanted, it did bring the type of reform that workers saw implemented in the future. Therefore, Sinclair’s story of Jurgis did represent an accurate yet overly graphic look at these three types of reform. However, it was the book’s graphic nature that clouded the eyes of the reader from seeing beyond the horrible conditions, to the book’s socialistic nature.

Bibliography
Bloom, Harold. Editor, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, (Infobase Publishing, 2002, p 11.

Mary Norton, Carol Sheriff, David Blight, Howard Chudacoff, Fredrick Logevall, and Beth
Bailey, A People & A Nation Ninth Edition Volume II: Since 1865 (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2012), p 578.

Upton, Sinclair. The Jungle. (Massachusetts, Cambridge: 1971).