Working Conditions Exposed In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel set at the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago, Illinois. Jurgis Rudkus and his family, immigrants from Lithuanian, decided to move to the United States to follow the “American Dream”. They settled in Chicago and started to work in Packing town. Unlike the working conditions of today, they encountered the worst working conditions possible, testing their family life and values, and how authority figures were there for their own gain, disregarding basic human rights.
Jurgis and his family first arrived in Chicago, to find out that people were not as hospitable as they thought, and that their cousin was not as profitable as well. They had to settle in a place were …show more content…
He soon found out the working conditions were not what he ever thought they would be. “ The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked again, and so on, until by night-time a man would be walking on great lumps the size of the feet of an elephant” (Sinclair, p. 85). Jurgis dad, Dede Antanas, finds a job in which he had to give part of his wage to the person who helped him find the job. Dede was old and the working conditions killed him. There was not any manner of hygiene in packing town; rotten and diseased meat was processed for human consumption. Furthermore, supervisors and inspectors would purposely ignore the fact if that meant an extra dollar in their pockets. When Jurgis had an accident at work and had to be out of work for months, the children who were too young to work, were forced to work to compensate for Jurgis lack of income. Jurgis and his family find out soon enough the full burden of Capitalism at work.
The Jungle’s contribution to American Society was the start of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (FDA) which prohibits the sale, manufacture, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous o deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors (FDA act of 1906). Even though the working conditions were not address at the time The Jungle was written, it helped
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a novel set at the meatpacking plants and stockyards of Chicago, Illinois. Jurgis Rudkus and his family, immigrants from Lithuanian, decided to move to the United States to follow the “American Dream”. They settled in Chicago and started to work in Packing town. Unlike the working conditions of today, they encountered the worst working conditions possible, testing their family life and values, and how authority figures were there for their own gain, disregarding basic human rights.
Jurgis and his family first arrived in Chicago, to find out that people were not as hospitable as they thought, and that their cousin was not as profitable as well. They had to settle in a place were …show more content…
He soon found out the working conditions were not what he ever thought they would be. “ The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked again, and so on, until by night-time a man would be walking on great lumps the size of the feet of an elephant” (Sinclair, p. 85). Jurgis dad, Dede Antanas, finds a job in which he had to give part of his wage to the person who helped him find the job. Dede was old and the working conditions killed him. There was not any manner of hygiene in packing town; rotten and diseased meat was processed for human consumption. Furthermore, supervisors and inspectors would purposely ignore the fact if that meant an extra dollar in their pockets. When Jurgis had an accident at work and had to be out of work for months, the children who were too young to work, were forced to work to compensate for Jurgis lack of income. Jurgis and his family find out soon enough the full burden of Capitalism at work.
The Jungle’s contribution to American Society was the start of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 (FDA) which prohibits the sale, manufacture, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous o deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors (FDA act of 1906). Even though the working conditions were not address at the time The Jungle was written, it helped