Inequality among humans has been and always will be a problem in the world. Large sums of people are extremely wealthy, live in mansions, drive multiple cars, and will never have a financial worry. Even larger sums of people are stuck working like slaves each day, and all they have to show for it is a cement box and if lucky a few personal belongings. A great example of these two life realities is the existence and operation of sweatshops. Huge companies like Wal-Mart, Nike, Apple and many others makes tons of money in the United States, while people in third world countries are doing their dirty work for around a dollar a day! It is apparent after reading “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair that sweatshops have been an issue and huge struggle for …show more content…
He wanted to make a point and prove to people around the U.S. the reality of the working conditions immigrants were placed in. A little while after this novel had been open to the public, Upton Sinclair was quoted saying, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” In a simplified breakdown of this quote, Sinclair meant that he wanted to help meatpacking workers, not to improve the quality of meat. The focus was meant to be on the working conditions, not the quality of the product. He incorporated many views and opinions into the text that was hoping to nudge the public toward a socialistic society. The hope for redistribution of wealth in the United States was extremely apparent. All the things Jurgis went through in his life really related back to the fact that he worked his butt off and was still very poor and underappreciated. After all the very difficult things Jurgis overcame, he finally found some hope and purpose combining some of his beliefs with that of the Socialist Party. Sinclair was so determined before drafting this novel that he took a trip to Chicago to get a firsthand visual of what was really going on and how the industry worked behind the scenes (Schlosser, ”I Aimed For The Public’s Heart….”). It is obvious that this trip really influenced his writing and made the novel that much more important to him. Unfortunately for …show more content…
The way operations are happening certain business owners are completely taking advantage of people that would do anything to make money just to support their family, while owners sit back and become rich. It is obvious that these people need work and financial help, so to make the process ethical the hard workers in sweatshops should make a reasonable and fair wage. There is no reason the top people in a company should have too much money to know what to do with it while the people that are killing themselves manufacturing the products all day live the way they have been for years. There is no such thing as a “good business” if the manufactures are not even paid a living wage. Within a business, it would be hard to argue that the people in a factory-working sunrise to sunset do not have the most demanding task. As bad as people need money in third world countries in 2015, a solution to sweatshops and people being tremendously under paid may be impossible. After putting some thought into this issue, the only possible solution I came up with that may reduce this unjust reality is the hope that future business owners care just as much about their workers’ lives as they do about their own. Like I stated earlier, there is no reason for an owner to have five different houses in five different places, while thousands of people doing the work for them share a cement
The period of time running from the 1890’s through the early 1930’s is often referred to as the “Progressive Era.” It was a time where names such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller stood for the progress of America and their great contributions to American industry and innovation. This chapter however, has a much darker side. Deplorable working conditions, rampant political corruption and power hungry monopolies and trusts threatened the working class of America and the steady influx of European immigrants hoping to make a better life for themselves and their families. What started as a grass-roots movement pushing for political reform at the local and municipal levels soon began to encompass
“You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn’t like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I’ve been trying to change it ever since” (azquotes). The quote in the previous sentence reveals the structure by which Upton Sinclair lived his life. During his lifetime, he penned many novels, articles and stories that changes the way America functioned then, and the way America continues to function now. One novel created by Upton Sinclair was The Jungle. This story of pain, suffering and tragedy brought the dangers of the meat packing industry to the people of America. He was able to use his socialist views to inspire the novel The Jungle, which passed many laws and made meat-packing plants making
To begin with, improve their working conditions. Promulgated mental and physical abuses sweatshops don’t delivered alleviate poverty. Poor working conditions have been around for centuries. Here in America, we have a stronger labor laws than most undeveloped countries, but it is not free of sweatshops. Reading I found out that many of the factory buildings are crowded, have windowless walls, filthy, back-breaking and hazardous. With little ventilations, heat, and stuffy some factory operators require their employees to work in bad working orders. In my opinion I feel that they are often unaware of their own rights, but have no choice but to continue to work because sweatshop managers threaten to punish them for insubordination. Now labor and human rights activists have been successful at raising public awareness regarding labor practices in both America and off-shore manufacturing facilities. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, United Students Against Sweatshops, the National Labor Coalition, Sweatshop Watch, and the Interfaith Center of Corporate Responsibility have accused multinational enterprises (MNEs), like Nike, Wal-Mart, Disney, and others of the pernicious exploitation of workers (Arnold and Bowie 221). German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, " Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own ...
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
These abuses are neither just nor irreconcilable, but many people believe that sweatshops are an economic necessity and will come to pass on their own with economic development. Closer examination of both the social and economic dimensions of sweatshop labor, however, reveals this presumption to be far from the truth.
Many impoverished people immigrated to America in hopes of achieving the American Dream but instead were faced with dangerous working conditions while the factory and corporation owners increased their wealth and profit by exploiting this cheap means of labor. Upton Sinclair succeeded to show the nature of the wage slavery occurring in America in the beginning of the twentieth century. People felt distressed and unimportant in the community because they were being used by the wealthy to generate capital leading the industry for the future success and efficacy in the market. Upton Sinclair was an American journalist who incorporated his personal research of the meatpacking industry conditions and people’s life, as well as the structure of the present business into the novel under analysis. Thus, real facts and data were incorporated into this literary work, which helps the audience to feel involved in the work and understand the overall atmosphe...
Looking at today's society, there is a lot of exploitation and hegemony among certain groups. Major global conglomerates exploit the people of many poorer countries for cheap labor. To the people overseas, they are receiving wages that are fairly high for their standards. As for the companies, they are making a lot of money due to cheap labor cost.
These millionaires and billionaires have different intentions they want to make more money and save money as well like in sweatshops. They send manufacturing jobs overseas where they can pay people less than a dollar an hour in unsuitable conditions. "In developing countries, an estimated 168 million children ages 5 to 14 are forced to work."(DoSomething.Org). From personal knowledge learned of being an American, children must be at least the age of 16 with consent from a parent to work. But even then you can only work so many hours at that age.” At least 21 workers died and 50 were hurt when a fire swept through a Bangladeshi factory making clothes for budget retailer H&M and other firms as they worked at night to fulfill orders."(Martin Hickman) Sweatshops are very dangerous places to work in due to lack of safety precautions: for example fire extinguishers, exit doors, and stairs
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, The Jungle, he exposes corruption in both business and politics, as well as its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. In a protest novel, the ills of society are dramatized for its effect on its characters in the story. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the lethal and penurious conditions that laborers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics, and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
Even though monopolies are illegal, public corruption allows companies to form and continues to be a problem today. In an article published by the Los Angeles, Anh Do
The portrayal of the ‘American Dream’—that one could start out at the bottom and work their way up to become rich—was appealing to immigrants because it convinced them they could accomplish this easier in America rather than in their home country. In the 19th century, leading into the early 20th century, America had a flood of immigrants due to the high demand for labour workers. Stockyards were some of the earliest rising companies of the U.S.A., which provided many job opportunities. In 1904 there was a failed strike against a stockyard in Chicago which attracted an American writer named Upton Sinclair, which is stated in the introduction of The Jungle (14). He developed a motif to write the muckraking novel, The Jungle published in 1906.
...d on his real life experiences in Chicago, which he used to then write the book. One who has read the book would also say that Mr. Sinclair is in favor of these government regulations that we have today, as the end of the book quickly transforms into a sort of socialist propaganda, which includs a 7-page pathos-based speech by a socialist speaker in the story; the book ends with a large socialist movement ramping up all over the nation with Jurgis being a part of it. While the need for socialism is debatable, the regulations that we have in place today are derived from lesser forms of Socialism, and are undebatably in place for the betterment of our society.
The public’s reaction created unintended consequences from the author’s original intent. Sinclair himself writes "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Publishing the novel led to new federal food safety laws such as the Pure Food and Drug act and the Meat Inspection Act. During his job Jurgis noticed the meat factory was a place “...where men welcomed tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding...”(112). As it would fatten them up and the factory could sell disease ridden meat. Moreover, on the killing floor, they would butcher “slunk calves” for meat. Slunk calves are born prematurely and is against the law to process this cow meat for
In 1906, Upton Sinclair's Book The Jungle was published in book form; it had previously been published as a newspaper serial in 1905. Few works of literature have changed history in the United States so much as The Jungle did when it was published. It has been said that the book led to the direct passage of the "Pure Food and Drug Act" of 1906 (Dickstein) and that it lead to a decades long decline in meat consumption is the United States.
The people who read it were so appalled by the disgusting filth, and the actual ingredients of the processed meat. The book provided the final drive for way for the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act and truth in labeling all passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Also in the story, Sinclair concerns the readers with the abuse of immigrant workers, both men and women. This is partially why he uses the story of the man moving from Lithuania to America.