The Evils of Capitalism in The Jungle
The American author, Upton Sinclair, popular for his muckraking of the Industrial Revolution, led a life that prepared him to publicize social issues. He was born September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland to Upton Sr. and Priscilla Sinclair. While both his parents and grandparents were socially prominent, he observed financial strain in his parents’ marriage. “Whether in Baltimore or later in New York City, his parents often lived in squalor, moving from one cheap boardinghouse or hotel to another and sharing rooms with rats and bedbugs. Compared to the homeless children he saw everyday, Sinclair felt fortunate but also angry. During most summers he lived luxuriously in the country with his mother’s wealthy
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In 1900 he married his first wife, Meta Fuller, and in 1901 his son David was born. In the same year, he began writing his first book; he completed more than 90 novels before his death. As Sinclair grew older, he became more active as a prominent socialist. “His public stature changed dramatically in 1905, after the socialist weekly Appeal to Reason sent Sinclair undercover to investigate conditions in the Chicago stockyards. The result of his seven-week investigation was The Jungle, first published in serial form by Appeal to Reason in 1905 and then as a book in 1906. Though intended to create sympathy for the exploited and poorly treated immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry, the novel instead aroused widespread public indignation at the low quality of and impurities in processed meats and thus helped bring about the passage of federal food-inspection laws. As Sinclair commented at the time, ‘I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,’” ( ) He used the profits from The Jungle to cofound the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905 and the socialist community, Helicon Home Colony, in 1906. With his second wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, he moved to California to continue …show more content…
Sinclair wrote his book to be relevant to the current events in Chicago in the early 1900’s. Beginning before the Civil War, the city had been developing into a meatpacking industry headquarters. Four companies created a monopoly of the meatpacking business, taking over control of all capital goods and increasing the market for packaged meat. With this growth in industry came a surplus of immigrant workers from Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Germany, Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, and China. To survive in Chicago, the immigrants lived as wage slaves. They worked in the packinghouses and associated business for unreasonable wages and in dangerous and corrupt conditions. Upton Sinclair’s venture into the packinghouses and his resulting book opened the eyes of the government to the issues in Chicago. He intended for his book to wake America up to the social issues in Chicago, but the nation directed its focus towards the health aspect of the turmoil. Although President Theodore Roosevelt did not align his views with the 20th century progressives, terming them “muckrakers,” he understood that conditions needed to be changed for the good of the public. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was enacted, authorizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prevent unsafe or mislabeled meat from entering the market. Roosevelt also signed the Pure
The novel follows a family of immigrants from Lithuania working in a meatpacking factory, and as the novel progresses, the reader learns of the revolting conditions within the factories. Sinclair’s The Jungle illustrates the concept of Bitzer’s “Rhetorical Situation” and Emerson’s quote quite effectively. For instance, the horrendous safety and health conditions of the packing factories were the exigencies that Upton Sinclair was making clear to the reader. The rhetorical audience that Sinclair aimed to influence with his novel was Congress and the president, as both had to agree in order to establish health and safety bills to better the conditions within factories. Sinclair’s efforts did not go unnoticed as in 1906 both the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug act were approved by both Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt (Cherny,
After the clean-up, U. S. meat is imported by many countries, opening fresh markets for the packers. Upton Sinclair is supposed to be. to have said that he aimed at the public's heart, and by. accident. He hit it in the stomach.
In 1906, socialist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book he hoped would awaken the American people to the deplorable conditions of workers in the meat packing industry. Instead, the book sent the country reeling with its description of filthy, rat infested plants, suspect meats processed and sold to consumers, and corrupt government inspectors. President Roosevelt became seriously concerned by the charges brought forth by Mr. Sinclair and determined the only way to protect consumers from unscrupulous business and unsafe food was to enforce regulation.
During the late 1800's and early 1900's hundreds of thousands of European immigrants migrated to the United States of America. They had aspirations of success, prosperity and their own conception of the American Dream. The majority of the immigrants believed that their lives would completely change for the better and the new world would bring nothing but happiness. Advertisements that appeared in Europe offered a bright future and economic stability to these naive and hopeful people. Jobs with excellent wages and working conditions, prime safety, and other benefits seemed like a chance in a lifetime to these struggling foreigners. Little did these people know that what they would confront would be the complete antithesis of what they dreamed of.
Socialism versus Capitalism in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Even before the beginning of the twentieth century, the debate between socialists and capitalists has raged. In The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, he portrays capitalism as the cause of all evils in society. Sinclair shows the horrors of capitalism. In The Gospel of Wealth, by Andrew Carnegie, he portrays capitalism as a system of opportunity. However, both Carnegie and Sinclair had something to gain from their writings; both men had an agenda.
Discuss how Upton Sinclair portrays the economic tensions and historical processes at hand in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description
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...
From the unsanitary working conditions to the mistreatment of workers and animals, he wrote about gruesome and upsetting topics that even caught the attention of the government. Because of Sinclair’s novel, the Food and Drug Administration(1906), the Federal Meat Inspection Act(1906), and the Pure Food and Drug Act(1906) were created. However, despite the good it has done for the safety of the people regarding consumption, the book is banned from many schools and libraries for the “violence” it contains. Because of this, many people do not have the chance to read a book that expresses ideas in which arguments that could enrich the reader’s mind that would allow the reader to become a more mature thinker. Although it is possible that the banning of the book was done out of consideration for the people, the right to decide whether to apply a book’s ideals and to be influenced by them should be solely up to the person after that person has decided whether or not the content is offensive or
Jefferson would have approved and even praised the muckrakers. The muckrakers saw how the citizens were “deceived” and were unaware of the terrible working conditions, along with disgusting processes to make products. Muckrakers, such as Upton Sinclair, tried to show the public the “light” and truth of the industries. Sinclair focused on the meatpacking industry in his book The Jungle. The industry put disgusting materials, including bones, into their meats and sausage. Sinclair said, “The use everything about the hog except its squeal.” Sinclair prompted the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 which completely changed the industry and made it safer. Sinclair and other muckrakers attempted to make the United States better for
Instead of a place of money, happiness and opportunity, they find a place of poverty, crime and illness. Because Sincalir wants the people who read his book to sympathize with the characters, he goes to extreme lengths to not attack the American Dream; but instead use all of the struggles that they face to show that what he believes about the economy is true. One of the most important parts of the book was probably the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The act was passed in response to the public’s cry for help over the meat industry’s practice of selling rotten and diseased meat to customers. Sinclair uses the cans of rotten meat to represent the evil of capitalism once more. The cans look appealing to the eye but inside they contain soiled meat, which is unfit for human consumption and made lots of people ill. In the same way, American capitalism presents an attractive face to immigrants, but the America that they find is rotten. The novel’s title symbolizes the true nature of capitalism, Packingtown is in its own way like a jungle. For example, the strong prey on the weak and everyone is fighting for survival. They are fighting over good food that isn’t rotten, to
Capitalism underwent a severe attack at the hands of Upton Sinclair in this novel. By showing the misery that capitalism brought the immigrants through working conditions, living conditions, social conditions, and the overall impossibility to thrive in this new world, Sinclair opened the door for what he believed was the solution: socialism. With the details of the meatpacking industry, the government investigated and the public cried out in disgust and anger. The novel was responsible for the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. With the impact that Sinclair must have known this book would have, it is interesting that he also apparently tried to make it fuction as propaganda against capitalism and pro-socialism.
His writing was on the right track, but he still didn’t have that one book to put him over the top. In 1900 Sinclair married his first wife. This was a start of a whole new era of writing for him. By 1904 Sinclair was moving toward a realistic fiction type of writing. He had become a regular reader of the "Appeal to Reason", which was a popular socialist-populist weekly magazine at that time. Upton’s big break came in 1906 when he published a book called, " The Jungle." As a writer this is where Sinclair gained most of his fame. This book gave him not only fame, but it also led to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. This book had the deepest impact since Harriet Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The books popularity enabled Sinclair to establish and support the socialistic Helicon Home Colony in Englewood, N.J. However the popularity of his type of writing fell away after that year. After " The Jungle" was written it set off many similar studies of a group, and industry. or a region. Among some of them were: "The Metropolis" (1908) which was a exploration of New York people, "King Coal" (1917) which was a story about the Colorado Mining strike of 1914, and "Oil!" which was considered one of Sinclair’s most influential writings.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
How The Jungle Influenced Social Reform and Socialism Beginning in the late 19th century, many people became concerned with many social problems resulting from the industrialization period of the United States. People began to demand reform. The writing of the book The Jungleby Upton Sinclair was one of the most influential tools used to reform many American industries. In this book, Sinclair focuses on the unsanitary conditions and corruption that was involved in the Chicago meat packing industry.