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Upton sinclair quizlet
How did factories change America in the 19th century
How did factories change America in the 19th century
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Taking place in the jungle of meat packing factories during the early 1900s in Chicago, a journalist by the name of Upton Sinclair dissects the savage inner workings of America’s working class factory lifestyle. Sinclair portrayed the grim circumstance that workers faced and the exploited lives of factory workers in Chicago. He became what was then called a mudrucker; a journalist who goes undercover to see first hand the conditions they were investigating. Being in poor fortune, Sinclair was able to blend into the surrounds of the factory life with his poor grimy clothing. The undercover journalist would walk into the factory with the rest of the men, examine its conditions, and record them when he returned home. It is the worker’s conditions Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible. Hundreds of people died that day. A good portion of the women who worked at the factory died from the fire, the others decided to jump out of the building to their death. At the end of the day, the families who had suffered a loss due to the fire received at most $75 as compensation. The corporation learned nothing from the disaster. However, this was an eye opener for some of the journalists who wanted to make a change. Around the same time, journalists started to go undercover to experience first hand just how corrupt the system had become. One of the most influential mudruckers is Upton Sinclair who went undercover in a meat packing factory and recorded his analysis of the Built off of the backs of immigrants, it is the very same people that are poorly mistreated but are the reason for the country's booming economy. Yet, a century ago these migrant workers who devoted their health and time to the factories receive a poor man’s salary. They worked long strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process. The corporation had no compassion towards its laborers. This extract from Sinclair’s novel The Jungle explains the terrible conditions in which employees worked: “...your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell,” (Sinclair, 12). Mikalos, a character in the novel, is used in this instance to personify the way in which the employees had to conduct their job. They had to focus on working as fast as humanly possible even if they were injured. The character states that he accidently made a laceration while deboning an animal. Even though his injury is significant, he is not to breathe a word of it to his employer. The employer cares not of the accident nor of the worker wasting valuable time chatting about “frivolous” events such as their health. It did not matter if a laborer lost a finger, the only thing that mattered to the businessmen was making more money. This was how life was working in the factory and it shows that the industries
Factory workers worked twelve to fifteen hours a day in hazardous condition. There were no protective rules for women and children and no insurances for job-related accidents or industrial illness. The workers were obliged to trade at company store
...s leading up to the fire and the aftermath of the event that makes this event so influential and important. The reforms made afterwards within New York legislation soon spread across the nation, and to almost every manufacturer in the country. It changed how workers were treated, the conditions in which they worked, and other legalities that protected their rights as workers and as human beings. This event also lead to the changing of lives through recognition women within the workforce, to women holding office in national politics, and eventually women’s suffrage. The fire impacted reformers and thinkers who went on to create the ideals within the New Deal. The majority of the legislation that was passed because of the outcome of the fire is still in effect today, over 100 years later. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire changed the nation’s workforce completely.
Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20th 1978. Sinclair grew up in a broken household; his father was an alcohol salesman and killed himself drinking. While his mother would not even think about drinking alcohol. So these personalities naturally clashed. So Sinclair found some solace in books, Sinclair was a natural writer and he began publishing at the young age of fifteen years old. Sinclair started off going to school at a small college by the name of New York City College. This was just temporary as Sinclair would need time and money to move higher up to a form of better education. So as a result Sinclair took the initiative and he started writing columns on ethnic jokes and hack fiction for small magazines in New York. The money he earned writing these columns allowed him to completely pay for New York City College, and eventually enroll to attend Columbia University. Sinclair worked as hard as he possibly could to get into Columbia University and he was going to do the absolute best he could while he was attending the University. Since Sinclair needed ex...
Upon his 1906 publishing of The Jungle, Sinclair was coined as an avid “muckraker” when President Roosevelt addressed an audience in April of that year. When asked whether or not the novel provided a realistic account of workers conditions within the Chicago meat packing industry, Roosevelt accused Sinclair of being a liar in an attempt to discredit him. A large part of this was credited to Roosevelt’s personal distaste for Sinclair’s apparent link to the Socialist party but, Roosevelt was also unaware that Sinclair had worked undercover at the plant to gather first hand and accurate accounts. The Jungle shined light on the poor working conditions of workers in a meat packing facility. Throughout the novel, Sinclair gave gruesome examples of what workers went through each and every day. Each department of the facility was faced with its own risks and challenges, “There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
Social Issues of Work in Ben Hamper's Book Riverhead Ben Hampers book Rivethead; Tales From The Assembly Line is a gritty in your face account of a factory workers struggles against his factory, his co-workers, and the time clock. Hamper makes no apologies for any of his actions, many of which were unorthodox or illegal. Instead he justifies them in a way that makes the factory workers strife apparent to those who have never set foot on an assembly line and wouldn’t have the vaguest idea how much blood, sweat and tears go into the products we take for granted everyday.
In the late nineteenth century, many European immigrants traveled to the United States in search of a better life and good fortune. The unskilled industries of the Eastern United States eagerly employed these men who were willing to work long hours for low wages just to earn their food and board. Among the most heavily recruiting industries were the railroads and the steel mills of Western Pennsylvania. Particularly in the steel mills, the working conditions for these immigrants were very dangerous. Many men lost their lives to these giant steel-making machines. The immigrants suffered the most and also worked the most hours for the least amount of money. Living conditions were also poor, and often these immigrants would barely have enough money and time to do anything but work, eat, and sleep. There was also a continuous struggle between the workers and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. The capitalists were a very small, elite group of rich men who held most of the wealth in their industries. Strikes broke out often, some ending in violence and death. Many workers had no political freedom or even a voice in the company that employed them. However, through all of these hardships, the immigrants continued their struggle for a better life.
At the beginnings of the 1900s, some leading magazines in the U.S have already started to exhibit choking reports about unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other offenses; which helped their sales to soar. In this context, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposé on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declared“ I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To get a direct knowledge of the work, he sneaked into the packing plants as a pretended worker. He toured the streets of Packingtown, the area near the stockyards where the workers live. He approached people, from different walks of life, who could provide useful information about conditions in Packingtown. At the end of seven weeks, he returned home to New Jersey, shut himself up in a small cabin, wrote for nine months, and produced The Jungle (Cherny).
The book center on immigration heavily due to the fact that many people during the industrial revolution period came to America for better working opportunities, of course America needed them because they provided a cheap source of labor. The Jungle, focuses primarily on the poorer European migrating into the United States, in which changed the demographics of America cities by crowding them even more. Throughout The Jungle we see that Jurgis and his family lived in an overcrowded areas, with run down buildings and no access to clean water or proper sewage systems (“Sinclair”). Upton Sinclair shows us how the billionaire company owners mis use these migrant workers throughout the book. The book explains the gruesome inside of the factories and how at times people would get stuck in the machines and it would kill them; leaving the remains in the meat they were making,. Sinclair also explains that during the winter months (the worst months according to Jurgis) many workers would get frost bite due to lack of clothing, and how Jurgis got an infection on his foot that put him out of work for months due to the hazards conditions within the factory
Sinclair’s full name is Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878. From early age he has been exposed to differences which might’ve influenced him greatly when it came to his thinking later on in life. His father was an alcoholic liquor salesman and his mother was religiously strict. He was raised on the edge of poverty but he was exposed to riches when it came to his mother’s wealthy family.
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.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
The real story is about Lithuanian immigrants who move to the stockyards of Chicago in hopes of a better life. Unfortunately, their hopes are quickly dashed. Like thousands of other untrained immigrants their need for money forces them into horrible work in order to make ends meet. In the story, he is being shown the different factories and rooms in which the animals are killed and made into the meat which "fed America". The book uses vivid descriptions and makes the atmosphere seem really quite nauseating.
“Rise up! When you’re living on your knees, you rise up.” In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton and his fellow colonists “rise up” against the British monarchy’s oppression of the colonies. The lyric very much relates to Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle. The Jungle follows the story of an immigrant family living in Chicago whose lives and human dignities are exploited due to American Capitalism and corruption. Sinclair conveys his attitude toward this through multiple voices, and ultimately, elucidates the need for the working class to “rise up” against corporate America. One of the voices represents America’s corrupt Capitalists and how they dissuade workers from going on strike. Another explicitly tells
The documentary strived to show us how factories were corrupt that they couldn’t provide good working conditions for the workers until we lost people. This documentary is about the tragic fire that took place on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle factory. We can clearly see through this documentary that these people didn’t matter to the factory owners because their needs were not met. The documentary shows that the year before the fire took place the workers led a strike asking for better working conditions, but obviously their voices were not heard. After the fire took place this is when factories started improving working conditions. It is sad to learn that it took 146 lives of innocent people in order for factory owners to be convinced that they need to improve the poor working
The novel focuses on the negative aspects of capitalism and sheds a positive light on communism. Steinbeck proves that there are many problems in capitalism with the way the migrants suffered during the era of the Great Depression. The economic slump, which many people assume affected the urban populations, was even harsher on the migrants. Steinbeck, throughout his novel, reveals the plight of the migrant workers during the Depression and how capitalism has crushed them. He reaches out to his readers and plants the idea that the glorified capitalism in America is not what it seems, and that any path, even communism, is preferable.