“I wished to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters were doing to their victims; entirely by chance I stumbled on another discovery--what they were doing to the meat-supply of the civilized world. In other words, I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach” (Bloom). With the publication of a single book, Upton Sinclair found himself as a worldwide phenomenon overnight. He received worldwide response to his novel and invitations to lectures all over the world including one to the White House by President Roosevelt. In late 1904, the editor of the Appeal to Reason, a socialist magazine sent Sinclair to Chicago to tell the story of the poor common workingmen and women unfairly enslaved by the vast monopolistic enterprises. He found that he could go anywhere in the stockyards provided that he “[wore] old clothes… and [carried] a workman’s dinner pail”. Sinclair spent seven weeks in Chicago living among and interviewing the Chicago workers; studying conditions in the packing plants. Along with collecting more information for his novel, Sinclair came upon another discovery--the filth of improper sanitation and the processing of spoiled meat. With the publishing of his novel, Sinclair received international response to its graphic descriptions of the packinghouses. The book is said to have decreased America’s meat consumption for decades and President Roosevelt, himself, reportedly threw his breakfast sausages out his window after reading The Jungle. However, Sinclair classified the novel as a failure and blamed himself for the public’s misunderstanding. Sinclair’s main purpose for writing the book was to improve the working conditions for the Chicago stockyard workers. Sinclair found it...
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...ivities. Sinclair promotes socialism, government owned companies that endorse more rights for its worker’s, as government own corporations will be less about the individual profit but the common good. Sinclair publicities socialism in The Jungle in many methods: a capitalist society provides their workers with sickening working condition, a capitalist society consists of corruption all over the board, and a socialistic society will mean a perfect world. Upton Sinclair was dubbed by President Roosevelt as “a muckraker”, a writer who investigates and publishes issues happening around America. Even though Sinclair’s novel did not do as much for the poor as he hoped, it did bring about change to America: stricter meat packing regulations, standards of cleanliness in processing plants, and public knowledge of what the Chicago corporations were doing to their canned meat.
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,
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
Sinclair agreed to "investigate working conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants," for the Socialist journal, Appeal to Reason, in 1904. The Jungle, published in 1906, is Sinclair's most popular and influential work. It is also his first of many "muckraker" pieces. In order to improve society, muckrakers wanted to expose any injustice on human rights or well-being. Therefore, it was Sinclair's goal to expose the harsh treatment of factory workers through The Jungle. The improvement on society, that he hoped would follow, was the reformation of labor.
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.
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).
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.
Most muckraking publications happened in either magazines, such as McClure’s Magazine, or novels, such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Sinclair’s novel revealed the horrors of the meat industry, and the poverty of the workers. The book sparked anger and concern regarding the safety of factories, and eventually aided in the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, although from a financial standpoint it had little affect at the moment. The book ends with multiple chapters praising socialism and how it is the only fair form of economy due to the extreme poverty of the working class and corruption in politics. To demonstrate the poverty of the people, Sinclair writes things such
“The Jungle” novel was written by an American journalist/ novelist name Upton Sinclair in 1906. “The Jungle” made a big hit and became his best-selling novel because it revealed so well about the economical and social reality during that time. The book mainly described about how unsanitary the meat packing industry was operated in Chicago and the miserable life of the immigrants going along with the industry. Through the story around the life and family of Jurgis Rudjus, a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with the belief to change their life and live in a better condition, Sinclair expresses that “The Jungle” is a symbol of capitalism. Sinclair’s contempt for capitalist society is present throughout the novel, demonstrated in the eagerness of Jurgis to work, the constant struggle for survival of the workers in Packing town and the corruption of the man at all levels of the society. Also, the author promotes socialism as a standard political society to replace capitalism.
Sinclair stated that “the animals’ faith emphasized [his] views of how industry treats humankind” (Sinclair 8). Machinery was more important and valuable than the human life, especially the life of an immigrant worker with no rights and freedoms. The author concluded that society was the jungle where people had to work hard in order to survive and escape the challenges of their living. Continuous struggle was needed to maintain the challenges and problems of people’s everyday life enabling them to maintain control over their life and to get the current opportunities. Exploitation of immigrants was another important problem covered in the book promoting specific changes in society. In conclusion, Sinclair made a very convincing argument and his writing was so influential it prompted government action.
From a standpoint of Socialism, Sinclair explores the movement as a plan that can fix what Capitalism has done to America. Through the descriptions of the characters lives, Sinclair effectively explains in detail how disastrous the exploitation of workers
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” he exposes corruption in business and government and its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. The novel follows immigrant Jurgis Rudkus as he struggles against the slow ANNIHILATION of his family and is REBORN after discovering that socialism as a cure away to all capitalism’s problems. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the DANGEROUS, INHUMAINE conditions that workers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
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.
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.