The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, was a fiction novel written to illustrate real conditions of immigrants in the United States and how they were exploited. While his main intent was to promote socialism in the United States, most people were more interested in the book’s descriptions of the meatpacking industry. The book follows the life of a Lithuanian immigrant who lives in a small town in Chicago, but the town is described as an “urban jungle”. The immigrant’s family faces many hardships and deaths as they work in horrible conditions, are scammed, and eventually some resort to alcohol and drugs. Sinclar was upset though because the public was concerned with food quality after reading the novel. Additionally, at first, Roosevelt hated Sinclair and the book because Sinclair advocated for socialism. However, after he read the novel, he decided to send the Labor Commissioner and a social worker to Chicago and investigate the meatpacking factories. Even though owners were aware of the inspection and made efforts to make the factories clean, it was still deemed horrible. The Bureau of Animal Industry published a report that claimed Sinclair was absolutely wrong. However, Roosevelt sent the report by the Labor Commissioner and social worker to Congress. Eventually, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which banned mislabeled or adulterated foods and drugs. This eventually led to the creation of the FDA, or the Food and Drug Administration. The report also led to the Meat Inspection Act, which banned adulterating or mislabeling meat products. It also created regulations on sanitary conditions in meat factories. While all of these regulations were good, in the end, Sinclair was not happy. As he stated in 1906, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” a statement expressing that rather than caring about the workers who had to suffer and having empathy, people cared more about their food.
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https://modernfarmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/beef-trust-hero.jpg
I really enjoyed your post and it got me interested in what other books Sinclair wrote and what affects they had. One such was titled 'I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty'. The book is about his plans to run for governor in California, how he would win Democratic nomination, and then win the governorship. The book reflects his ideology as a socialist and his ideal government. He describes state-seizures of idle factories and farm land, and for the government to hire the unemployed during the Great Depression to work on them. Sinclair would win the Democratic nominee in the state, but would fail to win the governorship. This does ask however, how much did his book help?
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/23510.Upton_Sinclair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
http://depts.washington.edu/epic34/
This was a very well written blog about the original intentions of Sinclair's novel and its unexpected benefits. It turns out that Sinclair actually used the money he earned from selling The Jungle to build his own Utopian society in Englewood, New Jersey. Sinclair assembled a group of "artists, writers, and social reformers" into a community that would supposed avoid the "drudgeries of domestic produce." Sinclair also hoped that its residents would be open to the ideas of Socialism, although the place itself was not built based upon its ideals. Ultimately, in March 16, 1907, about a year after it was built, the building burned down and the colony disbanded.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicon_Home_Colony
https://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-jungle
This is a very interesting blog about how Sinclair's book was commenting on how much immigrants struggle in America. I was wondering how the book impacted people who weren't American, and it turns out that the novel was actually printed in seventeen different languages. It was also looked at by the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, with great acclaim.
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https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-the-meat-packing-industry.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
I think it is interesting that this blog post examines the relationship between immigration and progressive reforms. This is not something I had previously considered, but your blog made me wonder if quality of products as well as working conditions decreased as corporations sought for cheap labor. It also reminded me of something I read recently about the current issue of mislabeling of seafood in order to lower costs and sell more available fish. 26-87% of the seafood may be mislabeled. This is a reminder that FDA reforms are still necessary in America.
ReplyDeletehttps://oceana.org/sites/default/files/National_Seafood_Fraud_Testing_Results_Highlights_FINAL.pdf
Overall, a very interesting description of the meat packaging plants, but as I read, I wanted to know more specifically about why the conditions were so horrible in the plants. For one, these businesses, didn't really care about safety or health regulations in order to cut costs. Meat that had fallen on the floor would be added back into the system. Rats would often defecate on rotting meat which would then be added back into the system. In addition, lost fingers were common and people who fell into these vats were processed and shipped out with other packaged meat. These putrid conditions even gave way to the practice in which fermented meat was added to the final product to give it a "smoky flavor". Although more of a modern study, psychologists have shown that people who work in these slaughterhouses physical and phycological wellbeing because killing these animals requires them to disconnect from the fact that these animals are largely "gentle creatures".
ReplyDeletehttps://blogs.lt.vt.edu/nlang10/2017/11/26/working-conditions-in-the-meat-packing-industry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_packing_industry#China