Living Conditions In The Progressive Era

In the book The Jungle, Upton Sinclair portrays the life of a Lithuanian family and begins working in the unhealthy and unsanitary meat packing plants. Sinclair is part of the socialist party. Sinclair’s diction, imagery, and anaphora help expose the harsh, unhealthy working conditions that the workers faced in the meatpacking industry in order to put in laws that regulate the working conditions. Sinclair’s overall purpose is to promote Socialism to help the immigrants and others working get the fair and just treatment that they deserve.

Upon reading Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, it can easily be seen that there were numerous injustices occurring within the early 1900s Chicago government. He wrote the book in 1906 after spending six months gathering research on the lives of poor, low class, immigrant families. With this information, he published his first book, The Jungle, through which he displays the hardships a immigrant family faces when they move to America. He chose the meat packing industry in the city of Chicago as his backdrop for this story, and while the names of the characters are fictional, most of the story is based on his real observations. He originally wrote the book trying to “set forth the breaking of human hearts by a system which exploits the labor of men and women for profit,” but people took it the wrong way, and Sinclair explained this misinterpretation when he says “I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” (NCBI) By this, he means that he wanted the American people to see the plight of the immigrants but instead the general public was more upset by the unsanitary condition of the meat they were ingesting. While Sinclair may not have achieved his original goal, his book did in fact have a significant impact; an impact that still effects the American people of today. It led to the creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 which is the predecessor to the modern day FDA (Young 231) (US Food). The Jungle shows the corruption in the Chicago government through the main character Jurgis and his trial, the raping of his wife Ona, and the unsanitary conditions in the meat factories where he worked.

Sinclair says, “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat

“But the tide was turned, according to historians and Dr. Wiley himself, when the voteless, but militant club of women throughout the country who rallied to the pure food cause” Janssen, 1981, ¶ 12). Undoubtedly, these women supported Dr. Wiley because he had become a popular speaker at their supper clubs where crusading writers of national magazines also joined his campaign by publishing his findings as editorials. Ultimately, legislation closely followed the January 1906 publishing of Upton Sinclair’s best-selling novel The Jungle, which portrayed dangerous working conditions as well as the unsanitary methods of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. On June 30, 1906, The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed providing inspection of meat products and prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transport of harmful patent medicines.

There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit (14). As you can see by his pure repulsion towards the meat industry, he was passionate about finding a solution to these disgusting habits. He held the companies accountable for keeping people safe, forcing them to only package the highest quality meats. His novel was a catalyst for the Meat Inspection Act to be passed in 1906, ensuring that meat products were being slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. Sinclair’s novel and subsequent events were instrumental in establishing a firm precedent for sanitary goods for the future of healthy Americans.

The claims found in “The Jungle,” were confirmed in The Neill-Reynolds Report [Doc B] which had been commissioned by then-president Theodore Roosevelt. Following the release of the report, Theodore Roosevelt, a known progressive, would sign the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 would lead to stronger regulation for cleanliness in the meatpacking industry but didn’t take into account the proper labeling of food products. The Pure Food and Drug Act, passed in the same year, would, “prohibit interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs (fda.org).” With both acts passed, consumer protection was ensured throughout the nation and was seen as a victory for reformers. However, the main issue that was meant to be addressed in “The Jungle,” was that of harsh working condition and unfortunately reformers were not able to cause much change on the national level in regards to harsh working

This book was called The Jungle and its purpose was to bring attention to the hardships of plant workers (Constitutional Rights Foundation). However, when the public read his book, they were more appalled at the possibility of consuming contaminated meat than the hardships of plant workers, and so demanded that President Theodore Roosevelt and Congress do something about it (Laws.com). In response, President Roosevelt commissioned labor commissioner Charles P. Neill and social worker James Bronson Reynolds to investigate Sinclair's claims. What they found was exactly what Sinclair had described (Constitutional Rights Foundation). After the President and Congress heard of these deplorable conditions, they went to work creating a law to improve the working conditions in both slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. What they came up with was the Federal Meat Inspection Act (Constitutional Rights Foundation). The act improved conditions in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants by forcing slaughterhouses and meat processing plants to practice clean and sanitary handling and preparation of meat. It also required inspections of livestock and animal carcasses, as well as monitoring of slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, among other things (USLegal, Incorporated). All this helped to put an end to the dangerous and unsanitary conditions of

Sinclair’s writing started to become very eminent in the early 1900’s, and by the age of 16 his book The Jungle changes the food industry forever. In 1905 Sinclair was hired to work in “Packingtown” Chicago for a meat processing company for a pay of $500 ( $13,513.51 today’s money) (Upton Sinclair Hits Readers in the Stomach). For two months Sinclair worked in the meatpacking industry, afterwards, he went into solitude for nine months to write about the details of the industry. “The meat would be shoveled into carts,

During the late 1800s rat droppings, assortments of putrid items,and chemicals were found in meats like, hams, sausages, and cans of meat. A man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of dried dung of rats. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who wrote, “The Jungle”, which exposes the

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the economy was booming, new technology flourished. The rapid industrialization brought achievement to the United States, however, it also caused several social problems. Wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few, and poverty and political corruption were widespread. As people became aware of these problems, a new reform group was created. Unlike populism, which had been a group of farmers grown desperate as the economy submerged into depression, the new reform movement arose from the educated middle class. These people were known as the progressives. The Progressive Movement was a movement that aimed at solving political, economic, and social problems. The Progressives were people

The Progressive Era Problems and solutions The Progressive movement that began in the late 1800s and early 1900s was an attempt to bring governmental reforms and to correct injustices in American life. Living conditions in New York were terrible, The Jungle (FDA) Muckraking meat industries getting caught and Theodore Roosevelt making laws drawn to protect cooperation. Document 1 The living conditions in New York were horrible specially the doubled of population in 1800s. People lived in tenements, which was overcrowded, small space, no bathrooms, no kitchen, no heat, bad hygiene and no privacy. “Lodgers in a Bayard Street Tenement” depicted in a photo that is shot by a photographer and writer Jacob Riis He wrote a book called “How the Other Half Lives” that led to a revolution in social reform.

During the progressive era, 1900-1920, Chicago had a growing population due to the vast number of European immigrants settling there. By the 1900s, nearly 750,000 people, almost half of Chicago’s population was having to live in the central park. Trying to produce enough food to keep the city feed was grueling. It was about meeting the demand. When The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was published in 1906, which revealed the stomach turning ways of the meat packing companies, it caused the people to become enraged. In The Jungle, he uses disturbing visual imagery to describe the filthy conditions of the meat packing industry in Chicago during the progressive era, in order to get the public’s attention, henceforth gathering the public along his side to fight for better health codes.

From the time of 1890- 1920 was the progressive era. In this time the American people experienced a very rapid industrialization in their major cities, where it grew not only with industrializing but economically as well. In this time we adopted many laws about working conditions that we still have today. For example, the government adopted laws about Jacob Riis and the photos he took, child labor, and women's suffrage movements. In the next few paragraphs I will explain to you why these three subjects are some of the most important things that happened in this time period.

He was most known for his book The Jungle, which became a worldwide bestseller and dramatically changed food regulation during the Progressive Era. Many people saw the results of this book as good, but they did not see the corruption it caused. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle changed food regulation in America forever, but the effects that came about because of The Jungle were more detrimental than beneficial.

Progressives knew of the terrible conditions that many laborers were going through in factories and workplaces across America, and they rose up to the challenge of fighting against them.