The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: An Argumentative Perspective
The Jungle is a fictional story in which Upton Sinclair portrays the inhumane capitalist economy/society that permeated Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th century. The story follows a Lithuanian family on their venture to seek the American Dream. Jurgis Rudkus, a brawny, boulder of a man with the will of a lion is in search of a better life for him and his wife Ona. Ona is the step-daughter of Teta Elzbieta Lukoszaite. Ona is warm hearted, yet easily intimidated when in the face of the obstacles of America. Marija, a woman with the strength of a man, accompanies the family in search of better work. The family is accompanied by a few other members such as Dede Antanas Rudku, Jurgis’s father, Elzbieta’s 6 children and her brother Jonas.
Modern industrialization has shaped the American world into what it is today, but this urbanized construct didn’t form without prior struggles. Capitalism was merely a synonymous term for a Darwinian society in the aspect that privately owned companies and corrupt politicians controlled the bridge gap between the poor working class and the rich. The story of The Jungle captivates this corruption through the tale of Jurgis Rudkus. Jurgis’s tale is one that many immigrants faced, because many immigrants at the time constituted the working class during the industrial revolution, considering that “87% of Chicago composed of foreign immigrants and offspring; 1880-1920, 25 million immigrants came to the United States. ” Sinclair illustrates the flaws in the American urban industrial society through the life of the working class, political movements, and law reforms, and the effect his novel had on the progressive era.
The working-class life under modern industrial capitalism consists of strenuous labor, long hours, and work environments that often never met humane standards. This mesh of exhausting and inhumane work never resulted inadequate pay. Jurgis was introduced to packing town, which is where most immigrants tended to resort to for work. He had stood outside for merely half an hour and was offered a job working for Durham. Jurgis was taken on a tour and witnessed the quick and robotic like workflow of the Durham workers. As they walked by, the tour guide humorlessly remarks that “they don’t waste anything here," “they use everything about the hog except the squeal. ” At the time this seems to be nothing but a joke but later relates to the abominable uses of leftover meat. Over time, Jurgis had witnessed firsthand what the packing industry would do with leftover meat. He would soon realize that “ it was custom, as they found, when meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it up or else to chop it into sausage,” and this had given a whole new meaning to the old Packingtown saying, “that they use everything of the pig except the squeal. ”
This says a lot about the meat industry. The owners possessed a low concern for the consumers of their goods and would willingly sell them spoiled meat, disregarding the effects it would have on people. Not only did they show a lack of concern for their consumers, but towards their employees as well. The different seasons of the year were all accompanied by their own work-related hardships. During the winter time men would work in “dark, unheated cellars where, you could see your breath all day and where your fingers sometimes tried to freeze. ” Workspaces would often lack sources of heat and men would be forced to work in chilling environments. This was extremely dangerous because often workers would come home with frostbite in different areas of their body, they'd become ill, or even chop off fingers due to lack of stable movement in their hands while holding knives. Bosses were unconcerned with these conditions, and only cared that the meat be processed.
Furthermore, there were many political changes that were a product of the struggles of labor during this time. For instance, when Ona had given birth to her son, Atanas, she was told by the doctor to stay at home “for her own health and for the baby's” but she knew that for her family to survive, she would have to return to her job, rather than risk losing her spot, so she did exactly that. Ona was suffering from, “headaches and pains in the back, and depression and heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work in the rain. ” One shouldn't have to work when experiencing these types of troubles with their health, let alone a woman who had just recently given birth. At this time, people had no other choice besides to do so because their families couldn't survive without the income. So, Ona resorted to “patent medicines, as her friends told her about them. ” These patent medicines all contained alcohol or some other sort of stimulant, but she, “found that they all did her good while she took them; and so she was always chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue. ” During this time, these patent medicines were temporary fixes for pains, yet they were habit inducing and lacked any real long term effectiveness. As a result of this, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, which required that a physician’s prescription be obtained before purchasing a controlled substance, and labels were to be attached to all drugs to disclose its contents and possibilities of addiction. As mentioned before, expired and tainted meats were canned and processed for customer consumption, without the accurate disclosing of its containing’s. “There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way from Europe old sausages that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white-it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for consumption. ” This is an image that lingers in your mind for the entirety of the novel. Foods that we’d deem today as unfit for even animals to eat, were fed to humans by disguising it with coloring and borax as a form of preservative. People around America were becoming diagnosed with illnesses such as E. coli, Trichinosis and salmonella. This was another factor in the formation of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which made it illegal for foods with poisonous qualities to be sold to consumers.
Moreover, Upton Sinclair aimed to open the eyes of the American people in hopes of influencing a change. Sinclair conveys the idea of the lack of effort in inspections at the meatpacking factories. While the inspector would be talking, “with you, you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. ” This portrayed the lack of concern in the inspector’s job, which led to tainted and unconsumable meat being processed and sold to consumers. This “depiction of meatpacking led to the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. ” This act ensured that meat was to be properly inspected and approved of the utmost sanitation, before being sold. Later on, in the text, Jurgis is at works and as a hog begins to run ramped around the factory, Jurgis sprains his ankle. The company doctor is called upon and the, “injury was not one that Durham and company could be held responsible for. ” This moment showed Durham’s lack of focus on their employee’s well-being and their sole interest on income. Jurgis later returns to work despite his injury because if he doesn't receive a wage, his family will starve. In today's society, full time workers are compensated for work related injuries, but this same ideology didn’t pertain to this point in time. This led to Workers compensation insurance in the 1920’s, which was another point of focus during the progressive era. Upton’s novel depicted a multitude of flaws that coincided within the progressive era and assisted in a movement of reform.
In conclusion, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is metaphorical. Jungles in a sense revolve around a Darwinian habitat, where only the strong survive and the weak perish. This is quite comparable to the American capitalist society of the late 19th century and early 20th century. The economy and unorthodox political values formulated a society where the bridge between the wealthy and the impoverished only grew wider and wider. The wealthy fed off of the misfortunes and strenuous labor of the poor, further contributing to their wealth, while the poor merely held on to their lives and jobs by a seamlessly thinning thread. The Jungle depicts the inhumane work environments and mistreatment of employees during the meatpacking era, the production of poisonous foods and phony dugs, and the conditions the working class lived in. Sinclair was able to demonstrate these problems through lives of the working class, political movements and law reforms, and the effect his novel had on the progressive era.
