...Andrew Costly quoted Upton Sinclair in the article, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry, stating, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach” (8). Sinclair conveys his disappointment in his novel not reaching the public as he had hoped. Sinclair anticipated that he would unveil to America the appalling conditions of big corporations; furthermore, showing how they monopolized every aspect of their business from the farm house all the way to America’s kitchen table. Costly states, “Because they were so large, the Armour, Swift, Morris, and National Packing companies could dictate prices to cattle ranchers, feed growers, and consumers” (2). Sinclair desired to pull America’s heart strings,...
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...In 1906, Upton Sinclair published his best-selling muckraking novel The Jungle which exposed the horror stories that occurred in the meatpacking industry. Majority of people in 2017 would agree that his book is only a piece of history in our improved modern world, but what many people are unaware of is that horrifying working conditions within factory farms still exist today. Workers in the meat industry consist mainly of vulnerable people who are exposed to an outrageous amount of physical danger and emotional stress. In order to understand the issue, light must be shed on the background of the workers. About 38% of slaughterhouse employees are born outside of the U.S. and a portion of them are undocumented. Meat-processing facilities often...
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...Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Upton Sinclair wrote his book The Jungle in 1906. This book was a huge success. Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. Sinclair grew up poor with his mother and father. His mother sent him to his richer family on his mother's side. He started to write children’s stories and humor pieces in magazines at age 14. He also he started writing stories at age 16. At 18, he graduated from New York City University. After the success of The Jungle, Sinclair started to write more books with a political message. To write the book, The Jungle, Sinclair had to go undercover at a meat packing factory and expose how the industry had mistreated workers and had unsanitary conditions. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is the book that he is most known for because it was able to change the law, it fit into a popular kind of writing called muckraking, and his political views were different from most peoples’ in America....
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...Muckraking, from its beginning in the Progressive era, up until now has been a way of ‘beast-slaying, exposing the dirty underbelly of the gargantuan corporate and political monsters that have plagued our country. Muckraking presents their secrets to the general public. It has, more often than not, been the catalyst for great change in legislation. And the battle hasn’t necessarily always been publishing investigative articles in newspapers. Photographs, fictional covers for extremely truthful situations, television, and social media have all been used as tools to publish findings. This powerful tradition continues today. These unconventional ‘weapons’ are extremely compelling and effective in spreading the knowledge of issues, thereby putting more power into influencing changes in both private and government policies. A major problem in the United States during the early 20th Century was the issue of Child Labor. Children were being put to work instead of being educated....
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...Impacts of The Jungle on American Society As Judith Lewis Herman exhorted in her novel, Trauma and Recovery, "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness” (“Trauma and Recovery Quotes”). However, a nationwide nerve was struck when the grotesque meat- packing industry was revealed by Upton Sinclair. He blazoned to Americans across the country the lurid details of the industry though his novel, The Jungle, a novel which changed American history. [This scathing review on the meat packing industry with socialist undertones brought an advent of great social and legal change to the United States.] With its stunning entrance into American literature in 1906, The Jungle created an uproar that has endured over a century since its publication. Upton Sinclair was an ardent proponent of socialism in America and yearned to reform the ailing country (Fogel). His novel was produced as a metaphor, comparing a jungle directly to the corrupt meat packing industry based in Chicago. Sinclair sought to expose the unknown atrocities hidden in the meat packing industry, which was not forced to obey any form of regulation (Shafer). Sinclair wrote that, “It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory” (Sinclair 56). This fictional piece of literature brought America to a screeching halt. Never before had such a bold statement been made about an industry that affected almost every single American. Upton’s...
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...which we the reader have not endured ourselves. His most notable work was The Jungle in which he exposed the American public to the inhumane and hazardous conditions of the meat packing industry and the injustices faced by immigrants. Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland to an alcoholic father whom he was named after and his...
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...century up to the 1920s average Americans experienced a dramatic expansion in wealth and prosperity. However, with the Wall Street Crash in 1929 the U.S.A. experienced an economic depression that destroyed millions of livelihoods. This eventful period of American history led many to question the American Dreams place in modern America. This research paper will examine the interpretation of the American Dream in literature between the Progressive Era at the start of the twentieth century and the 1950s economic and social boom. In order to do this the paper will examine the novels The Jungle, The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman. These three novels all examine the American Dream in different decades. Written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair The Jungle is a novel that portrayed the life of immigrants and the working class in early-twentieth century America. The novel was published during the muckraking decade and its depiction of poverty, unpleasant living and working conditions and the corruption of those in power led it to be called “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.” A socialist Sinclair believed that by the start of the twentieth...
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...| Capitalism vs. Socialism during the 1920’s | Diamond Jackson | | History II Dr. Hilton | | | Upton Sinclairs’ The Jungle is a common form of muckraking during the 20’s. The book is about a Lithuanian family who relocated to the US in hopes of finding success and building better lives. After hearing the story of how America supports the idea of freedom, and has unlimited opportunity, the main character Jurgis is convinced America was the place to be. Once arriving to America and coming in contact with the reality of the myth of his ideal society, Jurgis exposes the deeply rooted capitalism and the effects and problems that it causes. Because of this, Sinclair feels that socialism is the remedy to the capitalistic conditions he’s now a part of. Andrew Carnegies’ The Gospel of Wealth is a viewpoint of how beneficial capitalism is to American society and economy which is seen through the eyes of a high-class businessperson. Carnegie discusses the history of there being an equal society, the natural law of competition, and the capitalistic results and benefits. Sinclairs’ The Jungle and Carnegies’ The Gospel of Wealth are opposing viewpoints, therefore when it comes to the unequal distribution of wealth and ideas about capitalism and socialism both arguments are supportive and reasonable to a certain extent. In the 1920’s, the unequal distribution of wealth is evident and Americans start to see many cultural changes. America has now adopted the idea of...
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...In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, he exposes the issues and corruption within Chicago’s meatpacking industry. Through the use of muckraking Sinclair is able to help make the industry a safer place to work by describing the harsh conditions the workers faced making Mike Scully is the antagonist of the novel. The owners of the companies offer little pay and do everything in their power to keep the workers oppressed. While Mike Scully controls the stockyards through the use of schemes to keep the immigrants poor and break their spirits. Scully owns the housing company in packingtown that sells houses to immigrants, but writes a contract that he knows foreigners would not understand. By using complicated legal jargon it tricks them into paying for hidden expenses that causes them to...
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...had to expose the corruption within the society to inspire the government to want to make change. Muckraking, otherwise known as exposing corruption, became the new norm during the late 19th century, in which Progressives would expose the downfalls of society across different platforms such as magazines, books, photographs, etc. It was now a time of mass media in which Muckrakers specifically ran the social movement. Muckrakers were the Progressive journalists who wrote for popular magazines to expose the social injustices. Two of the most famous muckrakers in particular that made an impact during this time period were Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair. Jacob Riis was famous for his photographs and book How the Other Half Lives. His photographs and novel depicted literally, how the other half lives, the other half being the poor immigrants and working class of society. After publishing this, Riis gained the attention of not only millions of people but also the members of government including President Roosevelt, which inspired many reforms of the working-class housing, working conditions, child labor laws, and more. Upton Sinclair, another writer of the time, published a very famous novel called The Jungle which also inspired reform. His book exposed the meatpacking industry and how unsanitary the prepping of the meat was, as well as how horrible the working conditions were. Sinclair’s book, much like Riis’, made it all the way to the white house making more reform possible including...
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...for the health and safety of the American food and drug supply. Although the statutes have been revised many times since 1906, the essence of modern food and drug law remains consistent with the principles of federal responsibility for consumer safety that underlay the first statutes a century ago. The passage of the 1906 food and drug legislation stemmed from the actions of many people across the political landscape, ranging from Senator Albert Beveridge to socialist writer Upton Sinclair. But no indi- 1 viduals played a larger public role in the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act than Theodore Roosevelt and Harvey Wiley. Roosevelt, as president of the United States, and Wiley, as chief chemist of the Agriculture Department, served as twin driving forces for Congressional passage of the acts. To be sure, Wiley and Roosevelt did not act alone. The 1906 legislation resulted from years of efforts by politicians, government officials, industry representatives, and “muckraking” journalists....
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...Muckraking Reformation At the turn of the twentieth century a new part of America’s political culture was beginning to emerge due to the country’s advances in technology and specifically in the creation of mass magazine publications. These publications were able to reach largely the country’s growing middle class. These journalists soon noticed that their readers yearned for magazine articles that investigated the numerous dilemmas that plagued the American society at that time. The ground breaking journalists were labeled as “muckrakers” by President Roosevelt and often became a source of controversy within America’s political culture. Most muckrakers used their skills of descriptive writing to paint vivid and disturbing pictures of the...
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...Chapter 28 Outlines Progressive Roots • There was unrest throughout the land because industrialists concentrated more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. • Progressive theorists insisted that society could no longer use the “let-alone” or laissez faire policy. • Before 1900, politicians and writers begun to pinpoint targets for the progressive attack. Bryan, Altgeld, and the Populists flamed about the “bloated trusts” with corruption and wrongdoing. • Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote Wealth Against Commonwealth in 1894, it was about the Standard Oil Company and on its “predatory wealth” and “conspicuous consumption” • Veblen viewed parasitic leisure class engaged in wasteful “business” which was making money for money’s sake rather than the productive “industry” which was making goods to satisfy real needs. • Jacob A. Riis was Danish and immigrated to the U.S. He was a reporter for the New York Sun, and he wrote How the Other Half Lives. It shocked the middle class Americans in 1890; he talked about diseases, and how dirty and how bad off the New York slums were. It influenced New York City police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. • Theodore Dreiser wrote the The Financier and The Titan. He battered promoters and profiteers. • A lot of the socialists were European immigrants where there were already socialist movements in the old world. Messengers of the social gospel promoted a brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings. They used religious doctrines...
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...The Bureau of Corporations, predecessor to the Federal Trade Commission was created as an investigatory agency within the Department of Commerce and Labor in the United States. The Bureau and the Department were created by Congress February 14, 1903, during the Progressive Era. The main role of the Bureau was to study and report on industry, looking especially for monopolistic practices. Its 1906 report on petroleum transportation made recommendations that became part of the Hepburn Act of 1906, and was used when the Justice Department successfully prosecuted and broke up Standard Oil in 1911. In 1912 the Bureau issued a report on the development of water power in the United States, including its ownership or control, and fundamental economic principles involved in utilization of this new and rapidly growing energy source. The report noted an increasing concentration of ownership and control of widely separated waterpower developments in the hands of a few; a substantial interrelationship among leading water-power interests, as well as a significant and increasing affiliation between water-power companies and street-railway and electric-lighting companies. The report stressed the importance of promptly adopting a definitive public policy concerning water-power development.[1] The various concerns expressed would initially be regulated by the Federal Water Power Act of 1920. The business, managerial, and financial practices of these early utility holding companies would proliferate...
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...New Nationalism and Teddy Roosevelt: The new ideals of federal intervention, social justice and economic welfare for the Nation. Abstract In 1901 when President McKinley was assassinated, Roosevelt confronted sentiment, especially from the older members of the Republican Party, that he was not the right person to lead the country, often referring to him as “His Accidency.” Roosevelt was interested in quickly changing the mood of the country and establishing his legitimacy to his new position. He did so by introducing a “New Nationalist” form of Progressivism. When Roosevelt was sworn in, the Progressive Party had already been developing and growing since the end of the 19th century. It advocated for reforms and the lead of the government in changing society’s problems in response to socio-economic and political imbalances. Such thinking was a radical change in the country’s mindset, with earlier efforts supporting private efforts to solve the nation’s ills. The Progressive party had a broad platform, but the overall goal was for government to implement and lead efforts to alter societal inequalities. The Progressives called for eliminating corruption in the federal government as well as supporting a social welfare program, the women’s vote, penal system reform, and prohibition. Although the issue of civil rights for African-Americans was of concern of some members, this issue was not formally included in any of the Progressive party’s literature. With the support of...
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