A Cry for Socialist Reform in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair...

A Cry for Socialist Reform in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair The Jungle is usually associated with the federal legislation it provoked. Americans were horrified to learn about the terrible sanitation under which their meat products were packed. They were even more horrified to learn that the labels listing the ingredients in tinned meat products were full of lies. The revelation that rotten and diseased meat was sold without a single consideration for public health infuriated the American public. They consumed meat containing the ground remains of poisoned rats and sometimes unfortunate workers who fell into the machinery for grinding meat and producing lard. Within months of The Jungles publication, the sale of meat products dropped†¦show more content†¦Inevitably, Sinclair wrote his novel as an appeal to Socialism, because democracy failed to neither protect families and community values nor prevent the exploitation of wage labor from the hands of industry. The novel follows Jurgiss Lithuanian immigrant family into the disgusting tenements and meat packing factories of Chicago. There, they suffer the loss of all their dreams of success and freedom in America. They find themselves leashed to the grinding poverty and misery of the city slums despite all their best efforts. Sinclairs purpose is to display the evils of capitalism as an economic system. #8230;had given to the thought to a struggle by the Americas working class to free themselves from their enslavement under capitalism, and to the creating of a new and classless society controlled collectively by all the people in their self interest (Harris 57). Sinclair was bemused by the public reaction to his phenomenally successful novel. He said that he had aimed for Americas heart, but had ended by hitting it in the stomach (Harris 82). The novel opens with a Lithuanian custom, the veselija, a wedding celebration. However, Sinclair emphasizes that the foreign custom demonstrates that the immigrants share a great many social values. The central values expressed in the veselija are family, community, and charity. According to custom, the community shares in the expense of the celebration andShow MoreRelatedA Cry for Deliverance Essay1263 Words   |  6 PagesWhen Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle was published in February 1906, it provoked outrage among the American public and prompted much needed legislative reform within America’s meatpacking industry. Responding to public pressure, President Theodore Roosevelt launched a government investigation. The ensuing report, â€Å"Conditions in the Chicago Stock Yards,† confirmed many of Sinclair’s accusations and quickly led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. HoweverRead MoreEssay on Uptian Sinclai r And Socialism2267 Words   |  10 Pages Upton Sinclair and Socialism nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Socialism has always been hard for me to understand. I never really grasped the concept of it until I read the book The Jungle and began to research for this paper. Before I begin I would like to go through a condensed version of the history of Socialism. It was founded in 1901 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Two groups came together to form the Socialists, the Social Democratic Party and the â€Å"Kangaroo† wing of the older Socialist Labor PartyRead MoreThe Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Fame for the Wrong Reason Essay2798 Words   |  12 Pagesin Packingtown, the meatpacking district of Chicago. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle portrays life through the eyes of a poor workingman struggling to survive in this cruel, tumultuous environment, where the desire for profit among the capitalist meatpacking bosses and the criminals makes the lives of the working class a nearly unendurable struggle for survival. The novel The Jungle is a hybrid of history, literature, and propaganda. Sinclair, a muckraking journalist of the early 1900s exposed toRead MoreEssay about The Pendleton Act 930 Words   |  4 PagesGovernment jobs would now be based on merit, calling for a Progressivism Era. The Populist and Socialists soon emerged then declined. Farmers rose to form the Populist Party, which advocated for shorter workdays and government loans to farmers as well as election reforms. Once their part y leader lost in the election, there causes washed-out. Next, the Socialist party formed to put an end to capitalism. The Socialist believed that capitalism was the reason for the large gap between the working poor and richRead MoreThe Broken American Dream Exposed in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair1080 Words   |  5 Pages Sinclairs novel is meant to entirely reject the capitalist system and to bring in its place a socialist system. In this novel, capitalism and its exploitation of the immigrants and other workers, are in fact shown to be tools of the capitalist bosses, used as another means to control and mislead them. In Sinclairs novel the broken dreams of Jurgis Rudkis and his fellow Lithuanian immigrants, unions are meant to be institutions which give false hope to the workers. They live in utterly dreadful