Essay on "History of the U.S. From Reconstruction to the Present Time"

Essay 5 pages (1730 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"

The Jungle

The word "jungle" conjures images of a wild, uncivilized place where animals live without compassion or reason, but purely instinctively. The jungle is a place without mercy or empathy, where the strongest survive and the weak and old are cast off as useless. Capitalism has often been compared with a wild environment that breeds corruption and suffering as the economically weak are often preyed upon by those that are wealthy and powerful. Upton Sinclair, in his novel the Jungle, examined the darker side of capitalism through a number of characters trying to live the "American Dream." According to Sinclair, hard work and dedication were not positive attributes in the reality of capitalism of early 20th century America, instead corruption and exploitation were the way things really functioned. As a substitute for the capitalist system that Sinclair felt had failed millions of hardworking Americans, he offered Socialism as the way to bring about social and economic justice. In other words, the message Sinclair tried to get across was that only way out of the jungle of capitalism was through socialism. While Sinclair's purpose in writing the Jungle was to convey a socialistic message, there was also an ancillary effect of the book; the vividly disgusting descriptions of the meatpacking industry so shocked and horrified Americans that they demanded that the government force all food producers to clean up their businesses.

Sinclair's tale is one of a family of immigrants who arrive in America from Lithuania and are immediately thrown into the "jungle" of American capitalism. While the family had high hopes of the riches of America, they soon found that they had to make serious sacrifices just to survive. Jurgis Rudkis, the main character, tried as best as he could to make a living, but his hard work and dedication were not enough to make it in Packingtown (the meat packing section of Chicago); corruption was the currency there. Jurgis is forced to work long hours in terrible conditions for very little pay, a situation that is impossible to escape. While the children at first are sent to school, they are soon forced to leave school and get jobs to help support the family. Jurgis' wife Ona was not allowed to a holiday from work, not even for the birth of her child. And she was forced to have sex with her boss, whom Jurgis got into an altercation with and was sent to prison. When he finally got out of prison, he found that his wife was in childbirth from which she did not survive. To make matters worse, his son was drowned soon after and Jurgis left Packingtown to become a homeless wanderer. It was during his wanderings that Jurgis met several criminal characters who taught him the criminal way of life, especially the corruption of the capitalist system. After some time as a criminal, Jurgis wandered into a Socialist meeting hall and soon transformed himself into a full-fledged Socialist. The novel ends with Jurgis working with the Socialists to make significant political gains in elections, but still having a long way to go in order to transform America into a socialist utopia.

It was the concept of "Social Darwinism" that Sinclair wanted to denounce in his book the Jungle. Social Darwinism was the belief that society worked on the principles of Darwinism, the "survival of the fittest," and in American society, the wealthy industrialists were the fittest while the poor workers were unfit to prosper. Those who had position in society got there by being better adapted to the conditions of capitalism in America, while those who suffered in poverty were there because they lacked the proper ability to rise out of their situation. This, of course, was not true as Upton Sinclair asserted in his novel with disclosure that those who prosper in the American capitalist system were not those who had greater abilities but those who engaged in corruption and treachery. If Darwinism was correct, the employee who worked the hardest and produced the most would be the one who was rewarded, however, no matter how well he worked, Jurgis just could not advance in the jungle of capitalism. The situation of the industrial worker in the early 20th century was rather bleak with the average worker forced to work 9.5 hours per day, while many factories forcing their workers to toil for up to 12 to 13 hours. While Jurgis' family thought that he would be able to earn enough to support the entire family, the reality was quite different. Like many real immigrants, everyone in the family was forced to get jobs, including the children. According to some sources, "the nonfarm labor force probably included at least 1.6 million children aged ten to fifteen employed in factories, mills, tenements sweatshops, and street trades such as shoe shining and newspaper vending." (Boyer, 483) While those on the highest rung of the capitalist ladder claimed that they got there by being the most fit, Sinclair pointed out in the Jungle that they really got there, and stayed there, by using corruption and oppression; they were not really the fittest but the most unscrupulous.

And to maintain their position as the upper class in a capitalistic society, the industrialists needed a never-ending supply of labor who were ignorant of the ways they were being used. This meant that new waves of immigrants from different European countries were necessary. The story was careful to emphasize how each successive wave of immigration was used a tool by the industrialist to keep their workers in their place. If one group of workers learned the system and began to cause trouble, they could simply be replaced by another group of workers from a different place. Agents of the industrialists would scour the cities of Europe spreading rumors of riches to be made in the United States; and millions followed the rumors. As Sinclair stated, first came the Germans, "the next were the Irish…the Bohemians had come next…" [and after them came the Poles who had] "been driven to the wall by the Lithuanians, and now the Lithuanians were giving way to the Slovaks." (Sinclair, 62-63) Accordingly, immigration was an integral part of the system used by the industrialist to maintain their hold over the workers and keep them in poverty and misery.

It is no secret that Upton Sinclair was a devout socialist and wrote the Jungle as an advertisement for the socialist movement that gripping American in the first part of the 20th century. In fact, the main character of Jurgis Rudkis was most likely inspired by the real life Lithuanian socialist agitator Karolis Rutkis, who has been described as "a lowbrow bum, [who] helped J[onas] Sliupas and J[uozas] O[tas] Sirvydas to organize the Lithuanian socialist party in 1905...." (Subacius, 40) the story is filled with anti-capitalist ideas from the inability of Jurgis to make enough in the capitalist system to feed his family, to the corruption and cruelty of the capitalist system. According to Sinclair, "the workers were dependent upon a job to exist from day-to-day…, and thus the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with poverty." (Sinclair, 314) Workers in the capitalist system were nothing more than resources to be used and discarded when they no longer were of any benefit. Profit was the most important thing to the industrialists. And this greed for profit was characterized as "a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher -- it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh." (Sinclair, 317)

If Upton Sinclair wanted his tale to be an advertisement for socialism, the story actually had a very different effect on American society. It was the vivid descriptions of the meatpacking industry, especially the dirty and disgusting conditions that were present, which made the American public cringe. One particularly gruesome depiction was of the steam rooms in the pork processing plants where open vats often swallowed up human workers "and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth examining, -- sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard." (Sinclair, 93) These depictions of the real-life conditions that existed in the meatpacking industry so outraged American citizens that "this story ultimately led President Theodore Roosevelt to push for many of the federal regulations, including the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food Act, which apply to the food manufacturing industry today." (Cramer, 1) the Jungle was an eye-opening experience for the American people, who did not like what they saw, with the result being government intervention in the industry and a much better and safer product offered to the American consumer.

Upton Sinclair's the Jungle presents American capitalism is terms of a jungle; where the greedy and unscrupulous prey upon the good and decent workers. Hard working… READ MORE

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