The Jungle

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", takes us on a journey of a man named Jurgis Rudkis who arrive in Chicago and he and his wife Ona are married and have the ceremony and in a bar. Unfortunately as the couple was hoping for money to pay for their ceremony some guests sneak away or some only give food gifts. Jurgis ensures Ona that their debt will be paid when he states, "Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder" (21). Jurgis goes out to find work and finds a position in the meat packing plant. Instead of living the dream life in the ‘land of the free' the families are met with poor pay, being overworked, and subject to unfair labor practices and dangerous working conditions. The living conditions too were relentless and disgusting with several mattresses spread upon the floor. The families were forced to live in rat infested boarding houses with a town surrounded by garbage dumps and sewage pits—played in by children—leaving an almost unbearable stench in the air. Subjects that stuck out to my interest the most were the processes of meat production, living conditions, ages of people working in the meat-packing plant and some of the working conditions of the employees.

Process of Meat Production

Animals such as cattle, sheep, and hogs were killed on the side of the meat-packing plant by the railroads so that the railroads could take them away. "They don't waste anything here" (36), said the guide of the tour taking the new families through the meatpacking plant where the slaughtering of the hogs was the first stop. "They use everything about the hog except the squeal" (36), the guide had stated. The hogs were hung up on chains in an assembly line and "one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats" (38). As the hogs went down to through the process of inspection, "a government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for tuberculosis" (40), yet some hogs went uninspected due to his sociable nature. The slaughtering and processing of the cattle was took place on the floor which is unsanitary in itself. "Instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one to another of these" (41). The trains which brought the cattle had still had dead and diseased and hurt cattle and fetuses that were to be added to the rest of the meat late at night while no one was watching. "Downers', the men called them; and the packing house had a special elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang proceeded to handle them with an air of businesslike nonchalance which said plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday" (69). This showed the care that the employers had for the safety of society. The most rotted meat is made into sausage; other rotten and spoiled meat is sold to the most desperate people.

Living Conditions

There were four boarding houses, each packed with immigrants to a capacity that is deemed unlivable conditions today. There would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each room which houses about thirteen or fourteen people to one room which was about fifty or sixty to a flat. Everyone was responsible for furnishing their own mattresses, mattresses that were spread across the floor in rows "and there would be nothing else in the place except a stove" (29). These mattresses which were shared by men who worked in shifts; and these houses that were rat infested and filled with filth due to the packing of so many people in one place. Outside the houses were the stenches of the sewage pits