'The Jungle' By Upton Sinclair

601 Words3 Pages

The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair was an expose on the life of those who lived in Packingtown, Chicago. Packingtown was where most of the people who was looking for work lived, it was a very crowded city. Job openings were scarce and most of the jobs were very unsafe. Most of the people in this part of town were poor, so they did not really have much doubts of food,. The Jungle exposed the horrific work conditions, the poor food quality, and the deceitfulness of the business owners. Working in Packingtown, Chicago was a nightmare because 99% of the jobs were very deleterious. Finding jobs were very scarce and there were not a lot of jobs that were great, so people had to take anything they could get. These jobs had no safety precautions or safety rules; employees got seriously injured daily and death would happen occasionally as an effect of on the job accidents. Some of the jobs were just detrimental to the employees’ health even without the accidents. The main character Jurgis took a job at a fertilizer mill and he started getting sick on the first …show more content…

The store owners in Packingtown are very sheisty. They tamper with the merchandise and then sell it for unreasonable prices. Sinclair exposed them when he said, “How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?” (56). This did not stop only with food items, they would also trick people into paying higher prices for the exact same item that is a lower cost. “...the man had wound up the first halfway and the second all the way, and showed the customer how the latter made twice as much noise...” (56). This is crazy because thy both are the exact same clock but he’s selling one for a dollar and the second a dollar

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