10-17-00
Reaction Paper 4
Last
week we discussed various themes that were present in Upton Sinclair’s “The
Jungle”. A few mentioned in class
include working conditions, poverty, oppression, exploitation, and the
hopelessness of the working class.
These are the main themes that I have read up to this point that I would
like to discuss in this paper.
Hopefully I will paint a proper picture of what life was like for
immigrants in Packingtown, Chicago during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
First
off I would like to discuss the working conditions. For these people working in the meat packing factories the
working conditions were extremely uncomfortable and even more dangerous. The workers were trained to do one job, and
to do it quickly. In the haste of the
“speeding up process”, the workers would get careless and cut themselves and
end up with blood poisoning. Jurgis
when working in the packing factory once had to jump out of the way of a loose
steer and in the process twisted his ankle.
This shows how the factories were not designed for worker safety, but
only for mass production. Other
incidents cited by Sinclair were tales of men falling I lard tanks and being
nearly eaten by the chemicals, men standing on the floor of a cooler below them
while above them were the hot tanks used to boil of the skin of the animals
which caused these workers to always catch cold. Other bad conditions include the conditions that Jurgis worked
under in the fertilizer plant, where he could not see 10 feet in front of him
due to all of the fine fertilizer dust.
For any of the workers in Packingtown the working conditions were unsafe
ad unsanitary, and would never be allowed under the government today.
Poverty is also an issue
discussed in “The Jungle”. All of the
immigrants that moved to Chicago to work in the factories in hope of building a
better life for their families’ basically condemn themselves to living in
poverty. As for Jurgis and his family
they fell into the trap as soon as they got to Chicago. They bought a house and went broke in the
process. They could not afford warm
clothes or good meals, and were always one paycheck away from starvation. In the winter Jurgis could not afford to
heat the entire house, and the family had to sleep more tan one person per spot
in order to keep warm. The woman had to
go to work to help earn money for the family to pay rent, and eventually the
young boys had to take up selling papers in order to help with the income. On top of all of this, the food and clothing
available to them was of low quality.
The clothes they bought were not made to keep out the cold, and the milk
purchased was watered down and doctored with formaldehyde.
Then comes the exploitation and oppression of the
workers. They were all basically just
used until their health began to fail them at which time a new healthy worker
would take the place. Of course when
the workers got hurt they had no workman’s comp to pay for the injury and the
workers could not afford to sue. Even
unions were not worth the effort, because when workers would go on strike for
better work conditions or better pay, scabs would just take their places. The workers were constantly made to work
faster, and were forced to keep up pace which was physically hard on them. Then in slack times the workers would not be
paid to wait. Ona is a perfect example
of how workers were exploited because her boss forced her to do things that she
did not wish to do, and took advantage of her situation because he knew that
she could not speak up. In general,
both meat companies, who had a monopoly on the labor and could afford to treat
workers unfairly and give little in terms of conditions, and pay, oppressed
workers. The workers simply had no
choice but to either work under these terrible conditions or starve.
Finally the theme of the hopelessness of the working
class becomes very evident. In
Packingtown those who worked at the factories were doomed to stay in poverty
until they worked themselves to death.
For example Jurgis and his family worked to keep paying for the house
until they no longer could, and they lost it.
Then of course by this time they had lost their health and could not
easily find a job to support themselves.
For the working class at the meat packing companies, life was just a
downward spiral going from bad to worse.
These were the most important themes that I found in the
book up to this point. We discussed
them in class and I understand them clearly.
It is just discouraging thinking about the hopelessness of their time
and their position compared to how we have it today. I also think that this is interesting when discussing our false
sense of optimism when thinking times have always been getting better, and will
continue to do so.