The Jungle

1. The Jungle By Upton Sinclair

2. Upton Sinclair • Born in Baltimore on September 20, 1878 • Alcoholic father moved the family to New York in 1888 • His own family was extremely poor, but spent periods of time with his wealthy grandparents • Extremely intelligent and at the age of 14 entered the New York City College • Funded his college education by writing for newspapers and magazines • In 1902 met members of the Socialist Party of America and soon after became a committed socialist • In 1904 was commissioned by the journal, Appeal to Reason, to write a novel about immigrant workers in Chicago’s meat packing industry

3. Sinclair - cont’d • Was given $500 allowance by the journal’s owner , and after seven weeks came up with The Jungle • The Jungle was rejected by six publishers • Sinclair published the book on his own and after advertising in the journal, Appeal to Reason, had orders for 972 books • Doubleday Publishers hear of the order and decide to publish the book; The Jungle is an immediate success • President Roosevelt reads the novel and passes Pure Food and Drugs Act (1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906) • Sinclair later wrote in journals, wrote novels, became famous muckracker and joined socialist party and unsuccessfully ran for the governor of California • Died November 25, 1968

4. Reactions to novel • “ I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” – Upton Sinclair • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2ppaJwQ9UM&feature=related • 1906 Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle exposed unsanitary and inhumane conditions in Chicago area slaughterhouses. Reported meat sales fell 50 percent and took years to recover. As is true today, the highest quality, safest meat to eat was grown on the small mixed farms that dotted much of the American landscape. 

5. Progressive Movement • The Progressive Party was a factor in the presidential campaigns of three men — Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Henry Wallace. • Roosevelt struck out on his own and formed the first Progressive Party, saying he was as fit as a bull moose, from which came the colloquial name "Bull Moose Party." His platform called for tariff reform, stricter regulation of industrial combinations, women’s suffrage, prohibition of child labor, and other reforms. • The Progressive Movement was an effort to cure many of the ills of American society that had developed during the great spurt of industrial growth in the last quarter of the 19th century • The success of progressivism owed much to publicity generated by the muckrakers, writers who detailed the horrors of poverty, urban slums, dangerous factory conditions, and child labor, among a host of other ills.

6. Chicago Packing town • From Civil War to 1920s, Chicago is the country’s largest meatpacking center • Europeans brought cattle and hogs to North America and slaughtered them only as meat was needed • Since beef was difficult to preserve, cattle were killed year round and the meat sold and consumed while still fresh • Hogs were killed only in cold weather; their fat was rendered into lard and their flesh carved into hams, shoulders, and sides, which were covered with salt and packed in wooden barrels. Packers utilized hides, but blood, bones, and entrails usually went into the nearest body of running water • By 1840 Cincinnati led all other cities in pork processing and proclaimed itself Porkopolis • Chicago won that title during the Civil War • To alleviate the problem of driving cattle and hogs through city streets, the leading packers and railroads incorporated the Union Stock Yard and Transit Company in 1865 and built an innovative facility south of the Chicago city limits

7. Chicago Packing town –cont’d • Accessible to all railroads serving Chicago, the huge stockyard received 3 million cattle and hogs in 1870 and 12 million just 20 years later • Pork packers such built large plants west of the stockyards, developed ice-cooled rooms so they could pack year round, and introduced steam hoists to elevate carcasses and an overhead assembly line to move them • Chicago packers were preserving meat in tin cans, manufacturing an inexpensive butter substitute called oleomargarine, and, with the help of chemists, turning previously discarded parts of the animals into glue, fertilizer, glycerin, ammonia, and gelatin • Upton Sinclair's sensational novel The Jungle (1906) led to the Meat Inspection Act, and Pure Food and Drug Act which put federal inspectors in all packinghouses whose products entered interstate or foreign commerce

8. Chicago Packing town

9. Farm Factories • Factory farming is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory • The main product of this industry is meat, milk and eggs for human consumption • The majority of the animals that are raised for food live miserable lives in intensive confinement in dark, overcrowded facilities, commonly called "factory farms” • Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals to encourage high productivity

10. Farm Factories

11. The Jungle • Setting – Chicago Packing town/early 1900s • Genre – muckracking fiction • Point of View – Third person narrator • Protagonist – Jurgis • American Dream – Jurgis and Gatsby