The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, begins with the wedding of two Lithuanian immigrants, Ona Luzoskiate and Jurgis Rukdus (I probably butchered their names, no pun intended), near the meatpacking district of Chicago in 1906. Many of the guests gorge themselves with food without paying. Ona becomes concerned about how much the wedding will cost them, and Jurgis vows to pick up another job to make extra cash. However, the jobs in the meatpacking district of Chicago pay far below any reasonable minimum wage, and the workers suffer from horrible conditions, as the companies put profit ahead of worker safety.Jurgis and his family go on a tour of the meatpacking district, and even the shocking images there of the animals suffering and being slaughtered in the abattoirs were enough to dwindle Jurgis' optimism. It is revealed that the government inspector that is supposed to supervise the carcasses and check for diseases, such as tuberculosis, often lets several of them go unchecked, out of sheer laziness. The spoiled meat is doctored in secret before it is sent to the canning department.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING MAY BE SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC IN CERTAIN PARTS, DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ARE
Jurgis' first job is sweeping the entrails of slaughtered cattle and pigs through trapdoors. Although the stench is horrendous, he earns just over two dollars for every twelve hour work shift. Jurgis even ends up enjoying his job, and he doesn't understand how the other workers hate their jobs and bosses. He does not join the labor union, which is lobbying for a reduction in the fast work pace. He believes the other workers are quite simply lazy. Jurgis also discovers that a lot of unfit meat, including calf fetuses and animals that had died of disease, were slaughtered and packed along with the rest of the meat.
As winter approaches, many of the workers in Packingtown die from hypothermia on the meatpacking production line, literally, their bodies right next to the bodies of slaughtered cattle. The companies failed to provide the workers with adequate heating. Many of the workers also die from disease on the production line. So imagine that, dead people with diseases in their body in an abattoir. There were also some people whose limbs and phalanges fell in to some of the meat... and it was canned with the meat...
The real estate company has also trapped the family in a scheme involving a house that was advertised as a for sale, but given to them as a rental. Their wedding has also put them over one hundred dollars in debt. The house they were given was also not in the condition in which it was advertised, and is somewhat overpriced.
Okay, I-I'm sorry, but I can't write the summmary anymore. The book was just so... informative... I honestly believe that it was necessary, because had it not been published, there would be no FDA. There would also be no laws about worker conditions. But it also made me physically ill to read, I'm not exaggerating. Even writing this is making my hands shake. I also did some research on the book, and the president, Theodore Roosevelt, called Sinclair a 'crackpot' for his socialist point of view. I also was surprised at how the immigrants were treated, and it is somewhat sad, because even though we don't do THIS (all of the above) to immigrants today, we still often treat them as second class citizens, which is wrong no matter who you are. I would have to give this book an A+ for informing the public, but also a B+ for making me sick. So that averages out to about an A- I think. I definitely recommend it if you have a strong stomach.
