The Jungle Upton Sinclair Discuss Have any of

The Jungle Upton Sinclair

Discuss: Have any of you ever gotten sick from food you have eaten at home or from a restaurant?

Discuss: Do you think government regulation of the food industry is important? Why or why not?

“Mary had a little lamb And when she saw it sicken She shipped it off to Packingtown And now they call it chicken. ” § The New York Evening Post 1. What does this graphic poem mean? 2. Why would it be published in a widely read newspaper?

Stockyards

Inside a Factory

A “Disassembly” Line

Excerpt #1 from The Jungle But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham’s that he had gotten his week’s money and left there. That might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.

Questions to Consider 1. According to Sinclair, what happened to Jonas? 2. What does this mean for the consumers of pure leaf lard?

Excerpt #2 from The Jungle There was never the least attention to what had been cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had trampled and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them, they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.

Questions to Consider 1. What was Upton Sinclair’s purpose for writing in such graphic detail? 2. How do you think the American public reacted to The Jungle? 3. Do you think legislation (like the Pure Food and Drug Act) would have passed without the public attention articles and books like The Jungle received?