The Jungle 5
From the point of view of history, The Jungle, is both a comment on and a product of its own times. Those times most definitely need to be viewed in relation to what happened in the last half of the nineteenth century. This incredible time period saw the making of great industries and great fortunes (for those who were in control of the industries). So far as the relationship between business and government was concerned, it was a time of laissez-faire, where government had very little to do with what business was doing. If as Calvin Coolidge said in the 1920's, 'the business of America is business,' what did this mean for individuals, their rights and expectations? The Jungle appeared in January of 1906. It is completely understandable to me that the reading public responded to details on meat production and plant sanitation instead of the conditions of workingmen or Sinclair's Socialist message. In turn, The Jungle helped to do something completely different than what the book's author meant for it to do. The Jungle helped to push the Pure Food and Drug Bill out of a House committee and force president Teddy Roosevelt to jump into action. Roosevelt quickly requested the Department of Agriculture to send an inves
In some ways I can see where Sinclair is coming from in his beliefs, but at the same time there are other aspects of Socialism that I definitely do not agree with. It is a wonderful theory that if everyone owned everything then everyone would provide equally for it. This sound absolutely wonderful on paper, but the startling reality is that we are not all alike and different people have different standards. We live in America, the melting pot nation, the land of opportunity, where anyone can make it provided they have or can acquire the skills necessary to do so. Granted it is a lot easier to make it in America today than it was back when Sinclair wrote The Jungle due to Socialistic based programs like social security, welfare, Medicare, and workman's compensation. In addition, programs like these along with federal and private scholarship foundations have opened up many doors for the children of today to further their education without putting enormous strain on their entire family. Born Upton Bell Sinclair, Jr., on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, he was the son of parents who were southern by ancestry. The family was poor as the result of his father's lack of success as a salesman, and this plus his inability to support the family led him to drink heavily. Sinclair had an abhorrence of drinking abundantly apparent in The Jungle. Also, he makes mention of a science of "clean eating" in the same book. tigating committee and through additional pressure, including Sinclair's personal appeal, Roosevelt sent in an additional co
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1038
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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