I found some important information in this book regarding the sale of diseased and unsanitary meat, and other methods companies used cheat and get a greater profit.  Most companies sold the same product with a different label and a higher price.  One example of this is the system the meat packing industry used to sell their chicken.  The ingredient for their chicken did not even originate from a chicken.

Perhaps they had a secret process for making chickens chemically—who knows? Said Jurgis’ friend; the things that went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any.  They put these up in several grades, and sold them at several prices; but the contents of the cans all came out of the same hopper.  (Sinclair, 96)

In a second example the same idea came into play with sausages.

Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown.  All of the sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.  (Sinclair, 135)

The quality of the sausage meat was also never paid any attention either.

There was never the least attention paid to what was 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 in the hoppers, and made over again for consumption.  There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped 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 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.  (Sinclair, 134)

In another case of bad conditions, I observed the horrid the conditions the streets were in throughout the entire story.  Every winter it became extremely difficult to travel to and from work.  Proper clothing was important when it rained hard, and Jurgis’ could not afford the proper water resistant clothing.  So, when they walked to work every day it rained, they came home cold and sick.  Also, when the great snowstorms came every winter, the roads were covered in several feet of snow.  Ona, for example, could not get to work when it rained and when there was deep snow.  So, she had to pay for a ticket for a car ride to work when it rained, and when the snow got deep enough Jurgis was forced to carry her to work.

            It was not only during the rainy and snowy months that the road was in bad shape.  They were bad all year round.  Rotting wood planks served as sidewalks in some places, and the sidewalks were raised many feet above a dirt road below.  Little Antanas, Jurgis’ son, died from falling through the planks, getting stuck in the mud below, and eventually drowning in it.

            Stanislovas witnessed a boy lose his ears walking to work in the cold.  The boy came in whining that his ears hurt.  A man uncovered them and found them frozen stiff.  The first thing the man thought to do was to rub them in an attempt to warm them up.  “It took only two or three rubs to break them short off.”  (Sinclair, 79)

Not too far into the book, Jurgis and his family of Lithuanians decided that they wanted to buy a house instead of renting beds for the rest of their lives.  This seemed like a reasonable idea to them, because they could pay a few more dollars every month for a few years and then not ever have to pay a monthly bill again.  If they decided not to do this they would have to pay a monthly bill for renting a room in a tenant for as long as they lived.  However, they did not know enough about buying a house.  The Salesmen were all cheaters and liars.  The houses they claimed were new were actually old, cheaply made houses that had been redone several times to make it seem like it was new to the customer.  Furthermore, the house deeds that their customers were required to sign were very tricky.  The salesmen mislead their customers to believe that the only had to pay a fixed monthly rate of about 15 dollars a month for a limited number of months until the money owed was paid off.  However, what the salesmen did not tell the families was that included in their monthly payment was a percentage of what they still owed the housing company, and if they didn’t pay off every cent of what they owed in the given amount of time, the family would lose the entire house.  Also, none of what they paid would be accounted for.

Fortunately, Jurgis and his family did not have to find this out the hard way like the last four families to occupy the same house.  They met an old woman and her grandson who informed them of the actualities.  This information did not matter any to Jurgis and his family though, because would lose the house later on for a different reason.  After Jurgis went to jail his family could not keep up with the monthly payments.  At which point, it was the salesman’s decision to kick them out of the house or not.

Throughout The Jungle the working conditions in the factories have been obvious problems.  Minor injuries resulting from small accidents at work in all of the factories could put a person out of work for months if they didn’t kill the person.  The chemicals in every factory in packingtown and the surrounding areas that house the steel industry and other big companies are very harmful to the workers.  When Jurgis worked in the fertilizer mill, the powdered fertilizer filled the air, got in the workers’ lungs and eyes and mouth and ears, and buried itself deep in the skin and clothes of the workers.  The fertilizer had a horrendous smell and for the first few weeks of working in the fertilizer mill Jurgis couldn’t eat because he had lost his appetite as a result of throwing up in reaction to the fertilizer all over his body.

Even though Jurgis never died from the very bad working conditions he was in Old Antanas did.  Antanas felt that even though he was old, he didn’t have to stay home and not do any work to support the family.  So, he forced himself to walk to and from work.  As time went on he got sick and developed a cough.  But Antanas didn’t give up fighting and his cough got worse and worse.  Not only was Old Antanas’ cough making him weak, but the factory that Antanas worked in was literally eating at him.  Two or three inches of salt peter dissolved in water covered the entire area in which he works.  And like an acid the salt peter ate through his boots and gave him horrible sores on his feet until he could get to and from work anymore.  So Antanas eventually had to stay home and lie coughing in bed all day.  This continued until he died one night after coughing up a lot of blood.

Many of the jobs in the city of
Chicago had a statistical limit as to how many years a person could last in a certain job.

There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters in to the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work that began at four o’clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years.  There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years.  (Sinclair, 98)

            Up till now I have read to page 32.  The book begins with a 15 page introduction before it starts on page #1, so I thought that an introduction that long would be worth reading.  It explained a lot about Sinclair life and how he was involved in the Pure Food Act after The Jungle was published.  It also explains what The Jungle will be about.  It says that Sinclair traveled under cover to meat-packing factories for first-hand experience and studied the environment.

            The actual story begins with a wedding celebration for Jurgis and Ona.  They are very nervous about paying the bill for the wedding ceremony. 

            In school I have learned that factories of the 19^th century used to provide horrible working conditions for their employees.  Assuming that everyone knew this and thought that the conditions should be improved, I would think that the working conditions in the 20^th century would be better that those in the past.  However, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair firmly challenges my beliefs.  When describing the environment of the meat packing town in
Chicago, Sinclair includes true details about it.  The sewage puddles and pitch black smoke billowing out of the chimneys of the factories are only a few of the many gross details that I will come upon when reading The Jungle. 

            This book greatly reminds me of Supersize Me, because this book shows what really happens in the meat-packing factories in
Chicago and Supersize Me demonstrates what really happens when you eat McDonald’s food.