Corruption In Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

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Muckraker is a name given to anyone who finds fault in any given system or thing and has decided to capitalize on it. These so called muckrakers find all kinds of flaws and problems in specific areas. Because of their actions it causes many people to become upset. In most cases, those who became upset were the ones who were hiding something from the public. In the novel The Jungle, we come across multiple mind blowing things that were hidden from the public. Upton Sinclair wrote this book to show the business and political corruption during that time frame.

In his novel Sinclair begins with the story of Jurgis and his family, how they struggled to find money for their home. Because of their money problems they were not able to keep the house …show more content…
They often got the jobs no one wanted or the most dangerous jobs. The pay for immigrants was often lowered or even rigged by bosses. Mainly because that was the only job they could get and had everything to lose if they didn't work. In the workplace, for example, if a worker was late by a minute he didn't get paid for an hour. And if a worker is sick or got injured, they didn't get paid. Because of this it hurts families greatly. In most cases, if something like that happened then the children would have to go out and beg or even get jobs at the factories just to be able to have money for food.

The meat industry was probably the worst, it was very unsanitary and there wasn't much thought in how the slaughterhouses were ran. In many cases, men would get cut from the knives and get infected, but they would still work with them. The meat was often rancid and infected more often than not it was very unfit for packaging. Some cattle that were unfit for packaging would be sent to the back and after dark they would go and slaughter them and put them under the rest of the meat. Because of these conditions Ona’s father suffered a great deal from injuries from his job and because of it, he
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