Essay On The Meatpacking Industry

Words: 585
Pages: 3
Open Document
During the Progressive Era, many businesses lacked motivation. As long as money was the outcome, factory owners would care less what they were selling to their customers. One of the biggest, and most problematic examples of this was shown in the meatpacking Industry. At the time, journalists played an important role in exposing wrongdoing (Gliderlehrmen). A man named Upton Sinclair was the journalist to expose the meatpacking industry (Wikipedia). He did this through his book, The Jungle. Sinclair's work uncovered the horrible truth of the Meatpacking Industry to the entire country. He showed the United States how horribly the meats, and the workmen were being treated. This sparked the American progressive reformers to take action. Upton …show more content…
In some areas of the factory, there were no toilets, and men urinated on the factory walls. Men with crippled backs were forced to haul hundreds of pounds of meats. Men who used knives on sped up assembly lines oftenly lost fingers. Men were forced to eat lunch at their working station. Also, the factory owners would cheat workers out on their pay. These are just some of the examples of how workers were treated horribly in the meat factories during the progressive era. Workers could not quit their job, because there was no other work to get. These poor men were forced to suffer through their lives.
Americans were horrified after The Jungle was published by Sinclair in 1905. Meat sales dropped almost immediately (Constitutional Rights Foundation). The White House was harassed with piles of mail each day, most about Sinclair’s Novel. Theodore Roosevelt himself read the book, then invited Sinclair to dinner at the white house to discuss it (Constitutional Rights Foundation). After their talk, Roosevelt launched a full scale federal investigation in the Meatpacking companies. This resulted in the Pure Food And Drug Act, which made the FDA (My
Show More

Related Documents: Essay On The Meatpacking Industry

Robert Kenner's Argument Essay: Food Inc.

I was assigned to write an essay about the broad subject nutrition. Instead of writing the traditional “Proper way to eat” type essay I wanted to look through a new lens, and focus on the quality of the foods most Americans have access to, so therefore we eat. In simpler terms where did the food on my plate come from, and what is the quality of said food? I wonder if the food we eat today is the same food as the food my ancestors ate? Ultimately these questions headed me to the documentary Food Inc…

Words 677 - Pages 3

Essay about Omaha: Omaha, Nebraska and Omaha

transportation hub. Throughout the rest of the 19th century, the transportation and jobbing sectors were important in the city, along with its railroads and breweries. In the 20th century, the Omaha Stockyards, once the world's largest, and its meatpacking plants, gained international prominence. Today, Omaha is the home to the headquarters of five Fortune 500 companies: packaged-food giant ConAgra Foods; the U.S.'s largest railroad operator, Union Pacific Corporation; insurance and financial firm…

Words 992 - Pages 4