Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is an early piece of muckraking journalism. Like many muckrakers of the time, Sinclair sought to expose the awful underbelly of early American capitalism. Most saw this time in American history as great. Industry efficiency was at its highest as were profits. These were not signs of absolute prosperity, however. They were more like red flags being waved by the weak and powerless workers who created these prosperous conditions while literally killing themselves to do so.
The Jungle follows a “party” Lithuanian immigrants, led by Jurgis Rudkus, as they travel from their poor, desperate village to seek fortune in America. They have heard of others from Lithuania who came to America and lived like kings. This illusion begins to fade fast. From the beginning, the group begins to feel trapped by potential of success. They have little money to make the trip and they are swindled by almost everyone they encounter.
They befriend a delicatessen owner from Lithuania and he shows them around Packingtown, the section of Chicago dominated by meat-packing plants. He shows them the insides of the plants where they see the slaughtering first-hand. Jurgis is not repulsed at the gruesome scene of killing and cleaning thousands of animals a day, but is instead mesmerized and infatuated with the efficiency. Sinclair uses these scenes to show how easily an outsider could respect the “American” way without noticing the horrors, even when looking right at them.
Sinclair’s narrative structure follows the party members as they seek employment and housing. Once they have enough money to buy a house, they sign a contract and move in, only to find they have again been swindled. The agent who sold them the house did not tell them about interest, insurance, taxes and other fees. The sum of these other costs triples the original expectation and blows the family’s budget to pieces. Everyone in the town that isn’t a worker is a part of the scheme. The family met with two different lawyers about the housing contract and all deceived them in conjunction with the agent without a care.
Sinclair uses the experiences of the group to show how capitalism breaks both the individual and the family, both literally and figuratively. Injuries keep workers from the factories and their wages leading to their eviction and the eviction of their entire families. The corporations spend nothing on infrastructure so when the roads flood, people actually drown on their way to work. Jurgis loses his only son to drowning driving him out of Packingtown. He wonders around doing odd jobs until he begins a life of crime, netting him hundreds of dollars. Sinclair is arguing here that capitalism actually fuels crime, as it is easy to increase one’s personal wages 20 fold if he is willing to forget his morals, taking advantage of innocent people just like the housing agent did to his family. He paints a picture of a vicious cycle that always feeds the pockets of the rich.
Sinclair’s Jungle is a place where humans are slaughtered as much as the animals. They are an extendible resource mercilessly broken at the hands of modern slave drivers. Capitalism according to Sinclair is nothing more than cleverly disguised slavery where wages are paid just enough to satisfy the most desperate of workers keeping all workers under control.
Sinclair gathered this information working undercover in a meat-packing plant. While he deceived his employers and possibly his co-workers, the benefits to all of society heavily outweighed any moral argument about deception. The Jungle exposed rancid working conditions caused by unchecked greed. In addition to influencing the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act 1906, this novel answered the cries of the oppressed factory worker in America and shed truth on a lie that can still be seen today.
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