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The Jungle- depicted as a failure to me. The 20th century brought the world
technological advancement and opportunity. New inventions ...
... community and group cohesiveness" and was "usually depicted as a ... whittled down: their
journey into the jungle leads to ... here is not aware of his failure but the ...
... conquistadors hacked their way through the jungle and the ... I should say, Europeans
navigators depicted America as ... the quarrels and mutinies, the failure to give ...
Submitted by opoch on March 13, 2006
Category: American History
Words: 2559 | Pages: 11
Views: 136
Popularity Rank: 84,158
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The 20th century brought the world technological advancement and opportunity. New inventions such as the automobile, telephones, and mechanization of factories created an America of industry and big business. But behind this mask of wealth was a bitter truth, one of despair and crushed dreams. Immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe, were living in filth as the wealthy were securing more money. Almost all immigrant families were forced to live in suffocating buildings and many starved within a year of their coming. The factory work was horrifying, almost all workers eventually caught a disease or were worn down by the process of '"'wage slavery.'"' Upton Sinclair, a famous muckraker (journalist who exposes misconduct in society), exposed the truths of this hidden world to the public in The Jungle: '"'It was too dark in these storage places 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. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together'"' (Sinclair 148). This novel was written for the purposes of bringing to the eyes of the American people the exploitation of immigrant workers, unsanitary conditions in factories, and the theory of socialism. However, as only one of these goals truly inspired the public to act, the novel should be considered a failure.
Big business, a theory that began with the success of industrialism, effectively controlled the population in the early 1900"'"s. Businesses were able to control public opinion through newspapers and also through their own workers. However, as business competition increased, the need for skilled labor decreased due to mechanization. This led to an increase of pressure on the laborers to find employment. Mechanization was
built on two key factors: innovation and efficiency. It was a period in which most...
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