It is interesting to note that most of the workers in the Chicago stockyards in 1906 were immigrants, just as today, and they had their rights trampled in much the same way many of the plants are accused of violating rights even today. Thus, the safety and human rights issues may have improved, but certainly not as much as one would think they would have. I believe many of

Human Rights Crisis in the Meatpacking Industry Meatpacking Industry Safety Standards Meatpacking workers have historically been exposed to some of the most dangerous work conditions, resulting in one of the highest injury rates of any occupation in the United States. Between the years 1980 and 1985 the injury rate was three-fold higher for meatpacking plant workers than for all other manufacturing industries (Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA], 1988) and in 2000

Jungle, Upton Sinclair describes horrific conditions within the meatpacking plants, and writes of men falling into tanks and being ground up with animal parts and then made into lard (Sinclair pp). He writes that it was Jurgis's job to slide the cows into the trap, calves and all, and on the floor below they took out these slunk calves and butchered them for meat and even used the skins

He was the typical immigrant who sought to make his way in America but the harsh realities of American capitalist system left him battered and broken with a dead wife and child. After wandering through a life of crime and corruption, Jurgis is finally redeemed through socialism; just as American society could be redeemed through socialism. The Jungle ends with the socialist making some progress in the American political

Jungle Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle is perhaps best known for its historical and journalistic contributions, because the book opened the public's eyes to the horrors of the American meatpacking industry, and particularly its appalling health and safety standards. However, Sinclair's novel also represents an aesthetic and ideological advancement that is often overlooked in favor of the book's somewhat more dramatic accounts of life inside a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant.

Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" In 1906, a book was published that remains controversial in some circles more than one hundred years later. "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair was a journalist's fictionalized account of worker conditions in the meatpacking industry and slums of Chicago. The book was supposed to be about how laborers as a whole were victimized by ruthless bosses and an uncaring government, but it became about the meatpacking