Upton Sinclair's The Jungle And Industrial Capitalism

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The Jungle and Industrial Capitalism In Upton Sinclair’s book, titled The Jungle, he shows the hardships and outcomes of modern industrial capitalism by telling the stories of a family who suffered through harsh working conditions, low wages, deceitful real estate businessmen and politics, and the injustices that many immigrants faced. The book follows a man name Jurgis and his family of immigrants from Lithuania. They come to the United States seeking a better life and wanting to achieve the American Dream, but are unfortunately meet with a fate of poverty when they decide to buy a house and work at the Stockyards of Chicago.
When the family decides to buy a home, they believe that it’s just the beginning of their dreams, however, they …show more content…
This can be seen in the book when some of the characters make racial remarks. For example, Marjia states that, “French girls are bad, too, the worst of all, except for the Japanese. There’s a place next door that’s full of Japanese women, but I wouldn’t live in the same house with one of them.” This quote shows that even though all of them are prostitutes, Marija still feels the need to be racist, even though her and the girls are in the same class. Another example of ethnic tension would be when the saloon-keeper said, “Hello Jack…they call all foreigners and unskilled men ‘Jack’ in Packingtown.” The man is stereotyping all immigrants as being unskilled and taking away their dignity by not even calling them their own name. If racism was still a problem, it would be difficult for everyone to unionize for their rights. The last example is when someone is mocking an African American and making them out to be lazy. He says, “See hyar boss, a big black ‘buck’ would begin, ‘ef you doan like de way Ah does this job, you kin git somebody else to do it.’” This shows that people thought that African Americans weren’t intelligent enough and that they all had poor grammar and speech. This was probably the biggest obstacle the workers face because if they wanted better working conditions and pay, they would first have to get over their own problems together. A divided union would get nothing
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