Example research essay topic: Conditions In The Plants Working Conditions Meat - 1,192 words

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... ease she was a woman (111). All the time, these workers in factory lines were forced to work at backbreaking paces, because they had to keep up with the people in front of them moving the line so quickly. What supervisors would do is pay some of the meat cutters at the front of the line a little extra to work at a very rapid rate, and they would stand over them making sure that they went very fast so that everyone else would have to, which they called the process of "speeding up the gang" (60). The workers in the plants faced many chances of risking death, much of which had to deal with disease. The ones that worked cutting the meat were set at an astounding pace, and if they slipped up once with the knife and cut themselves, they suffered the risk of blood poisoning from the beef they cut, like one immigrant Mikolas who had to lie in bed sick with disease and lost his job because of it (11).

The working conditions were horrible for the immigrants, and many would die because of them, but the employers did not care because there were so many more wanting jobs. Working conditions were not the only terrible problem for the immigrants though, as they also had to deal with bad sanitation issues in both the plants and the food they consumed. The sanitation in the plants was so vile that it was the cause for government regulation of the industry due to what was described by Sinclair. The Packing Plants would use anything that they had for food, no matter how badly contaminated it was, and just use chemicals to disguise it. They would advertise "Deviled Ham" which was really small pieces of the waste ends of smoked beef, tripe died with chemicals to change the color of it and seasoned with spices to have a taste to it (103). Many of the imitation foods they make are canned with potato flour, which "as a food adulterant is a penal offense in Europe, " though "thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every year" (124).

Also in the plants there would sometimes be cattle who were just about to calve, which meant that they were no good for meat until they had grown more, but in order to save time someone would distract the government inspector while Judges was given the orders to push the calves down into the vats, where they would be chopped up and sold with the rest of the meat (65). There were also cattle that had been deformed or had gored sides or were even dead, that were taken after hours and chopped up just like the rest, and the meat was scattered in the packing so it could not be identified (66). Sometimes to keep warm during the cold unheated winters in the cellars, those working to take apart the steer would sometimes stick their feet inside of the carcasses to keep from getting frostbite (85). Worst of all however, was that the men who worked in tank rooms that were full of steam would sometimes fall into the vats and be boiled and turned into lard, but nothing would be done about it, they would just fish out the skeleton and can the person as they would with whatever empties from the lard machines (105). The sanitation problems were extreme, mainly because they would not bother to halt the process, and would send out any sort of food to the public. The packers would take old rancid butter and import it to the plants, and then oxidize it to remove the odor and churn it with skim milk, then sell it.

It also proved that government inspectors were not what the help that they appeared to be, as many were appointed to the jobs by the packers, and they were only meant to keep the diseased meat from being exported to other countries, which was against law, but they were still not stopped from selling it inside of the states. Once a government inspector in Packingtown had labeled several carcasses of steer as being infected with tuberculosis, but they were still left to be carted away to be sold in the city, so when one of the physicians insisted that all the meat needed kerosene injections he was fired that same week (101). Where Ona's mother Teta had to work, there were some massive issues with the sanitation of the sausage they packaged. If the sausage was old and moldy they would put borax and glycerine on it and put it into the hoppers which chopped them into pieces again to be repackaged.

There would be meat on the floor that was collected with dust and dirt and the spit of the workers, and then thrown back into the hoppers. The cellar Teta worked in was infested with rats, and so many times poisoned bread would be laid down on the floor to attract and kill the rats, which would then be scooped up with the poison and meat droppings and put into the hoppers to be reprocessed. Then waste barrels would be cleaned out every spring, and inside of them the "dirt and rust and old nails and stale water" would be loaded into the hoppers with the fresh meat (143). All of this food was packaged to be sent out globally, but the worst qualities of it were placed in the town for the immigrants to buy, full of chemicals and parts of animals that cause disease. Teta's youngest child had one day eaten some meat that was most likely believed to have been tubercular pork, and within the hour had convulsions and died from it (133). It was terrible because this was the only food they had access to, and many of the immigrants had no idea or care that there was so many things wrong with it, because there was not healthier or better food to find within miles.

The Jungle has many strong points that tell how things were for most immigrants during this time period. Many fled to America in hopes of the talks of being free from oppression and to be able to maintain a strong job and become successful, but very few ever realized it. The sanitation and working conditions in the plants were so coarse that it literally put the country in a shock to discover what was really going on. The book was extremely influential in making an impact on the regulation of all the food industries and making sure the food sold in stores is healthy and up to certain standards. It also helped raise agendas about how terrible the conditions in the plants were, which helped strengthen the unions of the time to better fight against the robber barons of the time. Though it was aimed at helping the socialist party, it ended up being a story that changed the way many Americans thought about their country and inevitably forced them to change things for the better.

Works Cited Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. New York: Dell, 2003.

Research essay sample on Conditions In The Plants Working Conditions Meat