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Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle

ding employment practices and workplace conditions that have grown up in the decades since its publication. If The Jungle failed in its ultimate purpose of arguing for socialism as an alternative to capitalism, it thus did contribute to a sweeping revision of public standards with respect to employer-employee relations, employment practices, and workplace conditions.

The remainder of this discussion will be devoted to an analysis of current regulatory standards as they relate to conditions and incidents related in The Jungle. We will not attempt to argue that The Jungle, by itself, led to all the reforms that have been enacted since its publication. Nevertheless, The Jungle can serve to give us a good working picture of conditions in the pre-regulatory era, in that it covers a broad range of the abuses which subsequent regulations have sought to prevent or ameliorate.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 included, among other provisions, limitations upon child labor. With certain limitations (applying mainly to agriculture), children under the age of fourteen may not be employeed. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds may work in a limited range of occupations, such as sales, for limited hours, while between sixteen and eighteen, they may be employed in any "non-hazardous" work (McAdam, Freeman, and Pincus, 1995, p. 511).

We may compare this to conditions which prevailed in The Jungle:

Meanwhile, Teta Elzbeita had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten a certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was; and with it the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in the world ... [a supervisor] showed the lad how to place a lard can every time the empty arm of the remorseless machine came to him; and so was decided the place in the universe of li

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Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:16, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681342.html