Laborers In Their Factories example essay topic

In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair uses a true to life story to demonstrate the working man's life during industrialization. Marx depicts in the Communist Manifesto an explanation of why the proletariat is worked so hard for the benefit of the bourgeois, and how they will inevitably rise up from it and move to a life of communism. When The Jungle and the Communist Manifesto were written, the proletariat, or working class, was a commodity of commerce. Like their brothers, they subjected to competition and all of the quick and sudden changes of the market. Before the industrialization movement began, there was more of a blend between the classes, and now there is a distinct separation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Because of the industrialization of the countries, the replacement of manual labor with the use of machinery and the division of labor, the work of the proletarian has become homogeneous.

It does not contain the individuality or charm of the laborer as handmade goods do. The worker instead becomes part of the machine and is reduced to performing menial, repetitive tasks. Thus, the workman's pay rate reflects his work, and is reduced to minimum amount needed to barely sustain them. Therefore, as the skill needed to perform the job reduced, so does the amount of the wages.

Also, as industrialization increases, so does drudge and toil. The worker become, in the eyes of the bourgeois in control, a part of the machine and as expendable and as easily replaced as any part of the machine. This is in the forms of prolonged work hours, amount of work done in a certain time, or by the increase of the speed of the machinery, which wears down and drains the workers. Modern industry has replaced the privately owned workshop with the corporate factory.

Laborers file into factories like soldiers. Throughout the day they are under the strict supervision of a hierarchy of seemingly militant command. Not only are their actions controlled by the government, they are controlled by the machines they are operating or working with, the bourgeois supervisors, and the bourgeois manufacturer. The more open the bourgeois are in professing gain as their ultimate goal, the more it condemns the proletariat. In other words, the more industry becomes industrialized or developed, or the less physical or mental skills a laborer needs to complete their task, the easier it is for women and to move up into equal or higher positions than that of men. The children are also worked just the same as any man.

There is now no social distinction between sexes and ages in the society of the proletariat. Each individual is part of the labor force, only differentiated by pay rate. Even after the laborer is free from exploitation in the workplace, and is given their pay, the other portion of the bourgeois takes its place. The landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, and others of the like, all of them try to take advantage of the workers by raising the price of the basic necessities. Jurgis and his family are an example of victims of this corruption; when they buy their house, they get sick, loose the house, Ona and her boss. In The Jungle everyone with any power over another man is sure to take full advantage of that for his own benefit.

But over time, the lower middle class; the trades people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen, the c rafters and farmers, all slowly dissolve into the proletariat, because they are not making enough money from their trade to survive on their own, and others because the need for their specialized skill has been taken over by a machine. Therefore the proletariat is comprised of all classes of the population. This drudgery of the proletariat is mirrored in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. In chapter 3, Sinclair depicts the workings of a normal packing factory. One man hooked the hogs to a giant chain, another would quickly slit the pigs' throat.

It would then be dropped into a burning vat and taken out again but a machine and de bristled. 'It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him. ' There were men each to do one aspect of the preparing; one swing of the knife, one monotonous movement, until the process was complete. 'It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork making by machinery... ' Jurgis became part of this machine as a sweeper of entrails.

Not only did the factories have him work over eight hours a day, but had him work extra hours or stay in the factory until there was work to do without pay, otherwise he would be fired. The factories continually overworked the laborers in their factories. '... there were portions of the work which determined the pace of the rest, and for these they had picked men whom they paid high wages, and whom they changed frequently... this was called 'speeding up the gang,' and if any man could not keep up with the pace, there were hundreds outside begging to try. ' As Jurgis realized the cost of everything the family needed to pay was more than the wage earners were making, he gave in and allowed Ona and little Stanislovas to go to work as well. There were jobs in the factories, like sewing covers onto hams and working lard-canning machines, that women and children excelled at, and factory owners would hire women and children before others for them. Maria got a job skimming fat off pieces of beef because she was 'as strong as a man. ' She was paid less the men doing the same job, but it still paid more than her previous job.

Jurgis and the others lived in the society that Marx and Eagles wrote about. They knew first hand the oppression and degradation that plagued the proletariat society..