Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was revolution and transformations being made to Europe and America. The second American Industrial Revolution led to improved transportation, communication, and banking, as well as the expansion of electricity, petroleum, and steel. More jobs were created due to the increased amount of factory work. With these jobs came poor employee conditions and poor living conditions for the lower-class workers. This revolution transformed the market by shifting to mass production of goods. It allowed work to be done faster and more efficiently, rather than by hand which took a longer time to make less products than mass production would. The Industrial Revolution allowed for a transformation of the American economy.
Primary Source
The author of The Jungle is Upton Sinclair, an American writer. Although the document is fictional, it discusses facts about the horrible working conditions in the factories. It focuses on immigrants because they are the ones who take the lowest paying jobs that no one else wants so they get treated the worst. The factory owners cared more about making money than with the safety and health of their employees. Its major focus is on the meat-packing industry. During the American Industrial Revolution, American soldiers were being sent to war with beef that was injected with embalming liquid which caused them to become so sick they were not able to fight in war. Also, dangerous compounds and chemicals were found in the food as preservatives. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair impacted America because it brought attention to the bad in food industries and working conditions in factories as well. The 1906 Food and Drugs Act was enforced because of this document.
The point of The Jungle is to show the public what goes on in the industries using these immigrants as wage slaves. Wage slaves are fully dependent on their income from employment and usually possess and/or require no skill but the work is usually difficult. He wanted to get the information out in the world so something would be done to help fix everything that was wrong. He focused on the meat-packing industry and how workers sometimes didn’t even get paid for part of the hours they worked. They were mistreated so much and taken advantage of because most of them were immigrants. Some of them lost their houses/apartments because they couldn’t afford it and then when they went to work they were exposed to dangerous assembly lines (sped up to make more, spend less) and unhealthy conditions in the industry.
The document takes place in 20th century America. The document is published in 1906, a few years after the American Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). The document was written to make the upper-class and middle-class aware of the horrible working conditions from after the American Industrial Revolution, in Chicago. I believe the author created this document because he wasn’t doing so well as an author before he moved to America. This was a good opportunity for him to make money but at the same time it was the truth and he was also helping society. There are now many food regulations and laws to protect the citizens of America from the unreasonable and poor working conditions/food quality.
The author creates the 5 w’s by using persuasion and imagery. He wants to persuade his readers of how awful the meat-packing industry is. He also does this by using imagery. He wants to make sure everyone reading knows what the factories look like inside. This helps them understand the working conditions better and how the meat was not heathy to eat.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was created roughly 6 years after the American Industrial Revolution. It generated shock from the public because it was a fiction novel but it was telling a story about true events. Upton Sinclair sympathized for the immigrants and wanted to do something about their conditions. He wrote about their horrible working conditions and the chemicals found in the meat that were harmful to everyone because that’s the only way he knew how to get the public and government’s attention. At first, he couldn’t find anyone to publish his book because of the horrible details but he eventually got it printed.
Final Paper
The American Revolution, also known as the Revolutionary War, took place between 1775 and 1783. This war allowed the United States to become independent in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The British Empire was in control of the 13 colonies where they had the power to tax and tariff everything they sold to the colonies. The colonists decided that they could do something about being controlled which is when the Revolutionary War happened. The United States sought the right time to gain control of their colonies and much more land to develop a stronger nation than the British Empire through the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, the Treaty of Paris, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers.
During the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, the British soldiers in Boston opened fire on colonists. Five men were killed during the shooting (American). An interesting fact about the Boston Massacre is that, “There is some evidence that the colonists planned the attack on the soldiers” (American). This proves that the American colonists want to become more powerful than Britain and the first way to do that was to gain their independence. “The Boston Massacre became a rallying cry for patriotism in the colonies. Groups like the Sons of Liberty used it to show the evils of the British rule” (American). The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonists that wants to fight against the British taxes. The colonists started an argument with the soldier when someone from the crowd knocked out a soldier by throwing an object at him. This made the British shoot into the crowd killing 5 colonists. After the incident, the British troops were removed from the city (American). The Boston Massacre was a very significant event that led up to the Revolutionary War because it “inflamed American opinion against the British” (Schulman).
On December 16, 1773, American patriots threw 342 chests of tea overboard into the Boston Harbor that belonged to the British East India Company (Britannica). This was the Boston Tea Party and it was a protest for the tax on tea. The British government attempted to punish Massachusetts by enforcing the Boston Port Bill, which closed the port of Boston as an effort to demand the colonists to pay for the wasted tea. Instead, it resulted in unity of the 13 colonies and war. Great Britain had tariffs and taxes to get as much money from the colonists and the colonists realized they could do the same if they fight for their own land and own government. The British also imposed the Stamp Act of 1765 on the colonists to raise revenue. “The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770, saving the duty on tea, which was retained by Parliament to demonstrate its presumed right to raise such colonial revenue without colonial approval” (Britannica). This showed that the colonists were putting fear into the British and trying to gain power slowly.
Benajmin Franklin, along with four others, negotiated with the British Empire through the Treaty of Paris. The other members were John Adams, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens. “The 1781 U.S. victory at the Battle of Yorktown made peace talks where British negotiators were willing to consider U.S. independence a possibility” (U.S.). This agreement helped end the Revolutionary War and allowed the United States to gain freedom from Great Britain. The United States territory was between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River. “The Treaty of Paris was signed by the U.S. and British Representatives on September 3, 1783, ending the War of the American Revolution” (U.S.). This established the peace between Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as granted the United States western territory and independence. With the Treaty of Paris, British forces were removed from the colonies
“The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in American history. It tells the major ideas that the Founders had about government. The Declaration also contains the Founders' complaints against the British king” (Declaration). The Declaration of Independence was designed to show the goals of the government. It was made so that the United States would not repeat the mistake of being conquered and controlled by another nation. The colonists expressed their complaints about the British king and their arguments for freedom. The colonists did not believe their rights were protected because they did not have the right to vote for the British representatives. The British felt as if they had the right to tax the colonists and control their trade since they were supporting and defending them. The Declaration of Independence was the start of democracy in the United States. In 1774, the colonists sent a few representatives to the First Continental Congress to handle their problem. In this meeting, some wanted to stop trading with Britain and others wanted to fight Britain to show them who had more power after all. The Declaration of Independence was signed by the members of the Continental Congress, where Thomas Jefferson was the head of the committee.
The Federalist Papers consist of 85 letters written to newspapers between 1787 and 1788. The authors are Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers were made to ratify the U.S. Constitution, Articles of Confederation. “After the Revolutionary War, many Americans realized that the government established by the Articles of Confederation was not working. America needed a new form of government. It had to be strong enough to maintain national unity over a large geographic area, but not so strong as to become a tyranny” (Costly). They did not want to repeat the British government, they wanted to make the U.S. government powerful but not too powerful that someone could take control of it forever. They wanted to make checks and balances so every branch of the government would be equal.
These events and agreements show goals of one of the course themes of transformation. They are steps towards transforming into a free country and democracy. Everything that the British did helped the colonists learn what they did not want to live like. They also wanted to transform into the powerful country that Great Britain was when they controlled the colonists. The colonists were transformed from a monarchical and hierarchy to a democratic society with representation. This transformation led to an independent self-governing country. Their goals were to solve the problems of debt, from the British, within their own government (The Transformation). They showed their determination to become more powerful than the nation that controlled them during all the battles in the Revolutionary War. In the Battles of Lexington and Concord, they stood up to the Redcoats and killed 250 of them, with only 90 men dying in battle.
After the Revolutionary War, there was the first Industrial Revolution which allowed the Americans to show how powerful they are with all their new inventions with transportation, communication, and banking. The American Industrial Revolution allowed the United States to gain an economic advantage over other nations. This helped with their want to become more powerful than Great Britain because money equals power in the governmental world. The Industrial Revolution was a powerful transformation that led to a stronger nation due to the increase in number of jobs, the type of communication that could be used, and all the inventions that allowed more money to enter the economy.
The Revolutionary War was the time when the colonists knew they were ready to do something about their government at the time. The United States created a centralized government with many rules and regulations in effect to help something like the British control from happening again. They were successful so far because the United States today is still a representative democracy with equal power through every branch of government. The colonists proved that the United States could become more powerful than Great Britain, and the whole world as well. The United States expanded and many people from other countries seek to live in the United States because of the amount of freedom there is in this country.