THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 1900 1917
THE MUCKRAKERS OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Problems such as poverty faced by people in the cities
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Abuses of the railroad company on farmers
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Horrible practices in Chicago Meat packing plants, such as rats on meat
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Political corruption in major cities
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Detailed explanation-1: -Almost as an afterthought, Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were processed, doctored by chemicals, and mislabeled for sale to the public. He wrote that workers would process dead, injured, and diseased animals after regular hours when no meat inspectors were around.
Detailed explanation-2: -The main theme of The Jungle is the evil of capitalism. Every event, especially in the first twenty-seven chapters of the book, is chosen deliberately to portray a particular failure of capitalism, which is, in Sinclair’s view, inhuman, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent.
Detailed explanation-3: -There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
Detailed explanation-4: -The industry operated with low wages, long hours, brutal treatment, and sometimes deadly exploitation of mostly immigrant workers. Meatpacking companies had equal contempt for public health. Upton Sinclair’s classic 1906 novel The Jungle exposed real-life conditions in meatpacking plants to a horrified public.