jungle

1. Unpacking The Jungle for the Twenty-first Century Reading Guide Project -- Immigration Then
and Now
Our Team
Sophie Ospital (Project Manager), Ian Clafford (Researcher/Editor), Andrea Serna
(Researcher/Editor), Edgar Sandoval (Researcher/Editor), Dan Kidd (Researcher/Editor)
Introduction: Immigration Then (1906) & Now (2020)
While many people think of immigration as a modern issue, it has actually been a debate in the
United States since before the American Revolution. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair tells the tale
of a fictionalized immigrant named Jurgis, who came to the United States from Lithuania in the
early 1900s. However, there are many parallels between his experiences over a hundred years
ago and the experience of immigrants today.
The story of The Jungle revolves around the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Sinclair
researched meatpacking facilities and practices in depth in order to expose the dangerous
conditions immigrant workers faced there. Some of the challenges faced by immigrants in
meatpacking facilities and other factories today are very similar to those that Jurgis and other
immigrants dealt with back then. In both the early 1900s and in 2020 one such challenge
includes the inadequate housing and low wages that make it difficult to earn a sustainable living.
Likewise, both then and now immigrant workers in these environments were and are also
disproportionately exposed to diseases.
While in the early 1900s these diseases included tuberculosis as well as lead, pesticide, and
arsenic poisoning, COVID-19 affects factory workers at disproportionate rates today. The effect
of disease in particular has to do both with a lack of available safety information, and the fact
that many of the workers live in close quarters in the same communities outside of work. This,
again, is another similarity with the way that Jurgis, his family, and many workers from the
meatpacking facilities lived. In an outbreak of COVID-19 at Smithfield Foods, representatives
noted that “a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same
buildings, sometimes in the same apartments,” which is an eerie resemblance to the housing and
working conditions endured by the characters in The Jungle. Nowadays, however, Latin
Americans are among the most affected by these sorts of conditions.
The Jungle focuses on the experiences of immigrant communities from south and eastern
Europe, but immigration trends have shifted greatly since that time period. At the time that
Jurgis’ story takes place the majority of immigrants to Chicago came from Europe, especially

2. from Germany. By 1990, however, the majority of immigrants were from Mexico and more
people were moving from Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in Latin America. There were many fewer
immigrants from Europe than before, which is also true of Chicago immigration today. While the
locations that people are immigrating from have shifted, however, the challenges that immigrants
face upon arriving here are shared across time and place.
Discussion Questions:
1. In The Jungle, Jurgis must spend time at home healing when he hurts his ankle, and his
family suffers financially. What parallels do you see between this and workers now who
can’t work due to COVID-19?
2. Why might meatpacking companies, regardless of time period, be invested in keeping
their rates of disease hidden?
3. How are some of the challenges faced by immigrants working in the meatpacking
industry now similar to immigrants like Jurgis in the early 1900s?
4. How does The Jungle portray the immigrant experience? What parallels do we see today?
5. How does The Jungle portray the American Dream? Is the American Dream still
achievable and what does it mean to you?
6. Jurgis and Ona came to the United States like many others because they knew someone
here or because they heard of promises of wealth. How is the American Dream falsely
depicted, and how does this portray chain migration?
7. Why was making the main characters in The Jungle a Lithuanian family so important?
How would the story be different if the main family were from the United States
originally?
8. Where are most recent immigrants coming from? Do their lifestyles and job prospects
differ today from what Jurgis went through in The Jungle?
9. Initially, the immigrant mentality of Jurgis was that if he worked hard enough, he would
be rewarded. This is similar to the hopes of others who come to the United States today.
How do the working and living conditions of meatpacking factories back then and today
show this to not be true?
10. What resemblance does Sinclair show in comparing the packed stockyards with animals
ready for slaughter to the packed housing conditions immigrants had to live in?
11. How do the housing conditions of immigrants back then relate to the conditions of
immigrants today? How do housing conditions of immigrants today affect their health
with COVID-19?
12. How might immigration status affect meatpacking workers’ ability to seek medical help
if they become sick?
13. Meatpacking facilities got away with underpaying their workers, unsafe working
conditions, and strict rules that could easily get someone fired for just showing up late.

3. Why is this still sustainable for corporations? What does this say about how they take
advantage of the large pool of hopeful job seekers that immigrants provide?
14. To what extent should private companies profit from finding employment for
immigrants?
15. Why are jobs associated with immigrant labor that are so crucial to society, such as meat
processing or fruit and vegetable harvesting, so underpaid while jobs in PR and
advertising pay a living wage? Why does the person picking avocados get paid
significantly less than the person making an avocado commercial?
16. Although there has been a lot of progress in regards to labor rights, why do we still see
parallels between conditions faced by immigrants then and now?
17. How can employers do better in regards to how they treat their workers? Who’s
responsibility should it be that they be treated fairly?
18. How could the prospect of socialism be appealing to the poor immigrants from The
Jungle? Do you see any parallels to today?
19. How do you think Upton Sinclair would react if he knew about how immigrants are
impacted by COVID-19 in factories and meatpacking plants today?
20. How does the United States pick and choose where to crackdown on illegal immigration?
How would that affect the job market?
Annotated Sources:
Calamuci, Daniel. “Return to the Jungle: The Rise and Fall of Meatpacking Work.” New Labor
Forum 17, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 67-77.
This article details how positive changes brought about in the meatpacking industry by
union organizing and market competition around the 1980’s have been undone by large
meatpacking corporations merging and buying out competition. These now very large
meatpacking corporations have been able to out-muscle the unions by hiring expensive
legal teams, bargaining concessionary contracts, and opening new plants wherein
workers’ rights to organize are heavily stifled.
“COVID-19 Among Workers in Meat and Poultry Processing Facilities ― United States.”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. July 10, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6927e2.htm#
contribAff.
This source is a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention covering
rates of COVID-19 among workers in meatpacking facilities across the country during

4. the current pandemic. It explores factors that are exacerbating the situation, and
precautions that can be taken. Even amongst the meat processing facilities that did report
the measures they used to combat the virus (111 out of 239 facilities), only 63 percent
“educated workers on community spread.” However, for educational messages aimed at
minimizing workplace and community spread to be effective, they would need to be
available in languages besides English in order to truly benefit immigrant populations
working in the facilities. Ignoring immigrants’ needs in this manner puts them at further
risk for the virus from lack of necessary information.
Derickson, Alan. “Naphtha Drunks, Lead Colic, and the Smelter Shakes: The Inordinate
Exposure of Immigrant Workers to Occupational Health Hazards at the Turn of the
Twentieth Century.” Journal of American Ethnic History 37, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 37-61.
This article centers on the occupational hazards--especially diseases--faced by
immigrants in the early twentieth century. Diseases mentioned in this article include lead
poisoning, various chemical poisoning, and diseases spread in factories such as
tuberculosis. It is also important to note that the immigrants who were doing the labor at
this time in the early 1900s were largely from Eastern Europe and Italy. The article also
notes the challenges faced by Chinese and Irish immigrants working to build railroads.
The discussion of diseases faced by immigrants from these countries and regions is in
line with the patterns of immigration to the country and to Chicago at this time, as
immigration from Latin America didn’t grow until later in the century.
Dilawar, Arvind. “America’s Most Famous Novel About Bad Meat Was Actually About
Immigrant Labor Abuses.” Talk Poverty, 10 Jan. 2019,
talkpoverty.org/2019/01/10/sinclair-jungle-immigrant-narrative/.
This article describes the unfair treatment of immigrants at the time of The Jungle’s
writing and how some of these negative practices translate to society today. One example
describes the United States’s xenophobia for immigrants and cites the wall on the
Mexican border as one of the products. Dilawar touches on the fact that immigrants still
make up a large portion of the meatpackers in the midwest and are underpaid by their
supervisors.
Ewing, Walter. “How Has Immigration Changed in the Last 100 Years?” Immigration Impact 8
May 2019. https://immigrationimpact.com/2019/05/08/how-has-immigration-changed-
in-last-100-years/#.X4cS4dBKgXY

5. This article discusses how immigration is different now as opposed to the time The
Jungle was written. Instead of immigrants mostly hailing from Russia, Italy, Austria, and
Hungary, people from different countries like China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines
are coming to the United States more commonly today. Nowadays, immigrants are more
likely to spread out in terms of where they live in the United States than before. Also,
they have more marketable skills which could translate into getting better jobs, unlike
those that were forced to work in the meatpacking plants in the early 1900s.
Gregg, Tom. “Our Immigrant Heritage: the Truth About ‘The Jungle.’” Draugas News. 15 Jan
2002. http://www.draugas.org/news/our-immigrant-heritage-the-truth-about-the-jungle/
This article provides more background on Upton Sinclair and what inspired him to write
The Jungle. It also tells what inspired Sinclair to choose Lithuanians as his main
characters and how he was able to accurately portray immigrants of the time.
Hiltzik, Michael. “Column: A Century Later, Meatpacking Plants Still Resemble Upton
Sinclair’s Depiction in The Jungle.” Los Angeles Times. May 5, 2020.
This article shares the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Smithfield Foods pork processing
plant in South Dakota which left more than five hundred workers infected. This affected
mostly Latino communities, as they are the majority of workers there. South Dakota
Governor Kristi Noem refused to issue stay-at-home orders in her state and tried to blame
the outbreak on immigrant lifestyles because most live together in large numbers.
Human Rights Watch, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry
Plants.” Human Rights Watch, 2004.
This article, put together in 2004, provides a comprehensive look at the United States
meat and poultry industry and how the industry looks after the human rights of its
workers. It focuses on the historical background of the industry, international law, and
how it reflects on workers’ rights, government obligations, and corporate responsibility.
The article also focuses on worker health and safety, compensation, and freedom of
association. After remarking on these subjects the article provides recommendations to
the administration, Congress, and state governments, as well as directly to meat and
poultry companies.
Jordan, K. (2020, October 06). 1st grade CPS teacher dies due to COVID-19 related symptoms.
Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://abc7chicago.com/coronavirus-chicago-
teachers-union-public-schools-teacher-covid/6790900/.

6. This news article tells the story of Olga Quiroga, a Chicago Public School teacher who
immigrated from Mexico while in her 20’s before she knew English. Quiroga worked low
qualification jobs and went to night school to achieve her dream of being an educator. In
October she unfortunately passed away from Covid-19 after she was exposed to the virus
handing out schoolwork and meeting students, an occupational necessity.
U.S. Government Accountability Office. Workplace Safety and Health: Safety in the Meat and
Poultry Industry, While Improving, Could Be Further Strengthened. Report to the
Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, U.S.
Senate, Washington DC, January 2005.
This report was conducted in 2005 at the request of Congress to determine the safety
hazards that meat and poultry workers face every day. It is a sort of audit on how OSHA
(Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has itself audited meat and poultry
factories. The report makes some suggestions to OSHA on how to better track injury and
illness rates in factories. The report also provides information on labor demographics and
states that the majority of meat and poultry workers are young hispanic men, 26 percent
of whom are undocumented.
Vedder, Richard, Lowell Gallaway and Stephen Moore. “The Immigration Problem: Then and
Now.” The Independent Review 4, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 347-364.
This article notes that people in the United States have looked upon immigrants as a
problem since before the American Revolution when the country was even its own
country. It deals with questions of assimilation and nativism in the United States across
time. The article discusses attitudes towards refugees and immigrants in the early 1990s
from the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba. At the time this article was
written, migrants from these countries were the majority who were entering the United
States (as opposed to the largely Eastern European immigration of The Jungle’s period).