Bad Treatment & Disgusting Conditions...

Something I noticed right off the bat is that this reading definitely ties in to what we have been discussing in class. For one part, it has a lot to do with food. However, there is also a portion of the book that is dedicated to immigrants and the conditions that they have to face as well as the treatment that they get after coming to America to "get big." This is obviously a common thing and it ties to our other readings of immigrant workers getting mistreated. I felt bad to read about the family's living conditions since it held a bad stench and it seemed revolting to be living as though it were something normal. I know I would never last in a dump like the one they were forced to live in. Not only this, but later they were cheated into buying a new place to live and it was not as nice as it was advertised either.

The part about the immigrants, however, did not get the best of me. It was only the third chapter and we already see that things are getting disgusting by the way Jurgis has to deal with the meat packing industry at work. There were sanitation rules but they were not being followed at all and I was grossed out by the fact that several of the animals were not getting checked properly and were allowed to pass on to the next stage even if they could have had tuberculosis. What is even more disgusting is the fact that the spoiled meat was still packed in with the other meat.

I know just from this that I would not want to eat any of this meat at all and it would be gross to have to do so in the old days... I'm glad that Sinclair helped bring everyone's attention to the meat industry and that it is supposedly a lot better now. If it weren't, I might as well become a vegetarian or something of that sort...