Early in the 20th century, Upton Sinclair spent several weeks in “Packingtown,” the part of Chicago in which meat-processing plants were located. His assignment was to write a novel about the plight of processing-plant workers. His writing first appeared as a serial in a periodical called Appeal to Reason, and was later printed in book form as The Jungle.The Jungle had an immediate impact, but it was not the impact that the author and his sponsors had expected. Passages concerning the filth in which meat was made captured the nation’s attention and led to some corrective federal legislation. The plight of the workers was lost in the shuffle. Let’s look at these workers in greater detail.
Sinclair’s novel and the resulting legislation attacked the owners/operators of the meat-processing plants for the filthy conditions they allowed to exist. For example, the most graphic passages explained in great detail that the processed meat could contain one or more of the following items: rat poison, rat dung, rats, human tuberculosis germs, bread set out (and poisoned) to catch rats, two-year-old sausages that had been rejected at foreign ports of entry, and human urine. Such conditions were deplorable, and the owners/operators received all the blame.
However, if you reread the graphic passages with an open mind, free from anti-management preconceptions, you may pause to carefully consider the actions of workers who carelessly threw dead rats into vats in which
sausage was being prepared and scooped up rat dung and poisoned bread and knowingly threw both into the vats.
Individually, the processing-plant workers were unhappy, dissatisfied, uncomfortable, and depressed—the very essence of low morale. As a group, their actions proved that they did not care about the welfare of the employer or the health of the buying public. These workers were not identifying with the organization and its goals. Rather, it was apparent that the workers hated their employer and gained some fleeting glee from doing things to subvert the employer’s goals.
It was many years after The Jungle was published that working conditions improved to any appreciable degree. Federal law quickly improved cleanliness and product standards, however. The lesson to be learned from this information is that enlightened employers should be aware that worker attitudes can still degenerate—as they did in Packingtown—unless management is ever alert to the welfare of workers.
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