Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, explores the conditions endured by immigrants during the Progressive Era. Sinclair uses vivid imagery and metaphors to describe the injustices, inequality, lack of equity, lack of resources, and human exploitation at the hands of capitalism. This paper seeks to identify the unique issues and barriers new immigrant families confronted in America. The social factors contributed to their distinct set of circumstances and the impact on immigrants and their families. It will focus on examining the similarities sustained today that continue to propagate social stratification and make upward mobility inaccessible to those at the bottom.

The Jungle introduces its readers to a Lithuanian family that migrated to Chicago. This family came to the United States seeking to find better opportunities and improve the lives of their family. They journeyed with sheer determination and a desire to work hard to forge social-economic climbing. Much to their disillusion, this family soon discovered that the American dream is not readily available to everyone and is exclusionary. The benefits of health care, housing security, and a decent life is reserved for those at the top.

In contrast, immigrants are contrived to a perpetual state of meagerness and survival. The system of capitalism enables those at the top to adopt a mentality that promotes a false sense of superiority as they believe their ability to endure is a result of being inherently stronger. However, the truth behind capitalism is insidious as it creates a caste system of the haves and have-nots (deserving vs. undeserving). These mores are aliening as individuals are only working to obtain self-sustenance, and there is no room for self-actualization or creativity to be nurtured or flourish. Economic mobility is controlled by a small minority which is decapitating and forces the masses to lose their labor power; inconsequence causes disenfranchisement. Under this system, the family disintegrates, and essential values, unity, and respect are lost.

Life in the United States brought on a host of social inequities stemming from the imbalance of wealth distribution and industrialization. Many of these families who worked in the meatpacking industry worked under the most dehumanizing and dire conditions while receiving low wages. Industrialization led to many social inequities, such as extreme poverty, hunger, homelessness, housing displacement, poor sanitary conditions, permitted diseases to spread rapidly. They were forced to work under poor and unsafe conditions, thus suffering severe health consequences and death because of no access to health care. Exposure to the city slums extreme levels of destitution affected their mental health, pushing them to find refuge and escape drug use, alcoholism, and prostitution. They were victims of unjust imprisonments, harsh legal fines/bails, and police brutality.

Women were raped, preyed on, and forced into prostitution. Brothels became the escape and the prison simultaneously. Sinclair illustrated how a proud, hardworking, strong woman like Marija, who first represented a spirit of defiance against corrupt bosses, began to decompose and tied into a web of drug addiction and prostitution. We also saw how Ona ultimately lost her life, as she did not have prenatal and postpartum care access. Unfortunately, the experiences of these women epitomize the norm and are not the exception for immigrant women in America. They fail victims of unabated abuse and suffer insurmountable pain-losses.

Why did they have these problems? What were the social and policy factors that contributed to the family’s problems? For programs and services that existed, how and why did they arise? When there was a lack of programs and services, what kinds of programs, institutions, and policies could have helped the family? (In this paper, just detail what the family needed. In the second paper, you will explain the programs and policies that have developed since that time.)