Gilded Age: Meat Packing Plants

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The Dark Side of Meat Packing Plants During the Gilded Age, conditions in meat packing plants were not the best. Sanitation was not important and work was dangerous. These meat packing plants were filthy, and the meat being packed would ship across the country. In Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, it talked about how the meat was piled on top of one another. The rooms where the meat would stay had leaky roofs where water dripped onto the meat. The rooms would be dark, rats would be all around the meat, and when the workers would grab the meat they sometimes would sweep rat dung off the meat. The workmen would deal with this by putting poisoned bread neat the meat so the rats would eat it and die. But either way, these rooms wouldn’t become any cleaner by putting meat, dead rats, and poisoned bread together. Within only one year of the book being published, tons of copies were sold. One of the people who had read the book was President Theodore Roosevelt. When he read Upton Sinclair’s book he was utterly disgusted about the conditions of these meat packing plants and realized something had to be done to make the meat packing plants cleaner so the meat wouldn’t be extremely inedible. This caused the Pure Food and Drug Act. It also allowed The Meat Inspection Act to be passed in 1906. This was to protect the consumers from eating unsafe meat. Also to make sure that the meat was being packed in a more sanitary way. It’s become clear that meat being packed was very unhealthy and working conditions were
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