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Table of Contents
OAH Magazine of History
The OAH thanks the
Merck Company Foundation for its
generous support for this issue of the
OAH Magazine of History
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Teaching Strategy Making Meat: Efficiency and Exploitation in Progressive Era ChicagoThomas G. AndrewsThis document is meant to accompany the Teaching Strategy, "Making Meat: Efficiency and Exploitation in Progressive Era Chicago" by Thomas G. Andrews, which appeared in the OAH Magazine of History 24 (January 2010). Document Four Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906), 130-31. [T]he speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. |
