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Over the next 40 years, unions such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) were able to improve both the pay and working conditions of meat packing employees in the U.S. The UPWA was also known for its progressive ideals and its support of the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

Developments such as improved distribution channels allowed meat packing companies to move out of urban, union-dominated centers and relocate to rural areas closer to livestock feedlots.

By the late 1990s, the meat packing industry had consolidated such that the top four firms accounted for approximately 50 percent of all U.S. poultry and pork production and 80 percent of all beef production.

On the surface of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald portrays a romantic love between a man and a woman, but inside the real meaning is much deeper. Fitzgerald depicts the 1920’s as a time of decay social and moral values, evidence of this is the greed and the pursuit of pleasure. Jay Gatsby’s constant parties epitomized the corruption of the American Dream as the desire for money and worldly pleasures overshadowed the true values of the American Dream.

It’s written in the American Constitution that every individual has the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. This right it seems has taken a twisted turn in the early 1920’s.

. These materialistic values consequently led the decay of the American Dream. The new American Dream described by Fitzgerald portrays a world where greed, the pursuit of money and pleasure are above all else. Fitzgerald portrays a world that has lost its way in the corruption of the American Dream.

Conventional wisdom says that while some disparities remain, things have generally advanced for Black people in America and today they are advancing still. People like Obama and Oprah are held up as proof of this.

Take employment: Black people remain crowded into the lowest rungs of the ladder...that is, if they can find work at all. While many of the basic industries that once employed Black people have closed down, study after study shows employers to be more likely to hire a white person with a criminal record than a Black person without one, and 50% more likely to follow up on a resume with a “white-sounding” name than an identical resume with a “Black-sounding”2 name. In New York City, the rate of unemployment for Black men is fully 48%

Black infants face mortality rates comparable to those in the Third World country of Malaysia, and African-Americans generally are infected by HIV at rates that rival those in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall the disparities in healthcare are so great that one former U.S. Surgeon General recently wrote, “If we had eliminated disparities in health in the last century, there would have been 85,000 fewer black deaths overall in 2000.”5

the perception of the American Dream was that an individual can achieve success in life regardless of family history or social status if they only work hard enough.

Gatsby epitomizes the idea of self-made success; he is successful financially and socially and he essentially created an entirely new persona for himself from his underprivileged past. All of the wealth and status which Gatsby acquired, that while on the surface made his life appear to be the precise definition of the American Dream were actually elements which led to it’s demise.

“The culture of consumption on exhibit in The Great Gatsby was made possible by the growth of a leisure class in early-twentieth-century America. As the novel demonstrates, this development subverted the foundations of the Protestant ethic, replacing the values of hard work and thrifty abstinence with a show of luxury and idleness.” (Donaldson, 8)

Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as "Okies," referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma. The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Most were of Anglo-American descent with family and cultural roots in the poor rural South.

Voices from the Dust Bowl illustrates certain universals of human experience: the trauma of dislocation from one's roots and homeplace; the tenacity of a community's shared culture; and the solidarity within and friction among folk groups. Such intergroup tension is further illustrated in this presentation by contemporary urban journalists' portrayals of rural life, California farmers' attitudes toward both Mexican and "Okie" workers, and discriminatory attitudes toward migrant workers in general.

California newspapers alternated between ignoring the strike or printing the growers' side until several strikers were killed by growers at a Pixley, California rally. The reporters and photographers who rushed to cover the strike generally reported that it was growers, not strikers, who were breaking labor and other laws.

In Fall 1931, migrants were arriving in the state at the rate of 1,200 to 1,500 a day, an annual rate of almost 500,000 (p109).

State and local actions aimed to keep needy migrants out of the state. The vagrancy laws of 1933 and 1937, under which many migrants were arrested and sometimes "lent" to farmers to work off their fines, were finally repealed in 1941 as unconstitutional (Edwards vs California). Similarly, the Los Angeles police operated 16 checkpoints on the California-Arizona border to turn back migrants "with no visible means of support" in February-March 1936 until the checkpoints were ruled unconstitutional. (Loftis, p126).

“It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” – John Steinbeck

By 1929, the richest 1% owned 40% of the nation’s wealth

The have-nots can dream about becoming a have, but the chances of achieving that dream today are miniscule. Steinbeck pointedly distinguishes between the selfishness of the moneyed class and the altruism of the working poor. In contrast to and in conflict with this policy of selfishness stands the migrants’ behavior toward one another. Aware that their livelihood and survival depend upon their devotion to the collective good, the migrants unite—sharing their dreams as well as their burdens—in order to survive. 

The progressives revealed how these companies eliminated competition, set high prices, and treated workers as "wage slaves."

He witnesses the greed and corruption in the industry and the deterioration of the lives of many workers. He is also shocked by the unhealthy handling of the meat. The novel presents graphic descriptions of diseased animals and rotting meat being sold to the American public.

"is sit down and look through cases where the criminals had been arrested. I listed how old [the perpetrators] were, whether they were male or female, their level of education. Did they come from broken families? Did they have school behavioral problems? I listed as many factors as I could come up with, and then I added them up to see which were the most common."

"The basic premise is that behavior reflects personality," explains retired FBI agent Gregg McCrary. In a homicide case, for example, FBI agents glean insight into personality through questions about the murderer's behavior at four crime phases:Antecedent: What fantasy or plan, or both, did the murderer have in place before the act? What triggered the murderer to act some days and not others?Method and manner: What type of victim or victims did the murderer select? What was the method and manner of murder: shooting, stabbing, strangulation or something else?Body disposal: Did the murder and body disposal take place all at one scene, or multiple scenes?Postoffense behavior: Is the murderer trying to inject himself into the investigation by reacting to media reports or contacting investigators

Among those in the profiling field, the tension between law enforcement and psychology still exists to some degree. "The difference is really a matter of the FBI being more oriented towards investigative experience than [academic psychologists] are," says retired FBI agent McCrary.

An understanding of personal choice is commonly based in a conception of rationality or rational choice

he central points of this theory are: (1) The human being is a rational actor, (2) Rationality involves an end/means calculation, (3) People (freely) choose all behavior, both conforming and deviant, based on their rational calculations, (4) The central element of calculation involves a cost benefit analysis: Pleasure versus Pain, (5) Choice, with all other conditions equal, will be directed towards the maximization of individual pleasure, (6) Choice can be controlled through the perception and understanding of the potential pain or punishment that will follow an act judged to be in violation of the social good, the social contract, (7) The state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws (this system is the embodiment of the social contract), (8) The Swiftness, Severity, and Certainty of punishment are the key elements in understanding a law's ability to control human behavior.

. On arriving in “the Promised Land”, though, they find their dreams to be disappointingly unattainable. The advertisements about ample work for all are really just ploys by the land owners to get cheap labor by attracting more workers than there are jobs. Gradually the family’s condition goes downhill as different members of the traveling group leave

. Like the persistent turtle, the Joad family will not give up. In addition, neither the story of the turtle, nor the story of the Joad family may end happily, but both the turtle and the Joad family will survive despite attacks and difficulties.

As I'm checking out, the elderly man in front of me says to the young woman running the register: "It's so sad to see your favorite store like this." She just shrugs.

A media capital Jonquière is not. And yet Wal-Mart's abandonment of this north Quebec outpost in the spring of 2005 made news from Tokyo to São Paulo as an object lesson in the lengths to which America's largest company will go to throttle the threat of unionization. Wal-Mart closed its store here a few months after it was certified by the Quebec government as the only unionized Wal-Mart in North America.

Discretion was essential, for they knew that there were workers who either truly liked their jobs without benefit of a union or were so fearful of losing them that they would oppose unionization.

With the mass production of low wage jobs, businesses have the ability hire their lackeys by the dozen.  Corporations thrive on the cheap availability of their employees and never feel compelled to increase pay allotments, simply because they know new, more desperate applicants will be coming through their doors to replace the previous groups.  For employers, low wage jobs are perfect; employment is high, and paychecks are low—great for overall profit of business. 

She made $6.65 an hour, but the company charged customers $25 an hour. In the book, she describes one day when a co-worker injured her ankle on the job and could barely walk, but refused to go to the hospital because she was worried about losing any wages.

The real secret to Ehrenreich's book, though, is yuppie voyeurism. Nickel and Dimed is an interesting read. It approaches the working poor like a separate species -- and for most of Ehrenreich's readers, they are.

Ehrenreich's book does have historical precedent, but it's not Orwell. It's the illustrated guides to the London underworld so popular with the Victorians. Ehrenreich's official conclusion: It's difficult, if not impossible, to keep afloat on $7 an hour. Her implicit conclusion: The poor are different from you and me. They look different. They eat different foods. They live in places middle-class people rarely go. They smoke. They even think differently from the way we do. They distrust collective endeavors. They're not stupid, but they're not interested in politics or other abstractions. Above all, they instinctively dislike change, even when change might improve their lives.

And sooner or later, she will be invited to testify before Congress, probably about the effects of welfare reform and the subsequent growth of the service economy.

People usually do not resort to risky and desperate moves unless they have nothing left to lose. Steinbeck begins the Joads’ story with the loss of everything they had

Whether as tenants or small landholders, either for subsistence or for markets, the vast majority of the poor migrantes now coming to this country are fleeing the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, just as the Joads

As far as capitalism is concerned, whatever will maximize profit is the arrangement that must be pursued, regardless of the human consequences. The situation in Mexico today resembles that of Oklahoma 75 years ago. Small family farms are no longer profitable enough, and people are being thrown off their land every year by the thousands.

Such cutthroat business practices ultimately have the twofold effect of hurting workers while also poisoning the meat with the cow’s own feces, which leads to the outbreak of E. coli bacteria illnesses.