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jen furphey

Best content in APEngLangper711-12 | Diigo - Groups - 2 views

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    What is this? There's nothing here?
Evan G

A review Fast Food Nation | Grist - 2 views

  • Turnover is huge, and the companies profit from it: Short-term workers accrue few benefits and are less likely to organize. Schlosser recounts how McDonald's and its ilk have fought against unions, sometimes closing stores to prevent workers from unionizing.
  • . Three companies grow and process about 80 percent of all French fries now served by fast food chains
  • The meat-processing industry and restaurant chains continually lobby against regulations that would improve worker and food safety
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    Gives a brief summary of all of Schlosser's complaints in FFN, while whining about the meat industries and their expansion, development, tactics, and industrialization. 
Sarah Sch

Finance and Corruption in America - 2 views

  • The benefits big business receives for their donations to political parties are endless. Not only can a corporation get tax cuts, they can get negative tax rates. This means, not only do they pay zero dollars in taxes , but they also get additional profits at tax time. "Texaco, for example, received a tax rebate of $67.76 million, which meant that it paid taxes at a rate of negative 37.2 percent..." (Washington Post, October 20, 2000)
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    This article from corporate welfare discusses corruption in America and cites some incidents that demonstrate how money affects American politics. Some of the occurrences are typical of the corruption described in "Fast Food Nation", however there is also other stunning information. The excerpt above tells of how Texaco receives money from the government when it files taxes. Texaco receives money that is in the tens of millions of dollars while the lower class typically pays thousands of dollars in overall taxes per household. This article is helpful in an essay citing how big businesses benefit from corruption.
Evan G

Cornell News: Meatpacking industry violates human rights - 0 views

  • "Workers in American beef, pork and poultry slaughtering and processing plants, many of whom are immigrants, perform dangerous, physically demanding and exhausting jobs in bloody, greasy surroundings. The workers not only contend with abuses and an unprecedented volume and pace in sawing and cutting carcasses, but they also experience constant fear and risk, not only for their health and safety but for their jobs if they get hurt or attempt to organize
  • many injured workers, who not uncommonly lose a limb or suffer severe life-threatening injuries, don't get workers' compensation when injured, and government laws, regulations and policies and enforcement fail to protect them.
  • "Meatpacking work has extraordinarily and unnecessarily high rates of injury, musculoskeletal disorders (repetitive stress injuries) and even death. The inherent dangers of meatpacking work are aggravated by ever-increasing line speeds, inadequate training, close-quarters cutting and long hours with few breaks,"
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    Talks about the dangers and accidents in meatpacking industries, as well as complaining about how unnecessary these accidents are. A little carefulness and selflessness on the part of the companies would go a long way.
Ellen L

Teens in the Workforce - Boston Fed - 0 views

  • 1998, Douglas Kruse and Douglas Mahony estimated that during an average week about 148,000 minors were working in violation of the law. They also found that youths in banned occupations were paid $1.38 less per hour than adults in the same job, saving employers about $155 million per year
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    This article describes the working conditions in modern America for teens, the corporation's complience (or lack thereof) of labor laws, and the evolution of these labor laws. The information in this article reflects the positions of the children in The Jungle and FFN, supplying concrete details about the safety risks presented to a younger workforce.
Evan G

The Outsider Writers' Book Review: Upton Sinclair: The Jungle - 0 views

  • Sinclair's book is a muckraking expose of the institutionalized inequality, corruption, privilege, sickness and slavery needed to keep the machine running that runs beneath he thin veneer of the American dream of freedom and success.
  • It's a losing battle, of course, and work in the packinghouses brings poverty, disease, death, injury, injustice, rape, jail and exploitation to the Rudkus family.
  • In the drive for even a half-penny of profit spoiled meat is bribed past inspectors, men are crushed and killed, waste is driven wholesale into public drinking water and, like the meat the process, every ounce of worth in a human being is taken before being discarded in favor of fresh meat
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  • Jurgis also is glad that he is not a pig – only to realize at the end that he and all the working men were treated as cruelly and as senselessly as the animals, driven to the point of death to churn out meat faster and faster and then discarded.
  • better to be a homeless vagrant than in service of the Trusts.
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    This site is AMAZING for topics regarding treatment of workers. It literally describes in vivid detail the cruelty and carelessness of the corporations, as well as the insignificance and disposability of the worker. No one matters; the companies see people in terms of dollars, not faces or names. People are just a means to an end, a way to get profit. Once the profit ceases, the people are discarded in search of even better workers, which will be discarded in their time as well
Evan G

A Literary Analysis of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - Associated Content from Yahoo! - ... - 1 views

  • The protagonist Jurgis is immediately overjoyed to have a job, denies to join a union because he is all but ecstatic with the poor working conditions, and believes he is making a good living for his family.
  • The Jungle couldn't be a better title for this book, as the immigrant family is eaten alive by conmen, politicians, dirty employers, lawyers, and shoddy living conditions.
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    Really attests to the title of the book, and talks about how cons and other deceitful tactics were used to screw the Rudkuses over. The second and third pages of it are interesting because they describe the book in both socialist AND capitalist points of view, giving a fairer view of Sinclair's words and accusations against capitalism.
Ellen L

Reading the Food Social Movement - 0 views

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    "These books catapulted food into the mainstream of modern culture and advocacy for social change, and opened doors for scholars as well as journalists to write about the political, commercial, and health aspects of food in modern society."
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    Food professor Marion Nestle discusses the social effects of FFN, as well as two other modern books, and the way they change how Americans view food. This topic is also related back to The Jungle, and it's seemingly ancient, yet undeniably relatable effects on the American food process.
Evan G

SparkNotes: The Jungle: Themes, Motifs & Symbols - 0 views

  • Every event, especially in the first twenty-seven chapters of the book, is chosen deliberately to portray a particular failure of capitalism, which is, in Sinclair’s view, inhuman, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent.
  • The slow annihilation of Jurgis’s immigrant family at the hands of a cruel and prejudiced economic and social system demonstrates the effect of capitalism on the working class as a whole
  • Instead of a land of acceptance and opportunity, they find a place of prejudice and exploitation; instead of a country where hard work and morality lead to success, they find a place where only moral corruption, crime, and graft enable one to succeed materially.
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  • The family itself has been subject to swindles, grafts, manipulation, and rape. As the corruption motif recurs with increasing levels of immorality, it enhances the sense that things are growing worse and worse for the family. Sinclair heightens the atmosphere of grim tragedy and hopelessness to such an extent that only the encounter with socialism in Chapter 28 can possibly alleviate Jurgis’s suffering and give his life meaning.
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    Yet again, Sparknotes is a fairly decent source, describing various themes for potential essay topics including the failure of capitalism, corruption in businesses, treatment of the [immigrant]  worker, etc. It's very short, to the point, and concise, talking about how awfully workers are manipulated, and the utter torment they go through on a day-to-day basis, merely trying to survive.
Evan G

The Great Depression - 1 views

  • Farm prices dropped to record lows and bitter farmers tried to ward off foreclosers with pitchforks. By the dawn of the next decade, 4,340,000 Americans were out of work. More than eight million were on the street a year later. Laid-off workers agitated for drastic government remedies. More than 32,000 other businesses went bankrupt and at least 5,000 banks failed. Wretched men, including veterans, looked for work, hawked apples on sidewalks, dined in soup kitchens, passed the time in shantytowns dubbed "Hoovervilles," and some moved between them in railroad boxcars. It was a desperate time for families, starvation stalked the land, and a great drought ruined numerous farms, forcing mass migration.
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    Although it's just a basic summary of the Depression on a website, it actually has some good statistical figures that might be included in essays to add effect or impact, or "concrete details" for Mrs. Furphey.
Evan G

GRAPES OF WRATH - 2011 « The Burning Platform - 3 views

  • “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. 
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    An overall summary of the depression/GOW. It especially hits on the selifshness of the rich, who seek to keep the poor divided, as well as on the unity of the poor, who die and sacrifice for each other. It contains an EXCELLENT quote from Steinbeck which cynically describes human nature, basically saying that nice guys are admired, but they never get ahead. Greedy, mean guys are hated, but they are admired for their success.  Again, later  it ties into crushing the migrants' dreams in order to keep them down and divided.
Evan G

The Grapes of Wrath; John Steinbeck - 2 views

  • , the Joad's journey to California was a trip in which the great expectations they had were the motor for their need to go on. Through the story, Steinbeck manifests his believe of “The body destroyed but the spirit not broken”, his hatred for corruption, and his faith in common people. This is clearly shown in how the Joad family fought together to overcome adversity. California was no “promised land” after all, only a dream that was broken by its cruel reality.
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    This source is all about the optimism of the workers, and how the big corporations constantly tried to manipulate and/or stamp out the sparks of hope and dreams that the migrants had. They used the migrants' dreams against them
Evan G

SparkNotes: The Grapes of Wrath: Themes, Motifs & Symbols - 3 views

  • Steinbeck consistently and woefully points to the fact that the migrants’ great suffering is caused not by bad weather or mere misfortune but by their fellow human beings. Historical, social, and economic circumstances separate people into rich and poor, landowner and tenant, and the people in the dominant roles struggle viciously to preserve their positions.
  • In order to protect themselves from such danger, the landowners create a system in which the migrants are treated like animals, shuffled from one filthy roadside camp to the next, denied livable wages, and forced to turn against their brethren simply to survive.
  • ” In the face of adversity, the livelihood of the migrants depends upon their union. As Tom eventually realizes, “his” people are all people.
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  • . Simple self-interest motivates the landowners and businessmen to sustain a system that sinks thousands of families into poverty.
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    Although Sparknotes is a very stereotypcial website on novels, it's still a very effective source of information. It makes blatantly clear the fact that the rich, aristocratic upper class is mainly responsible for the poverty and economic devastation in the country. The rich get richer at the cost of the destruction of the lower class. The workers are treated poorly in an effort to keep them desperate, which in turn keeps the rich people rich. Selfishness and greed, key themes in practically every novel read so far, is clarified and pointed out. The condition of the migrants is no accident, it's an intentional, deliberate plot to oppress them. Their only hope is through unity.
Evan G

Critical Analysis of "The Grapes of Wrath," by John Steinbeck - Inkweaver Rev... - 3 views

  • . 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.
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    Discusses the author's motives behind the novel, as well as the strategies he uses to convey his points. It's a really good source that gives the background and reasons for the book. It mentions literary techniques used to write the story, analyzing the interchapters and discussing the diction and word choice used by Steinbeck. It has good analysis of multiple parts of Grapes of Wrath. This is a very useful source in part because not only does it discuss the novel, it also points out the reasons behind the writing of the novel.
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    This is great, I was looking for a review like this when writing the first paper.
Zach Ramsfelder

"The Jungle" Turns 100 - 1 views

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    About the changes in worker safety and rights that have occurred since the Jungle was published in 1906; sort of links the Jungle to Fast Food Nation through its discussion of how today's meatpacking workers relate to meatpacking workers of the early 1900s
Emily S

Literary Reference Center - powered by EBSCOhost: The Enduring Values of John Steinbeck... - 0 views

shared by Emily S on 28 Sep 11 - No Cached
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    This author discusses the "brutal realism" that Steinbeck uses to make his message to readers more effective. His writing is designed to emphasize the hardships of the migrant class.
Julianne M

Digital History - 0 views

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    The is a good history of worker unrest, not just pertaining to late 19th century America. The Industrial Revolution was by no means the first instance of attempted unionization and worker discomfort.
Julianne M

Calisphere - California Cultures - 1866-1920: Rapid Population Growth, Large-Scale Agri... - 0 views

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    This demonstrates other events that were happening during the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century- not only were migrant farmers from all over America coming to California, but immigrants from Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, and China provided still more competition for work.
Emily S

Gale resource center grapes of wrath article - 0 views

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    This author describes the way Steinbeck sympathizes with the impoverished lower class. He portrays them in a way that idealizes them for their ability to combat the physical and emotional hardships imposed on them by the bankers. By favoring the migrant farmers, Steinbeck takes advantage of this emotional appeal to the readers and makes his exposé more convincing.
Travis F

treatment of the worker analysis - 0 views

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    this article is a general overview of The Jungle and what its purpose is.
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