Letter From Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

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Dear Aunt Bessie,

I thought about your request and found about the many problems in our country. Meat is never cleaned, children are forced to work in factories, often losing entire limbs, and probably over half the populations do not have equal rights. Following your request, I have decided to give away the million dollars as you told me, Six hundred thousand to the one that needs it most, three hundred thousand to the next, and one hundred thousand to the last. After a little bit of thinking, I decided the meat packing industry needed it the most. In Upton Sinclair’s book “The Jungle”, in 1905, he said they store the meat in dark rooms. There were usually roofs leaking water onto the meat and rats would usually run about on the meat. To top it all off, they don’t
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They just throw the meat and the mice in there together. The next cause I’d like to support is Child Labor. In the National
College Committee Report in 1911, Lewis Hine said he saw two breaker boys, at least fifteen years old that fell or were carried by the coal. While one got a very bad burn, the other was smothered to death. But most are just lucky losing a finger or getting bad

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