Analysis Of Upton Sinclair s The Flivver King

Flivver King Writing Assignment Zack Seymour US 102/ Professor Ward The Flivver King by Upton Sinclair tackles many social issues that were coming to be in the early 1900’s. Upton Sinclair used fictional characters in his book to depict how society viewed the rise of Ford and other enterprises. As a â€Å"muckraker† Sinclair had meaning behind every character and action in this book. His goal was to expose corporate enterprises for the â€Å"crimes† (no socialism or unionization) they had been committing. Based upon his book, Upton Sinclair would have had many answers why there was no socialism or unionization in the United States. His first answer would be corporate corruption. Big enterprises at this time only cared about their own profits not†¦show more content†¦Upton Sinclair felt that our nation at this time needed to establish a strong union where the workers can actually get help from a stronger organization when going against the corporations. Sinclair wanted a strong Union to help workers get what he feels they deserve, instead of terrible jobs. The reason why there is no strong presence of a labor union in this country is because of the risk that it presented for workers at the time. In the Flivver King, Henry Ford used thugs and goons to intimidate people from not bringing the any kind of union into his company. Upton Sinclair said this in the book, as a beleaguered American socialist in a society that is generally unsympathetic to the plight of the less fortunate, Sinclair pondered the question of why Socialism did not gain a foothold in the minds of the American workers. (Sinclair, Preface viii, xi) This passage shows the mindsets of the factory workers at the time prevented a chance and at a strong labor union. Sinclair feels that if the American workforce could have embraced a more socialist mindset, there could have been some kind of organization to protect them from being exploited and possibly fired just by mentioning the very idea of trying to start or join anything like a union. Other issues pointed out by Sinclair were workers being killed by various factors like poor or unsafe work