into thinking they were getting the house for a reasonable price, they lost the house which family members had died to pay for. It was the system that made it okay for the Jurgis family to be cheated out of their hard earned money.In the time period in which The Jungle takes place, I sincerely believe that it is the system that defeats individual people or groups of people. The nature of the workers in The Jungle is to work hard and try and make a good living. This is their nature because that is why they came to America. They did not come to be unsuccessful, but to have a better life. And in doing so, they knew that they had to work hard. It was clearly the system that victimized and defeated people before the working Americans united in a struggle to achieve the gains that they have accumulated. Improvements did not come easily. Organizing unions, winning the right to representation, using the collective bargaining process as the core of their activities, struggling against bias and discrimination, the working men and women of America have built a trade union movement of formidable proportions. In this past century, American labor has played a central role in the elevation of the American standard of living. The benefits which unions have negotiated for their members are, in most cases, widespread in the economy and enjoyed by millions of our fellow citizens outside the labor movement. It is often hard to remember that what we take for granted-vacations with pay, pensions, health and welfare protection, grievance and arbitration procedures. Holidays never existed on any meaningful scale until unions fought and won them for working people. Now, in this time period, anyone can be successful and happy unless it is their own nature not to be....
