D4.3.9-12: Presenting Evocative, Fair Adaptations for Many Audiences

Overview

Lesson Procedure

75-80 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction25-30 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A museum has room for one sentence on the wall about a factory fire. Write it once to make visitors feel the loss, and once to make them understand the cause. Can one sentence do both? What would make an emotional sentence unfair?"

   Collect a few pairs. Name the two pulls of the indicator: evocative ideas (details, images and voices that stir an audience) and accurate, fair perspectives. Students usually see that the most moving sentence is often a specific person's words or a concrete detail, and that it becomes unfair when it hides who is speaking or bends the facts. Introduce the indicator and today's question: how should the 1906 fight over meatpacking be presented to people outside school?

2. Direct Instruction25-30 minutes

   Part 1: The issue and the voices. In 1906 Congress passed a meat inspection law and a food and drug law, and Source 5 calls the conditions Sinclair "captured in The Jungle" the "final precipitating force behind both." Each source speaks from a different position, and each is a different kind of text. An adaptation must tell its audience which kind it is quoting: a novel, a company's defense, a worker's account recorded by a writer, or a government history.

   Source Information: who speaks in each source, what kind of text it is, and what to tell an audience

   Source	Who speaks	Kind of text	What an adaptation should say
   1: The Jungle	Upton Sinclair, through his characters	Novel (fiction based on Chicago's packinghouses)	That it is a novel, not a news report
   2: The Packers	J. Ogden Armour, head of Armour and Company	A company leader's defense, first printed as magazine articles	That he is defending his own industry
   3: Life Story of a Lithuanian	A stockyards worker, under a pen name	A first-person account recorded by the writer Ernest Poole	That the words reached print through an interviewer
   4: The Pure Food and Drugs Act	The House of Representatives' Office of the Historian	A government history page	That it is a modern summary
   5: The 1906 Food and Drugs Act	The Food and Drug Administration	A government agency's history of its own law	That the agency is describing its own origins

   Part 2: Read the sources. Students read in a jigsaw (one perspective per group) and mark three things in their source: its argument, its explanation, and its most evocative line. Terms: packers (meatpacking companies), consumption germs (germs of tuberculosis, called consumption in 1906), hoppers (funnels that fed meat into grinders), branch house (a packer's local warehouse that sold to butchers), condemned (rejected by inspectors as unfit), Meat Trust (a name critics used for the large packing companies), grafters (people who cheat for money), muckraking journalists (reporters who exposed wrongdoing), Wiley (Harvey W. Wiley, who led the Bureau of Chemistry that the FDA page names).

   How the texts were prepared: Sources 2 and 3 are typed exactly from the page scans of their 1906 books, Source 1 comes from the Project Gutenberg text of the 1906 novel, and Sources 4 and 5 are copied from the House and FDA pages; [...] marks every place where words are left out. The worker in Source 3 says at the start that Antanas Kaztauskis "is not my real name." Source 1 describes rats and spoiled meat in graphic detail; preview it before class and prepare students for it.

   1With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest—that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.

   [...]

   2It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white—it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. [...]

   1We would hear less criticism of the packers if consumers could follow a steer from pen to slaughter-house, see it converted into “quarters” and “cuts” and hung in the cooler, transferred thence to a clean, cold car, transported under ice to the farthest part of the country, and finally deposited in the branch house. That would bring home to the consumer, as nothing else can, the fact that no part of the people’s food-supply receives more careful handling than does the meat that comes from the large packing-houses.

   2In the absence of such a comprehensive inspection it would be a distinct benefit to the packers if the general public would take pains to visit and scrutinize the branch houses. They are always open to visitors. If there is a branch house of Armour & Co. in your vicinity, you are cordially invited to see for yourself just how the hated packer takes care of your meat-supply.

   [...]

   3Government inspection is another important feature of the packers’ business. To the general public, the meat-eating public, it ought to appeal as one of the most important features of any and all business in the whole country. It is the wall that stands between the meat-eating public and the sale of diseased meat.

   4This government inspection alone, if there were no other business or economic reasons, would be an all-sufficient reason for the existence of the packing and dressed-meat business on a mammoth scale. It should, if understood, make the general public a partisan supporter of the large packers.

   5Strangely enough, in view of its vital importance, this government inspection has been the subject of almost endless misrepresentation—of ignorantly or maliciously false statements.

   6The public has been told that meat animals and carcasses condemned as diseased are afterwards secretly made use of by the packers and sold to the public for food in the form of both dressed meats and canned meats.

   7Right here I desire to brand such statements as absolutely false as applied to the business of Armour & Co. I believe they are equally false as to all establishments in this country that are classed as packing-houses.

   8I repeat: In Armour & Co.’s business not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food-product or food-ingredient. [...]

   1The Lithuanian, who told the following story of his life to Mr. Ernest Poole, is a workman in the Chicago Stockyards and gave his name as Antanas Kaztauskis.

   2This is not my real name, because if this story is printed it may be read back in Lithuania, and I do not want to get my father and the ugly shoemaker into trouble with the Russian Government. [...]

   [...]

   3The next morning my friends woke me up at five o'clock and said, “Now, if you want life, liberty and happiness,” they laughed, “you must push for yourself. You must get a job. Come with us.” And we went to the yards. Men and women were walking in by thousands as far as we could see. We went to the doors of one big slaughter house. There was a crowd of about 200 men waiting there for a job. They looked hungry and kept watching the door. At last a special policeman came out and began pointing to men, one by one. Each one jumped forward. Twenty-three were taken. Then they all went inside, and all the others turned their faces away and looked tired. I remember one boy sat down and cried, just next to me, on a pile of boards.

   [...]

   4That night I told my friends that I would not do this many days, but would go some place else. “Where?” they asked me, and I began to see then that I was in bad trouble, because I spoke no English. Then one man told me to give him $5 to give the special policeman. I did this and the next morning the policeman pointed me out, so I had a job. I have heard some big talk since then about my American freedom of contract, but I do not think I had much freedom in bargaining for this job with the Meat Trust. My job was in the cattle killing room. I pushed the blood along the gutter. [...] One Lithuanian who worked with me, said, “They get all the blood out of those cattle and all the work out of us men.” This was true, for we worked that first day from six in the morning till seven at night. The next day we worked from six in the morning till eight at night. The next day we had no work. So we had no good, regular hours. It was hot in the room that summer, and the hot blood made it worse.

   5I held this job six weeks and then I was turned off. I think some other man had paid for my job, or perhaps I was too slow. The foreman in that room wanted quick men to make the work rush, because he was paid more if the work was done cheaper and quicker. I saw now that every man was helping himself, always trying to get all the money he could. At that time I believed that all men in Chicago were grafters when they had to be. They only wanted to push themselves. Now, when I was idle I began to look about, and everywhere I saw sharp men beating out slow men like me. Even if we worked hard it did us no good. I had saved $13—$5 a week for six weeks makes $30, and take off $15 for six weeks' board and lodging and $2 for other things. [...]

   1On this date, the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (PL 59-384) passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, 240 to 17. Muckraking journalists had long reported on the appallingly unsanitary conditions of the country’s manufacturing plants, especially those in Chicago’s meat-packing industry. But it wasn’t until the public outcry following the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle that Congress moved on legislation that would prevent “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs or medicines, and liquors.” The version of the bill which became the Pure Food and Drugs Act originated in the Senate (S.88), and after being sent to the House it was reported out of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee with amendments on March 7th. It sat unconsidered for three months, causing some to wonder if Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois was delaying it. On June 21st, with only a few days left to the session, Representative James Mann of Illinois captivated the chamber with a speech about fruit that had been colored with poisonous red dye, and liquor that had been distilled with chemical fillers. The New York Times called the debate over the Pure Food bill “one of the wildest times that has been seen this session.” After the measure passed, the House and Senate met in conference, settled their differences, and sent the bill back to their respective chambers for final consideration. Following a round of applause, the House approved the conference report on June 29th. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act into law the next day.

   1While Wiley was stumping for a law, muckraking journalists such as Samuel Hopkins Adams exposed in vivid detail the hazards of the marketplace. In fact, the nauseating condition of the meat-packing industry that Upton Sinclair captured in The Jungle was the final precipitating force behind both a meat inspection law and a comprehensive food and drug law. [...] Since 1879, nearly 100 bills had been introduced in Congress to regulate food and drugs; on 30 June 1906 President Roosevelt signed the Food and Drugs Act, known simply as the Wiley Act, a pillar of the Progressive era.

   2This act, which the Bureau of Chemistry was charged to administer, prohibited the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs under penalty of seizure of the questionable products and/or prosecution of the responsible parties. The basis of the law rested on the regulation of product labeling rather than pre-market approval. [...] Foods were not defined according to analogous standards, but the law prohibited the addition of any ingredients that would substitute for the food, conceal damage, pose a health hazard, or constitute a filthy or decomposed substance. [...]

   Part 3: Model the adaptations. Work through the five examples. Each adapts one argument or explanation for a named audience and venue, and shows how to keep its evocative power honest.

   • Print, for museum visitors: an evocative quotation with its genre (Source 1, paragraph 1)

     A history museum panel has room for one quotation from The Jungle. Which line, and what must go with it?

     Result: The "old Packingtown jest" that the packers "use everything of the pig except the squeal" is short and memorable. The label must add that it comes from a 1906 novel, so visitors know it is fiction drawn from Chicago, and one line of context from a government history: public outcry after the book helped push Congress to act (Source 4).

   • Oral, for a historical society: adapting the packers' argument fairly (Source 2, paragraphs 3-8)

     A speaker must present Armour's side to a room of adult history buffs. How?

     Result: Use his own evocative image, that inspection is "the wall that stands between the meat-eating public and the sale of diseased meat" (paragraph 3), and his flat denial that "not one atom" of condemned meat entered his products (paragraph 8). State plainly that he was the head of a packing company answering critics, then let the audience weigh it beside the other sources.

   • Digital, for online viewers: a worker's voice in a short documentary (Source 3, paragraphs 3-5)

     A two-minute digital documentary wants a worker's perspective. What should the narration and screen text do?

     Result: Read his scene at the gate, where about 200 men waited and "Twenty-three were taken" (paragraph 3), and his co-worker's line, "They get all the blood out of those cattle and all the work out of us men" (paragraph 4). On screen, show that the account was told to Ernest Poole in 1906 under a pen name. The voice is evocative because it is specific; the caption keeps it honest.

   • Oral, for lawmakers in 1906: why a concrete example persuades (Source 4)

     The House historian says Representative James Mann "captivated the chamber." What adaptation choice did he make?

     Result: He spoke about fruit "colored with poisonous red dye" and liquor "distilled with chemical fillers": concrete things his listeners ate and drank. An adaptation for any audience works the same way: choose the example closest to the listeners' own lives, and name its source.

   • A range of audiences: one explanation, three versions (Sources 4 and 5)

     How does the explanation "public outcry after The Jungle helped pass the 1906 laws" change for three audiences?

     Result: For eighth graders on a museum visit: one sentence and a picture of the book. For a historical society: add the House vote of 240 to 17 and the signing on June 30, 1906 (Source 4), and that nearly 100 bills had been introduced since 1879 (Source 5). For online viewers: a timeline graphic with links to both government pages. The explanation stays the same; the depth and form change.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Groups of four plan a four-panel museum exhibit titled "Meat, Money and the Law, 1906," using Diagram 1 as the plan for each panel. Each member drafts one panel for one perspective: the novelist, the packer, the worker, Congress. Each panel needs a title of no more than eight words, one evocative quotation with its speaker and kind of text, and two sentences of explanation. Then the group checks that no panel's title judges the issue for the visitor.

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Each student adapts one argument and one explanation from the sources for two different audiences and venues of their choice, using a different technology for each (for example, a podcast segment for high school listeners and an exhibit poster for a public library). Each product must include at least one evocative idea, at least two perspectives, and a line that tells the audience what kind of source each quotation comes from.

   Look-fors for the teacher: evocative choices that come from the sources rather than invented drama; quotations attributed to the right speaker and kind of text; numbers unchanged; and real differences between the two products in length, vocabulary and form.

5. Closure10 minutes

   Exit ticket: "Which evocative idea from today's sources would you use for an audience of ten-year-olds, and which would you leave out? Explain the difference."

   Teacher note on the sources: Source 3's narrator uses a pen name and names other immigrant groups in passages not printed here. The full chapter also includes language that reflects 1906 prejudice, including a stereotyped description of a Jewish clothing seller and the period term of 1906 for a Black union member; those passages are left out, and teachers who assign the full chapter should preview them. Students present the 1906 issue as history: the lesson takes no position on present-day food or labor policy, and students should not role-play the historical figures. All products stay within channels the teacher approves.

   Quiz passage. Questions 12-18 of the quiz use Source 6, four invented student drafts. Each draft is deliberately weak in one way, for students to judge and repair.

   1These four drafts were invented for this page. Invented students wrote each one for a different audience and venue outside the classroom, using Sources 1-5. Each draft is deliberately weak in one way, so that students can judge and repair it.

   2Draft A, a wall panel for a city history museum: "THE JUNGLE TELLS THE TRUTH. In 1906 Chicago's packers dumped poisoned rats into the sausage and sold it to the nation. Upton Sinclair saw it all, and his book proved it. Within months, Congress cleaned up America's food."

   3Draft B, a script for a podcast for high school listeners: "In 1906 a book was published. It was called The Jungle. Some people liked it and some did not. A meatpacker wrote articles too. Then the House voted 240 to 17 for a food law, and President Roosevelt signed it on June 30."

   4Draft C, narration for a two-minute digital documentary: "Even the packers' own leader admitted the truth. J. Ogden Armour wrote that 'meat animals and carcasses condemned as diseased are afterwards secretly made use of by the packers and sold to the public for food.'"

   5Draft D, a speech for a local historical society: "Listen to the words of a real worker. Antanas Kaztauskis told how he worked fourteen hours every single day in the killing room, and how every worker was paid nothing at all. That is how the Meat Trust treated its men."

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 3, paragraph 3, about 200 men waited at the gate and twenty-three were taken. About what share got work that morning?

   AAbout 1 in 2 BAbout 1 in 4 CAbout 1 in 9 DAbout 1 in 23

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 3, paragraph 5, the worker earned $5 a week for six weeks and paid $15 for six weeks' board and lodging. How much was his board and lodging per week?

   A$2.00 a week B$3.00 a week C$15.00 a week D$2.50 a week

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 4 says the Pure Food and Drugs Act passed the House 240 to 17. About what percent of the members voting were in favor?

   AAbout 93 percent BAbout 7 percent CAbout 76 percent DAbout 99 percent

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 5 says that "since 1879, nearly 100 bills had been introduced in Congress" before the 1906 law. Over about how many years were those bills introduced?

   AAbout 17 years BAbout 27 years CAbout 37 years DAbout 100 years

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   A student's digital documentary introduces Source 1 with the narration "Here is a 1906 report from inside a Chicago packinghouse." What should the student change?

   ACall it a 1906 novel, because it is fiction BName J. Ogden Armour as the passage's author CLeave out that the passage is about Chicago DCall it a government history of the 1906 law

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Armour calls government inspection "the wall that stands between the meat-eating public and the sale of diseased meat" (Source 2, paragraph 3). In his argument, what does this image do?

   AIt admits that his company sold diseased meat to the public BIt explains in technical detail how inspectors examined each carcass CIt reports how many animals the government inspectors condemned DIt makes inspection a shield, so readers trust the packers

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 3, paragraph 2, why did the narrator not use his real name?

   ATo keep his father and the shoemaker out of trouble BTo hide from the packers who had turned him off CBecause Ernest Poole asked him to stay unnamed DBecause the Meat Trust did not allow workers to speak

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 4 says Representative James Mann "captivated the chamber" with a speech about fruit colored with poisonous red dye and liquor distilled with chemical fillers. A student wants to use the same move to open a podcast about the 1906 law for high school listeners. Which opening uses it best?

   AReading out the bill numbers S.88 and PL 59-384, slowly and twice BGiving the House vote of 240 to 17 and the date of the vote CA labeled line from the novel's sausage scene, tied to lunch DNaming the House committee that reported the bill in March

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 4 says the bill "sat unconsidered for three months, causing some to wonder if Speaker Joe Cannon of Illinois was delaying it." Which timeline caption keeps the source's meaning?

   ASpeaker Cannon was caught delaying the bill BSome wondered if Cannon was delaying it CSpeaker Cannon voted against the 1906 bill DThe bill waited three months for the Senate

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A museum's visitors spend about two minutes at each display. Which plan best fits this audience and venue?

    AA full page of Source 2 printed in small type BA recorded reading of all of Source 3, chapter I CA list of every date in Sources 4 and 5 DA title, one labeled quotation, one line

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Compared with a printed exhibit panel, what can a digital documentary add, and what must it still do?

    AAdd music, so it may leave out the sources BAdd more words, so it does not need any images CAdd voices and images, but keep the sources DAdd opinions, because viewers expect them online

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Read Draft A in Source 6, paragraph 2. What is its main problem?

    AIt quotes Armour's words as if they were Sinclair's BIt is too short to fit on a wall panel in a museum CIt treats a novel as proof and gives only one side DIt gives the wrong year for the 1906 food law

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Read Draft B in Source 6, paragraph 3. Judged against the indicator, what is its main weakness?

    AIt lists facts with no evocative voices BIts vote count does not match Source 4 CIt uses a technology that is wrong for listeners DIt quotes Sinclair without naming the novel

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Read Draft C in Source 6, paragraph 4. What is wrong with its quotation?

    AIt quotes Sinclair's novel but names Armour as the speaker BIt turns his summary of critics into an admission CIt copies the words of Source 2 with three words changed DIt comes from the House historian, not from Source 2

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Read Draft D in Source 6, paragraph 5. What is its main problem?

    AIt names the worker by a name he did not use BIt bends his hours and pay for effect CIt is told in the wrong technology for a speech DIt leaves out the Meat Trust, which he named

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Rewrite Draft A (Source 6, paragraph 2) as a fair museum wall panel of no more than 60 words. Keep one evocative idea and include at least two perspectives.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Rewrite Draft C (Source 6, paragraph 4) so that it presents Armour's argument accurately and still feels strong for documentary viewers.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Fix Draft D (Source 6, paragraph 5) for the historical society. Use the worker's real numbers, keep one evocative line, and tell the audience how his words reached print.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    A two-minute digital documentary will present both Source 1 and Source 2. Describe two choices you would make so that both perspectives are fair and evocative.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how you would adapt the House historian's explanation (Source 4) for two different audiences: eighth graders visiting a museum and members of a local historical society. Name one evocative idea you would use for each and why.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to D4.3.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.