Where Will I Put My Million Dollars?

In America we are faced with many problems. As citizens we can find a way to help. If you had a millon dollars would you use it to help America become a better nation? If I had a million dollars, I would spend it on food safety, child labor, and Deforestation.

Food safety is definitely a huge issue. I would donate 600,000 dollars on helping food safety because it’s important that what we eat is healthy and safe for us to consume. The conditions we have right now are ridiculous. There is rats everywhere crawling around on the meat, so the packers are putting poisoned bread out for them and after the rats consume the bread, the bread, rat, and meat is all put together. ”There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had trampled and spit.” (Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Viking Press, 1905)

Child labor is another problem America is facing today. I would like to donate 300,000 dollars to helping the National Child Labor Committee because the working conditions are far too dangerous and extreme for a small child. The air is filled with coal dust, their fingers get calloused, and there’s a huge possibility that they could be killed. “..for long periods after the boy leaves the breaker, he continues to cough up the black coal dust.”(Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Report, 1911) Would you want your little sister or brother being injured or even possibly killed?

Deforestation is an issue we need to fix. I would like to spend 100,000 dollars on deforestation because some of the trees that are being cut down are thousands of years old. “Any fool can destroy trees”(John Muir, “The American Forests,” Atlantic Monthly, August, 1897) Above all this, one fact remains the same, we need trees to live. If we destroy all the trees in the world, we are left with harsh living conditions for ourselves. Our forests should be preserved if we want a better nation.

As you can see us as American need to step up and do our part to help. I’m going to help by donating a total of a million dollars to the meat industry, child labor, and deforestation, what will you do to help?

References:

John Muir, “The American Forests”, Atlantic Monthly, August, 1897 Lewis Hine, National Child Labor Committee Report, 1911
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Viking Press, 1905