How many have read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair? It was required reading in my history class

[demtenjeep]

Dumpts hardon for making the meat processing plants run regardless of sickness or cleanliness brought that right back to me.

[Texaswitchy]

1. Read it.

Still have the paperback.

[xmas74]

2. I was a vegetarian for two years

After reading it.

[Ex Lurker]

3. Sinclair's purpose in writing it

Was to show the plight of workers in the meatpacking industry. The public missed his point entirely and focused on the nonexistent quality control standards. He hit something, but not the bullseye he was aiming at.

[DBoon]

4. He wanted to hit people in the heart

and got them in the stomach instead

[Laelth]

9. +1 n/t

-Laelth

[mountain grammy]

33. Exactly!

[LeftInTX]

12. Sausage!

It was pretty graphic, but I was in HS, and that is what high schoolers focus on.

[malchickiwick]

28. It took the tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to get some worker protections

And then, only on the state level.

[Flaleftist]

5. Yes, I have.

I recall a part where there were hundreds/thousands? waiting outside the plant for the next position that opened regardless of the danger and low pay. They were desperate.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

8. Capitalism

Exploits the desperate people in this sick system that only works for the rich and sociopathic.

Cheap labor republicans

[Flaleftist]

20. No more respect or consideration for the workers than the animals they slaughtered.

[demtenjeep]

10. and if a hand or an arm got smashed off in the grinder, it ended up in that day's product

just horrible conditions for the workers. Thank god unions helped

[Flaleftist]

15. Yep. And people that fell into the cooking vats

they canned the whole batch anyway and sold it.

[Igel]

23. The local steel mill where I grew up had a memorial patch.

Every one in a while a worker or two would fall into a batch of molten iron.

They'd cast a portion of it and place the ingot in the memorial patch with the worker's name and birth/death dates. The body could never be recovered--it was immediately incinerated, and the carbon becoming part of the carbon that produced the steel, calcium and other elements would be removed as impurities and surface as slag.

The rest of the steel would go for making ships or soup cans.

With the steel mill land sold, the mill itself torn down, and the descendants scattered, I wonder what happened to the ingots?

[Laelth]

6. I did.

Sinclair was arguing for socialism. His novel failed. We got food-industry regulations instead of socialism. He said, “I aimed for America’s heart, but I hit it in the stomach.”

-Laelth

[rusty quoin]

41. I don't see regulations as anti-socialism. And we are still talking about that novel.

In fact socialism is why we got regulations. It wasn’t about suggesting what capitalist should do.

I’ll sign off like you do.

-The nose picker.

[Laelth]

45. The novel was highly influential.

It’s still relevant, but Sinclair was disappointed by the novel’s impact.

Personally, I define liberalism as regulated capitalism. Liberalism in the U.S., in many ways, prevented a socialist revolution (or, so some Marxists argue).

-Laelth

[rusty quoin]

47. Me too. That is exactly how I've seen it. The regulation of capital. Not everything is a commodity

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. Read it 48 years ago in my Freshman year of high school.

It was required in an economics class I was taking. The general consensus at the time was those days were behind us.

[not fooled]

29. Yeah, those years were behind us

until pukes regressed the nation right back to just about where we were at the turn of the 19th century.

[alittlelark]

11. 8th grade. Horrifying.

[malaise]

13. Great read

Scary

[jimfields33]

14. I read it. Not sure what class. Maybe English

That first couple pages especially stayed with me. Frightening book.

[ARPad95]

16. I read it my freshman year in college for US History class. I still have the paper I wrote on it.

Mar 22, 1979

Upton Sinclair wrote his novel, The Jungle, to reveal to the public the degradation of the workingman in the meatpacking industry of Chicago during the early 1900's. He created the character Jurgis Rudkus to represent the newly arrived immigrant who came to the "land of opportunities" full of dreams only to become a disillusioned, broken human being when confronted with the realities of a world of quick profits and unscrupulous men.

I think that the novel can be divided into three sections: a naive but determined Jurgis and his family who rapidly become aware of their plight to lead a life of desolation at the hands of the unseen enemy - "the System"; an apathetic Jurgis who, by regarding it as the only means of survival, joins "the System"; and, finally, a rejuvenated Jurgis who has regained his determination and hopes after being inspired at a Socialist meeting.

The moment Jurgis and his family landed in America they were subjected to many indignations by translators, crooked agents, and greedy lawyers. All of them regarded the Lithuanians and other immigrants as easy victims to swindle. They cheated these ignorant people out of money, housing and jobs. Since Jurgis was determined to survive, these setbacks only made him work harder. Unfortunately, a greater power was in control of the people who toiled in Packingtown.

When Jurgis became injured, he finally realized that the harder he had worked, the worse his predicament of how his family would survive had become. "The System" was catching up to him and there was not anything he could do to prevent its total domination of his life. With only a desperate need to survive, Jurgis joins "the System" by selling votes for the Democrats and working as a scab.

After going through a series of defeats which leave him despondent, Jurgis happens to come across a Socialist meeting. The socialist ideology paralleled Jurgis' own life. At last, Jurgis had found a new meaning to his life and he was content to work for the Socialists' cause.

Upton Sinclair's main conclusion was that Socialism would negate the evils fostered by Capitalism. Socialism, he proposed, would provide solutions to the problems of distribution of wealth and the competitive wage system which tended to favor the upper classes.

I feel that Sinclair was very sympathetic towards the Socialist's ideology. He all but showed Capitalism as a terrible affliction on the workingman and that Socialism would solve all their problems.

Upton Sinclair's main source of information was his own personal experiences. He was sent on an assignment to investigate the meatpacking industry in Chicago while working for a Socialist newspaper. His descriptive portrayals of the meatpacking industry were a result of his investigations. His knowledge of Socialism was probably obtained while working for the newspaper.

I think the most memorable passage is on page 260 - "There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind bars, and the man is outside."

[Sloumeau]

24. Sinclair wrote it in 1906, so he did not get to see that there would be

many versions of Socialism. Socialism in most of Europe is fine and dandy. In China and the former Soviet Union, it was, and is, not quite as dandy.

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. He died in 1968 (n/t)

[Sloumeau]

42. I'm sorry. I should have specified that he had not seen,

by the time he wrote The Jungle how Socialism would turn out.

[RandySF]

17. I did.

[wendyb-NC]

18. Read it 8th grade.

It describes the detail of meat processing for human consumption, from start to finish of the processing. It was pretty graphic, and the slaughter factories were quite abominable, filthy places.

[tblue37]

19. I have read it. nt

[Demovictory9]

21. I recall reading it as a kid

[Crunchy Frog]

22. My step father read it to us as a bedtime story when we were little.

[3Hotdogs]

25. I assigned it to my H.S. students and to the class I taught at Fordham, Manhattan campus.

[IronLionZion]

26. Trump campaigned on taking us backwards

And repeating old mistakes from the robber baron times and world-wide pandemics and a general mistrust of American institutions.

People misremembered that the past was not quite as "great" as some would have liked to believe. Yet here we are making America great again.

[Upthevibe]

27. It was one of the required books in one of my classes at Cal State....

I don't even remember what the class was but I remember the book impacted me.

[Demobrat]

30. I've read it

What many people don’t take away or don’t remember is that it is an indictment not just of the meat packing industry but also of false advertising

Remember at the end he muses over how his family’s troubles began with a flyer advertising the house he bought and the financing for it. A house he never would have even tried to purchase if he had understood the costs

It was the flyer and the lies it contained that ruined their lives.

That book taught me a lifelong suspicion of advertising

[nancy1942]

31. I read it years ago...

definitely made an impression on my belief system.

[Generic Brad]

34. I have

At one time I was well read. Now I’m just coasting.

[dflprincess]

35. This is what 40 years of union busting

has brought us back to.

[Hamlette]

36. Obama's agriculture secretary was on Chris Hayes tonight and calmed me down

he talked about the need for protective gear but he also talked about what happens if the food chain collapses. That was scary. I wish I could trust Trump to do the right thing in keeping them open but I do think keeping them open is the right thing to do.

[kimbutgar]

37. I remember that book

The current events have also reminded me what we faced in the early 20th century.

[Talitha]

38. My immigrant Grandparents worked in the Chicago Stock Yards and hated every second of it.

That's why I never read the book.

A lot of people in my very ethnic 'Back of the Yards' neighborhood worked at The Yards. I remember how living there impacted me as a child. For instance, you needed to roll up the car window whenever passing an open-slat cattle truck. If you didn't, you could wind up with something quite nasty being ejected into your lap. This was in 50's Chicago. And when an ill wind blew in from the east, the entire area smelled like a barn - and I don't mean the sweet smell of newly-mown hay, either.

If anyone has seen the Jimmy Steward movie 'Call Northside 777', that's the general area I grew up in. My older brother was a chemist at Darling and Company and said his job was to figure out how to use every part of the cow but the moo. Out of curiosity, I might pick up the book when my local library re-opens... or maybe it's at the gutenberg.org site.

[WyLoochka]

39. Called to mind right away

Shook up on that first read. Bears a re-read.

[notinkansas]

40. Yup. Read it for a high school History class.

I was gobsmacked to the point of hardly believing it, but the smell that would waft from the stockyards was proof enough.

[demtenjeep]

43. I never assigned the book to my 8th graders but there was a clip

in a discovery series the district bought that would touch on it.

I would always describe the arm, body becoming part of that days product. I would hear a lot of groans and I am never eating meat again...


It made impacts.

[raccoon]

44. I did. Nt

[Quixote1818]

46. Funny, I am currently reading his The Book of Life, mainly for his chapter The Fasting Cure

[TreasonousBastard]

48. Missed that-- but note the same points and memories in both threads. Some hell...

of a book it is.