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Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
is good for nothing else. Election evening Jurgis joins other party members and discovers that the Socialists got three times the votes they got the year before, almost the same number as the Democrats in Packingtown. The meeting of Socialist members ends with rousing speeches, as does the book.
The impression of American society I derived from the book was not a pleasant one. Although I would like to be proud of my country and be able to defend the things that go on here, sometimes I have to realize that there are times that we were wrong. The meat packing industry during the early 1900’s was obviously not a fair or equitable place. People working were mistreated and the American people were mistreated by being fed substandard food. This was a dark time in our Capitalist society, but it led to reform and now things like the Beef Trust are outlawed. The Pure Drug and Food Bill entered the Senate in 1902, it was kept “in cold storage” until 1905 when a few articles in The Ladies Home Journal and Colliers brought it back to the forefront of news. President Theodore Roosevelt installed a commission of inquiry and unfortunately, they gave the industry a favorable report. The Jungle seemed to be an instrumental part of the pressure on President Roosevelt to instill the Pure Food and Drug Bill and the Beef Inspection Act. I do not doubt that there are still extremely poor people in our country unable to find work and those that may find work may be mistreated, but I hope that it is not as rampant as in the Packingtown depicted in The Jungle.
The book was an interesting read, although, I do find it hard to look at meat the same way. The theme that I identified was the allegory between a jungle and the jungle of Chicago, and the allegory between the people working in the meat packing plant and the animals being slaughtered in them. The bosses in Packingtown force the people to live like animals, using them until they die or until they are no longer the healthiest, youngest, freshest immigrant. The bosses exploit the system making it work by corrupting those in power and keeping those not in power where they are. By only letting those that are corrupt get ahead the system continues to work for those in power. The unions mentioned in the book seem to be a healthy start, but they seem to be too little too late as well. The filthy manufacturing processes seem to be the main focus of the book because they are sensational, but the greater, more terrifying exploitation is that of the common worker. Sinclair said “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
The other theme prevalent in the book is the uprising of the Socialist movement set up by the overpowering and continuing disasters the family faces in [next page]