Book Review: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

This year is going to be a year of reading for me. Last year I mostly read blogs peppered with a couple books, but nothing to write home about as far as books are concerned. I'm resolved within myself to make sure I read a minimum of 10 books. I’m sure I’ll surpass that goal, but none the less it’s a goal to be attained. I was a bit late in starting my reading, yet I did finish my first book for 2009.  The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

The Jungle was written in 1904, and by 1906 because of the book, Upton Sinclair had and opportunity to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt, which later lead to a change in laws to the meat packing industry. Some of the wording and poetic license taken by authors of the time would cause us, in this era, to want to toss the book into the fireplace with the quickness and be done with it riight then. Yet if you hang in there, you will see the story unfolds into a world that blurs the lines between 1904 and 2009.

The story begins with the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his family making their voyage from their homeland of Lithuania to the good ole U.S. of A. to seek their fortune in the new world and lavish in the freedom of America. Jurgis and the family quickly find out that freedom has many nuances including all the scams that come along with “freedom” after landing in Chicago.

Jurgis and his fellow compatriots go through tribulations not unlike Black people of the time, yet without the threat of lynchings, at one of the most severe times for African Americans. But, be sure Jurgis could go and “hobo it” across the nation without repercussion because his skin was white. Jurgis and his family start work in the slaughter and packing houses used to butcher and can cattle and hogs in the Packingtown, commonly called the “Yards”, a district of Chicago.

Many of the ills plaguing the packing and slaughter industry that exist today are not new, but have been part of the meat packing system since 1904.

“One day a man slipped and hurt is leg; and that afternoon, when the last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving, Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work ehich this injured man had usually done. It was late, almost dark, and the government inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two of men on the floor. That day they had killed 4,000 cattle and this cattle had come in on freight trains from far states, and some of them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and some with gored sides; there were some that had died from what cause no one could say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence. “Downers,” the men called them; and the packing house had a special elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which said plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday routine. It took a couple hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis saw them go into the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being carefully scattered here and there so that they could not be identified…” wrote Sinclair in in 1904.  Jurgis’ story of using downers is no different than stories that can be found today. Remember in January of 2008 the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., of Chino, CA beef recall.

Not withstanding Sinclair’s obvious Socialist slant, the book is a great insight into how working class/merchant class continue to be locked in a daily struggle for better working conditions and living wages. The struggle for living wages continues.