#the jungle

[midnightsnackclub]

[weepingveil]

meat packing stereograph, chicago, 1890s.

this factory was part of chicagos union stockyard which later inspired upton sinclair’s novel “the jungle”

[thoughtportal]

The Jungle is a novel by American author and journalist Upton Sinclair, who was known for his efforts to depict corruption in government and business in the early 20th century.[1] In 1904, Sinclair spent seven weeks gathering information in the meat packing district of the Union Stock Yards in Chicago for the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, which published his novel in serial form in 1905. In 1906, the novel was published in book format by Doubleday.[2]

The book portrays working-class poverty, immigrant struggle, lack of social support or welfare, harsh living and dangerous working conditions, generating hopelessness or cynicism and cruelty among the powerless. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by Sinclair's contemporary, writer Jack London, compared The Jungle to America's most famous novel written to expose a cruel system, by calling it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."[3]

While Sinclair in describing the meat industry and its working conditions wanted to advance socialism,[4] the novel's most immediate impact was to provoke public outcry over passages exposing health issues and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century. This led to sanitation reforms including the Meat Inspection Act and other product safety legislation.

get a free ebook copy on Project Gutenberg

[sweetfirebird]

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Wanna read a book written about a hundred years ago about how American capitalism exploited immigrants and ruined their lives, but nobody cared about that part of the book, because the book incidentally also exposed the disgusting and unsanitary conditions in food processing and meatpacking plants to such a degree that Congress at that time passed legislation to ensure cleaner conditions?

Conditions that existed until RFK Jr (aka Pestilence) decided that they weren't that important because it was a hundred years ago and he is too dumb to know or care that companies under capitalism cannot be trusted not to harm their workers or their customers. And also because he is rich with excellent medical care, he assumes that a little dysentery and E Coli will be survivable and good for everyone. Who needs kidneys anyway, amirite?

This book follows an immigrant and his bride-to-be (and eventual wife) as they are put to backbreaking work making America's factories run, and how that system not only destroys them without batting an eye, but is so disgusting that it is literally poisoning the population buying the food it produces.

I really know how to upsell, I know.

This book used to be required reading in many high schools but I doubt it is anymore. It probably still should be.

Fortunately, it's free from Project Gutenberg.

Content tags: incredibly harsh conditions for poor human beings who just want a better life. but the part of this book that upsets most people is the description of the meatpacking plants. there will be blood. and shit. and human body parts in the sausage that you will definitely see being made.

[sharpeningdogteeth]

“preventable diseases kill off half our population. And even if science were allowed to try, it could do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish. For this reason I would seriously maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of less importance than the application of the knowledge we already possess, when the disinherited of the earth have established their right to a human existence.”

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair

[gutenpolls]

Free eBook digitized and proofread by volunteers.

Have you read it?

Yes (in the original English)

Yes (translated)

No (but I will)

No (I'm a coward)

Voting ended onMay 19

[slimshiesty]

Oh, how badly I miss my Jungle. TAKE ME HOMEEEE. T - 5 months ? (not soon enough i fear)