The Jungle.

Jungle Name-Check

2007-01-02T18:44:00.000-08:00

100 Years Later, the Food Industry Is Still "The Jungle"

Nothing in “The Jungle” sticks with the reader quite like what went into the sausages. There was the rotting ham that could no longer be sold as ham. There were the rat droppings, rat poison and whole poisoned rats. Most chilling, there were the unnamed things “in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.”

Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” as a labor exposé. He hoped that the book, which was billed as “the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of wage slavery,” would lead to improvements for the people to whom he dedicated it, “the workingmen of America.” But readers of “The Jungle” were less appalled by Sinclair’s accounts of horrific working conditions than by what they learned about their food. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he famously declared, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

“The Jungle,” and the campaign that Sinclair waged after its publication, led directly to passage of a landmark federal food safety law, which took effect 100 years ago this week. Sinclair awakened a nation not just to the dangers in the food supply, but to the central role government has to play in keeping it safe. But as the poisonings of spinach eaters and Taco Bell customers recently made clear, the battle is far from over — and in recent years, we have been moving in the wrong direction. . . .

To Conclude

2006-11-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Way back at the beginning of this conversation in August, I posted about the book jacket blurb and author introduction in my copy of the book. One of the main points was Sinclair’s disappointment with the response to his book. It raised a public outcry and lead to more legislation than probably any other book has, but that effect missed the target. After its exposure in The Jungle, people got fired up about the meatpacking industry and cried out for reform, which led to the first regulation of the industry and led to much safer meat handling and procedures. The book brought about real change. But Sinclair’s target was capitalism itself, and the particular industry was used just as an example of capitalism’s evils. Which is what I definitely got from reading the book. If you really look at it, the gross treatment of food plays a fairly minor role in the book. Much more omnipresent, I felt, was the overall system of graft and corruption. From Jurgis’s perspective, I got more fired up about that than his more isolated experience with Packingtown.

So why didn’t the general public? It goes back to what I wrote in that earlier post. People are generally self-centered beings. Most people didn’t live in Chicago, fewer were poor Chicagoans, and even fewer were workers in Packingtown. The general public didn’t really care about corruption in Chicago or even improving the plight of the meatpacking labor force. No, all they saw was what affected them directly: the food they had to eat. They wanted the industry cleaned up so they could trust the food coming out of it, and nothing else. They cared only about themselves.

The book didn’t miss its mark, Sinclair just overestimated the inherent goodness of people and their energy for caring. I’m sure everyone felt bad for Jurgis, but translating that emotion into action was more than most people could muster (regardless of his point that it would help them, too).

(Cynicism lesson over.)

The American Dream

2006-11-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

These days I get the sense that when people use the phrase “American Dream” they tend to mean winning the lottery or a reality show or in some way realizing “the easy life” without having to earn it. Originally, though, it related more to the U.S. as a land of opportunity. It was definitely something you earned, but the possibility of class mobility existed here in a way that it didn’t anywhere else. If you worked hard enough and persevered, you could eventually go from a life of poverty to a more relaxed middle class life. It’s the drag-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality. Anything is possible if you just work at it hard enough.

So I think Sinclair is very deliberate about Jurgis’s pat response to every adversity at the start of the book: “I will work harder.” According to the American mythology, that will do the trick. But we see that Jurgis--and the whole family--works as hard as humanly possible only to find it’s not enough to save them. Their disadvantages are too great, the obstacles stacked against them too powerful, to simply be overcome by hard work. Sinclair uses Jurgis’s story to deconstruct the idea of the American Dream, to show that it is more myth than mythology. There is an element of truth to the concept, of course, but the reality is much more complex than the “blame the victim” approach that’s generally espoused.

(Or, as someone much less eloquent than Sinclair once said, the “American Dream is only a dream.”)

Finally

2006-10-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Chapter 26

The police, and the strikers also, were determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary--and that was the press.

How little things change . . .

As very few of the better class of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city, besides Negroes and the lowest of foreigners--Greeks, Roumanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for them to get up to work.

. . . a throng of stupid black Negroes . . .

The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work, and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on; and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a "snooze," and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no system, it might take hours before their boss discovered them.

Sinclair's issue, obviously, is classism. He seems oblivious to his own racism, though. That is too often the case, that somone focuses on one form of oppression while perpetuating another. An example of a reaction to this is the recent Womanist movement. Women of color felt that feminists left out the race piece and civil rights left out the gender piece, so they started their own movement that included both. I was surprised when I ran across these stereotypes and racist prejudices in The Jungle, but I guess I shouldn't have been.

Chapter 27

And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had been out of work before, he had been content if he could sleep in a doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if he could get fifteen cents a day for saloon lunches. But now he desired all sorts of other things, and suffered because he had to do without them. He must have a drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to master every other consideration – he would have it, though it were his last nickel and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence. . . .

All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he was always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost.

How true.

Chapter 30

In Massachusetts the percentage of white illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in South Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent

Evidence of the north-south divide. Still seen in politics today.

The power which really governs the United States today is the Railroad Trust. It is the Railroad Trust that runs your state government, wherever you live, and that runs the United States Senate. And all of the trusts that I have named are railroad trusts – save only the Beef Trust! The Beef Trust has defied the railroads – it is plundering them day by day through the Private Car; and so the public is roused to fury, and the papers clamor for action, and the government goes on the warpath! And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, and think it's all done for you, and never dream that it is really the grand climax of the century-long battle of commercial competition – the final death grapple between the chiefs of the Beef Trust and 'Standard Oil,' for the prize of the mastery and ownership of the United States of America!

What's the buzzword today? Multinational corporations: Very large multinationals have budgets that exceed those of many countries. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are multinational corporations. They can have a powerful influence in international relations, given their large economic influence in politicians' representative districts, as well as their extensive financial resources available for public relations and political lobbying. Almost everything that's come out against global warming in the last decade has been funded by oil companies. Again, has anything changed?

"I'm not interested in that – I'm an individualist!" And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was "paternalism," and that if it ever had its way the world would stop progressing. It was enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like that; and yet it was no laughing matter, as you found out – for how many millions of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose lives had been so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew what freedom was! And they really thought that it was "individualism" for tens of thousands of them to herd together and obey the orders of a steel magnate, and produce hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth for him, and then let him give them libraries; while for them to take the industry, and run it to suit themselves, and build their own libraries – that would have been "Paternalism"!

The concept of individual liberty is one of the controlling ideas in the U.S. mindset. It defines us in contrast to other countries more than anything else. Lately I'm especially disturbed by the trend of individuals feeling that their personal rights take precedence over the common good. We seem to be getting even more selfish and individualistic in our thinking than ever before.

Chapter 31

His interests were elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a perpetual adventure. There was so much to know – so many wonders to be discovered!

Was Sinclair describing blogging? :-)

There's too much to try quoting, but if you want to you can read the Socialist discussion of the wastes of Capitalism, beginning with And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of competition: . . . It makes you think. I've been told (by those who get paid to know) that hunter-gatherer societies actually spent very little of their day working, on average. Some of our modern advances are wonderful, but it also makes you wonder how much of what we do is excess that we could do away with. Of course, I think history has proven that his alternate vision of a Socialist world that follows is completely unrealistic, too. Still, it seems like there ought to be something we can take from the book, when I don't see it having really changed a thing. Most disheartening.

the plight of immigrants

2006-10-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

I watched a movie this weekend called Dirty Pretty Things, starring Audrey Tautou of Amelie. It reminded me in many ways of The Jungle because it is another story about the struggle of immigrants, both legal and illegal, to survive. The movie, though it is set in modern day London, shows the same manipulations of immigrants by those in power. Made me very angry at times. It was an interesting parallel (and a good suspense movie).

BL

2006-10-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

hey all. i want you to know that I've picked up the book again. And while I'm only 30 or so pages in, I plan to pursue it as time allows.

And the Grand Finale

2006-10-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

In the Star's series on local food talks about how it gets from the farm to your local grocer.

Another Long One

2006-10-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

Chapter 20

All day long his man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy; though there are a few other things that are great among us including our drink-bill, which is a billion and a quarter of dollars a year, and doubling itself every decade.

Everything I’ve read/come across about the particular American paradigm is that we tend to work harder and play harder than almost anyone else. The drag-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps attitude that anything is possible through hard work and our massive consumption of alcohol seem to be two of our defining characteristics as a nation.

Chapter 22

. . . to be suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes, new places, and new people every hour! . . . and to now be his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a new adventure every hour! . . . What with plenty to eat and fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy, stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back to him. . . . He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it.

Did these passages make anyone else want to become a hobo?

Chapter 23

All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will; and the saloonkeeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.

Chapter 24

He saw the world of civilization then more plainly than ever he had seen it before; a world in which nothing counted but brutal might, an order devised by those who possessed it for the subjugation of those who did not. . . . He had lost in the fierce battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all society was busied to see that he did not escape the sentence.

Chapter 25

Since it was Jurgis' first experience [of mugging], these details naturally caused him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly--it was the way of the game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no more of it than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock. "It's a case of us or the other fellow, and I say the other fellow every time," he observed.
"Still," said Jurgis, reflectively, "he never did us any harm."
"He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure of that," said his friend.

Each of these three passages illustrates in my mind the harmful attitude that develops in the face of a competitive world. The idea that I have to cheat, rob, and steal to keep up because everyone else is. It’s really not that bad that I do so, because I’m just being like everyone else. And, in fact, I have to be better at it than them to really get ahead. There is no thought given to helping others or even the pain I might be causing them, because they will hurt me in the same way if given the same chance.

My Sermon

2006-10-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

The evangelist was preaching "sin and redemption," the infinite grace of God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering--with his smooth, black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket--and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hinger and cold!--This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem--they were part of the order established that was crushing men down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen! They were trying to save their souls--and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies? (from chapter 23)

There is a minor apocalyptic thread in the bible that has had major appeal for different groups of Christians throughout history. It’s based on the general sentiment that this world is so screwed up that it has no hope for redemption; we can do nothing to make the world a better place, so our only strategy is to hope Jesus comes again soon to take us all to Heaven. In the meantime, we will bide our time and try to be true to His teachings so that our place is assured, and even if the second coming doesn’t happen in our lifetime we know we’ll be with him after we die. Life may suck intolerably, but we can find the motivation to persevere through the knowledge that one day we’ll make it to Heaven and everything will be better. Our suffering will be rewarded, if you will.

That total emphasis on the afterlife misses a much greater thread from the book, though, the controlling theme of God’s entire message, in my mind. We shouldn’t wait around, but do what we can now; the world will never be Heaven, but we should work toward its image as much as we are capable. It’s there in the initial Covenant between God and the people of Israel that established them as a nation. The Year of Jubilation, for instance—every 49th year all debts are forgiven, slaves released, and land returned to its original owning family; there is a provision to make sure that inequality never gets entrenched in the society and everyone starts again at equal footing every so often. Widows and orphans—the two categories denied land to provide for themselves—are repeatedly mentioned as the responsibility of everyone to look after. When the people demanded a king to be like other nations, God tried to convince them they don’t want one because kings subjugate their people. They were supposed to remain a community in the fullest sense of the word. When they failed at this in later years, gave in to greed and perpetuated injustice, the prophets railed against them.

When he began his teaching, Jesus was especially critical of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They were the religious leaders of their day and took pride in following every last requirement of the law more completely than anyone else. Jesus said they were totally missing the point. It’s not about making yourself morally better by following the laws mechanically, and that those laws could in fact be summed up in two statements: love God and love your neighbor. How do you love God? He was asked. By loving—feeding and clothing—“the least of these.” As an example of neighborly love he shared the story of the good Samaritan, and Samaritans at the time were most reviled enemies. He said to pray for your enemies. He said to disregard what the original law said about an eye for an eye and instead turn the other cheek. I am mishmashing references from all over the Gospels here, but the theme is consistent. The first shall be last and the meek shall inherit the earth. God’s order is not human order, so every time we rank or judge people we get it wrong; every time we think ourselves better because we have more—money, education, culture, intelligence, whatever—we are breaking what is truly behind God’s law.

Jurgis feels this while listening to the sermon, that in his moralizing the pastor is missing what is relevant to his listeners. We are not called to try to be morally superior while waiting around for Heaven, we are called to care for God’s creation by eliminating suffering wherever we can. Not suffering due to sickness or natural disaster or mortality, that is beyond our control and is part of the human condition. We are called to eliminate the suffering we create every day in our struggles to hoard resources at the expense of others. If instead of competing everyone agrees to work together we can all be healthier and happier, and as much as possible make things “on earth as it is in Heaven.”

The Star's Third Installment

2006-10-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

Is about two area restaurants that try to rely on "organic, natural, sustainable, and local" food suppliers as much as possible.

Redbeard-Style (minus the vocab)

2006-09-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in the middle of chapter 18.

From Chapter 11 -

There is no pet quite so fascinating as a baby.

While there may be a certain truth to this, it's an interesting perspective to think of your child as a "pet." And I certainly haven't been in their position so I'm in no place to criticize, but I've noticed that they take a drastically different attitude toward children than we tend to. Other than Jurgis with his son, there is nothing precious or special about them. They are either useful or just one more annoyance.

From Chapter 12 -

They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.

Too true. We may have our basic personalities, but our circumstances and situations constantly shape us. In addressing ills we need to insist on personal responsibility, but that is nothing if we do not also try to change the social/societal conditions that the actions emerged from. There needs to be a balance of both.

From Chapter 16 -

These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources--he could not say that it was the thing men have called "the system" that was crushing him to the earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had brought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat of justice. he only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.

Exactly.

From Chapter 17 -

They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to. All life had turned to rottenness and stench in them--love was a beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled here and there about the courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them. He was ignorant and they were wise; they had been everywhere and tried everything. They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.

This could just as easily describe numerous places today as Chicago 100 years ago. Even in this country, much less the rest of the world, we do not start on a level playing field, and the results are all around us.

Next Article in the Series

2006-09-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

Can you dig it?

Redbeard - Chapters 11-19

2006-09-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

From Chapter 12 -

"They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything."

If all you did all day was lay around, you'd eventually come to the realization that you weren't accomplishing anything. And then you'd be really mad at your situation and the world that put you in that situation. I can totally understand what Sinclair's talking about here. The book just keeps getting more and more heartbreaking. You really want to see Jurgis and his family succeed, but it's like a slow-motion car crash. It's more terrible every second, and you can't look away.

From Chapter 13 -

albumen - any of a class of simple, sulfur-containing, water-soluble proteins that coagulate when heated, occurring in egg white, milk, blood, and other animal and vegetable tissues and secretions.

From Chapter 14 -

"For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage."

Ugh. We had brats for dinner tonight. I'm going to go throw up.

"Yet the soul of Ona was not dead – the souls of none of them were dead, but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open – old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It was a thing scarcely to be spoken – a thing never spoken by all the world, that will not know its own defeat."

"Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross. After that she learned to weep silently – their moods so seldom came together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves."

So depressing. I can't imagine wanting to live if I were in that situation.

When reading chapters 14-19, I didn't make any notations. I couldn't put the book down while I read those chapter, it was so compelling. I've got to stop here because if I go onto the next section, it might spoil some of the story for you.

Timely Article Series

2006-09-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

I've had the thought before that if I was really to examine my beliefs and act on them I'd be a vegetarian, I just find myself a bit too lazy and lacking in conviction. I'm afraid my interest in this issue may end up being the same, but I'm intrigued by the movement to only eat locally produced food. In today's Kansas City Star is the first article in a four-part series about that movement. Wednesday is supposed to be "Community Supported Agriculture," Oct. 4 restaurants, and Oct. 11 supermarkets. I'll try to link them as they come out.

I think this movement addresses a lot of the evils we're reading about in The Jungle. There may be better regulations in place today to prevent the sale of rotten meat and the dangerous working conditions, but there are still problems with the industry since it's all about producing as much food as cheaply, quickly, and efficiently as possible. Growth hormones, pesticides, preservatives, and plenty of other chemical treatments go into the food we eat. Eating organic addresses this aspect of the business, but not the mass production aspect. Even organically produced food can depend upon cheap labor, unpleasant working conditions, and environmental practices that might be questionable. Eating locally eliminates the big factory settings like those in the book, the faceless anonymity of corporate capitalism. You know where your food is coming from and who is producing it, and those producers are directly accountable to their customers. Things are grown and eaten as they are naturally in season in a much more environmentally friendly way. It's not just about changing the way you eat, but changing the way the entire food industry functions.

The article goes into much more detail, so if you are curious I'd recommend giving it a read.

If you want to see just what it would be like to eat locally, the companion article, The 100-Mile Diet: What if KC tried Canada couple’s approach? gives an interesting consideration. In our area the only way to get fruits and vegetables in winter with this approach is to can, dry, freeze, or preserve them, for instance. Sometimes doing the right thing can require sacrifice.

And if we want a companion read for after we've finished The Jungle, maybe we should take a look at this (from the bottom of the first link):

If there’s a must-read book that defines the array of issues involved in local eating, it’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals ($26.95, Penguin Press).

How influential is the best seller? Nearly everyone who was interviewed for this story was reading it.

The book’s author, Michael Pollan, criticizes Whole Foods for promoting what he calls “big organic,” or the industrialization of organic food. Since the book’s release in April, Pollan and John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, have been engaging in a spirited blogfest at www.wholefoods.com and www.michael pollan.com.

By summer, Whole Foods had announced its “Go Local” campaign, a companywide initiative that includes farmers markets in store parking lots, $100 gift certificates for consumers who share local sources with stores and $10 million to make loans to small-scale farmers.

Eager to apply the initiative, Rebecca Miller, marketing director for Whole Foods in Overland Park, was among the first to recommend picking up a copy of the book.

“We’re a very fine store, and we’re a very fine company worldwide,” she said, “but you go into our stores and we don’t have a lot of local food.”

Happy birthday, dear Upton...

2006-09-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hello, Jungle readers. It's a pleasure to join your group. I just started the book, and it's not quite what I was expecting... the descriptions in the text are so dense that I find myself having to read more slowly than I read most fiction. It almost requires the reading labor of poetry. It's a good thing I'm into poetry...maybe I'll get through the rest of Chapter 1 this week. :)

I also wanted to let you all know that today is Upton Sinclair's birthday. I get a daily email from Bloomsbury Press, and this is what they had to say today:

On this day in literary history from http://www.bloomsbury.com

Upton Sinclair born 1878 in Baltimore

Upton Sinclair was one of the most popular novelists in America in the early decades of the twentieth-century, although his name appears to be increasingly absent from anthologies of the period. Winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Dragon’s Teeth, Sinclair was a social-realist who used his novels to dissect the many problems plaguing the America of his day. In The Jungle, he creates the character of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America with great hopes of making his fortune as he searches for the fulfilment of the American dream. However, his dreams are quickly trodden under foot when he becomes a meatpacker in the filthy Chicago stockyards, the ‘jungle’ of the title. In his scathing social commentary, Sinclair exposes the life of the common man, the conditions in which he was forced to work, and the meagre slave wages he had no choice but to accept.

Inching Along

2006-09-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

All I've added to my schedule is one class; it doesn't seem like I should be that much busier. I'm in class every Tuesday night 6-10 and have a bit of homework. Yet it seems since I started I haven't been reading anything. I haven't even touched the pile of kids books on my desk and only seem to get to this book during lunch. I just finished chapter 7 today. Not real impressive. Anyway, a few measly thoughts;

Globalization

People said that old man Durham himself was responsible for these immigrations; he had sworn that he would fix the people of Packingtown so that they would never again call a strike on him, and so he had sent his agents into every city and village in Europe to spread the tale of the chances of work and high wages at the stockyards. The people had come in hordes; and old Durham had squeezed them tighter and tighter, speeding them up and grinding them to pieces, and sending for new ones. (from chapter 6)

A rather ingenious plan, really, if you only view other people as objects to consume and discard. And that, to me is the big problem with unadulterated capitalism, it leads to a consumption mentality that becomes all-consuming. Everything and everyone else is there for you to use if you can just be clever, strong, advantaged, and lucky enough to find a way how.

For Hadrian

He had learned the ways of things about him now. It was a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you. You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with. The storekeepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country--from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie. (from chapter 7)

While continuing the theme of the first quote, when I read it today this also made me think of Hadrian and his recent posts; it seemed in keeping with his viewpoint of late. There are a lot of things to love about this country, but it does seem to be a double-edged sword with equally detestable qualities.

Redbeard's Take - Chapters 3-10

2006-09-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

I'll go over my notes from a few more chapters tonight. I was talking about the book this weekend to Yuki's brother, who is very well-read. He liked it, too.

From Chapter 3:

"And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self- confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it."

This passage really makes me sad. It's just like real life. For most people, life doesn't turn out how they expect. When you're new and fresh, you're so optimistic, but that point when you find out that you're just drudging through your life, that life isn't fair, that's the tipping point.

From Chapter 5:

"And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he. So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar. And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty."

What a terrible way to live. This is how I imagine someone who works on commission lives.

From Chapter 7:

"She was too good for him, he told himself, and he was afraid, because she was his."

"He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she would be lost; he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her from the world."

That's how I feel about relationships. I don't want to get sappy, but it's scary having someone else depend on you. Wonderful, but scary.

From Chapter 9:

"When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote – and there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused for the rest of the day."

So, he's getting his naturalization papers because he gets 1/2 day off work? It's like wanting to do jury duty because you get paid time off. But under the conditions he worked in, you didn't have vacation time or floating holidays.
..."and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes."

That was true 100 years ago, and hasn't changed much since. Even with those 'sweeping McCain/Feingold campaign finance reforms'.

2006-09-09T17:39:00.000-07:00

I started the book this afternoon. And while I'm not very far into it. I did want to blog a little bit.

I can't speak about the dark undertones. However, the beginning is a bit light with the description of the wedding. While reading about the celebration, it reminded me of the Greek festival I went to last night. Here's some text:

A charming informality was one of the characteristics of this celebration. The men wore their hats, or, if they wished, they took them off, and their coats with them; they ate when and where they pleased, and moved as often as they pleased. There were to be speeches and singing, but no one had to listen who did not care to; if he wished, meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was perfectly free. (p. 9)

The festivities last night were much the same. Formalities were secondary to enjoyment. The dancing and music was entertaining.

When planning my own wedding, I wanted to create this kind of atmosphere for my own guests. I hope I achieved it.

Light through the canopy

2006-09-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm nearly done with the book. About 40 pages left. I talked to Mr. Longfellow today about a tentative end date. Maybe mid-to-late October? How's that work with everyone? And is everyone liking the book? General thoughts? Feel free to post or comment on the blog as you have time.

In the past, we've done some sort of after-book meetup. How does everyone feel about a [vegetarian] meeting to discuss?

Makes One Want to Be a Vegetarian

2006-09-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

I anticipate it will get worse, but chapter 3 is not the best reading during lunch.

Redbeard's Take - Chapters 1 and 2

2006-09-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

I've been zipping through my copy of the Jungle, and haven't posted about it yet. So this one might be a little long. I'm about 2/3 of the way through. My take so far, in general. I love the book. It's completely compelling. It's like watching an accident in slow motion. You can't look away. It's so heartbreaking. I hope I'm not spoiling the book for anyone, but really, if you're going to read it for the book group, you should already know most of this by now. I can't imagine how they're going to pile more sadness and tragedy on the hardworking Jurgis. And I've got another 1/3 yet to read.

From Chapter 1 -

"She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white."

First, I thought this line was interesting because, from what I know of weddings, a white dress denotes virginity. This book was written just about 100 years ago and there were still the same thoughts about white wedding dresses as there are today. Next, is the dress conspicuous because it was a rarity to have white (pure) wedding dresses back then, or is the girl, Ona, conspicuous because she's wearing it? Does the narrator know something about Ona that we don't, or is this some sort of hint at the future?

"...and if any of these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked sufficiently hungry, a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the feast."

That's just how it was in the old days, I guess. People were more inviting and accepting. Try that now, walking past a park shelter or a picnic and seeing if anyone offered you food or even an ice water. Not likely.

Viands. An item of food, a very choice or delicious dish.

Badinage. Light, playful banter.

"Some do not dance at all, but simply hold each other's hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express itself with their feet. Among these are Jokubus Szedvilas and his wife, Lucija, who together keep the delicatessen store, and consume nearly as much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the middle of the lfoor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking slowly from side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of toothless and perspiring ecstasy."

I love that passage. Very visual and heartwarming.

Shirtwaists. A woman's blouse or bodice styled like a tailored shirt.

"It is very imprudent, it is tragic – but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling with all the power of their souls – they cannot give up the veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all his days."

This passage could really be the summary for the book. Well, for the first half, anyway.

From Chapter 2 -

"He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten."

Jurgis is so young and strong, so full of optimism. That's how I feel at work most of the time, but there's this looming specter of the worn out, grumpy, continually pessimistic attitude. How long can it be held at bay?

"In that country [America], rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials - he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man."

America really is (or was) the best country in the world. We still count each other as good as any other man, but how many other men count others as good as themselves? Not many.

"It made them quite sick to pay the money the railroad people asked them for food."

That's true. Railroad food is expensive, and not that good. I guess that comes with being a captive audience.

"It was a standing jest of the boarders that Aniele cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in the rooms. Undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin, but it seemed probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old lady regarded it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms."

*shudder*

"This, too, seemed to the newcomers an economical arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and their heads were not full of troublesome thoughts about 'germs.'"

There's something to be said for the news. At least we're better informed about public health. Is it better to know what's killing you or just be blissfully unaware?

A Low Opinion of Humanity

2006-08-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

If you read my thoughts about Moby-Dick, you know I generally like my first experience with a book or movie to be as uninformed as possible. Once you start learning about the author, historical context, literary criticism, and such, start analyzing for meanings that come from beyond the text, you can never again have that one-on-one interaction with the text without outside influences on your experience. I'll go back after I'm done, learn more, and re-experience it with new eyes later, but I try not to spoil my opportunity to enjoy that first, untainted encounter (although if that were truly the case I wouldn't be participating in a discussion group and experiencing these books in a social context). That didn't happen in the case of this book, so if you don't want me to ruin it for you stop reading this post now (or at least skip ahead to the last paragraph).

I didn't so much make a choice as have it made for me. The edition I found on our shelf has a plain, white cover with the title and author in large print, and then the bookjacket blurb starts right there on the bottom of the cover:

The Jungle was designed as a weapon. The author hoped it would serve The Revolution--which seemed to him in 1906 to be marching just around the corner. He did not intend it to be a work of art . . .

That grabbed my attention enough that I kept reading. After that I wanted to compare and read the jacket blurb on the graphic novel. By that point I had enough information that I figured it wouldn't do any further harm to read the full graphic novel to get exposure to the story; plus, I was intrigued. At lunch today I read the introduction in this edition, written by the author with the benefit of hindsight in 1946. It's all very interesting.

Since it's gotten me thinking, I'll share what I've learned. When he wrote this, Sinclair was an idealistic socialist. He had struggled through poverty growing up and felt Capitalism was a corrupt and bankrupt system that only led to misery for the vast majority of people. His goal was to write something that would expose and overthrow that system, would lead to a Socialist revolution. This book was first published as a serial in a Socialist publication, in fact. He chose the meatpacking industry in Chicago as his target because it was such an obvious example of everything he saw wrong with Capitalism. And he wasn't the only one who thought so. The book caused a huge sensation, Sinclair was invited to visit the President, and before long Congress began passing the first laws to regulate the meat, food, and drug industries. It did a lot to make things better for the people Sinclair wrote about. But ultimately this was a disappointment for him; he saw the meatpacking industry as a symptom of the problem he hoped to address. People reacted by attacking the symptom, but missed the greater message and left alone the root problem, the Capitalist system itself.

In my previous post I made reference to my "socialist leanings." Let me give the disclaimer that I'm not a Political Science or History student; I can't say anything about the actual application of Socialism in the real world and whether it really "works" or not when put into action. The theory makes sense to me, though, that we all contribute to the greater good and the government is there to make sure it happens. Proponents of Capitalism believe that forcing people to do anything won't work, but that people will take care of each other if freely allowed to. I'm afraid I have too low an opinion of humanity to buy into that. If left to their own devices, the majority of people will pursue their own interests the majority of the time. They might look after family, neighbors, and "their own," but plenty of others will be left with no one to help them. I think the only way to insure that everyone is taken care of is to mandate it.

2006-08-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

A bookseller's take: Perhaps the meat industry now is more corrupt. We inject our animals with hormones, steroids and antibiotics before they are processed.
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I highly recommend the bookstore we popped into last Friday night on 39th St. Why? A creative collection of used books, glass panels in the floor, handmade bookshelves, reallocated vintage furniture, a custom made steel staircase, and a beer drinking bookseller.

Finished

2006-08-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

With Peter Kuper's graphic novel adaptation of the book. No surprise endings for me this time. But it's given me some momentum to get started on the actual book. I think this is going to be a frustrating read, frustrating in that it will make me angry and appeal to my sense of justice and socialist leanings.

Greetings, all.

2006-08-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

The new blog is up. I've sent out invites to most of the people who expressed an interest. If you want to read with us and post, then let me know and I'll send you an invite! Happy reading, everyone. I'll be starting as soon as I finish rereading Harry Potter 3.