Welcome to The Jungle

I finished reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle last week. You probably heard of it – famous novel, came out a hundred years ago, a classic muckraking expose of the Chicago meatpacking industry.

It may be the most depressing book I’ve ever read. If you haven’t, it concerns a Lithuanian family that immigrates to America to seek the American Dream™. Here’s what they encounter/endure:

--Horrific work conditions (unsafe environments, little pay, children having to work)
--Poverty
--Jail (three times!)
--Death (and plenty of it)
--Prostitution
--Swindling
--Crime
--Homelessness
--Disease
--Excess of drink (but curiously never alcoholism)
--“Hoboing” or “tramping”
--Swindling
--Graft
--Sexual harassment

I’m probably forgetting a few things but that’s the gist of it. It’s so macabre it’s almost comical. You expect characters to get hit by an asteroid or trampled by a rhino after a while.

Anyway, the book led to a lot of changes, including the commission of the Food & Drug Administration. Curiously, Sinclair didn’t give a shit – the point of the article was to push Socialism. Indeed, the last 50 pages or so reads like a Socialism pamphlet.

I dunno, I guess it was OK, if a little over the top.