{"id":14561,"date":"2022-11-24T16:57:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T16:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=14561"},"modified":"2022-11-24T16:57:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T16:57:21","slug":"welcome-to-the-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/welcome-to-the-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Jungle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as has come to Upton Sinclair.
\nThe New York Evening World<\/em>, 1906.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps others, better acquainted with the genre, may argue to the contrary, but Upton Sinclair\u2019s 1906 novel The Jungle<\/em> is surely a contender as the Great American Novel. Though far from an ideological bedfellow, Winston Churchill nonetheless wrote admiringly that Sinclair had marshalled his forces like the general of an army on the attack.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

That the work is not better known today is probably on account of the butcher\u2019s blade it takes to the American Dream, and the presentation of an alternative vision for humanity. Thus, Socialism is described as \u2018the new religion of humanity \u2013 or you might say it was the fulfilment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application of all the teachings of Christ (p.346)\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Jungle<\/em> is generally credited with the swift passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in June 1906 \u2013 eventually leading to the creation of the FDA \u2013 after laying bare to the American public the unsanitary practices of the Beef Trust in Chicago\u2019s Packingtown.<\/p>\n

Notably, however, action was only taken when the health of the US population at large seemed at stake. Sinclair claimed the \u201cembalmed beef\u201d scandal<\/span><\/a> \u2018killed several times as many soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards(p.105)\u2019 in the war of 1898.<\/p>\n

The Act did not, however, address the frightful working conditions of mainly immigrant workers in the meat packing industry; let alone the millions of animals subjected to industrial slaughter. Moreover, in certain respects, the industrial food system is now more disturbing than ever, while the FDA has long been subject to Regulatory Capture<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

At least we have The Jungle<\/em> to remind us of ongoing fraudulent misrepresentations:<\/p>\n

The storekeepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you; the very fences of the wayside, the lamp-posts and telegraph-poles, were pasted with lies. The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country \u2013 from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie<\/em>(p.82).<\/em><\/p>\n