"Jungle" book review

This novel horrified President Teddy Roosevelt and the nation, when it came out in 1906, exposing the evils of the Chicago meat-packing industry and resulting in the passage of the first Pure Food and drug Act. When I read about some our current practices, I wonder if we need another Upton Sinclair.

Reading a shocker

If the turn-out for the March 18, 2013 Advance Community Library Book Club meeting was any indication, only four members of the club tackled the task of reading Upton Sinclair's riveting and gory exposé of the practices which led to the 1906 passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

President Theodore Roosevelt, horrified by the book, first refused to believe the tales of death, disease and horror attributed to the Chicago meat-packing industries' callous disregard for human life. However, when the president sent his forces to check on the conditions on the "killing floors," he discovered that Sinclair's facts were, indeed, true.

Using the information he obtained by living in the Packingtown region of Chicago, Sinclair chose to write his historic book in fictional form, choosing his main character to be Lithuanian immigrants, named Jurgis Rudkos and his new wife Ona Lukoszis.

Sinclair weaves a horrifying tale of what happened to immigrants who came to America at the turn of the century to better their lives and escape starvation in their home countries.

Jurgis works in the bitter cold conditions of the killing floors, where he uses a knife and his own immense physical strength to kill cattle let loose on the floor to slip and slide in their own blood. When Jurgis is predictably injured on the job, he is given no medical treatment to combat the resulting infection. He is simply fired. In an era before labor unions and safety laws, workers routinely lost their lives on the job.

Readers are treated to horrific details about how meat was handled in 1905, before the government stepped in to regulate the industry. Meat which is left on the floor is scooped up with dead rats and rat poison and made into sausage. Children work for a nickel a day in the lard room. Workers who slip into the open lard vat are processed along with the rest of the ingredients. A worker gives birth on the factory line floor, and her baby is nearly processed with the meat scraps.

No wonder the book is considered one of the most difficult and depressing in American literature! However, it is a true account of life in America at the turn of the last century.

"I am so glad we read this book!" said book club member Nancy Lanpher. "I think it is one of the most important historical accounts ever written."

I first read the book in the mid-eighties, and it made me feel as if I had been wearing blinders all my life! It was truly a life-changing experience for me. The difficulty of the book is high enough that I had many students who wanted to read it, but they just couldn't handle the Lithuanian names, the "dated" language, and the historical references. It isn't a book for the weak of heart, but it's well worth the time you'll invest in reading it.