The Jungle Will Change Your Mind

THERE ARE PLENTY OF INTELLIGENT, perfectly well educated people who will tell you that they never read fiction. There are plenty of facts to keep one occupied. Some fiction, however, definitely needs to be read. Some fiction can teach you more about history than any history book. "The Jungle", by Upton Sinclair is such a book. There must be other books available about the urban american working class at the beginning of the twentieth century; it is doubtful that any are nearly as illuminating as The Jungle. As you read deeper into the story, you feel as if you yourself are living and working in a filthy Chicago slum, and you are miserable. The story begins when a farm laborer from Lithuania, Jurgis Rudkus, decides to move his entire family to America, where the streets are paved with gold. The family saves up enough money to buy third class passage to New York, living like animals in cages below decks on the voyage. The Rudkus family arrives by train in Chicago, where there is a large community of fellow eastern european immigrants, and jobs in the meat packing plants. Turn of the century Chicago was a growing city, with a large labor force of immigrants, and low wage factories. Rudkus and his family are exploited by landlords, and shift supervisors. All the women and children in the family must work, the same brutal hours and conditions as the men, for less pay, so the family can feed itself. There is no union, wages are pathetically low, hours are long and brutal, working conditions are miserable. Workers are hired and fired like throw away pieces. There is no government regulation of the industry, and the meat packers of Chicago put ground up rats on grocery store shelves mixed in with ground beef. Workers die on teh job regularly, and their bodies are swept aside like trash. Most members of the Rudkus family die in the ghetto, but Rudkus himself survives - and becomes a socialist activist. "The Jungle", published in 1906, motivated the government to pass laws to improve working conditions. Anyone who does not believe that there is a place for labor unions and government regulation of free enterprise, read "The Jungle", and you'll change your mind.