Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers’ hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.
I read The Jungle a few months ago and its aged so depressingly well.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 6 months ago
“The Jungle” famously spurred large reforms. The FDA exists and has a lot of power because people were disgusted by what they read.
That’s why you’re reading a hundred-year-old book: it was influential.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But only on one topic. Yes the FDA was created in large part from outrage over food condtions described in the book. But that really is only one chapter of the text, the majority of it deals with the exploration of workers in ALL sorts of industries (not just food), how preadatory home loans lead to finical ruins, how voting systems are rigged and how our policing system only produces more experienced criminals, not reform.
I mean heck, the last 2-3 chapters are explicitly socialist talking points that are still being said, for good reason, today. If the book was as influential as Sinclair wanted it to be, then we would’ve seen FAR FAR FAR more than the FDA.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My high school English class (in the Deep South) explicitly left those chapters out of our study of The Jungle lol.
KevonLooney@lemm.ee 6 months ago
So you’re intentionally exaggerating when you say “nothing has changed”. Yeah nothing has changed, except an entire Executive Branch department that didn’t exist before. It was more influential than many other books written at the time.
Of course the author wanted the book to be even more influential, that’s why authors write. No writer says “this book kinda sucks, I hope people read half of it and put it down”.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
🙄🙄🙄
You can “uh actually” my phrasing if you really want to, but playing tone police is to miss my actual point how these are long standing and well known problem.
If you don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation, it’s okay to just keep scrolling.