Upton Sinclair's Fabrications about Chicago Meatpacking
See letters-to-the-editor in the March 8, 2006 Wall Street Journal (subscription required). 4th letter.
Meatpacking Was Raw, But Not Really a 'Jungle'
John J. Miller's essay on Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (Leisure & Arts, Feb. 23) reminds us that Sinclair's novel on Chicago meatpacking plants was motivated by the author's ill-informed passion for socialism, but there's more to the story. The dreadful conditions Sinclair depicted in his novel were largely hogwash.
Government oversight did not begin with the passage of the law inspired by Sinclair, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Hundreds of inspectors had been employed by federal, state and local governments for more than a decade. Congressman E.D. Crumpacker of Indiana noted in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee in June 1906 that not even one of those officials "ever registered any complaint or [gave] any public information with respect to the manner of the slaughtering or preparation of meat or food products."
To Crumpacker and other contemporary skeptics, "Either the Government officials in Chicago [were] woefully derelict in their duty, or the situation over there [had been] outrageously over-stated to the country." If the packing plants were as nasty as alleged in "The Jungle," surely the government inspectors who never said so must be judged as guilty of neglect as the packers were of abuse. A 1906 report from the Department of Agriculture provided a point-by-point refutation of the worst of Sinclair's charges, labeling them "willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact," "atrocious exaggeration" and "not at all characteristic."
President Theodore Roosevelt was well aware of Sinclair's fabrications. In a July 1906 letter to editor William Allen White, TR wrote, "I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth."
As it turns out, the big meatpackers themselves pushed for the 1906 act because it put the federal government's stamp of approval on their products, foisted the annual $3 million price tag onto taxpayers, and imposed costly new regulations on their smaller competitors. Far from a crusading truth-seeker, the socialist Sinclair was a sucker who ended up being used by the very industry on which he heaped so much unjustified scorn.
Lawrence W. Reed
President
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Midland, Mich
See Prior Post Upton Sinclair Knew Sacco and Vanzetti Were Guilty
Meatpacking Was Raw, But Not Really a 'Jungle'
John J. Miller's essay on Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (Leisure & Arts, Feb. 23) reminds us that Sinclair's novel on Chicago meatpacking plants was motivated by the author's ill-informed passion for socialism, but there's more to the story. The dreadful conditions Sinclair depicted in his novel were largely hogwash.
Government oversight did not begin with the passage of the law inspired by Sinclair, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Hundreds of inspectors had been employed by federal, state and local governments for more than a decade. Congressman E.D. Crumpacker of Indiana noted in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee in June 1906 that not even one of those officials "ever registered any complaint or [gave] any public information with respect to the manner of the slaughtering or preparation of meat or food products."
To Crumpacker and other contemporary skeptics, "Either the Government officials in Chicago [were] woefully derelict in their duty, or the situation over there [had been] outrageously over-stated to the country." If the packing plants were as nasty as alleged in "The Jungle," surely the government inspectors who never said so must be judged as guilty of neglect as the packers were of abuse. A 1906 report from the Department of Agriculture provided a point-by-point refutation of the worst of Sinclair's charges, labeling them "willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact," "atrocious exaggeration" and "not at all characteristic."
President Theodore Roosevelt was well aware of Sinclair's fabrications. In a July 1906 letter to editor William Allen White, TR wrote, "I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth."
As it turns out, the big meatpackers themselves pushed for the 1906 act because it put the federal government's stamp of approval on their products, foisted the annual $3 million price tag onto taxpayers, and imposed costly new regulations on their smaller competitors. Far from a crusading truth-seeker, the socialist Sinclair was a sucker who ended up being used by the very industry on which he heaped so much unjustified scorn.
Lawrence W. Reed
President
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Midland, Mich
See Prior Post Upton Sinclair Knew Sacco and Vanzetti Were Guilty
posted by Gene Felder at 5:36 PM
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