# Did Sinclair lewis ("THE JUNGLE") Lie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 15, 2007, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135 "2007-06-15T17:37:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/21 "2007-06-17T04:25:03Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise] See “Food manufacture in modern China.” [/QUOTE] Whassamatta? You don’t like plastic in your kitten chow? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/22 "2007-06-17T05:10:22Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] I hope he was misquoted. That has to be one of the silliest logical extrapolations I have read–certainly the stupidest attributed to Friedman. [/QUOTE] I was thinking the same thing. I don’t agree with everything Milton Friedman wrote, but he certainly was not stupid, and was not given to rampant bouts of illogical thinking. I thought i had a copy of _Free to Choose_ around here somewhere, but i can’t seem to find it. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/23 "2007-06-17T17:05:46Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Miskatonic] Whassamatta? You don’t like plastic in your kitten chow? [/QUOTE] It’s not that so much; I just would rather not have [antifreeze in my toothpaste](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?ex=1338436800&en=60a8ba104bb752a1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss?TB_iframe=true&height=650&width=850): "Agency officials said they found toothpaste containing a small amount of diethylene glycol, a sweet, syrupy poison, at a Dollar Plus retail store in Miami, sold under the brand name ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste. The F.D.A. also identified nine other brands of Chinese toothpaste that contain diethylene glycol, some with concentrations of 3 percent to 4 percent… The agency said two Chinese companies, Goldcredit International Trading and the Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemicals Company, made the tainted brands found in the United States. In a statement yesterday, federal health officials called diethylene-glycol poisoning “an important public safety issue.” The Panamanian government last year inadvertently mixed the poison made in China into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine, killing at least 100 people, prosecutors there said." Of course, the upside of using the Chinese toothpaste is that it takes longer for you to freeze up at icy bus stops in the wintertime. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/24 "2007-06-17T17:18:34Z")
As I recall Sinclair was questioned about his assertions when the book was published and said he could back up everything he had written with proof and challenged anyone to find a single thing form his book that wasn’t true. The meat packers declined the challenge to face him openly and instead began a whispering campaign of spreading the rumor that he had made his claims up. Personally, I find the fact that the meat packers chose this route rather than take Sinclair to court and have his proof made public as strong evidence that they knew he was telling the truth. Friedman wasn’t even born when _The Jungle_ was published so any thoughts he had on it were not based on any direct knowledge of the facts. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/25 "2007-06-17T21:35:11Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] As I recall Sinclair was questioned about his assertions when the book was published and said he could back up everything he had written with proof and challenged anyone to find a single thing form his book that wasn’t true. The meat packers declined the challenge to face him openly and instead began a whispering campaign of spreading the rumor that he had made his claims up. [/QUOTE] Was Friedman aware of all that? ---
**Author:** ![Fuji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Fuji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuji)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/26 "2007-06-17T22:13:04Z")
[QUOTE=everywill] All of which pokes gaping holes in conservative/libertarian theory. [/QUOTE] Really? How so? ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2007, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/27 "2007-06-18T12:22:36Z")
Well, as i see it; Upton Sinclair told the people of the USA that: -meatpacking companies INTENTIONALLY sold canned meats that contained rat feces, rotten meat, and other contaminants -the meatpacking industry operated grossly unsanitary plants, most of their output would be contaminated -the meatpackers abused their labor force, and operated dangerous and unsafe plants -USA consumers willingly purchased unsafe meat products If the conditions in the meatpacking plants was so terrible, we should have expected mass poisonings (of consumers) to have occurred. I don’t see any historical evidence for this-one exception being the “embalmed beef” scandal of 1898 (soldiers in the Spanish-American War were issued cans of beef that were canned during the Civil War (1861-65). So, did the cooking process make the contaminated meat safe to eat? or WERE there mass poisonongs of people in the 1890’s 9as the result of unsafe conditions in the meatpacking plants)? The comparison to cigareetes is not valid-people have known that cigarette smoking cause lung cancer, for the last 45 years. the decision to smaoke is not the same as the decision to consume canned meats. The Milton Friedamn quote is from “FREE TO CHOOSE”; i’ll try to dig up a cite. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2007, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/28 "2007-06-18T13:09:20Z")
[QUOTE=Fuji] Really? How so? [/QUOTE] By providing anecdotal evidence against the assumption that unregulated market operations always will yield a more socially beneficial result than any alternative. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2007, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/29 "2007-06-18T13:13:53Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] Well, as i see it; Upton Sinclair told the people of the USA that: -meatpacking companies INTENTIONALLY sold canned meats that contained rat feces, rotten meat, and other contaminants -the meatpacking industry operated grossly unsanitary plants, most of their output would be contaminated -the meatpackers abused their labor force, and operated dangerous and unsafe plants -USA consumers willingly purchased unsafe meat products. [/QUOTE] I’ve never read the book. Did Sinclair actually **say** all those things, or did he simply describe the conditions he observed on the ground and leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions? I very much doubt he would have said anything to the effect of “USA consumers willingly purchased unsafe meat products.” Before the book was published the consumers generally did not **know** what went into those products, did they? And though Sinclair described a lot of things going into the sausage that you wouldn’t want to eat if you knew about them, did he actually say the products were “unsafe”? ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2007, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/30 "2007-06-18T13:22:26Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I’ve never read the book. Did Sinclair actually **say** all those things, or did he simply describe the conditions he observed on the ground and leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions? I very much doubt he would have said anything to the effect of “USA consumers willingly purchased unsafe meat products.” Before the book was published the consumers generally did not **know** what went into those products, did they? And though Sinclair described a lot of things going into the sausage that you wouldn’t want to eat if you knew about them, did he actually say the products were “unsafe”? [/QUOTE] As I recall, Sinclair talks about the main character’s father (Jurgis), who dies as the result of a cold, contracted ina cold meatpacking plant. He decribes how meat is being pickled in a big vat-and after a short period, the vat and its contents were dumped out, onto the (filthy) floor-and everything in the vat was ground up and canned as “potted” meat. In another example, he (Jurgis) relates how sides of beef were stacked ina warehouse, while rats ran over them and left their dung. So, i would GUESS that Sinclair was strongly implying, that the resultant canned meat products would be unsafe to eat. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2007, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/31 "2007-06-18T13:49:12Z")
[QUOTE=Renob] Probably because organic foods are no healthier than conventional foods. [/QUOTE] Heh…you’ll post that, uncited, and then request a cite from someone else? Sailboat ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/32 "2007-06-20T15:27:39Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] I believe the meat industry’s unsanitary practices were not widely known to the general public – **until** Sinclair published _The Jungle._ And then and only then came consumer reaction and government action. So the argument that “he must have been a liar because what he described was too horrible to be tolerated” really doesn’t fly. It is really not that hard for industries to keep dirty secrets when there are no muckraking journalists nor government inspectors around. [/QUOTE] No-even in 1900, people had newspapers, and talked . Supose your wife buys a can of beef for dinner-you and your whole family get sick! You tell your friends and relatives, and they tell theirs. Before you know it, the “Pure canned Beef” Companie’s products aren’t selling-will the grocer continue to stock them? Do the papers of the period mention mass poisonings? ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/33 "2007-06-20T16:11:53Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] No-even in 1900, people had newspapers, and talked . Supose your wife buys a can of beef for dinner-you and your whole family get sick! You tell your friends and relatives, and they tell theirs. Before you know it, the “Pure canned Beef” Companie’s products aren’t selling-will the grocer continue to stock them? Do the papers of the period mention mass poisonings? [/QUOTE] At the period in question, people were just getting a handle on contagious diseases and their causes. Typhoid and cholera epidemics were common. Refrigeration was far from universal. (This [link](http://www.realmilk.com/untoldstory_1.html) discusses the milk situation.) Bottom line – people probably were used to pretty questionable food back then and had immune systems to match, they were probably not unaccustomed to spending lots of time on the pot with digestive issues, and an outbreak of food poisoning wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy. ---
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/34 "2007-06-20T17:38:04Z")
I’ve been perusing _Free to Choose_, and the only mention that Friedman has of _The Jungle_ discusses the fact that American meatpackers welcomed the regulation since they could then tout their meat as “safe” in opposition to imported meat. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/35 "2007-06-20T17:42:08Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] No-even in 1900, people had newspapers, and talked . Supose your wife buys a can of beef for dinner-you and your whole family get sick! You tell your friends and relatives, and they tell theirs. [/QUOTE] Even today, most people describe as “stomach flu” symptoms that many in the medical community identify as salmonella poisoning. The idea that at a time when Pasteur’s work was stll relatively recent the typical person immediately linked a bad case of stomach cramps and diarrhea with a particular food product is unlikely. (The family eating bad tinned meat could have also been eating poorly stored, unwashed vegetables, unpasteurized milk, or contminated water.) ---
**Author:** ![Aholibah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Aholibah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aholibah)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/36 "2007-06-20T18:06:36Z")
From [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle) > [@wikipedia](#): > > After much persuasion from Sinclair as to the seriousness of the situation, Roosevelt agreed to send two men to investigate Sinclair’s claims. The men the president chose, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds, had both done investigative work for Roosevelt before, and were thought trustworthy. Sinclair really wanted Roosevelt to send his inspectors into the factories so they could see how poorly the workers were being treated; he wanted the nation to become better educated on the aforementioned issue of “wage slavery”. Instead, what he got was tunnel vision reports from Neill and Reynolds. Instead of the poor conditions and inhumane treatment of the workers, they chose to focus their reports on only the cleanliness, or lack thereof, in these packing factories. > > Even though the meat packers had forewarning and time to clean up, the conditions Neill and Reynolds observed were described as “revolting”. Ironically, the only claim that was unsubstantiated by the report was the claim that workers, who had fallen into the giant lard vats, were left in these vats and were consequently being made into Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard- by far the most influential, revolting, and striking passage in the book. Roosevelt was so concerned about the impact of Neill and Reynold’s report on western stock growers and European meat importers that he did not release the findings for publication. Instead, he helped the issue along by dropping hints of what was in the report, alluding to disgusting conditions and inadequate inspection measures. **ralph** , does this allay your suspicion that Sinclair’s allegations of revolting conditions in the meat-packing industry were unfounded, or not? Given that _The Jungle_ is a novel and never pretended to be anything else, I think invented episodes are to be expected. However, government-appointed inspectors backed up the claim that conditions in meat-packing pants were ‘revolting.’ If this is insufficient for you, can you explain why? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/37 "2007-06-20T19:37:52Z")
[QUOTE=Renob] I’ve been perusing _Free to Choose_, and the only mention that Friedman has of _The Jungle_ discusses the fact that American meatpackers welcomed the regulation since they could then tout their meat as “safe” in opposition to imported meat. [/QUOTE] An attitude they appear to have [reversed,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=423539) recently, when the shoe was on the other foot. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135/38 "2007-06-20T21:40:31Z")
A 1991 article by Lewis (Louise) Carroll Wade, excerpted [here](http://www.answers.com/topic/the-jungle-novel-7?cat=entertainment), claims that Theodore Roosevelt’s inspection teams did not find substantiation of a lot of Sinclair’s most extreme claims. As **Aholibah** notes, however, these weren’t surprise inspections. [This article](http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i26/26b01001.htm) questions the severity of Wade’s judgement of Sinclair: > [@](#): > > In an interesting, if disregarded, article published in American Studies in 1991, “The Problem With Classroom Use of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle,” Louise Carroll Wade, a social historian, finds the novel entirely without historical merit. Because Sinclair was a member of the Socialist Party, she maintains, he “loaded the dice” by ignoring “how millions could consume Chicago meat without ill effects.” The demise of the Rudkus family, she argues, is far-fetched, given the statistically improbable series of disasters that befall it within a few years’ time. Finally, she objects, the novel overlooks religious and ethnic institutions such as the Catholic Church that provided a safety net for working-class immigrants. > > While few historians share Wade’s categorical dismissal of The Jungle, her article serves as a helpful reminder of the distortions that will result from literal-minded readings of a document that is, after all, a novel. Wade, a historian who wrote a history of the stockyards called _Chicago’s Pride_, seems to be taking the pro-meatpacking side in an effort to balance the hyperbolic “muckracking” accusations of writers like Sinclair. But although she’s definitely right to point out that the melodramatic sequence of catastrophes in Sinclair’s novel isn’t a realistic representation of the experiences of the average immigrant stockyards employee in the early 20th century, I can’t find any evidence that she’s actually refuted any of Sinclair’s specific assertions about the existence of particular sanitary problems. Almost certainly, what happens in _The Jungle_ is much darker and more loathsome than the day-to-day experiences in a real-life meat-packing plant. But does that necessarily mean that any of Sinclair’s allegations about particular sanitation defects are actually fabricated and completely without basis in reality? Not AFAICT. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-sinclair-lewis-the-jungle-lie/408135.md?page=1)