Twain: “Day before yesterday’s New York Sun has a paragraph or two from its London correspondent which enables me to locate myself. The correspondent mentions a few of our American events of the past twelvemonth, such as the limitless rottenness of our insurance companies, where theft has been carried on by our most distinguished commercial men as a profession; the exposures of conscienceless graft, colossal graft, in great municipalities like Philadelphia, St. Louis and other large cities; the recent exposure of millionfold graft in the great Pennsylvania Railway system – with minor uncoverings of commercial swindles from one end of the United States to the other; and finally today’s lurid exposure, by Upton Sinclair, of the most titanic and death-dealing swindle of them all, the Beef Trust, an exposure which has moved the President to demand of a reluctant Congress a law which shall protect America and Europe from falling, in a mass, into the hands of a doctor and the undertaker.
According to that correspondent, Europe is beginning to wonder if there is really an honest human creature left in the United States. A year ago I was satisfied there was no such person on American soil except myself. That exception has since been rubbed out and now it is my belief there isn’t a single American male human being in America who is honest. I held the belt all along, until last January. Then I went down, with Rockefeller and Carnegie and a group of Goulds and Vanderbilts and other professional grafters, and swore off my taxes like the most conscienceless of the lot. It was a great loss to America because I was irreplaceable. It is my belief that it will take fifty years to produce my successor. I believe the entire population of the United States – exclusive of the women – to be rotten, as far as the dollar is concerned. Understand, I am saying this as a dead person. I should consider it indiscreet in any live one to make these remarks publicly.”
Upton Sinclair’s exposure of the meat packing industry, referred to above by Twain as the Beef Trust, and the “big business” of 1906 can be easily compared to the “big business” of 2009.
In the early 1900's, strikes, riots, labor unions, and new political parties arose across the country. The Government, with its laissez-faire attitude, allowed business to consolidate into trusts, and with lack of competition, into powerful monopolies. These multi-million dollar monopolies were able to exploit every opportunity to make greater fortunes regardless of human consequences.Upton Sinclair, via his novel “The Jungle”, exposed to the public what was known as the “Beef Trust” scandal and is a good example of "big business" corruption and the lack of concern for workers and the rest of society. "The Jungle," was filled with page after page of nauseating detail Sinclair had researched about the meat-packing industry, and dropped it on an astonished nation in 1906.
An instant best-seller, Sinclair's book reeked with the stink of the Chicago stockyards. He told how dead rats were shoveled into sausage-grinding machines; how bribed inspectors looked the other way when diseased cows were slaughtered for beef, and how filth and guts were swept off the floor and packaged as "potted ham."
In short, "The Jungle" did as much as any animal-rights activist of today to turn Americans into vegetarians. But it did more than that. Within months, the aroused -- and gagging -- public demanded sweeping reforms in the meat industry.
President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy. He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat.
Although the main thrust of Sinclair’s book was to draw attention to the horrible treatment of American workers by the corrupt Beef Trust, it was more effective at greatly improving food safety and production. Sinclair considered his triumph empty. He complained that the tragedy of industrial life and his socialist preaching were being lost in the meat controversy. He famously stated, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,"
"The Jungle", was a factual account of the beef and slaughterhouse industry and gives a heart-breaking portrayal of the hardships faced by the countless poverty stricken laborers in the slaughterhouses of Chicago but it could have been applied at the time to those in East St Louis, Illinois and elsewhere. In Sinclair’s portrayal a struggling family would undergo months of back- breaking labor only to lose their house at the drop of a hat. It was a desperate and unmerciful time when an accidentally fractured ankle cost a man his job and his family food and shelter.
One quote from the book that describes the power that "big business" had during this time period is, "In the national capital it had the power to falsify government reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was threatened it burned its books and sent its criminal agents across the country."
During this time period there was not a great deal of government regulation on businesses, and "big business" was able to take advantage of not only the workers, but also the American public.
Deja vu all over again.
Gary
