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 illinformed 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
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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. Threefourths 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.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2006
A21
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“For more information on Upton Sinclair and the origins of the
Meat Inspection Act, see http://www.mackinac.org/7229.”