12/17/2012
Good morning! Please
get out your family tree
chart for The Jungle.
Due after break:
• The Jungle
(Test on Wed. Jan. 2)
• Multiple choice questions
(Due Fri. Jan 4)
•Read to a child
(Due by the end of the semester)
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair,
to understand today’s politics:
He’s a rightwing pawn.
He’s a
socialist.
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair,
to understand today’s politics:
Overview:
• Who was Upton Sinclair?
• Four important terms
• Liberal/Conservative scale
• Some history
• Reading The Jungle
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
Who was Upton Sinclair?
• He lived from 1878-1968
• Muckraker, socialist, journalist
• Wrote over 90 books; The Jungle is his most
famous
• He said about The Jungle, “I aimed for the
public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the
stomach.”
• He also wrote Oil, which exposed unethical
practices by oil companies. That book was
made into a movie called There Will be
Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis (who also
played John Proctor in The Crucible, and
today is married to Arthur Miller’s daughter)
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
Four important terms:
• Capitalism – An economic system where goods, services, and means of
production are privately owned.
• Socialism – An economic system where goods, services and means of
production are owned by the people, or the government.
• Democracy – A system of government where laws are made by a
vote of citizens, or by representatives.
• Communism – A future utopian society envisioned by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. Communism was supposed to include no social classes, a democratic
government, and a socialist economy. (By the way, Marx was not Russian, he was German.
And he was not a revolutionary, he was an economist.)
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
Important to know about capitalism and
socialism: Neither one exists in its pure
form in any country. They are only
theoretical extremes of the same scale:
socialist
More gov. control /
regulation of business
capitalist
Less gov. control /
regulation of business
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
But maybe there are other ways to
determine how “socialist” or “capitalist”
countries are:
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
Q:
What does all of that have to do with politics in the United
States?
A:
Republicans lean slightly “right,” toward leaving private
industries alone, and Democrats lean slightly “left,”
toward more government regulation and control.
socialist
capitalist
Using The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, to understand today’s politics:
Q: So, when conservatives call Barak
Obama a “socialist,” are they correct?
socialist
capitalist
So, what does all of this have to
do with The Jungle?
The Jungle is a story
written to show the evils
of too much capitalism.
The characters are
tormented by companies
that are allowed to run
wild, with no government
oversight or regulations.
Do we ever read any books from
the opposite perspective?
Do we ever read any books from
the opposite perspective?
Hey,
too much
government
control is
baaad!
1906
1945
And now, for some history:
“The Pure Food and Drug Act” is just one way
that government regulates business. It was
passed as a direct result of The Jungle. Before
the act, food companies processed food and
labeled food pretty much however they wanted.
And now, for some history:
The Pure Food and Drug Act:
• Upton Sinclair lived and worked
among the meat-packing workers for
months to research for The Jungle.
• Legend has it that in 1906 President
Teddy Roosevelt was reading The
Jungle while eating, and he threw his
breakfast onto the White House lawn.
• The Pure Food and Drug Act was
passed a couple months later.
And now, for some history:
Major immigration
“waves” to the USA:
•Native Americans:
•English/Scotch:
•Africans:
•Germans, Scandinavians, Irish:
•Chinese
•Italians, E. Europeans, Greeks, Jews:
•Latin Americans, SE Asians:
Prehistoric, unknown number
1607-1790, about 2 million
1607-1807, about 1 million
1820-1890, 7.5 million
1849-1882, about 100,000
1890-1920, 20-25 million
1965-2008, 8-10 million
The only hard part about reading The Jungle is keeping
the Lithuanian characters straight: