(written 6-03)

Wow. Now I can see why this book had such a big impression on those who read it in the early twentieth century. Really heart-wrenching (and gut-wrenching) stuff. There's the famous quote that Sinclair said he aimed for the public's heart and hit it in the stomach instead. I guess people didn't care much for the Socialism stuff, but when they learned what exactly their sausage was made of, they got mad.

It was surprising how much Sinclair reminds me of Ayn Rand, especially considering their completely opposite views on capitalism. They both use a fictional human situation to show the evils of society from an individual's point of view, and The Jungle and Atlas Shrugged both ended with a lengthy philosophical statement that was thinly veiled as a speech by the characters. I guess the difference is, Rand didn't know when to quit, and tried to actually make her utopia become a reality in the book. Sinclair left it as a call-to-arms. I liked Rand's ideas in print, but, as seen in The Jungle and in Fast Food Nation, corporations can't be trusted to make good decisions. Not every business owner is a Howard Roark or a John Galt. And efficiency can sometimes come at a high human price. Profits don't equal success, and the market, self-sufficient as it may seem, needs regulation.

The situation has come a long way in the past century, with minimum wages, enforced child labor laws, anti-trust laws, worker's compensation, and more. But Eric Schlosser showed us that the meatpacking industry is still cheating its workers, still the most dangerous place to work, and still trying to avoid regulations at all costs, with injuries going unreported and meat going uninspected. I'm glad to finally have read this book... now when I talk about it I really know what I am talking about.