The Jungle

by Irving Sinclair

This book is best known for its disgusting descriptions of how meat products are made, but that's actually a minor part of the point, which is really just socialist propaganda.  That said, it's pretty well written.

Just to make things clear, a few words about my politics.  I agree completely that the workers described in this book are opressed and live in horrible conditions.  But it seems to me that many of the socialists described, including the main character, Jurgis, don't have a good working knowledge of how this socialist utopia would be run.  Oh, sure, most of them can tell you exactly what is wrong with society and have ideas of how to fix it, but could they really tell you just how the people are going to run the stockyards without having a system like the one before?  Jurgis himself starts getting snappy when he is put in control of workers. It was this lack of foresight that brought down the Soviet Union, as far as I know.

I'd better stop this before it becomes a rambling essay.  Oh, one last thing--I read this book and am still not a vegitarian.  Far from it.  So there.

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