Of Meat and Myth: Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle is pure myth, but it has had a very real legacy.

Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" was pure torture to read. Very little of it actually dealt with meat processing plants and its 'shocking scene' was based on an unsubstantiated rumor. It mostly dealt with his own Socialist interpretation of the life for immigrants and his long sob story that tried to prove that the state and collective were needed to create a workers paradise. Paradise was finishing this book and putting it down. Pass on this book. Read "McTeague" by Frank Norris instead. It was a much better written book that dealt with similar poverty and social issues and put a more realistic face on these unfortunate, but small minded, mean people. Erich Von Stroheim based his epic silent film "Greed" on the Norris' novel. m/r

Of Meat and Myth : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

FEBRUARY 08, 2013 by LAWRENCE W. REED

(The original version of this essay was published in The Freeman in November 1994. This longer version below was originally published by Liberty magazine in August 2006 to mark the centennial of the passage of the famed Meat Inspection Act of 1906. A full version, with citations, also appears in the 2011 book A Republic—If We Can Keep It.)

One hundred years ago, a great and enduring myth was born. Muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel entitled The Jungle—a tale of greed and abuse that still reverberates as a case against a free economy. Sinclair’s “jungle” was unregulated enterprise; his example was the meat-packing industry; his purpose was government regulation. The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in history, or at least in history books, as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.

A century later, American schoolchildren are still being taught a simplistic and romanticized version of this history. For many young people, The Jungle is required reading in high-school classes, where they are led to believe that unscrupulous capitalists were routinely tainting our meat, and that moral crusader Upton Sinclair rallied the public and forced government to shift from pusillanimous bystander to heroic do-gooder, valiantly disciplining the marketplace to protect its millions of victims. 

But this is a triumph of myth over reality, of ulterior motives over good intentions. Reading The Jungle and assuming it’s a credible news source is like watching The Blair Witch Project because you think it’s a documentary. 

Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/of-meat-and-myth#ixzz2LyN9iU6i