Replies

Btw, glad you mentioned The Jungle and Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I’m not as familiar with reactions to Bradley Martin’s ball or The Shame of the Cities, but I do know that the public reaction to The Jungle and the fire was not aligned with progressivism as much as straight reactionary fear.

The Jungle scared the white middle class because they were horrified at the idea that a black man had fallen into and had been chopped up in their food supply (a scene included in the periodical but not the published version, and one deliberately designed to provoke outrage) and the overriding concern for the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was to put municipal limits on the height of buildings, not labor reform. Only Washington DC (Philly was slow to rescind it) has maintained height restrictions that were placed on buildings in cities across the nation following the fire.

As always, our leftists historians read too much into their own validations and confirmation bias and miss these larger contemporaneous meanings.

Your thoughts are, as ever, very much appreciated, btw.

From my last post:

The Jungle scared the white middle class because they were horrified at the idea that a black man had fallen into and had been chopped up in their food supply (a scene included in the periodical but not the published version, and one deliberately designed to provoke outrage)

Thanks to PA for asking for that reference, and I stand corrected. It was not directly stated in the text, and whether implied by the work or not, it was taken that way by the larger media/society. My recollection is from a scholar of Richard Harding Davis who told that to me. It is my incorrect recollection that it came from the serial publication (more likely from the Davis papers but now I don't know), and I apologize for getting that wrong. I trust this scholar, and it conforms with my understanding of the period.

The Jungle has two passages that mention workers falling into vats. The first is in Chapter 9, and it got/gets the most attention:

These people could not be shown to the visitor,—for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

The other mention is in Chapter 12:

… sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy.

The serial publication, which appeared in, "Appeal to Reason" magazine, a socialist rag, is longer but not substantially different from the book as printed in 1906. The main difference is that the serial is more wordy and more maudlin (if that were possible). One omission that comes to mind is reference in Chapter 9 to the slaughterhouses shipping higher quality meat to France and Germany that was not included in the book form. Sinclair testified to this claim in subsequent press/hearings but it was not in the book. I don't know why. Another change is the names of the meat packing company and owner and Chicago politicians. I don't know the particulars other than to assume that the book publisher wanted to avoid law suits.

In that Sinclair wrote that blacks and eastern European immigrants (not then considered "white") worked in the slaughterhouses / meat packing factories and, worse, worked as striker breakers, people assumed that they were also among those who fell into vats of lard. Here for a couple press mentions expressing those fears:

Fell Into Vat of Boiling Water
Walter K Jones, a negro... fell into a vat of boiling wtare at the Swift & Co. packing house. (Washington Post, 1906-04-14)

Sinclair Gives Proof of Meat Trust Frauds
[subheading] Found a Child's Finger ...from a letter by a Brooklyn man, under date of May 10: "An acquaintance of ours... found, perhaps three years or so ago, the little finger of a child in a can of corned beef... I can see that such occurrences might be numerous and that (while nothing could seem more horrible) even more unexpected ingredients are now and then if not continually mixed with the prepared food sent out from Packingtown." (NY Times, 1906-05-28)

Report on Meat Converts Cannon
[workmen] are mostly ignorant foreigners or negros who have on knowledge of the sanitary requirements... some of them are suffering form tuberculosis. In these packing houses the meat is dragged about on the floors, spat upon, and walked upon. (NY Times, 1906-05-28)

Neill's Aides Talk: He Must Report Now
This witness also told the Commissioners that he knew of a case in which two members of the same family had fallen into the lard vats and been partially rendered into lard …. There is not telling how many men meet death in this way. There was a case.. in which a man fell into a tank, and the room was closed while remnants -mostly bones-were fished out.(NY Times, 1906-05-29)

Neill's Meat Report Coming in Sections"
The specific stories of using the skimmings from Bubbly Creek, of the mixing and grinding of the boiled remains of a stockyard employe [sic] who fell into a vat..." (NY Times, 1906-06-02)

I'm certain that there are many more references to this part of the Sinclair story, and these few here are from a quick search in NYT/ WP database. To really know what was going on, I'd want to dig into the ongoing news cycle from May to July 1906. Federal investigations found no evidence of workers actually falling into the vats, but the story served its purpose and provoked the President and Congress into responding w/ the Pure Food and Meat Inspection acts.

Sinclair enjoyed his notoriety, but the next time he hit the national news was in 1907 when his socialist utopia, the "Helicon Home Colony" failed.

Thanks for your note, ProgressingAmerica, I hope this satisfies your question.