Left: Hokey Pokey caramel corn, $9.98 per pound. Right: Penguin Books cover of “The Jungle,” 1906 novel by Upton Sinclair.
Grocery shopping the other day I succumbed to an impulse purchase. Just before checking out, a 15-oz. bag of Hokey Pokey Caramel Corn was calling my name. Interesting how stores display that sort of stuff near the check-out, tempting our craving of sugar.
At $9.98 per bag, the price rivaled those at the meat counter. In that section earlier I had been tempted to get some beef for grilling. Too expensive, I muttered, almost in earshot of the meat counter guy. He looked at me as if he knew my thoughts.
Such ponderous decisions also awaited us in the produce department. Even if it were free, we would think twice about tossing a head lettuce into the cart. Fortunately, the store offers some local produce in which we have more confidence that it will not give us diarrhea.
Even better, we are now harvesting peas, cucumbers, parsley and zucchini from our own garden, and soon, tomatoes and sweet corn. The trade-off, of course, is that in going to the grocery store for everything, you avoid the physical labor of gardening, which I really don’t mind and sometimes even enjoy. (See my June 11 post: “The nature of things – Amid weather and human turmoil, farms and gardens sustain our bodies and souls”).
Despite the lettuce crisis, we remain confident that the food we purchase and consume from grocery stores and restaurants is free of contaminants or at least carry an amount insufficient to make us ill. We take it for granted, thanks to the efforts of reform-minded and responsible leaders more than a century ago.
Progressive reform
One hundred twenty years ago, on June 30, 1906, Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drugs and Meat Inspection Act, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, a progressive Republican. It laid the foundation for consumer safety and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
Today we can go grocery shopping confident that the food we purchase will be safe to eat, if not always healthy – too much sugar, salt, fat, etc. Much of the credit for that goes to an author, Upton Sinclair, and his novel, The Jungle.
A bit like The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck for the Depression Era, The Jungle portrays the trials and tribulations of an immigrant family in Chicago amid the horrific conditions in a meat-packing plant, producing often tainted products and suffering workers. The novel was an immediate sensation. Despite Sinclair’s strident advocacy of socialism, Roosevelt promised to investigate the charges.
A recent purchase from Barnes and Noble, my copy of The Jungle awaits being entirely read. Perhaps I am reluctant as the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his family is not pleasant, as is much of the news these days. The themes remain the same: Wealth, greed, power, corruption, injustice. According to a Sparknotes summary, “the novel ends with the optimistic declaration that political change through socialism can transform society.”
As my wife and I discussed the contaminated lettuce outbreak, she reminded me of Sinclair’s book, which she had read as a high school assignment. My recollection sat off in the distance, a remnant of a journalism history class in college that included some discussion of the Muckraking Era. Progressive Era investigative journalism in 1890-1920 included Ida Tarbell exposing monopoly in Standard Oil, and Ida B. Well and racism in the South.
Regulation essential
There’s an old saying about agriculture: When you complain about farmers, don’t talk with your mouth full of food. The same could be said about government regulation. Don’t complain about it if it means that you can grocery shop with the assurance the food is safe to eat. I enjoyed the Hokey Pokey Caramel Corn from Minneapolis in confidence that it was safe, if not healthy.
Since the reforms initiated in the Progressive Era, Americans have been slowly brainwashed by Big Business to believe that government regulation is a bad thing. It’s only bad if you are doing bad things. Wage earners who must live on a budget should be thankful that the FDA, and state and local agencies are being vigilant.
About the cost of food, government could be doing more about that. Consolidation and monopolistic practices have kept prices higher than they would be in a more competitive marketplace. The majority of beef processing is controlled by four companies, Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef. (June 2 story in MinnPost: Spotlight on food prices shines light on monopoly forces in grocery industry)
It would be interesting to speculate what Upton Sinclair would say about politics and economics today. He lived to be 90 (d. 1968) and wrote nearly 100 books, many in the muckraking genre, exposing the ills of industry. In 1943 he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Researching The Jungle, in 1904 he went undercover for seven weeks investigating the meatpacking plants in Chicago.
Following is a summary of The Jungle in Sparknotes:
Jurgis Rudkus and his fiancée, Ona, immigrate from Lithuania to Chicago, believing hard work will bring prosperity. Instead, they encounter exploitation, dangerous working conditions, corrupt employers, predatory landlords, and crushing poverty in the city’s meatpacking district.
As the family struggles to survive, one tragedy follows another: Jurgis’s father dies from overwork, family members lose jobs, children die, and Ona is sexually exploited by her supervisor. After Jurgis attacks her abuser, he is imprisoned. Upon his release, he finds the family homeless, and Ona dies during childbirth. Later, his young son drowns, destroying his remaining hope.
Jurgis drifts through homelessness, crime, political corruption, and prison, briefly prospering as a strikebreaker before losing everything again. Eventually, he reconnects with surviving relatives, discovering that Marija has turned to prostitution to support the family.
At his lowest point, Jurgis attends a Socialist Party rally. Inspired by its message that workers should own the means of production and end exploitation, he embraces socialism, finds stable employment through socialist connections, reunites with his family, and regains hope for the future. The novel ends with the optimistic declaration that political change through socialism can transform society.
