An edition of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is available and even if you have read the book, get a copy of the complete edition and read it again. It seems that for years we have been cheated out of an even more horrifying story of the unregulated meat packing companies in Chicago in the early twentieth century. First, this edition is longer (about a third longer, I believe) and it presents a fuller and more devastating view of the struggles immigrants went through and an even uglier and more upsetting vision of the meat packing business. Who knew all those older copies of The Jungle were so heavily censored.
Thank goodness we have a Federal government which oversees things like meat packing and looks out for the health and well-being of the citizens. Just imagine what the combination of greed, corruption, and lack of regulations would be like: would it be like the Chicago depicted in The Jungle?
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