Upton Sinclair Puns

The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the knowledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down- Upton Sinclair.

Unfortunately no memes here, my apologies

Nevertheless , I'm often puzzled as I end up in conversations where either the person does not want to accept that pieces of paper is not money, or if people accept that its not money, they are frustrated that they are unable to convince others.

The Sinclair quote sums up the cognitive dissonance perfectly, because people realise that once they change their outlook, they will have to accept that their entire livelihood that they built up over decades is a complete lie- and this is difficult for the ego to accept.

“ But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls' earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week.
“

This has all happened before. It is happening again. Next verse, same as the first, a whole lot louder and a whole lot worse.

I have just finished the book, and it seems it fits in well with the general way most people here think. Also, perhaps it belongs on the reading list (library).

I am not an active member here, but I always read your stories and feel terrible for you all. Humans should not live like this... The struggles portrayed in The Jungle are not very different from the stories we read on this community. I hope everyone can break free soon!

Has anyone read the novel?

Just finished reading and I have to be honest. It was not an easy book for me to read. I never thought about reading it before because in history class they give you a raw summation of it's contents. It is used as a reason why Theodore Rosevelt created the FDA, this is in American schooling. My whole life, up until now, I thought that it was all about the horrors of the meat packing industry but nothing could be further from the truth. While the main character does get work in a meat packing plant, the book is actually about the horrors of American industrialization. What starts out as a happy immigrant family trying to achieve their dream in America, slowly turns into a nightmare. It is such a disservice for the history curriculum to tell kids that all this book is about is the horrors of the meat packing industry. This book probably could not be read by most high schoolers but I think it is an essential reading to understand the horrors of industrialization and rampant capitalism. It seems to me that education wants to obviscate this book because it is so damning to the history of America. Just some quick thoughts on the book. Did not want to put spoilers and if you have not read this book you really need to.

I read it as a teenager and I always thought this book was one of the most interesting/depressing books I had ever read.

The book is basically about how a family of immigrants come to America to fulfill the American dream of a better life...and then they don't reach it...they never even get halfway close. The story is about their brutal struggles and trials, just one obstacle after another, the family never catches a break for the slightest moment.

What did you guys think of it though?

"How is the price of an article determined?"

"The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers in the nation's wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of a bushel of wheat is fifty cents."

It seems Ludwig von Mises was not the first person to wonder how prices would be calculated in the socialist commonwealth. This quote from Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" includes a discussion on the matter. (Unless Sinclair's socialism involving prices meant it wasn't socialism?)

*slave holder

"ahhhhhhh wellll you see. The timing's... it's just not right. I get it. I TOTALLY get it. It's bad. But doing something will just cause problems and ya know. But you're totally right. You're totally right, and you saying something just shows how great a man you are. It's just not the right thing to do right now. We got X issue to deal with. But it's definitely good that you're thinking about in." In their defense, they were 100% correct that it would cause problems. Lincoln wins in 1860 on "okay well what if we just don't allow it in the new land we're acquiring (which to his credit, came out against the Mexican American war in his 1 term in Congress and it cost him)? You guys are totally good keeping what you got and buying more where it is but here going forward, no slavery in the new land. You guys can live with that right?" to which they responded "fuck you this is tyranny we're out." I still just find it funny how they're all these amazing brilliant men who wrote some of the most world changing documents to spread these challenging ideas and ideals... and they just put zero effort into thinking of solving the genuinely huge issues of emancipation because they were totally fine with the status quo

In English class in middle or high school was the first time I had heard of the book "The Jungle". Like most Americans who learned about the book at school, I was taught that it was about the meatpacking industry and that it was so disgusting that laws were passed to clean up the real-life meatpacking industry. At some point, I found out that The Jungle was in fact a novel, but being that I was struggling to keep up with classes and didn't want to spend too much of my already-thin free time reading some musty old book I wasn't sure if I'd like, I didn't pursue it any further. Eventually my sophomore year of college I was in office hours with my English professor for that semester, and after we had discussed what I had come there to, he pointed at his bookshelf and told me to take one of the books off it, and read it. (Thank you, Dr. Hanlon!) As it would happen, he had a copy of The Jungle and it was nearly at eye level. Being that it was one of the first books I saw, and a name familiar to me, and something I hadn't read yet, a triple threat, I took it. I then didn't read it for another two years. (Sorry, Dr. Hanlon.) But now it's 2021 and I'm through with the book. His copy as it turns out, came with a bunch of supplementary material at the end: excerpts from Sinclair's Autobiography, criticism and reviews both contemporary and later, and the original serialized ending of the book. I discovered this when, after feeling I was making some good headway into the book, put my bookmark in and set the novel down for the night, only to see that I was apparently only about a fourth of the way through. Happily I was further along than that.

The Jungle is depressing. The story is about a Lithuanian immigrant family, and specifically the young newlywed Jurgis, who move to Chicago to find a better life for themselves and their children. The "American Dream" is stolen from Jurgis and his family by a relentless barrage of tragedies—we are treated to nearly every sort of misfortune a poor man in an early 20th century city could look forward to. Poor housing, sickness, deaths of wives and children, workplace injuries, sudden job loss, women having to whore themselves, jail time, etc. Finally Jurgis, alone and desolate, happens to attend a political meeting just because it's warm inside—and discovers Socialism™, at which point the book becomes a series of opinion-pieces about the greatness of Socialism and how it's a cure-all to society. In the original ending, Jurgis mea

Sorry this isn’t the usual post asking for suggestions, please remove if not allowed. I wanted to get the opinion of this wide audience on The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I’ve always been curious about that book. I know it’s centered around the meat industry but exactly how graphic are the descriptions of animal cruelty? Is it mostly centered around exposing animal cruelty or labor exploitation (or both)? Just trying to proceed with caution here :)

Why is The Jungle labeled as THE book for bringing about change in the food industry? That’s all they teach you about it in school. I have personally read The Jungle, and this idea taught about it being a commentary on the food industry really confuses me. The Jungle is primarily about communism??? Sure, there’s some parts in there about how unhealthy and unsanitary the packaging plants are, but that’s such a small part of the book. It’s all about poor immigrants and workers and their terrible life. The last couple chapters are basically an ad for the communist party. Is anybody else just as confused as I am? Does anybody know why The Jungle gets this reputation?

While playing as Emperor Norton the second, an event popped up from Leahy who had overthrown MacArthur. In the event, it basically said that if the PSA helps the WCC and USA, the president of the PSA will become president of the USA. Now if Sinclair is president of the PSA and the event fires, can Sinclair become president or will Leahy refuse to even consider a socialist to become president?

I am guessing the answer is yes but have many of you read it? It definitely got me thinking more about Socialism. Also in case some have heard of it but not read it, and I supposed this is a spoiler, you may have heard that it focuses primarily on the gruesome working conditions of early 20th century Chicago, and it does for maybe 1/3 or half of the book. But some of it is about other stuff like politics and the main characters exploration of various things.

Anyways just wondering if it turned any of you Socialist or if anyone has general thoughts about the book. The writing was superb.

“The Jungle” is basically about the lives of Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago and I’ve started to fall in love with some of the characters’ names. Here are a few:

Ona

Elzbieta

Marija

Jonas (pronounced like “yonis”)

Antanas

Stanislovas

Kotrina

Jurgis (“yourgis”)

I love all these names except for maybe Jurgis (I don’t hate the name but I can’t really tell if I genuinely like it or if I’ve read it so many times that I’ve gotten used to it lol).

Any other nice Lithuanian names?

An important book for both AN and veganism.