"The Jungle"- Of Meat and Myth

[Tom Sawyer]

Interesting debunking of a "classic work" used in schools to promote the "progressive movement".

Of Meat and Myth
by Lawrence W. Reed
How propaganda turns into literature, truth, and progress: a page from American history.
Liberty magazine article

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.

Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich.
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, bravely 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.

[error]

That site's down.

[Tom Sawyer]

Wow it was just working a short while ago. Probably doing maintenance or something.

Here is another source
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4084

[ladyattis]

Thanks for the find. It's stuff like the "Jungle" that have hindered progress for decades (if not centuries).

-- Brede