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Magazine
Issue 6, 2005
Suzanne White Junod
"Possibly, the horrors of Packingtown are exaggerated; but only by exaggeration and uproar can we get abuses abated in this land of the unrestrained." Puck, vol. 59, no. 1528, June 13, 1906.
"Since the Chicago slaughter houses are so clean and everyone is invited to come and inspect them, why these strenuous objections to permanent inspection?" Puck, vol. 59, no. 1530, June 27, 1906.
"Meantime, the pure food bill is assuming somewhat the appearance of a band wagon." Puck, vol. 59, no. 1531, July 4, 1906.
On June 23, 2005, the Union Stock Yard Gate in Chicago, Illinois, was dedicated by the Friends of the Library USA (FOLUSA) as a Literary Landmark. The landmark commemorates the 100th anniversary of the publishing of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." At its peak, The Union Stock Yards occupied 450 acres on Chicago's Southside, employed 25,000 and processed 82 percent of all of the meat consumed in the US. It was once quipped that the meatpackers were so efficient that they processed "every part of the pig except the squeal." The Union Stock Yards were closed in 1971 and only the gate remains standing as a National Historic Landmark. Sally Reed, Executive Director of Friends of the Library, USA, presented the plaque to Margaret O'K. Glavin, FDA's Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs. The plaque will be displayed in FDA's History Office in Parklawn during the centennial and permanently affixed to the gate. The plaque reads:
"In 1906, Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, exposed the horrific working conditions beyond this gate. The recounted struggle for human dignity of Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus galvanized this nation, spurred the labor movement, and led to the passage of the Pure Food & Drug Act. This site is dedicated a Literary Landmark by the Friends of the Library, USA. -- June 23, 2005"
Although it seems that almost everyone has read and gagged over parts of The Jungle in the course of their education, many may have missed Edmund Morris' Pulitzer Prize winning biography, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) and its sequel Theodore Rex (2001), both of which make simply delightful reading. Morris makes it clear that Theodore Roosevelt was a man who, far from being merely a man "of the times," virtually created his own times, energizing the nation with bold decisions at critical times on an astonishing number of political, social, governmental, business, and international fronts. During his first term, he demonstrated his personal faith in politics as "the art of the possible." The issue of "trusts" was one of the most explosive issues of his presidency, yet he struck a conciliatory tone, reassuring business interests that he would protect the "delicate" mechanisms of modern business, while nonetheless taking action to "supervise" aspects of the great business enterprises which were prone to hurt the general welfare of the country. Humorist Finley Peter Dunn put a succinct summary of Roosevelt's first message on the subject of trusts in the mouth of the inestimable "Mr. Dooley."
"the'trusts, says he, are heejoous monsthers built up be
the enlightened
intherprise iv th' men that have done
so much to advance progress in our beloved
country, he
says. On wan hand I wud stamp thim undher fut; on th'
other hand not so fast."
His coalition of progressive and conservative-minded voters easily secured his re-election to a second term in 1904. Although he drew back from his most fervent anti-trust work during his second administration, he secured his most important anti-trust victory in 1905, when the Supreme Court held that the "beef trust" had illegally combined to avoid competitive bidding on livestock. In Swift and Company v. United States (1905), the high court put forth its "stream of commerce" doctrine which overturned a previous ruling holding that manufacturing was strictly an intrastate activity. Since both cattle and finished meat products moved in interstate commerce, reasoned the Court, the companies themselves became subject to federal oversight and regulation. This broadened interpretation of the interstate commerce clause became and remains a critical component of FDA's ability to act against violative goods under the provisions of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act as well as its successor, the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The agency is still required to establish as fact that suspected violative products have moved in interstate commerce.
The pages of Puck and of Judge, as well as all other major periodicals of the "Progressive" era contained almost endless references to "trusts." Puck was particularly fond of decrying the evils of both the Beef Trust and the Tobacco Trust, and even before Sinclair's portrayal of the dismal working conditions in Packingtown, showed little sympathy for the Packingtown factory owners. Noting that a number of packing house official had migrated to Europe or Canada when the investigation of their business practices began, Puck quipped, "If the exodus continues, the Beef Trust may be deftly "cured" by process of elimination."[1]Following their indictment, Puck noted that "one of the Beef Packer's main objections to their present arraignment in Chicago was the fact that they were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury "secretly and consequently illegally drawn." What conscientious scruples the Beef Trust has against that which is secret and illegal!" [2]
Puck's editors had been critical of the patent medicine industry, but they had also turned a skeptical eye to those ignorant and gullible patrons in communities across the country that fed the industry's excesses. Following publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, however, and publication of Roosevelt's own confirmation of the conditions in Packingtown as reported by his own "undercover" investigators, Neill and Reynolds, Puck threw its hat in the ring with the reformers, supporting passage of both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act, both of which Theodore Roosevelt signed on the same day -- June 30, 1906. [3]
What shall I eat? I will no longer feed
On meat and cater to the packer's
greed.
Let's see. There's fish -- as fresh as e'er was seen--
Made fresh by rubbing
it with Vaseline.
The market man "restores" and "touches up"
The somewhat
faded fish on which I sup.
There's "full cream cheese" that's innocent
of cream,
For things, you know, are seldom what they seem.
There's butter--more skimmed milk solifidied
After a dosing with formaldehyde.
What shall I eat? Perhaps some tea and cake.
The cake is made with "bottled eggs," "egg
flake,"
Or other doctored product of the hen,
Laid long ago--I know not where or when:
The tea, touched up with graphite, comes--
Who
knows? --
From China or--more likely --from Cohoes.
There's raspberry jam, made up of equal parts
Of apple cores and glucose --
nice on tarts.
But why continue the enumeration
Of substitution and adulteration
Until the thought of eating makes one ill?
And yet I scan the cafe's dismal
bill [of fare].
For I must eat. What shall I eat?
Ho, waiter!
Fetch me two boiled eggs and a baked ‘ptater.[4]
Jokes about the most prominent of the meatpackers of Packingtown were rife in the pages of Puck throughout 1906.
- "Our firm has been in business forty years. If we have been able to fool the people all of that time we have disproved Lincoln's assertion. -- J. Ogden Armour
Puck's rejoinder: Not at all. Lincoln declared that "you can't fool all the people all the time." Forty years, isn't "all the time." But forty years seems to be the limit of the Armour capacity."
- J. Ogden Armour remarks that American meat products "speak for themselves." Some of them, however, use foul language.
- Statistics compiled by the Secretary of the Interior show a remarkable increase in the number of vegetarians in this country. Some of our best know citizens are abjuring flesh and going in for grass. Here are a few expressions of opinion culled at random:
J. Ogden Armour: "No, I never touch meat of any kind. I am committed to a vegetable diet. There's a reason."
Nelson Morris: "I do not regard a flesh diet as healthful. Dressed Oats and Nutgrapes for mine."
President Tillden of the National Packing Co.: "The nearest I come to eating meat is a cereal hamburg steak. A flesh diet coarsens the intellect, don't you think?"
Mr. Swift of Packingtown: "I am a vegetarian of long standing -- by inclination, conviction, and I might add, by revelation."
[1] Puck, vol. 57, no. 1473, May 24, 1905.
[2] Puck, vol. 58, no. 1491, Sept. 27, 1905
[3] See James Harvey Young, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and the Meat Inspection Amendments of 1906," 59 (1985): 467-480.
[4] Puck, vol. 59, no. 1529, June 20, 1906