Sinclair's Letter

8/13/2019 Sinclair's Letter

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Jungle.. n a S tory ofP ackingtown.The ' 'Uncle To m ' s Ctl-bin" ofwAge sla.very.- J AcK LONDON .Th e greAtest novel written inAm eri ca in f i fty y ears .

Y ll GRAHAM PBILLTl"S

\The Jungle Publishing Co.Publishers of the books of Upton Sinclair.

P. O. Box 2064, New York City.(Letters intended for Upton S inclair personally should be addressed to Pr inceton. N. J .)

King Midas: A Romance.Th. ] ournal of Arthur St irling.Prince Hagen: A Phantasy.Manassas A N ovel of the Wa r .

.M:arcl'. 10, 1906.

Pre- l t Tneodore Roosevelt ,W a ~ h i n e t o n ) D. C.

My dear President Roosevelt:I have jus t returned ~ r c m some ex-

plori r .g in t e Jersey g l a f H ~ fac tor ies and f iml your kind note.I am glad to l earn tha t the Department of Agricul ture has t.akenup the mat ter of inspect ion, or lack of i t , but I arn exceedinglydubi ous as to what they wj.ll d i seover. I have seen so many peo-pIe go out there and be put o f f with smooth pretences. A man hasto be something of a detec t ive , or else int imate with the working -men, as I was, before he can realJ.y see what i s going on. And i ti s becoming a great deal more d i f f i cu l t since the publ ica t :on of

The June;le. I have received to-day a l e t t e r from an employeof Armour & Company, in response to my request to him to takeRay Stannard Baker in hand and show hin: what he showed me a yearand a hal f ago. He says: liRe wil l have to be well disguised, fc rthe l i d i s on' in Packir.gtown; he will f ind two detect ives in

places wl:ere b e f o n ~ there was only one. You must understandtha t the t ldng which I have cal) ed the condemned meat jl1dust ry,i s a matter of humireds of thousands of do l l a rs a month. I seein t o -day s Saturday Evenine; Post tha t Mr. Armour declares in hisa r t i c le (which I happen to know i s wri t ten by George Horace Ii.ori-mer) tha t In Armour and Compar,y t s busj.ness not cnf' atom of any


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condemned animal or carcass, finds i t s way, direct ly or indirectly, .from any source, into any food product Dr f O D ~ 1ngrpdient."Nowi compare with that the following extract from a formal s ta te-ment t ransmi t ted to Doubleday, Page : Company y Mr. Thomas H.McKee, attorney at l a t I I I E.roadway, NlEn lll York) who i s a personal f r iend or Mr . Walter H. Page, and was sent out to Chicagoby that firm to invest igate the si tuat ion :

"With a special conductor, l(r. Jr. ~ ~ u l l a n e y providedfor me by r . u r icn, at torney for Armour in teres ts , I went throughthe Armour plant again. Mullaney introduced me to T. X. Conners ,Manager, who called Mr. Hull, Superintendent of beef plant andsaid to him:: I have jus t t o ~ d Mr. McKee that we have nothinghere to conceal and that he can see anything he wants and can stayas long as he l ikes . PLease see that my promise i s made good. 'I expressed my desire to invest igate pointe, I s t , tlle systemof inSl)ect ion 2nd, the by-product food industry . .

I saw six hogs hung in l ine which had been condemned.A t ruck loaded with chopped up condemned hogs was in my presence( I followed i t} placed in one of the tanks from which lard. comes.1 asked par t icu lar ly about th is and the i nspector together withMr. Hull stated that la rd and fer t i l i zer would be the product fromtha t tank. The tanks are in a lone room. The East side is l inedwith tanks fCtr manufacture of la rd and fer t i l i zer ; the West sidewith tanks whose product is grease and fer i t l i ze r . The grease i s

r ~ ~ lubricator , etc . He r e i s a clear infraction of the law,because t requires that such condemned meat be mixed with sui 'f i-cient offal to destroy t as food. This seems to be done on the' Grease ' l ine of tanks; i t i s not done a t the ' Lard ' l ine of


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tanks. See Depart.ment of Agriculture Rules, .]june 27, 1904, ArticleIX. The excuse probably i3 that the inspector has not. found t.he

a n i m a ~ unfi t for one kind of human food, to wit - lara .Of the s ix condemned hogs referred to two were af f l ic ted

with cholers, t.he skin being red as blood and the legs scabbed;three were marked ' tubercular t though they appeared normal to alayman, the sixth had an ulcer in i t s side which was apparent.Two men were engaged in chopping up hogs from th is l ine . The truckload prepared while I stood there was deposited in a lard tank.I asked particularlly about the l ine of demarcation between thecarcasses used. for l a rd and carca,5ses used for grease. No ex-planation was given by ei ther the inspector or my conductor. ' I ta l l depend.s on how bad he i s , ' was the answer. I gathered theimpression, h o w e v e r ~ that not very many carcasses were placed inGrease tanks .-

So much for Mr M c ~ e e :For myself, I was escorted throughPackingtoWill hy a young lawyer who was brought up in the d is t r ic t ,had worked as a boy in Armour's plant , and knev r more or l ess irl

t i m a t e ~ y every foreman J spotter J and watchman about the pla.ce.I saw with y own eyes hams, which had spoiled in pickle, beingpumped ful l of' chemicals to destroy the odor. I saw waste endsof smoked beef stored in b a r r e l ~ in a cel lar , in a condition off i l t h which I could not describe in a l e t te r . I saw rooms inwhich sausage meat was stored} with poisoned ra ts lying about, andthe dung of ra ts covering them. I saw hogs w hieh had died ofcholera in shipment, being loaded into box cars to be taken to a


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4place called (\fiobe, in Indiana,_ to be rendered into lard .F'inally, I found a physician J Dr. William. K J aques) 4316 Wood-land avenue, Chicago, who holds the chair of bacteriology in theI l l ino i s State Universi ty ,and was in charge of the ci ty inspect on of meat during 1902-3, who told me he had seen b e e ~ carcasses,bearing the inspectors ' tags of condemnation, l e f t upon open plat .forms and carted away a t night, to be sold in the ci ty . I quotea few words from Dr. Jlaques' statement) furnished to Mr. : h ~ c K e eand would add tha t he has writ ten an ar t ic le which will appearin the "World's Work for May, and of which a proof could possiblybe furnished you, i f you cared to see i t .

M.y education as a physician teaches me that disea.sefollows the same law whether in animals or human beings. An accurate post mortem requires close inspection of al l the i n t e r n ~oreans together with the use of the microscope before a physiciancan say there i s no disease present. How many post mortems couldthe most expert physician make in a day' Ten would be a big day'swork; f i f ty would ta)if the endurance of the most strenuoulS . I t i s

r ~ p o r t e d that one hundred and f i f ty thousand animals have beenreceived at the Union Stockyards in a single day. How many animal pathologists are employed by the government who are capable ofmaking a re l iable post mortem and saying tha t an animal is notdiseased? In round ntunbers, say there are f i f ty - - - a few more orle ss for the sake of i l lus t ra t ion are not material . Say thereare only f i f ty thousand animals ki l led a day at the stock yards.This would be a thousand to .each inspector, a hundred Wl hour,nearly two a minute. What 1s such inspection as th i s w o r t h ~ I t


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t rue there i s some inspection that i s well done; i t i s that

which i s done for the sharp eyes of the foreigner.Inspection to be effect ive should include the ent i re

twenty-four hours. Federal inspection i s probably effect ive inday l ight . City inspectors work during ci ty hal l hours. Therai lroads and express companies brine animals into the ci ty everyhour n the day. When Jiohn yson has access to every room in thepacking houses and knows what i s done there every hour in thetwenty-four; when Ilis army of inspectors know the disposi t ion ofthe meat brought into the ci ty by more than th i r ty rai l roads;when he knows the dest inat ion and use of the refuse which the meatand l ive r wagons gather af ter night fal l from Fulton market, southWater s t ree t and other markets; when he know the meat that comesto the ci ty by wagon and other ways, then, in my est imation, hecan give something l ike an accurate estimation of the amount ofdiseased, putr id meat tha t i s ccnverted into meat in Chicago.Until he has th is information, he must confess to the ignoranceof which he accuses others. No one has th i s information. Thereare a hundred s t ree ts and avenues by whioh diseased meat can ent e r the City and be put on sale in the markets. The public hasmade no effor t to f ind out and i t i s l e f t to the men who deal inth i s merchandise to dump what they please into the stomachs of thebl is s fu l ly ignorant public. Neither do any of us know how muchdisease and suffering th is food causes. The diagnosis of the bestphysicians ia so often turned down at the post mortem table tha tthe actual resul t s of diseased food are diff icul ' t to ascer ta in .


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Finally, I might add that I have a long affidavit from aman named Thomas F. Dolan, now at the head of the Boston MaineNews Bureau, who was for many years a superintendent in Armour-splant , and has le t te rs to show that he was considered by Armouras the best man he ever employed. He makes oath to Anuour's cus-tom of taking condemned meat out of the bottoms of the tanks , intowhich they had been dropped with the idea of rendering them into'd ~ /L .fe r t i l i ze r . I t seems tha t the tanks r b u i l t ; 1 t h a false bot-tom, which l e t s down on a hinge ; and that when you stand at the topand see the meat dropped in , you are flooded by blinding clouds ofsteam which pour from a pipe down in the tank. When th i s a f f i -davit was published, Dolan was paid $5,000 by Armour to make another one contradicting himself . He took the $5,000 and went on togive away the w h o ~ story, which was published in the EveningJournal , March 16;, 1899. The fact tha t i t is a Hearst story w o u l ~tend to discredi t i t ; but having investigated the whole thing,and met every m n who was concerned in the expose, 1 am convincedthat the affida.vit is worth attention.

Baker knows intimately a man who is high in the counselsof Armour and Company, and was present at a conference in whichOgden Armour personally gave the decision to bribe nolan.

This i s a very long l e t te r but I feel the importance ofthe subject excuses i t . I t would give me great pleasure to comed01f l to Washington to see you at any time, but 1 would rather twas af te r you had read liThe Jlungle, because I have put a gooddeal of myselI into that .


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--7--You ask - "Is there anything fur ther , say in the Depart

ment of Agriculture, which you would suggest my doing"''' I wouldsuggest the following: That you do as Doubleday, Page & Companydid ; b ind a man concerning whose intel l igence and integrit;}' youare absolutely sure ; ;3end him up here, or l e t me meet him inWashington, and t e l l him a l l that I saw) 2Jld how I saw i t andgive him the names and addresses of the people Vlho will enable

i ~ to see i t . Then l e t him go to Packingtown as I did, as a working -man; l ive with the menl get a job in the yards , and use hiseyes and ears; and see i f he does not come out at the end of a fewweeks feel ing , as did the special correspondent of the London"Lancet," whom I met in Chicago, that the condi t iona in the packing -houses const i tute a menace to the health of the civi l izedC .,L: . r Ie- T / ; ;. ~ ~ ~ ~ l - 5 .world." / (;7

Thanking you for your kind in te res tVery sincerely,

F'. S. I might add tha t when I was in Chicago I learned a gooddeal about the connections which the packers have in Washington,SO tha t I think i t most l ikely that before the Department ofAgriculture ge t anybody star ted for the purpose of invest igat ingPackingtown, word had been sent there to the packing -houses thatthings A40uld be cleaned up. I know posi t ively that th is Vias donein the case of Maj or Seaman who went out there for Co-llier' sWeekly.

Sinclair's Letter

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