The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 30, 1926, Page 9

The American ee Nw ioe (Of the ae Labor in Literature) FEM atl Ages were ecarred wit ignoraaan dominant, Sr iia) Sao oe iat culosig th the cattle they were feediig, be and superstition, saturated with the blood of] rid food that yields profit is better than pure food | cause tt.made them fatten more, quickly; end witch and heretic, Priests lived upon the labers| that brings loss, Cheap ingredients that ruin there they bought up all the-old rancid butter “of the poor, Predatory nobles burned and pil-| stomachs are better than good ingredients that left over im the grocery stores of a continent, laged in the name of God. Crusades for Christ} strengthen muscle—if the former bring greater | and ‘oxidized’ it by a forced air process, to became part of the program of Popery. Parano-| yield, And, therefore, we must inauguarate take away the odor, rechurned dt with skim Jacs became saints, and madnesa became virtue,| health boards and health commissions to prevent milk, and gold it tm bricks tn the cities. Up Yet with all of this strange, twisting life, this} our manufacturers from poisoning the public. to a year or two ago it had been the custom sacrifice of human spirit and human intelligence, Before 1906, however, there were no Pure Food to kill horses in the yards—ostensibly for fer there was about the Middle Ages a social econo-| jaws of any consequence, and the poisoning of the tilizer; but after long agitation the newspa miy unknown to our day. The profit motif was! public was a procedure that had no legal limits. pers had been able to make the public reab undeveloped. Capitalism, despite its early out} The appearance of The Jungle in that year was ® ize that the horses were being canned. Now bursts in ancient Greece and Rome, had not! revealing and exciting thing. It alarmed the it was against the law to kill horses in Pack- “evolved into 4 system, American readers. Aiming at their hearts, he | ‘™stown, and the law was really complied In brief, there was about the social philosophy | hit their belles, Sinclair confessed. Eyen Theo bo aa the ppt at any — sa Pr of the Middle Ages a-soclality of attitudesand a] dore Roosevelt was aroused. The meat-trusts pe tiga a newt sain er Communism of sentiment that, within its scope, runnin sheep—and yet what a job you would have One Se Sy SeCpesetenn ts enennty, ened, to get the public to believe that a good part in the words of: St, Antonio, exist for man, not it ated if rays Gor Saeed and ination to teally man for riches. The Christian hierophants of the cule tek _ a Praga Sie cas anes It is in its description of the proletarfat and petition, ‘The ideal: system, wrote Gratian, is the Kind of labor to which it is driven, however, that The Jungle is more significant. The novel mr NEE ‘ageee of ke ck vas ak describes the proletariat {1 action. “The work ¢ the laborer aled vivid and ettenetrs dered social sacrilige. Gratian’s statement: ot is reve’ is ‘eos “The man who buys (something) in order that he may gain by selling it again unchang- ed as he bought it, that man is of the buyers and sellers who are cast forth — God's temple,” is illustrative of the feudal attitude toward cu- pidity and exploitation. The “lust of gain” was inevitably scourged. | A schoolman of the fourteenth century express- es the same attitude in even more illuminating detail: “He who has enough to satisfy his wants, and nevertheless ceaselessly labors to acquire riches, either in order to obtain higher social position, or that subsequently he may have enough to live without labor, or that his sons _May become men of wealth and importance— all such are inclted by a damnable avarice, sensuality or pride.” The common need was paramount. Usury was categorized with adultery and fornication, and no usurer “could become mayor, councillor or mas- ter of the guild.” It-was described as an unpar- donable sin. The relief of the poor was one of the fundamental duties of those who had escaped wealth that was at the basis ef the medieval doc- trine of feudal religion. The disappearance of this sociality ot attitude with the’ rise of individualism is significant. Cal- vin’s justification of interest and defense of the merchant are an arresting form of the change. Religion, with the commereial revolution and the new order, now becomes an anodyne of capital- ism. Money-making is now justified as virtuous and profit defended as a form of religious wis- dom. The economic .virtuesgbecome predominant, Prudence and piety are now considered “the best of friends.” And the discharge of “the duties of business” becomes the “loftiest of religious and moral virtues.” Profit-making becomes an attri- bute of the good life. Success in business, ac- cording to the preacher, Richard Steele, becomes “a proof that a man has labored faithfully in his vocation, and that God has blessed his trade.” Thus religion justifies capitalism, defends and exalts the bourgeoisie, hallows the exploitation of the many by the few, sanctifies wars and is made to bless an industrial plutocrdcy. Today the profit-motif is a mania. It has turn- 4 our civilization into an abbatoir in which men are the victims as well as the butchers. The de- sire for profits consumes everything in its sweep. The very idea of a social world becomes taboo. Teachers are taught to impress its absurdity. Priests are driven to reveal its futility. News- papers make it a mockery and statesmen de- nounce it as a dangerots dream. Is it any won- der, then, that men like Carlyle and Ruskin, lack- . Ing the telescopic vision of Marx, wanted to turn back to feudalism? Of course, their desire was is easily appreciated. In things closest to man’s life, the food he eats, the woman he marries, the monetary-motif has swept. “Marrying for gmoney” has become a coloquialism that is knit into the very life of our language. “She did well” referring to her marriage—is but a form of economic approval. Our marital life in large part rotates about this pivot. In food manufacture the samo spirit is poverty. In brief, it was the social character of } frustrated before it was born, but its mbtivation, * UPTON SINCLAIR Portrait Bust by the Swedish Sculpter Carl Eidh. were exposed. A Pure Food Law was passed. People would no longer be forced to devour the ~ flesh of animals diseased and putrid. The belly had announced an anatomical revplt against un- restricted capitalism. This fragment from The Jungle will illustrate why the book had such a sweeping effect upon the American people. “Theré was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been worth while for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they. must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crip- pled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed on “whiskey malt,” the refuse of the breweries, and had . become what the men called ‘steerly’—which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a man’s sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it; how was he to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It was stuff such as this that made the ‘embalmed beef’ that had killed several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.” Then there was Durham's, the famous packing house: » “De-vyled’ ham was made out of the waste ends of smoked beef that were too small to be sliced by the machines; and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would show white; and trimmings of hams’ and corn- ed beef; and potatoes, skins and all; and finally, the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the tongues had been cut out. All this ingenious mixture was ground up and flavor- ed with ‘spices. to make it taste like some thing. Anybody who could invent a new imi- tation had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said Jurgis’ informant; but it was hard to think of anything new in a place where so many sharp wits had been at work for so long; and where men welcomed tuber- sc es otitcks CMR Riedel Ges Om Mineo cae Sty nag tart % “There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where oki Antanas had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his persom. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have @ sore that would put him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the basa of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be criss-crossed with cuts, until you Could noe- longer pretend to count them or to trace. them. They would have no nails—they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis’ might live’ for two years, but the supply was renew- ed every hour. There were the beef luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator cars; a fearful kind of work that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who work- ed in the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that @ man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years. There were the woo!” pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid kad eaten their fin- gers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut rep resenteda chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, aid not give out and forget himself, and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the ‘hoisters,’ as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down thru the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every. “few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms, These people could not be shown to the visitor—for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of - which there were open vats near the level (Continued on uext page)