The Jungle (Norton Critical Edition)

by Sinclair,Upton

• ISBN13: 9780393977790
• ISBN10: 039397779X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-11
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

This story of the immigrant experience in the harrowing Chicago stockyards has drawn comment from historians, policymakers, and literary critics, and it is a widely assigned teaching text. The novel is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory annotations. "Contexts and Backgrounds" provides readers with an understanding of The Jungle's disparate social, historical, political, and literary dimensions. Included are autobiographical selections by the author; contemporary perspectives on the meatpacking industry, including writings by Theodore Dreiser, Adolphe Smith, and J. Ogden Armour; and commentary on the living conditions of immigrant workers. Historical studies by Jimmy Skaggs, Rick Halpern, James Barrett, Robert M. Crunden, John Braeman, William Cronon, and Eric Schlosser address the central issues: slaughterhouse abuses, protectionism and The Beef Trust, muckraking, Progressivism, and consumer rights. "Criticism" collects eight provocative readings of The Jungle as a literary text, as a historical document in its own right, as a contribution to Progressive-era muckraking, and as an important work in urban, economic, and labor history. Contributions include Jack London, Edward Clark Marsh, Winston Spencer Churchill, Walter Rideout, June Howard, Scott Derrick, Michael Brewster Folsom, and Christopher P. Wilson. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
A Note on the Text	xi
The Text of The Jungle	1	(328)
Contexts and Backgrounds	329	(152)
The Author in His Own Words	331	(26)
Excerpts from the Appeal to Reason Version of The Jungle	331	(14)
[Sinclair and Sentimentalism]	331	(1)
[An Alternate Ending]	332	(13)
[The Early Life of a Muckraker]	345	(3)
What Life Means to Me	348	(5)
[What Socialism Means to Me]	353	(1)
[Art and Propaganda]	354	(3)
Contemporary Perspectives on the Meatpacking Industry	357	(31)
[Interview with P. D. Armour]	357	(5)
Theodore Dreiser
[Portrait of a Beef Baron]	362	(3)
Harper Leech
John Charles Carroll
[The Beef Trust]	365	(6)
Charles Edward Russell
[The Perfection of Capitalism]	371	(3)
A. M. [Algie] Simons
[Cruelty to Animals]	374	(2)
A. [Adolphe] Smith
[A Packer's Rebuttal]	376	(4)
J. Ogden Armour
U.S. Bureau of Corporations [Division of Labor in the Meatpacking Industry]	380	(1)
[Social and Economic Implications of the Division of Labor]	381	(7)
John R. Commons
Living Conditions and the Immigrant Worker	388	(40)
From Lithuania to the Chicago Stockyards---An Autobiography	388	(8)
Antanas Kaztauskis
[Immigrant Wages and Family Budgets]	396	(11)
J. C. Kennedy
Housing Conditions in Chicago, Ill.: Back of the Yards	407	(8)
Sophonisba P. Breckinridge
Edith Abbott
From The Social Problems at the Chicago Stock Yards	415	(4)
Charles J. Bushnell
The Vice Commission of Chicago [Immigrant Women and Prostitution]	419	(4)
The ``Poor Man's Club'': Social Functions of the Urban Working-Class Saloon	423	(4)
Jon M. Kingsdale
[Slaughterhouse Humor]	427	(1)
Anonymous
Historical Studies	428	(53)
[Market Conditions and the Beef Trust]	428	(3)
Jimmy Skaggs
[Racial and Ethnic Divisions in the Slaughterhouses]	431	(10)
Rick Halpern
[Packingtown's Women Workers and Labor Resistance]	441	(4)
James R. Barrett
[Muckraking, Progressivism, and the Pure Food and Drug Law]	445	(14)
Robert M. Crunden
[The Extension of Federal Power]	459	(6)
John Braeman
[The Packing Industry in the Ecosystem]	465	(10)
William Cronon
[Back to The Jungle: A View from the Twenty-first Century]	475	(6)
Eric Schlosser
Criticism	481	(42)
What Jack London Says of The Jungle	483	(2)
Jack London
The Jungle	485	(2)
Edward Clark Marsh
The Chicago Scandals: The Novel Which Is Making History	487	(3)
Winston Spencer Churchill
[Jurgis's Conversion]	490	(3)
Walter Rideout
[Sinclair's Documentary Strategy]	493	(4)
June Howard
[Gender in The Jungle]	497	(6)
Scott Derrick
[The Development of The Jungle]	503	(9)
Michael Brewster Folsom
[The Ironies of Progressive Era Authorship]	512	(11)
Christopher P. Wilson
Selected Bibliography	523