>>Terry;
>>
>>Oh yes, the Mayflower. A group of religious who came to the shores of what later became the United States, due to religious persecution in Europe. The first thing they did was to persecute Catholics. Thus began our national heritage of hating someone for whatever reason.
>>
>>The Separatists and Puritans were more afraid to lose their souls due to the presence of a Catholic, then their scalps to an Indian.
>>
>>Try reading the book by Upton Sinclair "The Jungle". Although it was written about 100 years ago it gives a contemporary view of life in the United States! Perhaps things just have not changed that much. Cheap labor, owe your soul to the company store and wait for the next wave of workers to replace you because they will accept a lower wage.
>>
>>Tom
>Tom
>
>I read The Jungle a few years ago. What a depressing book. It makes you wish there was another way of structuring things apart from full on capitalism or full on socialism.
>
>Nick

Nick;

I read “The Jungle” (written published 1906) for an English class while I was attending engineering college, more than 30 years ago. It seemed remarkable at the time how contemporary the book was. It was describing labor in the United States, etc. It seems like it is still true. It must be a part of capitalism.

One incident in real life that I often tell people about is the scene where President Theodore Roosevelt is eating his breakfast in the Oval Office early one Sunday morning. According to the story the President was having a plate of sausage and eggs, which he was holding in one hand while standing and reading “The Jungle”.

The President happened to be reading the part of the book about meat processing (how the beef is killed) and how sausage is made. He became so enraged and disgusted he threw his plate through a window of the Oval Office breaking the window. Immediately Roosevelt ordered an investigation of the meat packing industry in the United States, and thus was born the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. I will give no details concerning what the book said about meatpacking but I would be surprised if you read it you would ever eat sausage or meat again!

The House and the Senate approved the Food and Drugs Act on June 30, 1906. The incidents in the book were taken from real life. The real name of the company described in the book was in fact J. Swift and Company, Chicago, Illinois.

Tom