Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Sara Paretsky revisits Sinclair's "The Jungle"

Over at "The Outfit," a group blog run by some Chicago-based crime writers, Sara Paretsky has posted an interesting item on the occasion of the centennial of the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

She toured the area where the great meatpacking plants of Chicago once operated.
At the height of the Yards activity, [she writes] the meatpacking plants were popular tourist attractions: as many tourists visited the stockyards as did the 1893 Worlds Fair. Americans couldn’t get enough of the majesty of their industrial machine; seeing 35000 animals killed in a day was proof of the power of the Industrial Age.
It's an interesting item: click here to read it.

Last month I posted a brief item--"Birth of a fast food nation"--on The Jungle; click here to read it.

--Marshal Zeringue