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The Jungle
By Upton Foenkinos
A very sad and true reality of eastern European migrants. An epic fiction novel based on the disgusting ways in which people in Sinclair’s time were forced to live. The way they were manipulated, ripped off, neglected and sometime even killed by the very community that profited from their cheap labor.
Based in Chicago, it follows the story of a young family who immigrated to the USA to improve their life. It was shameful how many people took advantage of their desperation and naivety.
Corruption is a huge part of every day and it’s normal. You need to know the right people and steer clear of the wrong people to get one step ahead. But even then, the next day will have you taking ten steps back again just trying to overcome the overwhelming economic adversity. Apparently when the book was published the FDA was created.
It is a rather long and slow book and demands 100% attention from the reader. It’s an eye opener and unbelievable. This isn’t a must read, unless you are particularly interested in the meat stock yards and the plight of cheap immigration back in the early 1900’s.
Quotes:
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She was always chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue
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For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage
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They use everything of the pig except the squeal
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There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white—it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it
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There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside
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Life was a struggle for existence, and the strong overcame the weak, and in turn were overcome by the strongest