Illegal Immigrants and Wage Slavery

After reading The Jungle, I thought about situations today where we have conditions some what similar to Packingtown. What occurred to me is that we do have this with illegal aliens. They live outside of our laws and are taken advantage of by businesses.

I find it interesting that we are polarized on the immigration debate. Republicans want border security and to expel illegals currently in the country. Democrats want to legalize them or some say that currently nothing is that bad. Phrases like “they do jobs Americans won’t do” were common from the Democrats in the immigration debate in 2007. In the recession currently I think they would like to revise that statement.

The point i think is that currently they are fleeing a country that is so bad that wage slavery is a better opportunity. This has a lot to do with class warefare in Mexico and their terrible poverty. They also have many places that are in utter anarchy. Juarez Mexico had a murder toll of almost 1600 people in 2008. Juarez is across the border from El Paso Texas and has 1.4 million people living there. That’s a very bad place.

So I think this would be a picture of what immigrants saw coming to America in the early 1900s. We know the Irish were fleeing in the 1800s. As Americans we look in at them and think they must be in hell, but is it that they are stepping up out of hell? I don’t want to sound insensitive, but my existense and ability to cope with my conditions is based off of my experience. I would love everyone to live as I do, but I will not covet my neighbor’s goods to give to others. I will give charitably, but I won’t advocate that people have their goods siezed by the government.

Laws don’t always work anyway. I know many people who have broken the law without being reprimanded. They cut back on a behavior but they don’t stop it. With illegal immigration we should be looking at the cause and not how to deal with the people here. Mexico has big problems and we need to deal with it. We don’t need to bail out the current regime, but we need to use diplomatic pressure to help Mexico get their ducks in a row. We should also make it easier for legal immigration.

I think we are too busy trying to fix things with other people’s money. That is a sin in my religion. We do not covet our neighbor’s goods. If you want to help give your money and the money of people who want to give.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

I recently finished the book the Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I wanted to read this book, first for the socialist agenda that it puts forth. Sinclair made no bones about it. He went to Chicago to make the mantra of the working class. He wanted to expose the truth of “wage slavery” and the evils of Capitalism.

Secondly I thought the brutal subject matter was interesting. It spends a lot of time detailing the brutal work in a Chicago meat packing plant. It is a huge slaughter house and Sinclair provides a very vivid look at the horrible conditions of a 1900s stock yard. I know many read this in school (that amazes me considering how much this book tries to indoctrinate readers and just how downright disturbing it is), but I never got that opportunity.

The story revolves around Jurgis Rudkus and his family. They are Lithuanian, and move to America because they hear that it has better opportunities. When they arrive in Chicago, they do find work and are happy. After time goes by they start to understand why people who live in “Packingtown” are not content with the work in the yards. Through the book Jurgis and his family suffer terrible incidents that kill off several members.

Jurgis loses his job and ends up getting work in other factories, politics, and lives like a tramp for a season. Through all these experiences Sinclair shows the readers how Capitalism corrupts every aspect of American Life. Jurgis ends his journey discovering socialism. Sinclair is able to use Jurgis, an uneducated Lithuanian, to explain his simple truths of socialism.

It is a very moving story. Readers were not as moved by the socialist agenda as they were the horrid conditions of America’s meat packing industry. The book led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration.

I highly suggest reading it if you haven’t. It is a very thought provoking story, and lets us look at the ills of the world as it was starting to be industrialized. You can get a copy of the text for free at the project Gutenberg site:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/140

The story to me brings up a couple of subjects that I think we wrestle with as a society. The first is immigration. Jurgis was an immigrant from Lithuania. What the book did not want to examine was why he left for America. There was propaganda distributed by the meat packing industry to get workers in other countries. This was done every time the workers started to unionize and talk of a strike would come.

The issue is why did they want to leave? What was their system? Jurgis left because he was peasant farmer and he wanted to marry Ona. He felt that in America he could up his lot in life. The issue to me is that no matter what happened he never wanted to return to Lithuania. He also left Chicago to bum through America. He went to Texas and Missouri. In St Louis he worked the harvest season and not was mentioned about it being the hell “Packingtown” was.

To me this is where the story did not ring true. If when he returned to Chicago he went to go see his family it would have made more sense, but he didn’t. He just went back to the worst place on earth because he could find work easier there in the winter. Well he should have known that wasn’t true. Why not go to New York, Boston, or stay in Missouri? They couldn’t have been worse.

To say there was nowhere else is disingenuous. He found different work outside the city at local farms but turned it down. I never like the idea that people are screwed with their life. In America we can just go to another area and start over. Too much governing and we could lose the basic freedom to change our situation and station in life. That does not mean we allow devastating conditions in any industry or allow slavery of any human. The issue is that he had already crossed the Atlantic to find new opportunities. Why would he not try other places in America? The west was growing and totally different industries than what he was finding in the Midwest.

The next issue is deplorable working conditions and “wage slavery.” “Wage Slavery” is where people are forced to work long hours to make just enough money to eat and survive. In the book they worked 12 - 14 hours to make enough money to pay rent and eat. Obviously this is unacceptable to most people. No one wants to see people in “the Jungle.” This is what pushes minimum wage. We want people to live with dignity in the US. The push for 8 hours days and OSHA working standards also helps with horrible conditions

The last issue is Capitalism itself. The Jungle revolves around commodities. Food mostly but a lot of the rhetoric at the end was indicting the oil industry, the steel industry and the railroad industry. Most of the thoughts on this will have to wait for another post. This one is getting huge and long winded. I think the book exposes the need for regulation in capitalism. How much though is what should be debated. To go from uncontrolled capitalism to government controlled industry is an extreme shift.

Sinclair tries to further the socialist movement by finding the most disturbing human experience at the time. He succeeded in revealing how bad Capitalism and industry can be unchecked. His solutions appear to be too extreme at the time, and appear to me the same now. I think many of the self proclaimed liberals and progressives today agree with Sinclair even though after a century things have changed.

The question we debate today is if we had too many changes for social justice or not enough. Sinclair lived in a world that was closer to anarchy and was crying out to have some regulation. We don’t live in a US anything like what Jurgis saw.