Sinclair found the lies America is selling
By Susan Morgan
Eng 105

Cut deep within Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” and there lurks a different kind of story. One that exposes the American Dream as a lie. It is this story that changed my conception of an American tale and made me reexamine the ones I know. The passage that affected me greatest was a passage entirely missing from the 1906 printed edition. The passage in chapter 12 where Jurgis is coming to terms with disappointment in the American Dream. “The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country – from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie. The whole country was a lie; its freedom was a lie, a snare for pauper workingmen, its prosperity was a lie of rich employers, its justice was a lie of grafting politicians.” Sinclair’s assertions are shared by economists and leaders that feel America is selling misconceptions to not only immigrants but to ourselves. The days where a young immigrant like Jurgis could come and thrive with hard work are nearly extinct because of the great corporation’s push for profit.

“There are no cats in America and the roads are paved with cheese,” sang the little Russian mice as they celebrated upon the ship carrying them to America. It is often this scene from “An American Tale,” the popular animated movie that I think of when I imagine the immigrant story. I picture Feifal the mouse and his family leaving Russia for America in hopes of finding freedom, justice and prosperity and leaving behind oppression from the “cats.” Sometimes I think of the Rags to Riches books that were popular at the turn of the century. Sometimes I picture the coming to America as a grandiose affair like in the movie “Far and Away” where Tom Cruise becomes a successful boxer and Nicole Kidman and he go out west to claim their own piece of land that the government is giving away. That is the American dream isn’t it? To come from nothing, work hard, and to eventually become something is the moral we learn from these stories. Even in “The Rise of David Levinsky,” by Joseph Cahan the reader can still claim that hard work brings financial success if nothing else. Yet Sinclair’s passage dispels these romanticisms.

When Sinclair wrote “Prosperity was a lie of rich employers” he was suggesting that Jurgis was being exploited. In the novel Lithuanian immigrants and he are abused by their employers and kept from keeping a home, earning savings, and keeping a healthy family. This is contradictory to the American ideals that offer prosperity to those who work for it. A recent Editorial in the Kansas City Star stated, “Every year Americans have the courage to set out on that journey and many arrive – buoyed by the faith that honest work will earn its reward.” Yet even today many are living out the same crippling fate as Jurgis.
Amy Glasmeiler, lead professor of economics at Penn State wrote in the Centre Daily in her article “American Dream requires a living wage,” that the working poor are struggling harder now then ever before with more education on their backs and less to show for it. “Even Americans with a postsecondary education are facing job losses as companies move overseas or to other U.S. states with lower costs.” Working hard in school to get a descent paying job is a lot to ask in today’s land of opportunity and prosperity. Even recent discussion in the House of Representatives about raising minimum wage is a lackluster solution. “the working poor would have seen only a short-lived benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. By the time the full increase took effect in three years, most of the benefit would have been eaten by inflation and continued increases in oil prices.” The working life that Jurgis lived is taking shape in some distorted forms in today’s society, which is becoming bleaker for future generations. “In many families today, children cannot say they expect to be better off than their parents.”

Clive Scott, a senior editor of The Atlantic and columnists for the National Journal and the economic publication Market Place is coming to terms with his own disappointment in the American Dream. “In a meritocractic society, the children of the poor can get rich by working hard, and the children of the rich fall back if they are idle,“ he said in the August issue of Marketplace in the article “The American Dream is Dead.” That is the American Dream, to work hard and get somewhere or to lose it all for hardly working. Yet there are many Americans who are born into money and never have to work hard. On the same note there are many who start of poor, work extremely hard and never get anywhere. As Scott said, we no longer have the dream, “America is now less the land of opportunity than France, than Germany, than Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The only other rich economy that the U.S. outscores in this respect is — you guessed it — the UK. Abolish the estate tax and America will be a serious contender for the bottom of the opportunity league.” America was once the land of opportunity but is now falls short of other countries. So when America sells you a bill of goods that it is THE land of opportunity it is a lie. Scott went on to say that public education is leaving the poor stranded.

America is losing the battle against keeping the title of land of the free as well. Sinclair knew this when he said “its freedom was a lie; a snare for pauper workingmen.” Janice Hahn, councilwoman of the 16th district in Los Angeles, is outraged with how the hourly wage workers of hotels in and around LAX are being treated by the Hotels’ owners and supervisors. “Hardworking men and women live one paycheck away from losing their homes and not being able to care for their children.” Is it freedom to force people to work at slave wages and from paycheck to pay check? Some might say that you are free to not work at all, but you’re free to do that in any country. You could also say that you are free to kill yourself or work endless hours for peanuts and once again I would like to point out that you could do this in ANY country. Nowhere does it state land of the Religiously free because some people will argue that there is an extremely conservative government making decisions for liberals. IS it the land of the verbally free? Not with the FCC censoring anything they assume will offend anyone.

The only part of the passage that didn’t need explaining to be known as true is that “justice was a lie of grafting politicians.” This was legally evident in the times Sinclair wrote the article for the Appeal to Reason and it is still evident today with current politicians being busted for bribes and money laundering. There are also injustices made to the working poor of this country, immigrant and native born alike. A lack of national health insurance, a lack of living wages, and a lack of concern for their well being as their jobs are out sourced or their families hurt from hours of separation.

Sinclair’s passage “The whole country was a lie” therefore must be true. In fact it holds truths that even apply to our current times. So why was it edited out? Maybe because people want so badly to believe in something that it doesn’t matter how true it is. Another reason was to make it more palatable for the readers of the day. The idea of America being the land of the free, the land of opportunity and prosperity and justice for all is ”truthiness” as Steven Colbert of the Colbert Report would say. It's kind of true; it is true for some people almost enough people to make it completely true, but not it isn’t exactly all true. If one of us suffers from an injustice, we have all suffered that injustice and that injustice threatens everything we believe in and makes falsehoods of all our country’s promises. Currently there are many injustices taking place hurting our working poor. Maybe America would benefit from being more honest and marketing themselves to the rest of the world and their native borne as Land of the kinda free, land of some opportunity and justice for those who can afford it. Scott has an idea for a new campaign to put new life into the American dream like giving it a new name, “Maybe the Canadian dream. Hard to believe, but the chances of starting with nothing and ending up rich are now higher north of the border.” With the Canadian government embracing socialist reforms like universal health care Sinclair would have agreed.