Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle. Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog, ClassicKindle.com, a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Those familiar with Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel about the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, were not in the least bit surprised to hear of “pink slime.”

One curious thing he had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts; which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to come a “slunk” calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is not fit for food. A good many of these came every day to the packing houses . . . whoever noticed [a “slunk” calf] would tell the boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice . . . they took out these “slunk” calves, and butchered them for meat . . .

Ewww.
The book was a sensation and brought changes in the food packing industry, “not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.”
Yes, the American consumer can be picky!
This is not to say the book is all grim:

Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about weddings and holidays.

Maybe that is not the best example . . .

That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted herself–this house was unlucky. Every family that lived in it, some one was sure to get consumption. Nobody could tell why that was; there must be something about the house, or the way it was built–some folks said it was because the building had been begun in the dark of the moon. There were dozens of houses that way in Packingtown. Sometimes there would be a particular room that you could point out–if anybody slept in room he was just as good as dead. With this house it had been the Irish first; and then a Bohemian family had lost a child of it–though, to be sure, that was uncertain, since it was hard to tell what was the matter with children who worked in the yards. In those days there had been no law about the age of children–the packers had worked all but the babies. At this remark the family looked puzzled, and Grandmother Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation–that it was against the law for children to work before they were sixteen. What was the sense of that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little Stanislovas go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother Majauszkiene said–the law made no difference except that it forced people to lie about the ages of their children.

Find out why this book has never gone out of print!