48 pages • 1 hour read
Deborah BlumThe Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Yellow Chemist”
In November of 1904, novelist Upton Sinclair began research into the working conditions inside Chicago’s slaughterhouses. He spent seven weeks undercover in the stockyards and butcheries, observing the appallingly gruesome and unsanitary state of the industry, and interviewing those employed there. He discovered what he expected: that workers were paid poorly to work in dangerous environments, in which they often suffered devastating injuries, with no rights afforded to them by their employers. Sinclair was further horrified by the complete lack of any hygiene protocols. In 1905, his novel The Jungle began to be published in serial increments in the small socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason. Sinclair did not omit any of the gruesome details in writing his narrative, and his original contract with Macmillan publishers to publish the Jungle in its complete form was cancelled. Sinclair shopped the manuscript to another publisher, Doubleday, Page, & Company. Before considering publication, Doubleday sent the Chicago Tribune a copy of The Jungle to solicit the newspaper’s opinion on the facts of Sinclair’s assertions. When the Tribune refuted every claim that Sinclair made, the publisher became suspicious of the newspaper’s overly praiseworthy depiction of the slaughterhouses. The publisher hired two independent investigators to examine the conditions for themselves. When they confirmed all that Sinclair had described, Doubleday agreed to publish The Jungle.
Meanwhile, criticism of Wiley’s scientific methods in the Poison Squad studies emerged. Scientists employed by the food industry suggested that, because Wiley had to switch his method of delivery of borax from adding it to the participants’ food to insisting they consume the borax in capsules, the experiment did not approximate normal ingestion of the chemical. Furthermore, detractors claimed that Dr. Wiley and his staff could not possibly know for certain whether their participants were fully complying with Dr. Wiley’s directive that they could only eat food served by the study.
Personal criticisms were also levied against Dr. Wiley. Dr. Wiley was staunchly on the side of “Colonel” Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., the owner of Old Taylor brand bourbon. Distillers like Taylor demanded proprietary language distinguishing between standards of spirits, including delineations between “blended-whiskey” and “straight-whiskey”. Fakery was rampant in the liquor industry, and manufacturers like Taylor were incensed by the actions of counterfeiters who would bottle simulated or blended product and sell it under their reputable labels. Dr. Wiley happened to like bourbon, and his detractors claimed a bias on his part because of his particular affinity for the higher quality straight, bonded product.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Jungle”
Upton Sinclair had been hoping to inspire readers to adopt a more socialist stance on worker’s rights in writing The Jungle. While he failed to ignite a socialist revelation, his audience was horrified to learn how America’s most prolific stockyards were running their businesses. Readers were sickened by the revelation that they were eating meat from diseased animals, that the products they purchased contained filthy byproducts and refuse from the slaughterhouse floors, and that accidents involving employees and the processing apparatus may have caused consumers to inadvertently consume human meat. Readers began contacting the White House, asking what action President Theodore Roosevelt planned to take on the appalling conditions present in the meatpacking industry. Roosevelt had also read the novel and was reminded of the fetid meats supplied to soldiers in Cuba. The President sent independent investigators to Chicago to examine the situation for themselves and report back to him. Although the meatpackers went to great lengths to clean up their operations before they arrived, what they discovered was even worse than many of Sinclair’s findings. Roosevelt kept the report from the public, deciding to deal with the contents internally, but Upton Sinclair leaked the content he was aware of to the press.
Dr. Wiley had begun contacting magazines and newspapers to challenge their advertisements for products which his published scientific results had proven to be dangerous. He insisted that they bore responsibility for these implied endorsements and demanded accountability. Attacks against Dr. Wiley began to become increasingly personal. His detractors claimed that he was an egomaniacal, conceited, and incompetent scientist who believed he should have the authority to dictate what and how Americans should eat. They accused him of enjoying frightening the women he spoke to in his speaking engagements, and that he received money from the producers of higher end spirits like Colonel Taylor and his friends, protecting their interests because he had a dependence on alcohol. None of these accusations were true.
Dr. Wiley’s work and the explosive revelations of The Jungle created the combined pressure to push forward the Pure Food Bill. The monumental and unprecedented Meat Inspection Act and Food and Drug Act are signed into law on June 20th, 1906. Consistent with the egotism regularly attributed to Roosevelt by historians and contemporaries, the President did not acknowledge Wiley’s tireless efforts in any form, instead claiming sole responsibility for the law’s passage. In the press, however, both the Meat Inspection Act and the Food and Drug Act were collectively known as Dr. Wiley’s Law.
Part 1, Chapters 7-8 Analysis
Dr. Wiley was a purist; he felt that any compromise on the recommendations that he made for pure food legislation and regulation constituted a loss. This rigidity in his thinking made him a target for those who wanted to criticize him for being out of touch. The accusation that he was anti-business was a convenient excuse for food manufacturers and their sympathizers who did not want to address the possibility that they should accept accountability. Dr. Wiley could not fathom the mindset the could allow someone to profit off the unconscionable practice of slowly, knowing poisoning their fellow citizens. When Dr. Wiley began his Poison Squad experiments, he hoped that it would become more difficult for these companies to publicly answer for the practices they were willing to engage in at the expense of others. Others at the USDA and other government organizations believed compromise with and concession to the wishes of the food and chemical manufacturing giants was the most pragmatic course of action when attempting to initiate and enforce legislation and regulation. Dr. Wiley felt that he conceded to their wishes without defending what he knew to be the ethical hard line which he felt he should follow, he would be rendering a disservice to the American people and shirking his responsibilities as their protector. This tenacity endeared him to the American public, his colleagues, his allies in the progressive movement, and the press.
As Dr. Wiley continued to fight for food safety standards, he was repeatedly pitted against large corporations and the bureaucrats who held water for them. This reveals one of the book’s most important themes: that politics and capitalism are obstacles to public health.
