"Cliff Notes - Jungle, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

The trusts had their defenders, however. One of the most
well-known was John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil Company
had the petroleum market cornered from 1882 to 1911. "The
growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest,"
he said. "The American beauty rose can be produced in the
splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by
sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not
an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a
law of nature and a law of God."

The courts disagreed and in 1892 ordered the breakup of
Rockefeller's trust. It lived on under the guise of a holding
company until the courts ordered its dismemberment in 1911.

SOCIALISM. Sinclair wouldn't turn his attention to the
trusts until 1902, when he became acquainted with socialist
ideas. Socialism is a body of ideas that blames many of
society's ills on competition for profit. Socialists want to
substitute cooperation for competition. They want the
government to control the enterprises that produce goods and
services and to direct these enterprises toward socially
responsible, not just profitable projects.

As the final chapter of The Jungle demonstrates, socialists
don't always agree on goals or methods. Some of them want total
government control of the economy, some only partial control.
Others, including communists, believe that it's necessary to use
violence to replace a capitalist system with a socialist one.

Sinclair didn't believe in violent methods or in the need for
government to take over an entire economy. From 1902 until his
death in 1968, he was a democratic socialist. He believed that
voters who were educated about the evils of a capitalist system
could use the ballot--not the bullet--to take control of the
economy through their elected government. The extent of this
control would depend on what the voters decided was necessary.
Educating the voters was Sinclair's major purpose in writing The
Jungle.

EARLY ADULTHOOD. At age twenty-four, when Sinclair first
began reading socialist theory, he was ready for its message.
Financially and professionally, he was down and out. He had
financed three years of graduate study at Columbia University by
churning out cheap adventure novels. Then he had spent two
frustrating years writing serious novels, but his serious books
had been washouts. He was unable to earn enough money to
support his wife and their baby son, and this failure depressed
him.