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The novel focused on overworked immigrants, but readers fixated on details about meat production. Upton Sinclair described men falling into vats and then being turned into food. He documented rats scurrying onto piles of diseased meat. "Rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers together," winding up on dining tables. This was muckraking at its best, ripping aside the veil for Americans to see what might otherwise be ignored.

Teddy Roosevelt rather liked the book, however, invited Sinclair to the White House to dine, and ramrodded the Meat Inspection Act through Congress before the mid-point of that same year.

The pen, it used to be said, is mightier than the sword. I haven't heard that expression used by anybody in years, and I can't think why: Certainly, it remains true.

Only yesterday, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Vatican, took pains in the course of their Easter observances to disparage Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a mediocre book by a hack novelist. They took a few shots at the just-published Gospel of Judas, too. Has such a thing ever happened before? Not that I can recall.

Now, let me be clear about something: All that The Da Vinci Code and The Jungle have in common is that they are both mediocre novels. Certainly, I don't mean to liken Brown's fiction to Sinclair's journalism, or to suggest that organized religion has much in common with meat-packing (though I reserve the right to revisit that last). I do mean to point out that ideas have not lost their power to engage and move masses, or to frighten the powerful. If it seems otherwise, it's because what commonly passes for an intellectual these days is a nuisance who hasn't any ideas.

Bob Felton
www.CivilCommotion.com
The Intersection of Religion, Law, and Politics