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What Americans Ate When There Were No Food Laws · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should know in it, doing some stuff you should know,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff on the Stuff you should know podcasts.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Hey, can I make.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: A couple of quick announcements?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, is it a correction about me?
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: No, that's a listener mail. Okay, just a couple of
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: quick things. Firstly, I have had my front tooth implant redone,
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  Speaker 3: So the next roughly eighty episodes might be a little
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  Speaker 3: lispy here and there.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Can you say sibilants, sibilants?
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  Speaker 1: It's actually more f's.
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  Speaker 2: Can you say fibilants fibilance.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes air just shoots out of that a little toothhole
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: tooth the thh at the end. That's problematic. So you know,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: here we are again everyone, and bear with it. And
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: I appreciate your support.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: You can't even tell Chuck like, had you not said something,
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  Speaker 2: maybe one person would have noticed. I think it's fine.
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  Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
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  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but you'll have some some words you will
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  Speaker 3: stand out. The other quick one is just for this
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: episode massive CoA trigger warning any vegetarians or vegans or
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: really anybody who is just grossed out by gross food stuff.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: This is choc bowl.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. If you find the human body and the stuff
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: it can do odious two, you might want to just
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  Speaker 2: be prepared. Yeah, all right, So that was good, good
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: CoA buddy. Yeah, because we are talking about what things
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: were like before America started regulating the meat that we
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: bought in ate and it turns out it was a
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: total free for all until then. But it was really
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: just kind of nestled in a short period. Yeah, you
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: know where like the Second Industrial Revolution happened and all
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, everybody moves to the cities and you
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  Speaker 2: can't buy your bacon from the guy down the street anymore,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: or make your own milk or whatever. You have to
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  Speaker 2: buy it. And so these companies sprung up to supply
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: that stuff and they started cutting corners immediately.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the American way time and time again. We've
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  Speaker 3: seen from the very beginning corporate interest, corporate lobby all
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: in the name of profit. And this isn't just US railing.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: This is the history of the United States.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, most of them are advertisers on stuff
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: you should know too, probably so so people needed this
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: stuff and if they filled a void, like it was
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a necessary thing that they were doing. But the problem
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: is because there's zero regulation, I mean none, Like there
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: was an author named Deborah Blum, and she wrote The
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Poison Squad colon One chemist's single minded crusade for safety
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: at the turn of the twentieth century, and she said
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: that there was nothing that could be done to food
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  Speaker 2: that was illegal because there were no food safety laws.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: There was nothing you could do aside from kill your customers.
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  Speaker 2: And even then you might just get some bad press
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  Speaker 2: and everybody's like, oh, well it happens.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I wonder if it was because they just assumed that
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: these new corporations would just sort of deliver food the
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: right way, or I just don't wonder if it was
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: naivete I mean, eventually it was. Obviously stuff started coming
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: out as we'll see in this episode, and Congress, you know,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: bows down to the donors, as they still do today.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: But I just wonder what they thought at first, just like, no,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: this is great, and you know, they're supplying more food
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure they're doing it right.
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  Speaker 2: My take on it is because this is like set
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: largely in the Gilded Age, that there was a general
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: like hands off approach like, hey, this business is zooming
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: this economy into the stratosphere. Sure, and we don't want
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: to interfere with it, and I'm sure they're going to
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: do the right thing anyway.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
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  Speaker 2: So that's my take. I think that there was a
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: combination of not really realizing that we needed regulations because
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: we never needed them before, and then not wanting to
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: meddle with this red hot economic engine that was flaming,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: just with so many flames.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, flames on the side of your base.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess we should start with milk, huh.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, why not? Because it was pretty bad stuff.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
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  Speaker 3: Pasturization had been around for a long time. It was
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: a minute in the eighteen fifties, but they didn't get
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  Speaker 3: on the widespread pasturization of milk till about the eighty
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: or so years later. So if you went and bought
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: your milk, you know, I think the understanding for a
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: lot of people is like, oh, well, back then you
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: would buy your milk from the local dairy, right, and
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  Speaker 3: it was that's way better just to get it fresh
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  Speaker 3: from the teat like that, and that was not true
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  Speaker 3: because this milk was nasty. It was killing babies. Four
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand babies a year from drinking bad milk.
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  Speaker 2: In America alone. That's not a global stat that's just
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: in the United States.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, unbelievable.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: It is.
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  Speaker 2: It's nuts. So everybody's like, yeah, this just happens. But
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I guess people just thought that's what happened when you
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: drink milk sometimes, or I don't know what the thinking was. Yeah,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But a guy named John Newell Hurdi h R t Y.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: He became the chief Health Officer of Indiana in eighteen
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: ninety six, and we should say by this time, just
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: kind of to give it some context, the pure food movement,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: which was a progressive movement in the nineteenth century, along
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: with like temperance, suffrage, abolition, it had really kind of
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: started to gain steam. So this guy wasn't laying the groundwork,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: but his work was very noteworthy. But he became the
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  Speaker 2: chief Health Officer of Indiana and he immediately started investigating
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: the state's dairy farms and found what they were doing
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  Speaker 2: is what was killing, you know, infants who were being
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: fed cow's milk.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was because it was cow's milk that was
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: watered down so they could stretch profits. But it was
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: watered down. It's not like they had some beautiful filtration
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: system from a Poland spring.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Actually, I don't even know what a Poland spring is.
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  Speaker 2: It's a specific spring. It is ironically not in Poland.
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  Speaker 1: I had a feeling so they weren't using that.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, they were using like the farm's pond water,
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  Speaker 3: which was disgusting. It was stagnant at one point, like
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  Speaker 3: he literally held up a bottle of milk from Indiana
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  Speaker 3: and saw actual worms inside of it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that awful?
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  Speaker 1: Live worms they were moving.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that wasn't all he found. He found insects, hares, blood, pus,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: cow manure. He estimated that just the residents of Indianapolis
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: ingested about two thousand pounds of cow manure every year,
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  Speaker 2: just from the milk they were drinking.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's collective, not each person, of course, but that's
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: still a lot of I.
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  Speaker 2: Think you would ode on cowpoop if you ate that much.
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  Speaker 1: Or maybe it would make you into like a superhero.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: There is another really gross one that Dave turned up.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: I think it was originally in an Atlantic article about
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  Speaker 2: the early days of milk. But one of the things
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  Speaker 2: that they would do so like if you thinned milk
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: with water, it was very clearly thinned it. It didn't
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: look like milk it because it was bluish gray. So
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: they put like chalk or flour or plaster of Paris in.
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  Speaker 2: Not great, but still it gets much worse. You also,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: when you got a bottle of milk, expected the cream
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  Speaker 2: to still be there on top. The cream rises to
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  Speaker 2: the top, as they say, right, well, if you've been
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  Speaker 2: watering down your milk, there probably isn't much cream left
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  Speaker 2: in it, but you need to put that cream back in.
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  Speaker 2: There's something that looks like it. So they said, aside
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  Speaker 2: from stagnant pond water, what else do I have on
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  Speaker 2: the farm that's basically free that I'm not using that
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  Speaker 2: I can use for this? Oh yeah, these little calves
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  Speaker 2: that I'm slaughtering and selling is veal. I could use
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  Speaker 2: their brains impure because it has kind of a creamy texture,
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  Speaker 2: and that will stand in for the cream that I'll
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  Speaker 2: put on top of the watered down milk that I'm
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  Speaker 2: selling in the bottle.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that is a horrifying thing to hear. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: with human ears, we should point out that wasn't It
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  Speaker 3: wasn't like everybody was doing that. This is like an
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  Speaker 3: example of you know, who knows, it could have been
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: one farm. But what they did find out what was
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: being used widespread and just sort of with regularity in
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: the industry was using formaldehyde to preserve milk pre pasteurization,
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  Speaker 3: which is you know, we all know it's an embalming
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  Speaker 3: chemical used for dead bodies to make them last longer.
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  Speaker 3: And this was literally killing babies if you were a
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  Speaker 3: kid in Indianapolis in an orphanage, or actually anywhere in
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  Speaker 3: the United States. They didn't have a baby formula back then.
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  Speaker 3: You can listen to our episode on do we do
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: one just on baby formula?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, one on formula and one on the breast.
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  Speaker 3: I think, oh, that's right. I thought there was two
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  Speaker 3: on the breast, but it was too total. That wasn't
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: trying to be funny.
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  Speaker 2: There, Well, it was hilarious.
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  Speaker 3: They would you know, you would get cow's milk as
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: a little bebie in an orphanage, so it would you know,
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  Speaker 3: it would it would kill a kid very quickly if
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  Speaker 3: you're drinking formaldehyde.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it doesn't take much for a little infant, right,
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  Speaker 2: And it's apparently one of those things I read that
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  Speaker 2: it's it will just kill you, like almost immediately if
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: you ingest the right amount. So it's not good. And
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: even if it doesn't kill you right away, it's it's
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  Speaker 2: not a pleasant way to die. And again, four hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand babies a year we're dying in the United States
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  Speaker 2: just from bad milk. So it was definitely more than
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: just one one dairy farm in Indiana. It was a
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  Speaker 2: widespread problem.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, So you know that's hero number one. Hero
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  Speaker 3: number two also comes to us from Indiana.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Wait, wait, before we move on, you got to tell
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  Speaker 2: him that great, great quote from doctor Herdy.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, I thought it was kind of smarmy. Sure, I
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: guess he had the right to be smarmy. A reporter
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: asked if formaldehyde and milk was dangerous, and he said, well,
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  Speaker 3: I guess it's all right if you want to embalm
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: the baby.
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  Speaker 2: That didn't strike me as smarmy.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Is it smarmy for the nineteen twenties or whatever?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I guess, But he's he's saying like that's what the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: milk producers are doing. They're embalming babies.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I don't know. I thought a man
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: of science would say it is extremely dangerous.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: I see, you know, I see, yeah, I get so.
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  Speaker 3: Still a hero, a little smarmy maybe, but who is
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: to spare him?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: The second hoo's your.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Hero that's coming in is a gentleman named doctor Harvey
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  Speaker 3: Washington Wiley. In the eighteen eighties, he got to be
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  Speaker 3: in his bonnet about the problem with food.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: He was a boiler.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Maker professor there at Purdue, and then the USDA, the
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: fairly new USDA, said all right, we're going to start
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: a Bureau of Chemistry, and you're the guy that's going to.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Run it, right he was.
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  Speaker 2: He essentially dedicated his entire adult life and career to
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: fighting for like making the American food market wholesome. Essentially,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: like that's what that guy did. And he actually had
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: a bit of the showman in him. He had a
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: huge ego. Apparently, most of the people who were talking
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: about today had enormous egos, and they rubbed up against
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: one another, and even though they didn't like one another,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: most of them they still managed to work together to
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: affect real change. Which is kind of a cool little
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: hats off to everybody. So one of the first things
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: that doctor Wiley did when the USDA hired him to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: run the Bureau of Chemistry, which apparently was a new
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: department at the time. This is in the I think
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties or the late nineteenth century at the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: very least, he started testing syrup and jam and all
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: sorts of stuff. I'm not quite sure if he was
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: doing it to compare because he was actually researching corn
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: syrup at the time, to find out if this was
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: actually okay to use as a food because there was
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: that whole pure food movement was like, hey, I don't
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: know what we're putting into our food to preserve it,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Like we didn't used to do that ten years ago
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: before everybody moved to the city. I'm not sure how
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: I feel about this. So doctor Wiley's job was to
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: find out if these things were actually harmful or if
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: you could use them. One of the first things he
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: found out was that most of the maple syrup and
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the honey, like ninety percent of the honey was fake.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: There wasn't a drop of honey in it.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was corn syrup. They would flavor a little
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: bit with maple. For the syrup, they would flavor it
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: like whatever fruit.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I guess. For jam, I'm not sure what they flavored
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it with.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: For honey, I don't know either, Like how would you
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: take a bite and be like, this is honey?
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I guess, I don't know.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: But that was just sort of a jumping off point
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: where he was like, well, wait a minute, if they're
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: doing this to honey and maypay syrup, we need to
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: start looking into other things. And he started to learn
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: about formaldehyde in foods. Borax, which is a it's a cleaner,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: you know, like boric acid cleaner under the brand. I
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: think it was a brand, wasn't it Borax?
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I think it was like twenty Mule team Borax.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, that kind of thing.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Was the name. That was the name of the brand.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: But he started realizing this stuff was in our food.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: He got obviously pretty upset about it and goes to Congress,
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: and Congress is not interested in passing anything because, as
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: you will see, just like you know the things that
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: go on today, the food lobby was strong and rich
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: and powerful, and Congress sat on their hands.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah that. Author Deborah Blum also said that like there
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: was no political will, not just because they were in
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: the pockets of like the food producers. They a lot
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: of them, most certainly were, and basically all of them
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: were getting money from them at the very least. But
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that also if you introduced one of these bills, you
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: were like a crackpot. You were a quack. You were
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: you had no idea, right, you had no idea what
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: it meant to like be in the business world. You
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: were just a dummy. That's how. That's how these things
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: were reviewed. And I think something like a hundred or something.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I think like more than one hundred bills were introduced
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: and just within a decade or so, and only like
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: eight or nine of them managed to get passed. Yeah,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: that's how that's how looked down upon the idea of
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: food regulation was at the time.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: So Wiley is a pretty smart guy, he said, He's
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: kind of had a little bit of showman quality to him.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: So he got together an experiment, also sort of a
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: PR stunt. In nineteen oh two, he took twelve government
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: clerks and put them in housing in the basement of
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: the Agricultural Department building there in DC, and they were
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: exposed to what they called Hygienic Table trials, where half
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: of these young men were secretly fed formaldehyde, borax, sodium benzonate,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: all kinds of nasty chemicals like the stuff that was
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: going in food, and it was conveniently leaked to the
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: press and doctor Wiley. They were called the Poison Squad,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: and doctor Wiley was dubbed Old Borax.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he he actually became a national figure, like
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: people like just as the average American knew about him.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: If you read the newspaper, you probably were familiar with doctor.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Wiley, the old Borax, old Borax.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: And we talked about him in the Poison Squad in
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I think that does the FDA Protect Americans episode? Yeah,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: just kind of briefly, But I mean that whole book
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: that Deborah Blum wrote was about doctor Wiley and the
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Poison Squad and the work he did amazing, and Wiley
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: definitely deserves a lot of credit. He gets less credit
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: than he probably should get because around that time people
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: started to kind of look at Teddy Roosevelt, as we'll see,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: as the person who really got the legislation pushed through.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: But it probably would not have happened it when it
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: did without doctor Wiley. But in addition to doctor Wiley,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: there was also Teddy Roosevelt and another guy, a muck
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: ranking journalist, a socialist named Upton Sinclair, and those two
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: were considered to be some real driving forces behind food
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: regulation in America.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know what that means.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: It means that it's time for a message break.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: It means I'm going to go try and find a
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: tiny chick lit it to shove into my tooth hole.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: You should just switch the colors once in a while.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Aaron Cooper has my flipper.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, man, quite a gift.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: I don't think it would fit now anyway. Okay, So
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: don't feel bad, Coop. Just keep praying to that thing
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: every night and it'll be okay.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: So weird, all right, we'll be right back, all right.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: So we left off with quite a teaser that a
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: gentleman named Teddy Roosevelt and a socialist writer named Upton
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Sinclair would change the course of America.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: And boy did they.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: A little background on Teddy Roosevelt just because it really
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: applies here to how he got sort of swept up
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: in all this. To begin with, he was a soldier.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: He led the rough riders and the invasion of Spanish
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: held Cuba. And the reason that is important to this
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: story is because that invasion and that whole war was
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: a lot of Americans died, but not from the battle itself.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: I think about four hundred Americans died in combat, but
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: about fifty five hundred died from disease, from malaria and
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: dysentery and typhoid. So President McKinley, after the war started,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: just a big military commission to investigate what it was
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: like to be a soldier in all these awful conditions.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: And that very key to this story included the food.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: That they ate.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because there was at least among the people who
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: had fought in the Spanish American War, there was this
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: awareness that the roast beef, especially the canned roast beef
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: god that had been delivered as rations. Yeah. Yeah, you're
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: walking a fine line just even attempting canned roast beef, Right,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: it better be good. This was so not good. It
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: was it was like it would make you immediately start vomiting.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: According to Teddy Roosevelt, Yeah, they called it embalm meek
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: because some of it was clearly rotted. But then they'd
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: added formaldehyde. This wasn't even like, Okay, this is fresh meat,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: we're gonna add formaldehyde. They would put the formaldehyde in
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: after it was rotted to try to counteract the.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Rod you know, to bring it back to life.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly to frankenstein it up. And they found that that, Yeah,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: when you ate the stuff, it didn't matter what you
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: did to cook it or anything like that. It would
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: just make you throw up or just start pooping your pants,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: like almost immediately. And Teddy Roosevelt and all the other
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: veterans of the Spanish American War were pretty miffed about this.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: So when Roosevelt got the chance to go testify for Congress,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: he was the governor of New York by this time,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: about that beef, that tinned beef, he definitely took the chance,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: or took the opportunity.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he called that canned beef a disgrace to our
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: country and also had a little testimonial description when the
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: cans were opened to the top was nothing more than
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: a layer of slime. It was disagreeable looking, that's putting
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: it mildly and nasty. Sometimes we stowed it with potato
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: and onions. But I could have eaten my hat stewed
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: with potato and onions rather than the beef. Nearly all
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: the men sickened after eating it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that cross?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Any you know, like you said, by this time, I
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: mean he was already a war hero, but governor of
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: New York, he has you know, some clout all of
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: a sudden.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: For sure. Yeah. He was fairly well known enough that
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: when McKinley stood for reelection in nineteen hundred, he chose
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt as his running mate. Yeah, and he was
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: still young. I think he was forty two. Less than
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a year into the second McKinley administration, McKinley was assassinated
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: and died, and so suddenly Teddy Roosevelt, the vice president,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: is president, and he became the youngest president in history.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: K was forty three, Roosevelt was forty two. And it's
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: really weird. It's one of those moments in history where
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the right person happens to be in the right place
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: to really make things happen that seemed intractable before.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And I don't know enough about Teddy Roosevelt to fully
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: sing his praises, but from what I can tell, just
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: the brief stuff I've read about him researching this. He
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: was a really interesting, level headed dude, at least as
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: far as balancing the interests of the United States went.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Dare I say that, Well he was.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: He figured big in the foundation of our national parks.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: So that was a big part. But also like in
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: this specifically, he saw a very important need that needed
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: to be filled, which was the meat producers, but the
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: food producers in general, the meat producers in particular needed regularly.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: They were doing some nasty stuff, he found out, and
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: he went to Congress and was like, make this happen.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: If you don't make it happen, I'm going to basically
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: expose all of you who are in the pockets of
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: this beef trust as they call it, the Big five
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: beef producers, which included Armor, Swift, and Libby. Who are
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: all three still around making meat in the United States.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know his hands were even as president,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: tied by Congress and the lobby.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Until that is.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Our final hero of the day comes along a gentleman
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: named Upton Sinclair, like you said, a hardcore socialist and
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: a writer who wrote the very very famous book The
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: Jungle about well most people, if they've never read the
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: Jungle would probably say, yeah, it's about exposing the meat
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: packing in Chicago, right, But fourteen I'm sorry, fifteen pages
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: really covered that meatpacking disgust that we are going to
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: have to talk about.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So just get ready.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: The book was really about an immigrant worker who comes
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: to America and has sort of just stopped on by
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: capitalism because again, he was a socialist and this was
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: his cause.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So in the end of the book, the worker
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: who's I think only identified as Urgis j u Rgis,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: he just keeps getting like, he loses his family, he
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: loses essentially anything good to his life by being ground
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: through the gears of capitalism. And on the other side,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: he comes out and finds that socialism is the answer
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: and starts dedicating himself to building a socialist paradise or whatever. Right.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: So that was, like you said, the point of the book.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: But when America read this book, they did not pay
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: any attention to that socialist message at all. In fact,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: plenty of them ignored the fact that there was an
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: overt socialist message and still read the book and got
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: something out of it. And what they got was those
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: fifteen pages of disgusting descriptions of what was going on
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: in Chicago's meatpacking district where essentially all of the beef
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: and pork and I guess sheep mutton was processed this
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: one area and just where they kept the live live
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: stock before slaughter, just when they arrived by train and
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: put them into a pen. Just that pen, chuck was
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: a square mile big.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was known as packing town. And in order
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: to get this information, he went undercover. He spent seven
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: weeks posing as a worker in this meatpacking district, which
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: was like I said, it's called packing town, but it
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: was in the heart of the Union stockyards, and like
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: you said, they would bring in by train. It was
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: the most efficient system on earth for processing animals. Ten
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: thousand cattle, ten thousand hogs, five thousand sheep a day
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: coming in being processed. They were doing I think they
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: were going through eighteen million animals a year at this
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: point because of a very innovative new system called assembly
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: line work, which is you know, we know what it
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: is now, but back then it was kind of revolutionary.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: And that they would put make one person do one
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: job and one job only, all day long, for twelve
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: hours a day, and as fast as they could.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you screwed up. The four men would
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: be like, you had one job.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, don't get your finger cut off and put into
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: a sausage.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that would happen, right. They would use everything
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: they could from the animal. Apparently there was a widely
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: known phrase that was used there that they used everything
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: about the hog except for the squeal just haunting.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I want to point out though, like not in
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: the way that like an ethical master chef wants to
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: use or a hunter that you know, provides meat for
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: their family tries to use every you know, good edible
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: part of the animal.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: That's a different deal.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: We're talking about like you know, grinding up hoofs for
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: you know, filler exactly.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out right.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: So when he wrote The Jungle, he interviewed, first of all,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: he witnessed what he wrote about firsthand. But he said,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: like I did not I did not like exaggerate this stuff.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: This is not me embellishing, Like I witnessed this firsthand.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: And the stuff that I didn't witness firsthand, I interviewed
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: people who witnessed it firsthand. Yeah, and so he's like,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: this stuff in the book is real. People and we
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: haven't even really kind of cracked into what was in
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: those fifteen pages. I say we do that.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Now, should we take a break into it.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: I think that's a fine idea.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Chuck, all right, we'll be right back.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, So we're back. It's time to get into
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: the grizzly details of the jungle. There's some pretty famous
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: stuff in there, just because it just it got out
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: so far and wide. It was a very widely read
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: book and an even more widely discussed book because of
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the disgust that it generated. But for example, when they
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: when they generated when they created sausage, like Upton Sinclair
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: told everybody how the sausage is made, and everybody's like,
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: we didn't want to know, but now we know, and
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: we can't unknow it. They would grind up moldy sausage
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: that had been rejected from Europe so it was bad
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: when it got to Europe, and then they shipped it
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: back to America, and then they used it in the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: sausage they fed Americans. That stuff would also be mixed
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: in with scraps of meat that had been shoveled off
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: of the floor. Probably at that couple of times a day,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: they would shovel meat scraps and flesh and blood off
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: of the floor put it into the sausage mixture. That's
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: bad enough that it was on the floor, but the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: workers frequently had things like tuberculosis and they were spitting
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: bloody tuberculotic spit onto the floor, so that would get
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: mixed in with the food scraps, the meat scraps that
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: would be put into the sausages. There was a rat
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: problem there, so they would put out poison pieces of
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: bread for the rats, and then when the rats ate
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: the bread and died, they put the rats in the sausage.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And then furguod measure, they put the poison bread in
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: the sausage too. This was just the sausage that they
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: were making.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I get the feeling that there was. If
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: there was a poster on the wall of this workplace,
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: it was if it's on the floor, it's in the sausage.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Tobacco spit, That's that's probably the best thing you could
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: hope for.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you being a flavor tobacco spit.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if anyone's still listening, you know, obviously potted meats,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: you know, mystery meat is kind of a funny thing
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: to say these days, but back then it was truly dangerous.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: It was you know, organ meats, It was tripe. This
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: is a quote, and it's hard for me to even
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: say this word for because of my tooth and because
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: it's disgusting. But the hard car cardalin is cardlinagenus, cartilaginous, cartilaginous. Yeah,
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: there we go, hard cartilaginous gullets of beef after the
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: tongues had been cut out, was in this potted meat
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the potted chicken in particular. It always appears
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: in quotes because it was later determined there was no
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: chicken at all in the potted chicken. It was just,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: like you said, every piece of the animal they could use,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: not for ethical purposes, but because they could sell it
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: as potted chicken and tell everybody, yeah, it's just ground
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: up chicken, just to eat it and shut up.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So you know this is awful. The workers themselves
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: are working in deplorable conditions, twelve hours a day in
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: these disgusting rooms, doing this stuff, the same job over
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: and over and over, which was a new thing. Like
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: people weren't used to assembly line work much less like
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: if your job all day is to I don't even know.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: I can't even imagine what they were doing.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Skinning, slicing, removing, deboning.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. They I made the joke about
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: losing a finger, but they did. They would lose digits,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: they would lose limbs. This stuff would go into the food.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: There were even people that fell into lard vats and
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: boiled alive and that.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Went into the food. Yeah, there was a well, they
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: went into the lard.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: There was a quote that well which eventually went into food,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: you know exactly. There was a quote from Sinclair that said,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: all but the bones of them went out into the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: world as DRAMs pure beef flowed.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: I don't think Derams is around anymore.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Durhams couldn't survive that one. Yeah, there's another quote from
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Upton Sinclair that he said, I aimed at the public's
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: heart and by accident, I hit it in the stomach,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: which is him. Yeah, with him recognizing that he wrote
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: this book about socialism and everybody just focused in on
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: the really gross food stuff and that even still it
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: affected change. It just wasn't the change he was trying
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: to affect. But he wasn't one of those guys who's like,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: oh great, I'm a celebrity either way, I don't care
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: how I got there. He turned out to be like
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: really bitter at everybody missing this message. Like his book
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: was widely read and nobody got it, at least they
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: didn't get it the way that he intended them to
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: get it.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is another good quote. He said that he
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: was made to a celebrity not because the public cared
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: anything about the workers, but simply because the public did
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: not want to eat tubercular beef.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, that word. You start messing with that word,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: it gets grosser and grosser.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, tubercular beef should open for diarrhea planet.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, I think you've just come up with a tour.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: So this is a very sort of a bombshell book.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: It was released in nineteen o six in January, sold
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: twenty five thousand copies right out of the gate, which
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: was just a ton of books back then. There's a
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: lot of books now, as we've learned. Within about five months,
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: it was translated into seventeen different languages and eventually became
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a silent movie as well in nineteen fourteen.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, like you said, it was a bombshell. Basically,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: that log jam in Congress of you know that had
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: kept any food regulation bills essentially from passing this book
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: like broke it open. It dislodged all that stuff, and
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: the reason why was multifaceted. In addition to grossing out
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the public and being like, we're eating this, government, do
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: something about this. Somebody do something about this, you had
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: that public outcry, which is kind of in line with
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: the progressive drum beat, right, you also had a developing
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: drum beat coming out of the business side, because that's
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: where that's the whole The debate was divided between the
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: progressives who were cranks and crazy and didn't understand business,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: and the business side who were like, to shut up
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: and eat this stuff. We're trying to make a profit
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: here and get the engine of the United States revving.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: There was a group in business that was like, hey,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: we're already following like food safety practices totally and it's
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: really expensive compared to our competitors who are cutting every
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: corner possible and selling unsanitary products for way lower than
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: we can sell our safe products. So if these guys
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: start getting regulated, we're going to even the playing field.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, they'll be behind us
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: because they're going to have to play catch up expense
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: wise to get to the same level that we're operating
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: at and have been all this time. And I said, ketchup,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: which is ironic because one of those companies that was
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: already doing things safe was the Heinz Company.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hats off to the Heinz Company.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, not just Heines, but also old Taylor Whiskey.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know there were it wasn't everyone. And
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: that's a really good point. I'm glad you made it
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: because Heines probably since that has been saying. By the way,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: you know, we weren't a part of all that, right,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: you know, it should have been called the Jungle Colon
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: except for Hines. So Roosevelt all of a sudden is
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: getting one hundred calls I'm sorry, not calls. He was
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: getting one hundred letters a day, calls. He would have
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: been like, what's happening here about food safety? He calls
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: up Upton Sinclair. These guys should not be buddies, And spoiler,
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: they did not end up being buddies. Yeah, it wasn't
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: like some crazy like you're like this and I'm like this,
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: but you know, we have a lot in common. As
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: it turns out, the only thing they had in common,
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: it seems like, was that they wanted to clean up
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: the food situation in the United States. They didn't trust
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: each other, of course, they didn't really like each other.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Of course, Roosevelt.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Did not like a muck breaking journalist, and of course
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Sinclair was like, Hey, the Beef Trust is giving you
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars for your presidential campaign, which in
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: the future, in twenty twenty four, that would be seven
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: million dollars.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Wow, so you're in.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: The pocket of the Beef Trust, which he denied, of course,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: because he had to eat that beef in Cuba.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, mister Sinclair, I bear no love for
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: those gentlemen, for I ate the meat they can for
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: the army in Cuba.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, comma, but their checks cashed all the same.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Well, he lived up to that quote. He took on
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: the Beef Trust, and he got this legislation essentially passed
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: through as we'll see. And then, just as a side note,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: you mentioned muckrakers. Apparently Teddy Roosevelt was the one who
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: inadvertently coined that term. He was giving a speech about
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the whole point of the speech
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: was about, but he was basically railing against journalists to
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: go look and dig up scandal. And he allowed that
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: there's a role that they play in the public forum
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: that's a good role, which is if there's somebody doing
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: something shady, these guys are going to go find out
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: and tell everybody, and that's a public good. What he
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: was saying is even when given the chance to just
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: write legitimate journalism, after that, they still go look for
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: scandal and like try to cause problems that might not
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: necessarily need, that aren't really problems. And he compared them
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: to a character from Pilgrim's Progress who was the muckraker
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: and muck is poop by the way, who had the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: chance to trade in his muckrake for not a muckrake
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: and didn't even look up to didn't even bother looking up,
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: just kept looking down at the muck he was raking
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: for not a muckrake exactly.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: So he doesn't like Sinclair, like we said, he certainly
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: doesn't trust him. He thought that the account in the
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: Jungle was he called it hysterical. So he's like, I'm
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: going to look into this myself, and by myself, I
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: mean I'm going to have other people do it for me.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Charles Neil, who was a Commissioner of the Bureau of
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Labor at the time, and an attorney from New York
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: named James Reynolds would do the same thing. Well, I
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: don't think they posed as workers, but they did the
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: investigation in packing town in Chicago. It resulted in the
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Neil Reynolds report. And basically, I mean the long story
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: short of the Neils Reynolds report is, by the way,
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: everything he said what's true.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's even more more than than he put
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: it in his book. That was the thing you said,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: they didn't pose as packing workers. The packing companies knew
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: they were coming, and they yes, and they were so
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: like the stuff they were doing was just so bad
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: and entrenched that they still were caught doing all this
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: stuff knowing that these were coming to investigate. So now
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt has documentation from two people that he trusts saying, yes,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: this is actually going on. This is a huge problem
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: and we need to do something about it.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Should we talk about the bathrooms.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, let's because we haven't been super gross for a minute.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: So like we said, they exposed even worse things than
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: in the book, and this is one of them. The
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: bathrooms weren't really bathrooms. Sometimes it would just be a
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: little cordoned off area of the same workroom floor where
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: they're scooping up god knows what to put into the sausage.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: There was obviously no sinks, there were no open toilets.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: You would just pee in that corner. There was no soap,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: no toilet paper, and that's when it was just sort
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: of cordoned off.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: There were also places where it was just nothing.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: They would just pee where they were so they could
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: keep working as fast as they could. They said, the
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: fumes from the urine, I'll just read the quote hints
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: in some cases, the fumes from the urine swell the
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: sum of nauseating odors arising from the dirty, blood soaked
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: rotting wood floors.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Fruitful.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fruitful is hard for me to say. Fruitful culture
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: beds for the disease germs of men and animals.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't forget. Multiple times a day they scraped
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: up the stuff that had dropped on the floor and
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: put it in the sausage. And I saw a description
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: of those floors that really turned my stomach. They called
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: them spongy. Isn't that awful because they were rotting from
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: spit and blood and urine. That's what the meat was
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: coming into contact.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it held even more.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so gross, dude, spongy wood as bad enough as
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: So the other thing they did was said, and by
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: the way, President Benjamin Harris former president, in eighteen ninety
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: you signed a very weak meat inspection bill that basically
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: put USDA inspectors at these meat packing plants. But all
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: they were charged to do was say, well, this cow
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: was healthy before they slaughtered it, and I'm going back
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: to sleep now. They had no authority to oversee what
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: happened after that point exactly.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: So even the rejected animals that those USDA inspectors would
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: be like, this one doesn't pass, muster, get rid of it.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: They would get rid of it, and then when the
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: inspector left, they would go back and get it and
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: process it anyway. So there was no actual like oversight. Yeah.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Even the oversight that was there was just completely undermined.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: So this this was like, this was bad news for
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: the Beef Trust and other packers. This something was now
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: going to happen because Teddy Roosevelt had this report, and
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: in addition to the jungle being out in public, he said, Hey,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: I've got this report, Congress, I want these I want
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: some reforms to be pushed through. Make it happen, or
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to release this report that I've commissioned that's
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: really getting to blow the lid off of this stuff.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And he got cooperation from the Senate. They passed a bill,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: passed a great bill, and then it started to get
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: blocked in the House, and I think it came down
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: to like two senators or no, two congress people, congressmen
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: who were so in the Beef Trust pocket that they
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: staged a last ditch effort at stopping these meat inspection
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: bills from going through. And that finally did it for Roosevelt,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: and he released the Neil Reynolds report, and it just
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: made anybody sticking up for the Beef Trust look so
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: bad that you just couldn't get in the way of
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: it any longer.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think didn't someone leaked it beforehand too?
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: Didn't Upton Sinclair help leak it?
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, supposedly, And I guess Teddy Roosevelt angrily wired Doubleday,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: the publisher, the actual guy named Doubleday, and said, like,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: can you please tell up upting Sinclair to leave the
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: is of ruting the country to me? For once?
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: That was smarmy.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: You see smarm everywhere in all the quotes.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I see smarmy people.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: So this resulted in two things, the Meat Inspection Act
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: of nineteen oh six and then eventually the Pure Food
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: and Drug Act, which outlawed the sale of any altered, adulterated,
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: mislabeled foods, drug, medicine, or liquor. Became known as doctor
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: Wiley's Law or the Wiley Act. Contribute to doctor Wiley.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: That was not the creation of the FDA, though that
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: would come along a little bit later. And like you said,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: we have a great episode on the FDA.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: What year was that though nineteen twenty.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Seven, nineteen thirty. The Bureau of Chemistry was part of
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: the USD until nineteen twenty.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Seven, all right, So then finally in nineteen thirty we
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: get our FDA.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: And then finally in nineteen thirty eight, after FDR came
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: into office, the federal government was the agent. The FDA
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: was finally given real teeth to actually regulate stuff. It
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: was kind of nominal for a while until the late thirties.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: You gotta say real teeth right now.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm sorry, I mean as a slam.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: That's all right.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Well, if you want to know more about this really
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: interesting period in history, go research up Sin Saint Clair,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt, doctor Harvey Washington, Wiley, read the Jungle, do
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: all that stuff, and just see how grossed out you
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: can get before you vomit. And since Chuck laughed at vomit,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener mail.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I read this.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: It's an email about our live show in Seattle, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: I read this as sort of a hey, here's what
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: you get at a stuff you should know show. Because
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: we've got we've got the cities lined up. We haven't
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: announced on sale dates or anything, but I think we
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: can probably say what cities were going through.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Right Yeah, Yeah, I think it's pretty much in the bag.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: So we're going to hit Chicago, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis, all
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: the apolis is and then where are we going in
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: the Northeast this year?
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: In the Northeast, We're doing DC, We're going to do Boston. Yeah,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: we're going to us New York City, which we haven't
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: been to in a while.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a minute since we've been to New York.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: And then we're going to finish out the year in Durham,
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: North Carolina, and our final show the year in Atlanta,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: like we like to do.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the schedule as it stands now, and it's
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: pretty close to baked, close enough that we're willing to
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: say this in the hopes that we don't have to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: edit out of town.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: So I read this because this is a little taste
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: of what you can get here. And this is from
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Mary Benedict, a grandma to a grandson, and they went
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: to the show together.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a great email.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: It was Hey, guys, been listening for about ten years.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I'm a huge fan and retired teacher. I introduced my
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: grandson just stuff you should know, and he too has
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: become a devoted fan. So for Christmas, I gave him
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: tickets to the live event in Seattle. He was thrilled.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: We went to the show, absolutely loved the experience. The
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: topic was fun. You two are as great as you
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: sound in your episodes. As the questions move forward, so
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: we do a little Q and a at the end. Surprise,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: surprise if you haven't been to a show. So as
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: the questions move forward toward the end, you declared one
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: final question which would have left my grandson at the mic.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: I was repeating to myself, please please see that he's
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: a kid. Please see that he's a kid, and Chuck
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: did exactly that. You asked him how old he was,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: as well as the girl behind him, both were fourteen.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: You apologize to the other side and let the two
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: young people talk with you. Please know what a remarkable
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: moment that was for my grandson, A euphoric life experience
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: in memory.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: So thank you.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: I also want to share my appreciation for how kind
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: you were to all the people in Q and A.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: You always asked a question about them or thoughtfully commented
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: on personal things they shared with you.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: That level of.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: Compassion and kindness is extraordinary. In my regard for you,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: both rose even higher. And lastly, Josh, thank you for
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: your vulnerability sharing that you need to avoid the news
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: right now, for your well being, demonstrated strength and emotional
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: intelligence to everyone present, and thank you for modeling great
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: life strategies. Are you familiar with highly sensitive people? You
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: may not be one, but I am and my grandson.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Is as well.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: It is a character trait, not a problem, and that
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: would make a fantastic topic for a podcast for sure.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Sorry this ran long, but in the world where people
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: are quick to point out what's wrong, Mary, we love you.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: I believe it's important to tell people what they are
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: doing when they are doing great things. And you two
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: are doing great things.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, That is wonderful.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: That is Mary with an I Benedict and Mary's grandson.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: So thank you both for coming.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, a lot, Yeah, for sure.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: The life strategy example I'm setting is avoidance.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Now, avoiding the news is not avoidance.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: If it's true. If you want to be like Mary
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: and her grandson and come to one of our shows,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: we will eventually put the information and links and all
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: that for tickets up and in the meantime you can
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: get in touch with us by email at stuff podcast
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.