When it comes to manufacturing, it's still a "Jungle" out there

When Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" (1906) describing the horrendous conditions in Chicago's slaughterhouses, he hoped to convince Americans to improve labor standards for American workers.

Instead, disgusted by Sinclair's descriptions of what entered their food supply, Americans passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Meat Inspection Act, which led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. They hoped to improve their food, but forgot about the workers.

"I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit its stomach," Sinclair observed.

In the recent scare about Chinese-made products, we risk once again putting products ahead of the people who make them.

It was not until the Wagner Act (1935), passed as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, that American workers gained the right to organize in order to have greater control over their working conditions, including hours and safety, and to demand a fair share of the fruits of their labor.

Yet, between the Civil War and the New Deal, hundreds of American workers had died in industrial accidents and in armed combat against their employers. Americans in the late 19th century feared "industrial warfare" as they watched employers and employees literally take arms against each other.

No incident is more famous than the Ludlow, Colo., Massacre of April 20, 1914. Coal miners had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America, but their employers, which included John D. Rockefeller Jr., refused to permit the union to organize. When more than 10,000 miners went on strike, mine owners evicted them from company-owned housing and hired strike breakers and armed guards.

Armed company thugs sprayed the miners' tent village with gunfire. In the ensuing standoff, about 20 Americans were killed, including women and almost a dozen children who suffocated when Rockefeller's hired men burned down the miners' camp. As fighting continued, Colorado's governor brought in the state militia and successfully appealed for federal troops to restore order, invoking the state's power against American workers.

We cannot forget the lessons of our own history. It took generations of conflict between workers and their employers before the United States established fair and safe working conditions. In certain sectors of our economy — most notably agriculture and, once again, slaughterhouses — that fight continues.

American workers have died in the fight to establish a fairer economic system, while consumers have too often placed the benefits of cheap goods ahead of the conditions in which they are produced.

Lead-laden toothpaste and toys from China put us at risk. Americans are right to demand that China improve its products' safety. But, this time, let's not forget that Chinese laborers also work long hours, sometimes under egregious conditions, and are denied their right to organize in a country that benefits from global capitalism while refusing its workers the freedom that should be part of all free markets.

This time, let's hope the news of unsafe Chinese goods will inspire Americans to care not only about the products but the conditions on the factory floors where they are made.