Page 67 - Upton Sinclair News Today

The 20 million people who visited the 1904 fair left with some food for the mind as well as with novel foods in their belly.

The White Castle chain began in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas, where its ingenious small burgers kicked off a national craze and inspired imitators of all shapes and sizes. But over a century later, White Castle has entirely vanished from its home state. And the story of how it introduced America to the hamburger has largely been overshadowed by its fast food rivals.

Aria Dean is an artist who works in multiple media. Her interest in materialist and structural film has always been an intellectual base, and in her new film Abattoir, U.S.A.! she builds upon that base in ways that expand her creative practice. Dean speaks with McKenzie Wark about the connection between her earlier film and her newest piece, the importance of collaboration, and the challenges of being an artist who is also a noted writer.

The meat industry is associated with animal rights violations, environmental damage, and health risks. But it’s also rife with human rights issues.

Anyone who has read "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson or "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, knows that Chicago was once the “Hog Butcher for the World” thanks to the Union Stock Yards and meatpacking plants nestled next to the railroads. Stanley Kurek, a Polish immigrant, first opened Stanley’s in 1924. Stanley’s was a place for stockyard workers to come in, get a meal, and cash their paycheck. Two remnants of this storied past can still be seen today. The fir...

Leaders in the Dubuque area are pushing back against bills that expand what teens can do for work.

After thousands of dockworkers went on strike in the Los Angeles area in 1923 and the Industrial Workers of the World called on workers in other industries to strike in solidarity, the police announced a ban on public meetings.

Hiland Dairy Starting back in 1882, Nicholas Steffen started selling ice cream at his bakery and restaurant. Ice cream was originally only sold on Saturdays and holidays, but popularity grew. Steffen changed the name from Steffen’s Bakery and Restaurant to Bon Ton Bakery and Restaurant in 1885. By 1990, Steffen’s company was shipping more than...

Darwin discovered that evolution proceeds with neither direction nor purpose. The natural world is largely indifferent to plan or plot. Yet we, story-seeking creatures that we are, see the world around us as more completed, more accomplished, than what came before. Tom Comitta’s The Nature Book explores these tensions by stitching together hundreds of fragments in the history of literary writing about the natural world—this excerpt alone is a collage of ninety-seven novels ranging fro...

The White Castle chain began in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas, where its ingenious small burgers kicked off a national craze and inspired imitators of all shapes and sizes. But over a century later, White Castle has entirely vanished from its home state. And the story of how it introduced America to the hamburger has largely been overshadowed by its fast food rivals.