Sinclair’s “The Tanker” Fitting Eulogy For Dead Man?

Upton Sinclair, author of “The Jungle” that exposed brutal accidents in Chicago’s meatpacking industry at the turn of the century, would love this Fox report: “Illinois man’s body found in fuel tanker hauled by truck.” Sherlock Holmes might be interested, too.

Apparently, the poor man was inside the truck filled with gas at a fuel transfer hub in the Village of Buckley about 100 miles southwest of Chicago. He was found only after two truck drivers “were unloading [the tanker] and noticed the fuel wasn’t flowing smoothly”, according to local news reports. Coroner Bill Cheatum told Champaign’s WCIA-TV he had “no idea” how the body ended up inside the tanker, although family said they hadn’t seen the 29-year-old man for 10 days and thought he was “on a road trip”. The family added the deceased didn’t drive a gasoline truck, although he did work at a BP gas station.

“No idea of how this could happen,” huh? In a Sinclair novel titled “The Tanker”, we’d probably be told it all had something to do with one man’s desperation and another man’s greed: “All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour…and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country…”

Davd Soul