Other editions of book The Pit a Story of Chicago

The Pit: A Story of Chicago is a 1903 novel by Frank Norris. Set in the wheat speculation trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade Building, it was the second book in what was to be the trilogy The Epic of the Wheat. The first book, The Octopus, was published in 1901. Norris died unexpectedly in October 1902 from appendicitis leaving the third book, The Wolf: A Story of Empire, incomplete. Together the three novels were to follow the journey of a crop of wheat from its planting in California to its ultimate consumption as bread in Western Europe.

Norris described The Pit as a fictitious narrative of a "deal" in the Chicago wheat pit, which is the nickname of the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, where commodities are traded like stocks and bonds. One man tries to corner the market on wheat to make a fortune. More than a business story, the novel deals with love and the lack of love in a relationship, selfishness, power, greed, the financial power of men and lack of their power to control events that are shaped by nature. Quote: "Think of it, the food of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people just at the mercy of a few men down there on the Board of Trade. They make the price. They say just how much the peasant shall pay for his loaf of bread. If he can't pay the price, he simply starves." These poor people's lives are completely out of their hands. In contrast, Norris suggests that ultimately the men down in the Pit don't have power over them either, nor over their own lives, because above all, nature rules.

These novels, while forming a series, will be in no way connected with each other save only in their relation to (1) the production, (2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American wheat. When complete, they will form the story of a crop of wheat from the time of its sowing as seed in California to the time of its consumption as bread in a village of Western Europe.

Like his more famous contemporary Upton Sinclair, American author BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NORRIS, JR. (1870-1902) also highlighted the corruption and greed of corporate monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... themes that continue to make his work riveting reading more than a century later. The Pit, first published in 1903, is a fictional narrative of the dealing in the Chicago wheat pit, focusing on speculator Curtis Jadwin, who is so addicted to his own greed that it becomes his downfall. The second part of Norris's projected "Trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat," *The Pit is preceded by 1901's The Octopus, also available from Cosimo. (Norris died before he could write the third volume, The Wolf.)

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