Uptin Sinclair's The Jungle

In 1906, Upton Sinclair self published a book that he hoped would change The United Sates of America. First considered a 'muckraker,' a term President Roosevelt stole from the pages of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Upton Sinclair proved to be much more than a trash throwing journalist. The Jungle was a movement in itself, spawning a social and economic uproar and laying the ground work for what would become today's Food and Drug Administration.

Before the publication of his masterpiece, Upton Sinclair was a struggling and ultimately unsuccessful writer and poet. His early works were never well received and constant rejection pushed him to improve his craft, pursuing sustenance. As a child, Sinclair was privy to both sides of society, having been born from parents who came from different sides of the socio-economic spectrum. In his youth, he resolved to never sell out to the upper class.(2)

Sinclair's work Manassas, a novel about the Civil War, inspired the editor of The Appeal to Reason, the leading socialist newspaper in America, to offer him $500 to write a book about America's working class: wage slaves. After two months of research in Chicago's meat packing district, posing as an employee and interviewing hundreds of people, inspecting their places of work and their homes; he had enough material to write the book he felt he was born to write.

What Upton Sinclair wrote was fiction based on facts, events he witnessed and stories he had been told. The Jungle follows the plight of a Lithuanian family of immigrants who work in the Chicago stockyards. The district is corrupt and working conditions are less than desirable. There is no law and supervisors as well as police officers are paid off. Women and children are mistreated and forced to work under awful conditions. Blacklisting is not an uncommon occurrence. The novel depicts a series of mishaps, grotesque accidents and deaths that could have easily been prevented.

Jurgis Rudkus, the books main character, is a representation of the suffering working class. His young wife dies in childbirth do to a lack of proper medical attention and his son drowns in the streets because of horrid living conditions. He flees his life in despair, only to return because he has no where else to go. An illiterate and uneducated immigrant, Jurgis can do nothing else with his life but squalor through work for those deemed better than him.

The tragic events in Jurgis' life lead him to the Socialist Party, a place of refuge and help for the suffering. He finds better, more secure work through another party member and can continue to provide for his deceased wives family. The novel ends as little more than propaganda, something Upton Sinclair himself had regrets about in hind sight. The Socialist party wins many major elections and the book finishes with a feeling of purpose and promise, the start of a new future.

As well as a social exploration, The Jungle caught sight of a side of the nations largest meat suppliers which light had never caught before. Meat polluted with urine and feces, rotten and canned anyway. Jurgis is even witness to another workers death, ground up and mixed with the meat. Dangerous waste and lard collected in an outdoor pond, fermenting and giving off toxic fumes. The fat is even used for human consumption, the impoverished using it to cook with after picking out the animal hair.

Originally published as a serial in The Appeal to Reason, The Jungle quickly became a popular point of discussion. The major meat packing companies cried out, demanding justice for a book they considered slanderous and preposterous. The public was outraged, disgusted by the depiction of child labor, horrific working conditions and unsanitary treatment of meat. This outcry caught the attention of President Roosevelt and Upton Sinclair was quickly invited to the White House to discuss his findings. Word of the novel went as far as England and even Winston Churchill, a member of Parliament at the time, encouraged English readers to buy the book.

Roosevelt's inspector's confirmed what the public feared: that there was "evidence of practically everything charged in The Jungle."(2) These findings inspired Roosevelt to pursue America's first Pure Food and Drug Act. The nation's first food inspections regulations were strongly put into affect. Slaughter houses had no choice but to comply.

Working condition were also greatly improved after the Act took place. The meat suppliers suffered extreme losses and would do anything to recoup profits. They were cleaned and monitored, long shifts adjusted. Unions were even invited to assist the protection of worker's. Later in life, Sinclair looked back optimistically and felt proud of his efforts. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach... I helped to clean up the yards and improved the country's meat supply. Now the workers have strong unions and, I hope, are able to look out for themselves."(2)

Upton Sinclair continued to write, though never quite achieving the same international attention he did with The Jungle. He unsuccessfully pursued politics and failed at staring a Socialist Utopian society. All of his proceeding works, unlike those of his earlier writing years, addressed other social institutions: the judicial process, American publishing, the oil industry, world literature, education, the press, organized religion, coal mining and Wall Street.

Despite the legal success of his work, Upton Sinclair did have one complaint. His deepest concern had been with the fate of the workers, and he realized with bitterness that he had become a celebrity not because the public cared anything about the workers, but because it did not want to eat diseased meat.(1) Even though working conditions had been changed, Sinclair's strong Socialist beliefs had been pushed aside, a secondary issue never to be addressed. Many of today's scholars would argue that those efforts were in vain and in the twenty first century, immigrant laborer's are treated just as badly as they ever were.(3)

Upton Sinclair achieved what his fellow 'muckrakers' strived for: change. The Jungle has been translated into many different languages and was made into a movie in 1914. He indirectly saved millions of unsuspecting lives and achieved the attention of a government too busy to monitor it's own food supply. Even in 1967, more then sixty years after The Jungle was passed, President Lyndon Johnson commended Sinclair's efforts at the signing of the Wholesome Meat Act, the next stepping stone in his legacy.

Bibliography

1 Dell, Floyd Upton Sinclair, A Study in Social Protest New York: George H.

Doran 1927:104-120

2 Jensen, Carl Ph.D. Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20^th

Century New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000: 51-63

3 Sinclair, Upton The Jungle 5th ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2006