By Peter Marks

-Published in 1906-Takes place in Chicago’s “Packingtown”

district and focuses on the conditions of the laborers and sanitization within slaughterhouses

-Sinclair went undercover and posed as a slaughterhouse employee for seven weeks before beginning the novel

-Sinclair’s main message was one of socialism and to enlighten the American people about the way immigrant workers were being treated; the public instead focused on the vulgar descriptions of the meat being shipped to their homes

Excerpt from The Jungle:“It seemed that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef for canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men with great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken to the canning-room. When they had speared out all they could reach, they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the balance and dumped it into the truck; this floor was filthy with manure tracked in from the streets, and with spit, and the accumulated dirt of years...” (p. 52)

Excerpt from The Jungle:“There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerin, and dumped onto hoppers, and made over again for home consumption” (p. 126)

-Sinclair personally sent then President Theodore Roosevelt a copy of the novel, who was outraged at the atrocities being described and called for reform

-Legislation quickly passed the Pure Food and Drug Act as well as the Meat Inspection Act in 1906, the same year the book was published, and eventually helped to form the Food and Drug Administration

-Domestic and foreign sales of American meat products declined over 50% immediately following the release of the novel

Two of Upton Sinclair’s more well known works

-Published in 1917-Exposed filthy mining conditions in the

Western coal mining industry in the 1910’s-Based on the 1914-1915 Colorado coal strikes

Excerpt from King Coal: “There are a hundred and seven people entombed in the mine, and the company officials have sealed it, and are sacrificing those lives” (p. 115)

Sinclair helped bring to light the injustices of the coal miners and what they were being subjected to on a daily basis

-Published in 1927-Takes place during the big Oil Boom of

Southern California-A satire depicting the greed and corruption

that is associated with one of the world’s largest markets

-A socialist-driven agenda that points out the evil in capitalism

While Upton Sinclair was most well known for his social impact because of The Jungle, his other works would always live in the shadows. He tried to take bigger steps forward with his socialist agenda by running for Governor of California, but that did not materialize. Sinclair even opened his own socialist commune, but it was mysteriously burned to the ground within a year of its opening. Overall, Sinclair was a visionary for his time and his lasting effects will always be on the pages he left behind.