He supported himself by writing adventure stories.
His first book Springtime and Harvest (written 1901) didn’t do so well.
He was very poor.
The Jungle ( 1906) was a huge success.
It exposed unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry in The Jungle.
It also caused a public outcry for things to change.
Theodore Roosevelt invited Sinclair to discuss packing-house conditions, and a congressional investigation led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Law
The autobiographical novel Love's Pilgrimage (1911) treats his marriage and the birth of his child with a frankness which shocked some reviewers
Sylvia and Sylvia's Marriage, a massive two-part story
King Coal (1917), based on a coal strike of 1914-1915, returned
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to labor protest and socialistic polemic. Oil! (1927) dealt with dishonesty in Warren G. Harding's administration. Boston (1928), a novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, unearthed much new material and demonstrated the constructive research that always lay beneath Sinclair's protest writings. Socialist candidate from New Jersey In 1917 he left the party to support President Woodrow Wilson. He returned to the Socialist camp when Wilson supported Allied intervention in the Soviet Union. In California he stood for Congress on the Socialist ticket (1920), for the Senate (1922), and for governor (1926 and 1930). In 1933, persuaded to campaign seriously for governor, he called his program "End Poverty in California." His cogent presentation of Socialist ideas won him the Democratic nomination, but millions of dollars and a campaign based on falsehood and fear defeated him in the election. World's End (1940) launched Sinclair's 11-volume novel series(the Lanny Budd historical novels,) attempting to give an insider's view of American government between 1913 and 1949. One of the novels, Dragon's Teeth (1942), a study of the rise of Nazism, won the Pulitzer Prize. Before his death on November 25, 1968, Sinclair had produced more than 90 books which netted at least $1 million, most of it contributed to socialist and reform causes. home in which he wrote The Jungle was declared a literary landmark in 2005. He gained additional fans and recognition when his book Oil! was adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson for the film There Will Be Blood in 2007. The film starred Daniel Day-Lewis and received two Oscars. Died November 25, 1968 At age 14, he attended the City College of New York and started selling children’s stories and humor pieces to magazines.
After graduating in 1897, he enrolled at Columbia University to continue his studies and, using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself.
he National Wholesale Liquor Dealer’s Association lobbied hard against all food and drug legislation and threatened to boycott those newspapers that supported it. They may have won the battle if Upton Sinclair’s novel. The Jungle, had not been published in 1906. In his reality-based novel, Sinclair depicted the extremes of american capitalism run amok. The book contained a section about a meat packing plant in which overworked and underpaid laborers were mistreated. It described spoiled and filthy meat being ground into sausage, along with insects and rodent parts.
inclair had intended the novel to be a plea for socialism, but The Junglequickly turned sentiments toward legislation that protected employees and consumers. An independent investigation by the Department of Agriculture supported Sinclair’s descriptions. Upon learning the results of the investigation, Roosevelt put pressure on the House to pass the Meat Inspection Act, which was signed into law on June 23, 1906. The act authorized federal inspectors to examine meat shipped interstate and gave them the authority to enforce set standards for slaughterhouses. This act was hailed as a significant advancement for the public
interest. Sandburg, Lippmann, and muckraking author, Upton Sinclair, ended up jailed while covering strikes. Until the early twentieth century, there was little legislation in place to prevent food adulteration or false claims about what a food or medicine could do. In 1820 the British chemist Frederick Accum (1769–1838) published his Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Methods of Detecting Them in both England and the United States. Accum’s revelations of what ingredients really went into many foods led to the first national food law in Britain, which was passed in 1860. he Jungle shocked readers with its vivid descriptions of filthy, rat-infested conditions, and it led to a governmental inquiry and a huge drop in meat sales. Anxious to improve the industry’s image, the government passed both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act on June 30, 1906. These laws marked an important point in the development of food legislation in America, for they initiated the inspection of factories, farms, and other food facilities. In 1938 the Pure Food and Drug Act was updated and renamed as the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In 1967 the Wholesome Meat Act, which updated and expanded the Meat Inspection Act, was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Sinclair also wrote several nonfiction books exposing what he saw as the corruption that capitalism created in various areas of American life. For example, The Brass Check(1920) deals with journalism, and The Goose-Step (1923) with higher education. Sinclair helped organize the American Civil Liberties Union and the League for Industrial Democracy. He ran unsuccessfully three times each for Congress and for governor of California. Upton Beall Sinclair was born on Sept. 20, 1878, in Baltimore. He died on Nov. 25, 1968.
The novel follows a family of immigrants from Lithuania working in a meatpacking factory, and as the novel progresses, the reader learns of the revolting conditions within the factories. Sinclair’s The Jungle illustrates the concept of Bitzer’s “Rhetorical Situation” and Emerson’s quote quite effectively. For instance, the horrendous safety and health conditions of the packing factories were the exigencies that Upton Sinclair was making clear to the reader. The rhetorical audience that Sinclair aimed to influence with his novel was Congress and the president, as both had to agree in order to establish health and safety bills to better the conditions within factories. Sinclair’s efforts did not go unnoticed as in 1906 both the Meat Inspection Act, and the Pure Food and Drug act were approved by both Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt (Cherny,
However, that was not the case. When The Jungle was presented to the public, readers were astonished by the disgusting and unsanitary state in which the meat was being processed in. The community was more concerned with the meat conditions than they were with the horrific conditions the workers were faced with. So while the popularity of Sinclair’s work was not his original intentions, it still accomplished stages of reform. It can be assumed that Roosevelts initial reluctance to accept Sinclair’s novel was in part, directly connected to his disbelief that the Federal government had become so disconnected and oblivious to American industry and the complete lack of Federal oversight. This “disconnect” did not last long as The Pure Food and Drug Act, as well as, the Meat Inspection Act were both directly set in to place mere months after Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle was published. This type of reform supported progressive philosophy by preventing corporate owners from remaining above government regulation and started a trend in the way government regulators began to deal with corporate monopolies and trusts. The Jungle, along with other “muckrakers” began a series of Federal oversight reforms and regulatory guidance that soon began to take hold in other industries. Big industry would soon realize that they were not above the
Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description
In 1906, Upton Sinclair's Book The Jungle was published in book form; it had previously been published as a newspaper serial in 1905. Few works of literature have changed history in the United States so much as The Jungle did when it was published. It has been said that the book led to the direct passage of the "Pure Food and Drug Act" of 1906 (Dickstein) and that it lead to a decades long decline in meat consumption is the United States.
In Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” he exposes corruption in business and government and its disastrous effects on a family from Lithuania. The novel follows immigrant Jurgis Rudkus as he struggles against the slow ANNIHILATION of his family and is REBORN after discovering that socialism as a cure away to all capitalism’s problems. The Jungle is an example of protest literature because it exposes in a muckraking style the DANGEROUS, INHUMAINE conditions that workers lived and worked in, corruption in business and politics and the unsanitary meat that was sold.
In the world of economic competition that we live in today, many thrive and many are left to dig through trashcans. It has been a constant struggle throughout the modern history of society. One widely prescribed example of this struggle is Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel, The Jungle. The Jungle takes the reader along on a journey with a group of recent Lithuanian immigrants to America. As well as a physical journey, this is a journey into a new world for them. They have come to America, where in the early twentieth century it was said that any man willing to work an honest day would make a living and could support his family. It is an ideal that all Americans are familiar with- one of the foundations that got American society where it is today. However, while telling this story, Upton Sinclair engages the reader in a symbolic and metaphorical war against capitalism. Sinclair's contempt for capitalist society is present throughout the novel, from cover to cover, personified in the eagerness of Jurgis to work, the constant struggle for survival of the workers of Packingtown, the corruption of "the man" at all levels of society, and in many other ways.
The beginning of Meat Inspection Act seemed to be at 1904, after “The Jungle” of Sinclair published. In fact, it started twenty years earlier, the regular law, used to satisfy Europe, the largest meat export market, but in 1865 Congress passed an act to prevent the importation of diseased cattle and pigs. Because of disease, European like Italian, French, and English restricted or banned the importation meat, and they turned to another supplier. Some bills were introduced but they failed to gather sufficient support. May 1884, Bureau of Animal Industry was established, it was doing good job in fighting Europe restrictions, helping the packers, but not helping the domestic consumers. March 1891, the first major meat inspection law was passed; some country removed the prohibitions on importing American pork. It distressed the European packing industry as well. So, they imposed more standards. Government had to do more action; major percent meat slaughtered was inspected. Some of companies exploited the law, but most of them, especially big companies agreed with the committee in 1902. In 1904, Smith, who was a great information aid to Sinclair, published a series of articles in The Lancet...
The people who read it were so appalled by the disgusting filth, and the actual ingredients of the processed meat. The book provided the final drive for way for the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act and truth in labeling all passed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Also in the story, Sinclair concerns the readers with the abuse of immigrant workers, both men and women. This is partially why he uses the story of the man moving from Lithuania to America.
These were only some of many examples in The Jungle about deceit and corruption exhibited in the meat packing industry. Nonetheless, plants had government inspectors to check for tubercular animals, but Sinclair explains that these inspectors were usually the kind of people who would be easily distracted by those passing, and would not regret missing dozens of other animals. Therefore, people’s faith in those government inspectors had been betrayed, and their health needs were relentlessly ignored. However, Sinclair’s exposing of the scheming meat packing industry increased the awareness of such practices occurring daily.
Although an investigation of the Bureau of Animal Industry, which provided the inspectors of the packaging plants, was ongoing, Roosevelt felt the need to have unbiased investigators look into the matter. Roosevelt and Agriculture Secretary James Wilson “asked Commissioner of Labor Charles P. Neill and New York...
One the key pieces of legislation that was a prime example of the progressive era, was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. This law came about due to muckraking, and also because of public and political interests. Muckraking, such as Upton Sinclair’s piece, “The Jungle”, helped in the timing of the adoption of this legislature. This piece of legislature, allowed for the regulation of processed food items in United States food markets. The Pure Food and Drug Act was assigned to the Department of Agriculture under the Bureau of Chemistry (Law, 2004).
The Jungle caused such an outcry that President Roosevelt tried to mandate government enforcement of sanitary and health standards in the food industry. After Congress wouldn’t pass a meat inspection bill, Roosevelt released the findings of the Neill-Reynolds report. The Neill-Reynolds’s report found that the meat packing industry was as horrendous as Sinclair claime...
... government inspection of meat products. The Pure Food and Drug act also passed after the Meat inspection Act of 1906. The packers denied the charges and opposed the bills to no avail. These bills protected the publics right to safe sanitary meat.
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.