The Jungle
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It
was written about the comrption of the American meatpacking industry during the early
20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the peveg1y, absence of social programs,
unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working
class, which is contrasted with the deeply rooted con'uption on the part of those in power.
The sad state of turn-of-the-century labor is placed front and center for the American
public to see, suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American
"wage slavery".H The novel is also an important example of the "muckrakinq" tradition
begun by iournalists such as Jacob Riis. Sinclair wanted to persuade his readers that the
mainstream American political parties offered little means for progressive change.
Upton Sinclair came to Chicaeo with the intent of writing The Jangle; he had been given
a stipend by the socialist newspaper The Appeal to Reason Upon his arrival in the lobby
of the Chicago Transit House, a hotel near the stockyards, he was quoted as saying,
"Hello! I'm Upton Sinclair, and I'm here to write the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Labor
Movement!" (Arthur,43). He rented living quarters and immediately immersed himself
in the city by walking its streets, talking to its people, and taking pictures. One Sunday
afternoon, he worked his way into a group of Lithuanian immigrants getting together for
a wedding party - "Behold, there was the opening scene of my story, a gift from the
gods". He was welcomed to the festivities and stayed until two o'clock in the morning.g
The novel was first published in serial form
in 1906. "After five rejections", its first
published
edition as a novel was
by Doubleday, Page & Company on February 28,1906,
and it became an immediate bestseller.u It has been in print ever since.
Upton Sinclair originally intended to expose "the inferno of exploitation fof the typical
American factory worker at the turn of the 20th Century],"H but the reading public
instead fixated on food safety as the novel's most pressing issue. In fact, Sinclair bitterly
admitted his celebrity rose, "not because the public cared anything about the workers, but
simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef'H. Sinclair's account of
workers' falling into rendering tanks and being ground, along with animal parts, into
"Durham's Pure Leaf Lard", gripped public attention. The morbidity of the working
conditions, as well as the exploitation of children and women alike that Sinclair exposed
showed the com:ption taking place inside the meat packing factories. Foreign sales of
American meat fell by one-half. In order to calm public outrage and demonstrate the
cleanliness of their meat, the major meat packers lobbied the Federal government to pass
legislation paying for additional inspection and certification of meat packaged in the
United States. H Their efforts, coupled with the public outcry, led to the passage of the
Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the
Bureau of Chemistry that would become in 1930, the lrood and Drug Administration.
Although the meatpackers lobbied the government for legislation, they did not welcome
regulations. Sinclair and President Theodore Roosevelt were both integral to the passage
of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Roosevelt was sent
multiple copies of The Jungle, including one by Sinclair himself, prompting his curiosity
about meat inspection, but not much else. After much persuasion from Sinclair as to the
seriousness of the situation, Roosevelt agreed to send two men to investigate Sinclair's
claims. The men the president chose, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds, had both
done investigative work for Roosevelt before, and were thought trustworthy. Sinclair
wanted Roosevelt to send his inspectors into the factories so they could see how poorly
the workers were being treated; he wanted the nation to become better educated on the
issue of "wage slavery". Instead of acknowledging the poor conditions and inhumane
treatment of the workers, the men reported only on the cleanliness, or lack thereof, in
these meat packing factories.
Even though the meat packers had forewaming and time to clean up, the conditions
and Reynolds observed were described as
Neill
"revolting". The only claim in Sinclair's work
which they failed to substantiate was that workers who had fallen into rendering vats
wereleftandsoldaslardM.Rooseveltwassoconcernedabouttheimiactof
Neill and Reynold's report on western stock growers and European meat importers that he
did not release the findings for publication. Instead, he helped the issue by dropping hints
from the report, alluding to disgusting conditions and inadequate inspection measures.
This pressure was adequate, although the bill that was finally passed did not include
dating cans of meat or charging the packers for inspection costs.l5J Sinclair rejected the
legislation, as he viewed it as an unjustified boon to large meat packers partially because
the U.S. was to bear the costs of inspection at $3,000,000 a year.ffi He famously noted
the limited effect of his book by stating, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I
hit it in the stomach."
Footnotes
l. ^ s a Young, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy," p. 467
2. ^ Upton Sinclair, "Is The Jungle true?", Even if only one tenth of it is, it is enough to
3.
make people feel sick.Z&e Independent,May 17, 1906 - as quoted and cited in: Giedrius
Subadius (2006), Upton Sinclair: The Lithuanian Jungle. Rodopi, ISBN 9042018798.
s4
Sullivan, Mark (1996). Our Times. New York: Scribner. p.222.[SBN 0-684-81573^
7.
4. I "Of Meat and Myth," Lawrence W. Reed, The Freeman, November 1994
5. I Young, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy," p.467-480
6. I Young, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy," p.477
7. ^ Upton Sinclair, "The Condemned-Meat Industry: A Reply to Mr. M. Cohn Armour",
Everybody's Magazine,
XIV, 1906, pp.612-613