The Jungle

THE JUNGLE

“I AIMED AT THE PUBLIC'S HEART, AND BY ACCIDENT

 I HIT IT IN THE STOMACH."  

​​​​​​​-Upton Sinclair

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Meatpackers seen at the stockyards circa 1904. Chicago History Museum.


Upton Sinclair, With Two Of Many Books. Everett Collection.

SINCLAIR: Life & Career

Upton Sinclair (Sept. 20, 1878 – Nov. 25, 1968) was an American novelist of social protest and political matters, popularly known for his 1906 "The Jungle."

The Jungle

Sinclair had composed The Jungle to reveal the appalling conditions within the meat-packing industry. His description of “diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat” had the public astounded, and ultimately became a catalyst for new federal food safety laws in the United States.

"This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat will be shoveled into carts and the man who did the
​​​​​​​shoveling will not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one."

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-Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle:(1906).

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. 1906. FDA.


Factories were plastered with unsanitary elements, dangerous machinery, and even chemicals within certain food products. 

"Making link sausages--machines stuff 10 ft. per second. Swift & Co.'s

House, Chicago, U.S.A." Library Of Congress.

How "The Jungle" Changed American Food | The Poison Squad. Feb 13, 2020. PBS Ⓒ.

“How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned
​​​​​​​peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?”

​​​​​​​
-Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle:(1906).

"When people are starving and they have anything with a price, I guess you ought to sell it, I say.
I guess you realize it now when it's too late."


-Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle:(1906). Chapter 27, pg. 348
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Sinclair had voiced the corrupt truth of work conditions in factories within The Jungle as

well. He continued to preach for reformed labor circumstances thereafter.

Upton Sinclair, Jr., arrested on April 29, 1914 for protesting conditions of Colorado coal miners. New York City.

"...there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out
of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale
water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat,
​​​​​​​and sent out to the public’s breakfast."


​​​​​​​-Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle:(1906).
​​​​​​​


Muckrakers like Upton Sinclair presented the conflict of potentially dangerous food manufacturing practices to America's attention, then declaring the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

 Upton Sinclair to President Theodore Roosevelt, praising the presence of federal inspectors in factories.

3/10/1906; Letters Received, 1893-1906. Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture.