Muckraker Revolution

Upton Sinclair was the author of a book called "The Jungle". His book was designed to bring light to the conditions of those who canned meat in Chicago, but his foul descriptions of the unsanitary food, and the vile slaughterhouses resonated with his readers much more.

Upton Sinclair is most known for his criticisms of the meat packaging industry in his book The Jungle. For close to 2 months, Sinclair worked in a Chicago meat package plant in order to expose the hidden truths of the industry. This was one of the first examples of a journalist immersing themselves in the material coved in

Upton Sinclair published his novel, The Jungle, in 1906 using elements of naturalistic fiction, with the idea that ordinary people cannot overcome the system, to convey his political agenda. He did this by writing about a fictional family that comes to Chicago from Lithuania with the promise of guaranteed work where they “might earn three roubles a day” and be “rich m[en] in the bargain” (Sinclair 24-25). He used the meatpacking industry to show the extreme affects a large scale industry can have on an individual and on a family and to draw sympathy from the reader for typical families in capitalist America, choosing to focus on the immigrant experience. The Jungle, however, not only describes the horrific working conditions and the failures

Sinclair’s poetic imagery concerning the dead animals was to represent the fate of the workers, and instead made the reader sick to their stomach (Wilson). This misinterpretation, however, was powerful force which demanded an immediate change. The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act passed in 1906, and led to the development of the federal Food and Drug Administration (Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle). With the publication of The Jungle, Sinclair became internationally famous and even more involved in social issues. He went on to muckrake the steel and glass-making industry as well as continuing to lobby for meatpacking

the growing concern about the quality of food in America the government took action to

There were no toilets, so human and rat excrement wound up in the meat, along with the rats themselves. These unsanitary details moved readers far more than the injustices inflicted on the workers. Other examples include the rechurning of rancid butter, the cutting of ice from polluted water and the doctoring of milk with formaldehyde. The average consumer was shocked to know that the “pure beef” was in fact contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Imagine

Upton Sinclair was a famous writer who gained the title of being a “muckraker,” a term that Theodore Roosevelt created to refer to a journalist who was dedicated to divulging the evils of industrialization. Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, got a lot of people thinking about the meat processing industry and how sanitary

Due to execrable food preparation prior to June 30, 1906, the United States established the Pure Food and Drug Act to ban the preparation, sale, and shipment of contaminated food and drugs. The act also banned mis-labelling and false claims of food and drugs. On June 30, 1906, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was also established to ensure the safety of the goods and the safety of the consumer.

The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act are congressional acts that were signed by President Teddy Roosevelt on June 30, 1906 in an effort to prevent the adulteration and misbranding of products distributed. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, America was in the process of transforming from an agrarian society to an industrial economy which became known as the Progressive Era. During this period, meatpacking industries and food corporations were run by corrupt business owners who overworked employees in unsanitary conditions, and had no regulation of how the food was processed. As a result of the high demand for food in the United States, food industries were under the impression of mass producing goods to create

     While the works of Upton Sinclair are not widely read today because of their primacy of social change rather than aesthetic pleasure, works like The Jungle are important to understand in relation to the society that produced them.  Sinclair was considered a part of the muckraking era, an era when social critics observed all that was wrong and corrupt in business and politics and responded against it.  The Jungle was written primarily as a harsh indictment of wage slavery, but its vivid depictions of the deplorable lack of sanitation involved in the meatpacking industry in Chicago resulted in public outrage to the point where Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection

During the late 1800s rat droppings, assortments of putrid items,and chemicals were found in meats like, hams, sausages, and cans of meat. A man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of dried dung of rats. Upton Sinclair was a muckraker who wrote, “The Jungle”, which exposes the

The Jungle is a novel that focuses on a family of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life. The novel was written by Upton Sinclair, who went into the Chicago stockyards to investigate what life was like for the people who worked there. The book was originally written with the intent of showing Socialism as a better option than Capitalism for the society. However, the details of the story ended up launching a government investigation of the meat packing plants, and ultimately regulation of food products. It gave an informative view of what life was like in America at the time. Important topics like immigration, working conditions and sanitation issues of the time were all addressed well in the novel.

When Upton Sinclair spoke about his book, The Jungle, he said "I aimed at the public 's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." (v). Never a truer word was spoken. The Jungle is the story of an immigrant family who arrived in Chicago looking for a better life only to suffer harsh living conditions as well as dangerous working conditions in the meat packing factory, where they were employed. The Jungle also brought attention to the unsanitary practices under which the meat was processed for human consumption. Finally, The Jungle offered socialism as the cure to the suffering of the workers who were employed in the factories. Sinclair, a socialist, credited many of the terrible conditions under which the immigrants lived and

5. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle exposed filthy conditions in meat packing plants. The public was outraged and the government responded. In 1992 ABC-News did a similar story, this time in a supermarket.

Books are very important to the development of an individual’s mind. They make understanding new information much easier. Reading is also important to an individual as it helps them to sort out relevant information. By reading, a person can determine what they are interested in as they grow older. Books are, no doubt, a great resource. They are food for thought, and moreover, they console us in our sorrow and they make us forget about the worries of life. Over the past years, I have read many books that have definitely enriched my knowledge. But none of them have impressed me as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. To me this book is one of the finest books in the world. In fact this novel is so remarkable that it made history and changed the course of events. The Jungle’s excellent qualities have made it my favorite book.