The Jungle

This novel is the original and uncensored edition written approzimately in 1904. This cover was used in 1906 with the publication of the first commercial edition – less chapters and a less brutal description of both the working conditions and the production of miserable meat. As a muckraker, Upton Sinclair had no idea that this work of fiction would inlame the public and the politicians to the degree that it did. The story revolves around an immigrant worker and his family laboring in the slaughterhouses of Chicago and the iunhuman, slave like working conditions. It tells of the filthy and contaminated meat products produced in these disgusting factories. President Teddy Roosevelt read the book and immediately dispatched investigators to the heartland of America and as a result the Pure Food and Drug Act was enacted. This novel laid more groundwork for the continuing labor struggles of the turn-of-the-20th century. Jack London said, “Here it is at last! What “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for black slaves. “The Jungle” has a large chance to do for the white slaves of today. It is brutal with life. It is written of sweat and blood and groans and tears. It depicts not what man ought to be, but what man is compelled to be, in this our world in the twentieth century. It depicts not what our country ought to be, or what is seems to be in the fancies of Fourth of July spellbinders – the home of liberty and equality, of opportunity – it depicts what our country really is, the home of oppression and injustice, a nightmare of misery, and inferno of suffering, a human hell, a jungle of wild beast.” “The Jungle” is Sinclair’s most famous novel. He went on to write “Oil” which the 2007 award winning movie”There Will Be Blood” is adapted from and many other novels including the Pulitzer Prize winner “Dragon’s Teeth.” Upton Sinclair, along with Jack London are truly the most important political fiction writers in American History. A Collector’s Edition.