The Jungle

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.” — Upton Sinclair, The Jungle The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. However, most readers were more concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, greatly contributing to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. Sinclair famously said of the public reaction “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.” Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. He first published the novel in serial form in 1905 in the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason and it was published as a book by Doubleday in 1906. Reception Upton Sinclair intended to expose “the inferno of exploitation [of the typical American factory worker at the turn of the 20th Century]”, but the reading public fixed on food safety as the novel’s most pressing issue. Sinclair admitted his celebrity arose “not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef”. Some critics have attributed this response to the characters, most of whom, including Rudkus, have unpleasant qualities. The last section, concerning a socialist rally Rudkus attended, was later disavowed by Sinclair. But his description of the meatpacking contamination captured readers’ attention. Sinclair’s account of workers falling into rendering tanks and being ground along with animal parts into “Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard” gripped the public. The poor working conditions, and exploitation of children and women along with men, were taken to expose the corruption in meat packing factories. The British politician Winston Churchill praised the book in a review.