Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore on September 20, 1878. He began writing at a very young age and began making money off of his works at around 15. His immediate family was extremely poor; however he often spent long periods of time living with his wealthy grandparents. Through his experience with the two extremes of the social spectrum Sinclair developed certain morals and values that led him to become a socialist. Sinclair's greatest heroes were Jesus Christ and Percy Bysshe Shelley (Simkin). Upton Sinclair was a very successful student and funded his way through college by writing articles for various newspapers and magazines. By the time he was 17, Sinclair was earning enough money to support his parents and get his own apartment. His greatest goal in life was, from an early age, to bring a solution to the world's uneven distribution of wealth.
In 1901, Sinclair published his first novel, Springtime and Harvest. This was a romance novel about young, poor lovers. He followed this novel with The Journal of Arthur Stirling, Prince Hagen, Manassas, and A Captain of Industry. These novels were primarily centered on the stark contrast between the poverty-stricken and the extremely wealthy upper class. To Sinclair's dismay, these novels all sold badly which meant, of course, that Sinclair was not getting his message to the masses (Bloodworth).
Sinclair drew inspiration from other great writers of that era. The works of writers such as Robert Blatchford and Frank Norris pushed him to become a socialist. No other writer, however, inspired Sinclair as much as Jack London, who wrote The People of the Abyss in 1903. This novel was about London's own first hand account of living undercover in the slums of the east end of London. Sinclair saw this novel and felt obligated to continue exposing, as Jacob Riis put it, “how the other half lives”. He did this by writing his most famous novel, The Jungle.
The Jungle was published in 1906 as a story about two Lithuanians who come to America seeking the American dream. They take up residence in an overcrowded and run-down boarding house near a city called Packingtown. This is an example of a so-called “company town” in that it is composed of workers that all labor for one company or industry. The industry that accommodates Packingtown is what would be expected, meat packing. Packingtown is different, whoever, in that it encompasses all steps of producing what we would call store-bought meat. This is an example of vertical integration, in the sense that the company controls every step from the slaughtering of animals directly to the canning, packaging, and shipping of these meats. Needless to say, one who spends a long period in Packingtown would get to see exactly how processed meat goes from beginning to end. This means that any company secrets, that is, anything that the company would not like the public to know about their product, are exposed to the laborers who work there. This is exactly how Jurgis, the protagonist of the story, learns of the evils of society and, like Sinclair himself, devotes himself to the socialist cause. The novel is famous for not only being a shocking tale of poverty, but also for displaying how millions of immigrants were living at that time (Sinclair).
Sinclair's objectives in writing this book were simple; to recruit people to join the socialist cause and to reach ever closer to his goal of bridging the immense gap of social disunion. His success, however, was not in getting better lives and working conditions for the poor, but more regulations on meatpacking. Sinclair's vivid descriptions of how leftover entrails and spoiled meats were passed off as “deviled ham” and sausage prompted the American government to pass new laws and regulations concerning the packing of meat. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 encompassed all these laws and regulations. This act included inspecting the animal before it was slaughtered, slaughtering animals in a “humane” way, and then multiple inspections on each carcass at every step. The other act passed was the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the still running Food and Drug Administration. This act was effectively an act which gave specific health regulations for all food and drugs, not just meat. These successes, although helpful the U.S. as a nation, were not at all what Sinclair had intended The Jungle to do (United States Department of Agriculture; U.S. Food and Drug Administration).
All the attention Upton got from writing this novel was not positive, however. He, among other journalists and writers of his time, were labeled as “muckrakers” by none other than President Theodore Roosevelt himself. This basically meant that Sinclair, along with the others, were digging up the deepest and most appalling secrets of the industrial world, and presenting them in a descriptive and blunt manner. Upton was one of the best at using this writing style, in which he described in gruesome detail of the horrors that constituted the meatpacking industry. Although these “muckrakers” helped pass many laws in favor of the poor and also in regulation of industry, Teddy Roosevelt saw them as a nuisance and potential threat to industrial America. Theodore himself met with Sinclair after reading his novel and said that "radical action must be taken to do away with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist"(Simkin).
