The Jungle (1906) is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago's Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, complete absence of social security, scandalous living and working conditions, and generally utter hopelessness prevalent among the have-nots, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of the haves. The sad state of turn-of-the-century labor is placed front and center for the American public to see suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American "wage slavery". The novel is also an important example of the "muckraking" tradition begun by journalists such as Jacob Riis. Sinclair wanted to show how the mainstream parties of American politics, already being tied into the industrial-capitalist machine, offered little means for progressive change. As such the book is deeply supportive of values and criticisms held by Communism, a movement still in its infancy at the time. Upton Sinclair came to Chicago with the intent of writing this novel; he'd been given a stipend by the socialist newspaper The Appeal to Reason. Upon his arrival in the lobby of the Chicago Transit House, a hotel near the stockyards, he was quoted as saying, "Hello! I'm Upton Sinclair, and I'm here to write the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Labor Movement!" (Arthur, 43). He rented living quarters and immediately immersed himself in the city by walking its streets, talking to its people, and taking pictures. One Sunday afternoon, he fell in with a group of Lithuanian immigrants traveling from a wedding to the party that was to follow; he was welcomed to the festivities and spent the evening there dancing the night away - "Behold, there was the opening scene of my story, a gift from the gods."
   The novel was first published in serial form in 1906 by The Appeal to Reason; "after five rejections", its first edition as a novel was published by Doubleday, Page & Company on February 28,1906, and it became an immediate bestseller. Their efforts, coupled with the public outcry, led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration.
   Although the meat packers were lobbying the government for legislation, they were actually opposed to having federal regulation of their products. Sinclair and President Theodore Roosevelt were both integral in the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Roosevelt was sent multiple copies of The Jungle, including one by Sinclair himself, prompting curiosity about the matter of meat inspection, but not much else. After much persuasion from Sinclair as to the seriousness of the situation, Roosevelt agreed to send two men to investigate Sinclair's claims. The men the president chose, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds, had both done investigative work for Roosevelt before, and were thought trustworthy. Sinclair really wanted Roosevelt to send his inspectors into the factories so they could see how poorly the workers were being treated; he wanted the nation to become better educated on the aforementioned issue of "wage slavery". Instead, what he got was tunnel vision reports from Neill and Reynolds. Instead of the poor conditions and inhumane treatment of the workers, they chose to focus their reports on only the cleanliness, or lack thereof, in these packing factories.
   Even though the meat packers had forewarning and time to clean up, the conditions Neill and Reynolds observed were described as "revolting;" the only claim left unsubstantiated by the report was the sensational claim that workers who had fallen into the giant lard vats were left and sold as lard. Roosevelt was so concerned about the impact of Neill and Reynold's report on western stock growers and European meat importers that he didn't release the findings for publication. Instead, he helped the issue along by dropping hints of what was in the report, alluding to disgusting conditions and inadequate inspection measures. This pressure was adequate, although the bill that was finally passed didn't include dating cans of meat or charging the packers for inspection costs. Sinclair actually rejected this legislation, seeing it as an unjustified boon to large meat packers partially because the U.S. treasury had to bear the costs of inspection at $3,000,000 a year. He famously noted the limited effect of his book (which led to meat packing regulations, but not to reform of the wages and living conditions of its workers) by stating, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
   In 1914 the All Star Features Corp. produced the silent film 'The Jungle' based on Sinclair's book.

Plot summary

Jungle as metaphor

Footnotes

• Young, James Harvey, "The Pig That Fell into the Privy: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Meat Inspection Amendments of 1906," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 59, 1985, 467-80.
• Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York: Random House, 2006.
• In The Brass Check, Sinclair relates that the New York Herald commissioned a follow-up story, "Packingtown a Year Later." The reporters spent two months undercover and found conditions worse than ever; the Herald's publisher killed the story before publication.

External results