THE JUNGLE

By Upton Sinclair

BACKGROUND

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1878

Sinclair enrolled in the City College of New York at 14, & began writing dime store novels (cheap, melodramatic paperback - popular

1850-1920) at age 15.

His family was extremely poor; however, Upton spent short periods of his life with his wealthy grandparents. He later claimed that witnessing those extremes turned him into a socialist.

By his death in 1968 he had written more than 90 books.

He claimed in 1962”You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it.”

Change it he did!

Upton Sinclair is best remembered for his novel The Jungle published in 1906.

He wrote it to expose his research of the Chicago meatpacking industry.

His novel directly led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

“Ultimately, it would be Sinclair’s political

convictions that would lead to his first literary

success and the one for which he is most known.

The contempt he had developed for the upper

class as a youth had led Sinclair to socialism in

1903, and in 1904 he was sent to Chicago by the

socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write an

exposé on the mistreatment of workers in the

meatpacking industry. After spending several

weeks conducting undercover research on his

subject matter, Sinclair threw himself into the

manuscript that would become The Jungle.”

-Bio.

THE NOVEL

Story about Jurgis(pronounced Yoorghis) Rudkis, a Lithuanian immigrant coming to America with high hopes of wealth, freedom, and opportunities.

Instead he discovered the astonishing truth about “Packingtown” the busy, filthy stockyards of Chicago.

EXCERPTS …and “California

hams,” which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out…whose skins were so heavy and course that no one would buy them…-That is until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled “head cheese”!

It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyer, mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that was ever in a ham could make any difference …..

EXCERPTS

There would be meat that had tumbled out onto the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.

This is no fairy story and no joke: the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one- ….there were things …which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.

Meat Grinders

EXCERPTS

It was too dark in those storage piles….,but a man could run his hands over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.

…these rats were a nuisance, and the packers would put out poisoned bread….they would die, and then the rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers. (funnel-shaped cylinder to grind meat and other ingredients)

There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage.

Link to Pure Food & Drug act

WHAT DO YOU THINK ? TABLE PARTNER…GO!

1. Why would the meat packing company use spoiled meat in their products?

2. Why do you think the workers generally did not object to the way the meat was processed?

3. What were some of the reasons the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 passed so quickly?

4.”You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it.” Upton Sinclair, 1962

What is the meaning of this quote?