“The Jungle,” By Upton Sinclair And It’s Effect On American Society During The 19th Century

5 Pages 1139 Words

One of the strongest impulses in late 19th century and early 20th century American literature was the attempt to rebuild urban society. Journalists aimed to direct the citizens’ attention to social, economic, and political injustices. They came to be known as muckrakers, after Theodore Roosevelt accused one of them of “raking up muck,” through his writing.(Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation.630) They were committed to exposing scandal, corruption, and injustice to the public. Upton Sinclair, a Socialist, and dedicated humanitarian, was one of them, and wrote The Jungle, the first of several novels aimed at exposing industrial ills, and calling for reform.

In 1904 Fred Warren, the editor of the socialist journal, “Appeal to Reason,” commissioned Sinclair to write a novel about immigrant workers in the Chicago meat packing houses. Julius Wayland, the owner of the journal provided Sinclair with a $500 advance, and after seven weeks in the stockyards researching, he wrote the novel, The Jungle. The Jungle was published serially in the “Appeal to Reason,” in 1905. In spite of the work's immense popularity, it was extremely difficult to get The Jungle published in book form. Publishers were unwilling to touch it without censoring the manuscript, although demands for back issues of the newspaper containing the novel ran high. Eventually
Doubleday, Page and Company published the book in 1906, after checking that the facts in it were true.

The public reaction to the book was not what
Sinclair expected. His main aim had been to highlight the plight of the workers and present Socialism as an
alternative to the ill’s of capitalism. However these
aspects were surpassed by the chaos over the unsanitary manufacturing practices in the meat industry. Sinclair states, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jupton.html)
Public rea...