The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written in 1905 in an attempt to expose the plight of the

workers of Chicago's Packingtown and elsewhere. Sinclair was sent to Chicago to report

the conditions. What he found and wrote about caused much disgust, followed by much

reform. This novel has been deemed as one of the most influential books of the twentieth

century.

Upon reading The Jungle and learning how their meat was being produced, many

Americans found meat repulsive and even temporarily discontinued consuming it. "Meat

would be stored in great piles in rooms ... and thousands of rats would race about on it ...

These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they

would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together" (135).

Descriptions like this made an entire country lose its appetite.

This novel also caused a revolution in the meat industry. Roosevelt, upon reading

Sinclair's work, appointed a special investigating commission to see if Sinclair's claims

were true (VI). Disturbed by the findings of the commission, Congress passed the Meat

Inspection Act in 1906 requiring meat shipped across state lines be inspected by the

federal government in all stages of its production. It also helped with the passage of the

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prevents the mislabeling and adulteration of

foods and drugs (V).

Despite its efforts on the nation's appetite and food production laws, Sinclair's

goal was to stimulate reform of the lives of wage slaves, which he succeeded in doing only

on a small scale. He once said, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the

stomach" (VI). Whatever his goal was, his novel still became one of the most influential

novels of this century.