JUNGLE, THE,

JUNGLE, THE, Upton Beall Sinclair's novel of labor exploitation in Chicago's meatpacking industry, advanced groundbreaking food and drug legislation rather than the anticapitalist outcry the author anticipated. A member of the Socialist Party of America, in 1904 Sinclair accepted a $500 commission from the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write a fiction series comparing northern "wage slavery" to the South's antebellum slave system. Published in book form in 1906, The Jungle interpreted the hard-ships of ethnic workers as an odyssey toward socialist re-birth. Protagonist Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant to Packingtown, at first gladly accepts meatpacking employment. He endures long workdays in miserable conditions; loses his job in defense of his wife, whom a fore-man has seduced; is bereaved of his home, wife, and family; and, finally, after months of aimless wandering, discovers new dignity and purpose in the socialist movement. Sinclair's novel was the product of nearly two months' research in Packingtown, the laboring community adjacent to Chicago's stockyards.

However, popular reaction to the best-seller fell short of his hopes: as Sinclair famously observed, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach." Shocked at the unhygienic processing methods and product misrepresentation portrayed in the novel, consumers shunned dressed meat, while President Theodore Roosevelt launched an inquiry into packing house sanitation. The findings, which confirmed Sinclair's account, prompted Congress to pass both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

Since the Progressive Era, scholars have valued The Jungle as a document of America's industrial and immigrant experience. Sinclair's apt descriptions of the stockyards and workday retain their emotional impact, and his celebrated portrayal of an ethnic wedding in Packingtown offers a rare glimpse of community ritual and interactions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bloodworth, William A., Jr. Upton Sinclair. Boston: Twayne, 1977.

Harris, Leon. Upton Sinclair, American Rebel. New York: Crowell, 1975.

Yoder, Jon A. Upton Sinclair. New York: Ungar, 1975.

Rae SikulaBielakowski

See alsoMeatpacking ; andvol. 9:Conditions in Meatpacking Plants .

Jungle, The (1906).Published in 1906, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle remains one of the most influential novels in American political and social history. Sinclair was a socialist writer who had just published a book on chattel slavery and an article on the meatpackers' failed 1904 strike for the socialist periodical Appeal to Reason. Invited by the journal's editor, Fred Warren, to do another exposé, this time of wage slavery, Sinclair in the autumn of 1904 lived for seven weeks in Chicago's meatpacking district, investigating both the plants and the adjoining workers' residences.

Based on this research, Sinclair wrote a graphic description of conditions encountered by a fictional family of Lithuanian immigrants. Jurgis Rudkus, the protagonist, is optimistic that he will succeed in America because of his physical strength and his work ethic. Instead, the industrial order grinds down not only Jurgis but every member of his family, several of whom die or suffer other terrible fates.

While Sinclair's goal was to expose the evils of industrial capitalism and demonstrate the need for socialism, the public's reaction was very different. At a time when middle‐class consumers were being taught to trust national name brands as symbols of purity and quality, Sinclair offered a very different message. The Jungle portrayed an industry in which monopolistic corporations sold diseased and damaged meat and invested in advertising rather than in pure and safe products. In the resulting uproar, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. Commented a disappointed Sinclair: “I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Later critics attacked the pessimism of the book, especially Sinclair's failure to recognize the resourcefulness of immigrant workers.
See also Immigration; Industrialization; Meatpacking and Meat Processing Industry; Progressive Era.

Bibliography

James Barrett , introduction to The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, 1988, pp. xi–xxxii.

Robert A. Slayton

Jungle, The, novel by Upton Sinclair, published in 1906. This exposé of the Chicago meat‐packing industry prompted the investigation by Roosevelt and the federal government that culminated in the pure‐food legislation of 1906.

Jurgis Rudkus, a Slav immigrant, marries frail Ona Lukoszaite and seeks security and happiness as a workman in the Chicago stockyards. Foremen abuse him, real‐estate sharks filch his meager savings, and at every turn he is beset by misfortunes arising from the poverty, brutality, and disease that are the conditions of his employment. At the birth of a second child, amid direst want, Ona dies. Jurgis's morale temporarily disintegrates and he becomes successively a tramp, common thief, highwayman, and pawn of a corrupt politician. Then, having thought his way through this morass of chicanery and brutality, and despairing of the individual's capacity to face modern society alone, he arrives at a belief in socialism.