SINCLAIR, UPTON BEALL

Upton Beall Sinclair was a famous American writer and essayist whose book The Jungle, an exposé of Chicago's meatpacking industry, shocked the nation and led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

Sinclair was born September 20, 1878, to a prominent but financially troubled family in Baltimore, Maryland. Sinclair's father was a liquor salesman who was also an alcoholic. His mother, a teetotaler, came from a wealthy background. In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to New York. Sinclair's father sold hats but spent his earnings on alcohol. Sinclair, who became a teetotaler like his mother, moved between two different financial worlds—the relative life of poverty with his father and mother and the affluence he experienced when visiting his mother's well-to-do parents. He later stated that experiencing the two extremes helped make him a socialist.

Sinclair began to write "dime novels" (books of pulp fiction that sold for 10 cents) when he was a teenager. At age 14, he attended New York City College, financing his education by writing for newspapers and magazines. In 1897, Sinclair enrolled at Columbia University. He continued to write prodigiously, a habit that became lifelong. By the time he died, Sinclair had published close to one hundred books.

In 1901, Sinclair released his first book, Springtime and Harvest, later republished as King Midas. Around the same time, he became involved in the socialist movement. He was an avid reader of socialist classics and Appeal to Reason, a socialist-populist journal. Socialists maintain that inequalities in the distribution of wealth are best solved by either direct state ownership of key industries or through regulation of private business. In 1905, Sinclair joined with authors Jack London and Florence Kelley and labor attorney clarence darrow to establish the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

During this period Sinclair also became interested in the works of such investigative journalists as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, who publicly exposed corruption in U.S. government and industry. This type of investigative reporting came to be known as "muckraking," thanks in part to Sinclair. In 1904, the editor of Appeal to Reason commissioned him to write a novel about the immigrants who worked in the meat packing industry. After seven weeks of research, Sinclair produced his sixth book, The Jungle, a novel about a young Lithuanian immigrant who finds work in the stockyards of Chicago. Sinclair's frank portrayal of the unsanitary and miserable working conditions of those who labored in the meat packing industry, was serialized in 1905 where it began to create a furor.

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
—Upton Sinclair

Unable to find a publisher for his book, Sinclair, after six rejections, published the novel himself. He took out an ad in Appeal to Reason, and received 972 advance orders. When the publisher Doubleday heard the numbers, the company took on the book. The Jungle was published

in 1906 and immediately sold over 150,000 copies. Over the next few years the book was translated into 17 languages and became an international best-seller.

Horrified at the description of the filthy conditions in which the meat packers worked, and even more dismayed at the offal and other repellant ingredients that were part of the meats they were consuming, the American public demanded immediate and widespread reform. President theodore roosevelt met with Sinclair at the White House and launched an investigation into the practices of the meat packing industry. Although the beef industry and other producers of consumable products, including pharmaceutical companies, had vigorously fought federal regulation of their industries, Sinclair's revelations helped turn the tide.

Bowing to the swelling chorus of public indignation, Congress passed the pure food and drug act of 1906, which prohibited foreign and interstate commerce in adulterated or fraudulently labeled food and drugs. Under the new law, such products could be seized and destroyed and offenders faced fines and prison sentences. Congress also passed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, which attempted to regulate the inspection of the slaughtering and processing of animals sold for human consumption.

Sinclair put his newfound wealth into a cooperative living experiment he established in Englewood, New Jersey. When a fire destroyed the commune in 1907, Sinclair was financially unable to rebuild it. He followed The Jungle with a number of other muckraking novels, including King Coal (1917), Oil! (1927), and Boston (1928). None, however, achieved the same popularity.

Sinclair eventually moved to California where he became actively involved in politics. He ran unsuccessfully for public office on the Socialist ticket and organized a socialist reform movement known as End Poverty in California (EPIC). In 1934, he ran for governor of California on the Democratic ticket, but was defeated by Republican incumbent Frank Merriam.

Sinclair returned to writing in the 1940s, producing his famous Lanny Budd series, which is composed of 11 novels that deal with American politics from about 1913 until 1953. The third book in the series, Dragon's Teeth (1942), recounts the rise of Nazism. It received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1943, the only major literary award given to Sinclair.

In the 1950s, Sinclair moved to Arizona with his second wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, for health reasons. When Craig died in 1961, the two had been married almost 50 years. Sinclair remarried at the age of 83. He spent his later years writing and occasionally lecturing. In 1962, he released his autobiography. In 1967, a year before his death, Sinclair was invited to the White House by President lyndon johnson to witness the signing of the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, which expanded the earlier meat inspection act of 1906. In 1968, the socialist crusader, who proved that one man can bring about reform, died in his sleep on November 25, 1968, in Bound Brook, New Jersey.

further readings

Ivan, Scott. 1996. Upton Sinclair: The Forgotten Socialist. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America.

Mitchell, Greg. 1991. Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's E.P.I.C. Race for Governor of California. New York: Random House.

Sinclair, Upton [Beall] (1878–1968),born in Baltimore of a prominent but impoverished family, began writing dime novels at the age of 15 in order to pay his way through the College of the City of New York. While doing graduate work at Columbia, he wrote six novels, among them Springtime and Harvest (1901), retitled King Midas (1901); Prince Hagen (1903), a fantasy about U.S. high finance and politics; The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903), about an insufficiently appreciated young poet; and Manassas (1904), set in the Civil War. The tone of these early works was suggested by Sinclair himself, who said that Jesus, Hamlet, and Shelley shaped his thought, and that he was disillusioned when the world did not meet him with the love and trust with which he approached it. After participating in an investigation of the Chicago stockyards, he wrote The Jungle (1906), in which he first indicated his conversion to socialism. His earnings were later invested in his cooperative colony, The Helicon Home Colony at Englewood, N.J., and, after his removal to California (1915), in four unsuccessful campaigns for public office. In 1934 he united large sections of the unemployed and progressive elements in an EPIC (End Poverty in California) league, which captured the Democratic party machinery, nearly won him the governorship, and aided a follower to become Democratic governor in 1938.

Sinclair was a prolific writer, having published from 1901 to 1940 more than 100 works, ranging from pamphlets, social studies, boys' books, and studies in health, religion, and telepathy to novels, short stories, and plays. The most important of these include The Metropolis (1908), describing the morals of a society created by great fortunes; King Coal (1917); The Profits of Religion (1918), contending that organized religion is a capitalist tool in teaching the poor that God has allotted them their positions; Jimmie Higgins (1919), a pacifist novel; The Brass Check (1919); 100%, the Story of a Patriot (1920); They Call Me Carpenter (1922), a rich man's dream of a meeting with Christ; The Goose‐Step (1923), a study of higher education in the U.S.; The Goslings (1924), about American schools; Oil! (1927); Boston (1928); Mountain City (1930), about a man dedicated to becoming a tycoon; The Wet Parade (1931), a fictive plea for prohibition of liquor; American Outpost (1932), an autobiography; Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox (1933), a study of finance in motion pictures; and The Flivver King (1937), a study of the automobile industry.

World's End (1940) is the first of a series of novels in which Lanny Budd, illegitimate son of a munitions manufacturer and a famous beauty, travels throughout the world, meets famous people, and is a figure in international intrigues and political maneuvers. That novel covers the years 1913–19; Between Two Worlds (1941) proceeds from the Versailles Treaty to the stock market crash of 1929; Dragon's Teeth (1942, Pulitzer Prize) covers 1930–34; Wide Is the Gate (1943) is concerned with anti‐Nazi activities from the French Popular Front through part of the Spanish Civil War; Presidential Agent (1944) has Lanny become confidential agent of President Roosevelt, and carries the narrative to Munich in 1938; Dragon Harvest (1945) continues to the fall of Paris; A World To Win (1946) and Presidential Mission (1947) deal with events on the Continent, in North Africa, and the Orient, from 1940 to 1943; One Clear Call (1948) deals with the war to the time of Roosevelt's fourth term; O Shepherd, Speak! (1949) describes the war's end and Lanny's peace plans. The Return of Lanny Budd (1953), a sequel to the series of ten novels, warns against the dangers of Soviet Russia's policies.

Even in his eightieth year Sinclair published a novel, It Happened to Didymus (1958), about the modern reincarnation of an apostle. In My Lifetime in Letters (1960) he sampled the volu‐minous correspondence he received over the years, and he added to his memoirs with an Auto‐biography (1962). Sinclair's pseudonyms included Clarke Fitch, Frederick Garrison, and Arthur Stirling.

Upton Beale Sinclair Jr.

Upton Beale Sinclair, Jr. (1878-1968), American novelist and political writer, was one of the most influential muckraking writers of the 1900s. He continued to write and speak for reform for many years.

Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 20, 1878. His father, struggling against poverty and liquor, moved the family to New York City when Upton was 10. At 14 Upton entered the College of the City of New York. He graduated in 1897 and went to Columbia University to study law. Through these years he supported himself by writing for adventure-story magazines.

Sinclair moved to Quebec in 1900. His first novel, Springtime and Harvest (1901), was a modest success. Three more novels in the next 4 years failed to provide even a bare living. In 1906, however, The Jungle, exposing unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions in the packing houses of Chicago, scored a huge success. The novel's protest about the lot of laborers and the socialist solutions it proposed did not have much immediate effect, but its exposé caused a public outcry. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Sinclair to discuss packing-house conditions, and a congressional investigation led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Law.

Sinclair divorced his first wife in 1912. The autobiographical novel Love's Pilgrimage (1911) treats his marriage and the birth of his child with a frankness which shocked some reviewers. He married Mary Craig in 1913. Sylvia and Sylvia's Marriage, a massive two-part story, called for sexual enlightenment. King Coal (1917), based on a coal strike of 1914-1915, returned to labor protest and socialistic polemic. Oil! (1927) dealt with dishonesty in Warren G. Harding's administration. Boston (1928), a novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, unearthed much new material and demonstrated the constructive research that always lay beneath Sinclair's protest writings.

Sinclair became a member of the Socialist party in 1902 and was Socialist candidate for Congress from New Jersey in 1906. In 1917 he left the party to support President Woodrow Wilson. He returned to the Socialist camp when Wilson supported Allied intervention in the Soviet Union. In California he stood for Congress on the Socialist ticket (1920), for the Senate (1922), and for governor (1926 and 1930). In 1933, persuaded to campaign seriously for governor, he called his program "End Poverty in California." His cogent presentation of Socialist ideas won him the Democratic nomination, but millions of dollars and a campaign based on falsehood and fear defeated him in the election.

World's End (1940) launched Sinclair's 11-volume novel series attempting to give an insider's view of American government between 1913 and 1949. One of the novels, Dragon's Teeth (1942), a study of the rise of Nazism, won the Pulitzer Prize. Before his death on Nov. 25, 1968, Sinclair had produced more than 90 books which netted at least $1 million, most of it contributed to socialist and reform causes.

Further Reading

Sinclair's My Lifetime in Letters (1960) and The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (1962) are revealing, if not entirely reliable. Sinclair's work is discussed appreciatively in Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature (1942). A brief essay and a rare reprint of the "End Poverty in California" program are in Arthur M. Weinberg, Passport to Utopia: Great Panaceas in American History (1968). □

Sinclair, Upton (1878–1968), muckraking author, social activist.Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1897, briefly attended graduate school at Columbia, and joined the Socialist party in 1902. In 1905, with the novelist Jack London, he helped found the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. A brief trip to Chicago led to the novel on which his reputation largely rests, The Jungle (1906), an exposé of the meatpacking industry widely credited with having inspired passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Unlike most other muckrakers, Sinclair was a book writer, not a journalist; a tireless advocate of radical causes and self‐promoter, he ultimately produced more than one hundred books. He wrote vegetarian and temperance tracts; investigative novels on the petroleum industry and the Sacco and Vanzetti case; and nonfiction attacks on organized religion, the universities, and the press. He rarely received the critical respect he craved, but some of his books proved popular, and most caused a stir. At one time he was, in the estimation of H.L. Mencken, the most widely translated American author.

Sinclair ran for office several times, most spectacularly in 1934 when his End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement won him that state's gubernatorial nomination. A well‐financed hostile advertising campaign against him, including radio, billboards, and film, and involving techniques that would later become staples of political campaigning, contributed to his loss that November. Sinclair retired from politics thereafter but continued to write, producing a series of novels featuring the dashing globetrotter Lanny Budd, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943.
See also Meatpacking and Meat Processing Industry; New Deal Era, The; Progressive Era; Socialism; Temperance and Prohibition.

Bibliography

Leon Harris , Upton Sinclair: American Rebel, 1975.
Greg Mitchell , The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, 1992.

Greg Mitchell

Sinclair, Upton Beall (1878–1968) US novelist and social reformer. In 1906 he published his first novel, The Jungle, an exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry, which led to the reform of US food inspection laws. His other novels include The Money Changers (1908), King Coal (1917) and Dragon's Teeth (1942, part of an 11-volume roman-fleuve entitled World's End), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.