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| 2/25/1905 |
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Upton Sinclair, The Jungle and the Food & Drugs Act
The Jungle is an exposé or "muckraker" novel, Upton Sinclair's attempt to show the life of immigrant workers in Chicago's meatpacking industry and put the lie to the American Dream. aimed to put the lie to the fairy tale. When it was published in 1906 it quickly became an international best seller, and launched a government investigation that changed the food laws in America overnight. |
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| 4/14/1906 |
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"Comes the Muckrake Man"
On this day in 1906, borrowing from John Bunyan, President Roosevelt made his famous speech labeling as "muckrakers" the new breed of investigative writers -- Ida Tarbell (Standard Oil), Lincoln Steffens (municipal politics), David Graham Phillips (Senate politics), Ray Stannard Baker (treatment of minorities), Samuel Hopkins Adams (patent medicines), Upton Sinclair (the meat industry), and others. |
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Online Books Page
Find electronic texts of The Jungle (and The Jungle, With Supplemental Readings on the Beef Trust Scandal of 1906 and Its Outcome), The Moneychangers, The Machine, The Metropolis, Damaged Goods, and other works. |  | Spartacus Educational
Offers a lengthy biography, excerpts from the author's works and letters, and comments about Sinclair by other writers, including George Bernard Shaw:
"When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to your novels. The object that the people in your books never existed; that their deeds were never done and their sayings never uttered. I assure them that they were, except that Upton Sinclair individualized and expressed them better than they could have done, and arranged their experiences, which as they actually occurred were as unintelligible as pied type, in significant and intelligible order." | | Teaching Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
A lesson plan which outlines suggested classroom issues and strategies, a review of major themes and historical perspectives, comparisons and connections to other works (includes John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Stephen Crane's Maggie, Frank Norris's McTeague, and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie), and suggested topics for discussion and questions for the classroom.
"The most difficult problem in teaching The Jungle is how to approach a text in which literary qualities are subordinated to political purpose. The Jungle does not lend itself to the kinds of literary discussions that most of us are accustomed to. Its literary shortcomings are obvious." | | The EPIC Plan
Find Sinclair's ambitious plan to end poverty and save America from self-destruction.
"We of the EPIC movement presume to tell the people of California that we know how to end poverty and will do it if elected. We are not professional politicians seeking office, but men of faith believing in the right and power of the people to manage their own affairs. We believe that democratic government confronts today the gravest crisis of its history. Our old and established industrial system is falling into ruins, and a new system has to be built in the midst of the collapse. Unless Democracy can find a way to do this, we shall have civil war, followed by Fascism and ultimately by Bolshevism. In the effort to avert these events, we present a plan to the people of California." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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