Upton Sinclair

(noun)

Highly influential muckraking journalist whose novel The Jungle incited a public outcry over the unsanitary and corrupt practices of the meatpacking industry, yielding significant legislation.

Related Terms

Examples of Upton Sinclair in the following topics:

  • Industrial Cities

    • Upton Sinclair's The Jungle chronicles the dangerous living conditions endured by immigrant factory workers in the early-1900s, a period of rapid urbanization in the U.S.

  • The Muckrakers

    • Samuel Hopkins Adams in 1905 showed the fraud involved in many patent medicines, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) was a novel that gave a horrid portrayal of how meat was packed, and David Graham Phillips unleashed a blistering indictment of the U.S.
    • Oskison, Upton Sinclair), Cosmopolitan (Josiah Flynt, Alfred Henry Lewis, Jack London, Charles P.
    • Lindsey, Frank Norris, David Graham Phillips, Charles Edward Russell, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Merrill A.
    • Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, which revealed conditions in the meat packing industry in the United States and was a major factor in the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
    • Sinclair considered himself to be a muckraker.

  • The Progressive Era

    • Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906) was influential and persuaded America about the supposed horrors of the Chicago Union Stock Yards (though Sinclair himself never visited the site); a giant complex of meat processing that developed in the 1870's.
    • The federal government responded to Sinclair's book and The Neill-Reynolds Report with the new regulatory Food and Drug Administration.

  • Features of Progressivism

    • One of the most notable examples of this literature is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, published in 1906 and offering a disturbing portrayal of the meatpacking industry in the U.S.

  • Social Justice

    • In The Jungle (1906), socialist Upton Sinclair repelled readers with descriptions of Chicago's meatpacking plants, prompting many Americans to rally behind the federally-mandated remedial food safety legislation passed under Roosevelt's administration.

  • Conclusion: The Successes and Failures of Progressivism

    • "Muckraking" journalists such as Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Jacob Riis exposed corruption in business and government along with rampant inner-city poverty.

  • Political Critiques of the New Deal

    • While not really an opponent of Roosevelt, a socialist writer Upton Sinclair (known for his immensely influential 1906 novel The Jungle) popularized a program known as End Poverty in California (EPIC) that Roosevelt eventually considered to be too radical .
    • Many farmers and unemployed workers supported EPIC although Sinclair lost the governorship of California in 1934.
    • Although Roosevelt did not endorse Sinclair, the program influenced later New Deal policies.

  • The Progressive Era

    • Upton Sinclair (September 20, 1878–November 25, 1968) was an American author who wrote nearly 100 books and other works across a number of genres.
    • In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle, which exposed conditions in the U.S. meat-packing industry and caused a public uproar that contributed, in part, to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
    • Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of industrialized American from both the working man's point of view and the industrialist's.

  • The Square Deal

    • The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 were both widely accredited to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which revealed the horrific and unsanitary processes of meat production.

  • Definition and statistics

    • Sexton/Bowman-Upton 1991, p. 12).
    • Sexton/Bowman-Upton 1991, p. 10).