“The_Jungle,”_By_Upton_Sinclair_And_It’s_Effect_On_American

“The Jungle,” By Upton Sinclair And It’s Effect On American Society During The 19th Century One of the strongest impulses in late 19th century and early 20th century American literature was the attempt to rebuild urban society. Journalists aimed to direct the citizens’ attention to social, economic, and political injustices. They came to be known as muckrakers, after Theodore Roosevelt accused one of them of “raking up muck,” through his writing.(Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation.630) They were committed to exposing scandal, corruption, and injustice to the public. Upton Sinclair, a Socialist, and dedicated humanitarian, was one of them, and wrote The Jungle, the first of several novels aimed at exposing industrial ills, and calling for reform. In 1904 Fred Warren, the editor of the socialist journal, “Appeal to Reason,” commissioned Sinclair to write a novel about immigrant workers in the Chicago meat packing houses. Julius Wayland, the owner of the journal provided Sinclair with a $500 advance, and after seven weeks in the stockyards researching, he wrote the novel, The Jungle. The Jungle was published serially in the “Appeal to Reason,” in 1905. In spite of the work's immense popularity, it was extremely difficult to get The Jungle published in book form. Publishers were unwilling to meat, jungle, workers, sinclair, one, after, room, rats, rat, out, novel, book, upton, roosevelt, published, public, practices, packers, over, meatpacking, inspectors, aimed, wrote, unsanitary, treated, theodore, tank, suffered, story, stockyards, socialist, socialism, seek, rooms, reason