The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is a vivid account of living, working and social conditions of the working classes of urban America in the early 1900s.   Sinclair uses the story of Jurgis Berczynskas, a Lithuanian immigrant to inner-city Chicago, to represent the hardships faced by America's blue collar working class.

Jurgis Berczynskas is newly married and living near his sister and other Lithuanian immigrants in a slum of Chicago. He, his wife, his sister and the other adults in his circle of friends and family are poor, lack secondary education, vocational skills and proficiency in English.  The search and procurement for jobs is depicted as excessively difficult and unfair.  Insufficient jobs existed for persons with their backgrounds, and job positions were distributed by corrupt managers to persons without ensuring proper qualifications.  The working conditions in the factories, meat packing houses, stockyards, and plants are described in great detail as deplorable environments with inhumane conditions.

A typical section of this area of Chicago included 40,000 families living in cheap, unsuitable housing in one square mile.  Poor or absent regulations of water and sanitation systems, food, and medicine caused millions of poor persons to suffer mental and physical illnesses of wide varieties and severity.⁽¹⁾  Often men and women worked these dangerous, physically fatiguing jobs only to be unable to actively participate in raising their children because of lack of time and energy.  Children often were removed from school in order to supplement their families' incomes and were heavily maltreated both physically and mentally by the adults they interacted with at home, school and at work centers. 

Jurgis worked a succession of unrealistically difficult jobs with exposure to noxious environmental agents and unethical treatment.  His hopes of coming to America to attain prosperity destroyed, he joined a union in hopes of receiving more steady work and better working conditions but found only corrupt union leaders and business owners on all sides.

Jurgis' wife was intimidated and coerced into sexual exploitation.  Jurgis was imprisoned for assaulting the perpetrator of the sexual crimes committed against his wife.  While in jail, he lost his job, and his family and friends were evicted from their home.   Shortly after his release, his wife died from inadequate medical care while prematurely giving birth, and his infant son died from an accident resulting from unsafe living conditions in their neighborhood.  Jurgis left Chicago for over a year, traveling the Midwest while begging and working odd jobs.

Returning to Chicago, he met with discrimination while searching for work.  As a result, he turned to petty crime, including involvement in illegal political activities.  He was imprisoned for again attacking the man who took advantage of his wife.  After his second release, he was reunited with his family. Jurgis found hope in joining the socialist movement, and much of the latter part of the story focuses on expounding socialist ideology.

Sinclair’s expose on Packingtown, the Chicago stockyards in which the story takes place, revealed the nauseating details of the unregulated meat packing industry.  His book told of such atrocities as dead rats being swept into sausage machines and how meat inspectors were bribed to ignore the inclusion of diseased animal carcasses in meat production for public consumption.

Sinclair portrays the life of the working class, particularly of immigrants, minorities and women, as deplorable in order to illustrate how capitalism can cause exploitation of the working class and can produce mass suffering.  His book has influenced: the treatment of animals; improvements in buildings and working conditions; political agenda; sanitation regulations; formal acknowledgement and enforcing of rights of workers, women, and children; regulation on prostitution; immigration proceedings; banking practices; city planning; civil engineering; and ethical standards of many institutions' codes of conduct.

This edition of The Jungle included informative footnotes on the politicians, business owners, methods of work (including the processes of many production activities and supplies used), geography, financial practices, literary terms and definitions applicable to the time. 

Sinclair wrote The Jungle at the request of a socialist newspaper for a serial.  Shortly after a workers’ strike in Packingtown, Sinclair lived among the residents for nearly two months, carefully recording observations and firsthand accounts of the people with whom he interacted.  He not only spoke with the workingmen and their bosses, but with politicians, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and many other assorted members of society.  He studied the systems and processes of numerous industries, and used accounts of current events from newspapers and periodicals. 

He expounded on the information from these sources to write a visceral account of what he saw.  The sources were more than sufficient for providing relevant, adequate information. Reading the story was enthralling; I felt compelled to read this fascinating account of these mistreated people. 

The exploitation of immigrants and the development of laws and policies to protect workers was an area of U.S. history of which I had very little knowledge until reading this book.  The history of forced prostitution is also discussed in this book and opens the reader’s eyes to the depravities of human beings.

Shortly after the book was published, public fury was raised by the book’s content. This spurred President Roosevelt to send inspectors to Chicago to confirm the accounts.  The inspectors reported that the situation was actually worse than Sinclair described.  Roosevelt, with the consultation of Sinclair, was key in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which regulates meat for consumption even today.  Sinclair's contributions caused radical reforms, particularly in the meat packing industry, and has influenced historians, politicians, policymakers, literary experts and consumers for over a century.

1.  “Upton Sinclair and the Pure Food and Drug Acts of 1906," by Arlene Finger Kantor, MPH, American Journal of Public Health, 1976, Vol 65, No 12. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1653522&blobtype=pdf