The Jungle Upton Sinclair Exposed

1906 novel by Upton Sinclair

The Jungle
First edition
Writer	Upton Sinclair
State	United States
Language	English language
Genre	Political fiction
Publisher	Doubleday, Page & Co.
Publication date	February 26, 1906
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	413
OCLC	1150866071

The Jungle is a 1906 novel past the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968).^[1] The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat manufacture and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United states.^[two] However, most readers were more than concerned with several passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century, which profoundly contributed to a public outcry that led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

The book depicts working-grade poverty, lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted abuse of people in ability. A review by the writer Jack London called it "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."^[3]

Sinclair was considered a muckraker, a journalist who exposed abuse in government and concern.^[4] In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the socialist paper Appeal to Reason. He first published the novel in serial grade in 1905 in the newspaper, and it was published as a volume past Doubleday in 1906.

Plot summary [edit]

Chapter 9, of the Jungle, novel by Upton Sinclair, describing corruption in the Golden Age

Jurgis Rudkus marries his fifteen-yr-old sweetheart, Ona Lukoszaite, in a joyous traditional Lithuanian wedding ceremony feast. They and their extended family have recently immigrated to Chicago due to financial hardship in Republic of lithuania (and so part of the Russian Empire). They take heard that America offers freedom and higher wages and have come to pursue the American Dream.

Despite having lost much of their savings beingness conned on the trip to Chicago, and so having to pay for the wedding—and despite the disappointment of arriving at a crowded boarding business firm—Jurgis is initially optimistic about his prospects in Chicago. Young and strong, he believes that he is immune to the misfortunes that have befallen others in the oversupply. He is swiftly hired by a meatpacking factory; he marvels at its efficiency, even while witnessing the cruel treatment of the animals.

The women of the family answer an ad for a four-room firm; Ona, who came from an educated background, figures that they could easily beget it with the jobs that Jurgis, proud Marija, and ambitious Jonas take gotten. While they discover at the showing that the neighborhood is unkempt and the house doesn't alive upwardly to the advertisement, they are taken in by the slickness and fluent Lithuanian of the real estate amanuensis and sign a contract for the firm.

However, with the help of an erstwhile Lithuanian neighbor, they discover several unexpected expenses in the contract that they must pay every month on fourth dimension, or else face eviction—the fate of nigh dwelling house buyers in the neighborhood. To meet these costs, Ona and thirteen-year-sometime Stanislovas (whom the family had wished to ship to school) must take up work as well.

While sickness befalls them frequently, they cannot afford non to piece of work. That winter, Jurgis'southward father, weakened by exposure to chemicals and the elements at his chore, dies of illness.

Some levity is brought to their lives by the arrival of a musician, named Tamoszius, who courts Marija, and the nascence of Jurgis and Ona's showtime kid. However, this happiness is tempered when Ona must render to work one week afterward giving nativity, and Marija is laid off in a seasonal cutback. Jurgis attends union meetings passionately; he realizes that he had been taken in by a vote-buying scheme when he was new to Chicago, learns that the meat factories deliberately utilise diseased meat, and learns that workers oft came downward with ailments relating to their unsafe and unsanitary piece of work.

Work becomes more enervating as wages fall; the working members of the family suffer a series of injuries. Amidst this hardship, Jonas deserts the family, leaving them no pick but to send two children to piece of work equally newspaper boys. The youngest child, a handicapped toddler, dies of food poisoning; only his mother grieves his death.

Later on recovering from his injury, Jurgis takes the to the lowest degree desirable job at a fertilizer manufactory. In misery, he begins drinking booze. He becomes suspicious of his pregnant wife'south failure to return home on several nights. Ona ultimately confesses that her boss, Phil Connor, raped her. Then, by threatening to fire and blacklist everyone in her family, he coerced her into a continuing sexual relationship.

Jurgis furiously attacks Connor at his factory, but half a dozen men tear him away. While in prison awaiting trial, he realizes it is Christmas Eve. The next day, his cellmate, Jack Duane, tells him about his criminal ventures and gives him his accost. At trial, Connor testifies that he had fired Ona for "impudence" and easily denies Jurgis'southward account; the judge dismissively sentences Jurgis to thirty days in prison house plus court fees.

Stanislovas visits Jurgis in prison and tells him of the family'south increasing destitution. After Jurgis serves his term (plus three days for his disability to pay the fees), he walks through the slush for an unabridged twenty-four hour period to get domicile, but to detect that the house had been remodeled and sold to some other family. He learns from their sometime neighbour that, despite all of the sacrifices they had made, his family had been evicted and had returned to the boarding house.

Upon arriving at the boarding house, Jurgis hears Ona screaming. She is in premature labor, and Marija explains that the family had no money for a physician. Jurgis convinces a midwife to assist, simply it is too little also belatedly; the baby is dead, and with one last look at Jurgis, Ona dies shortly later. The children return with a day'southward wages; Jurgis spends all of it to get boozer for the night.

The next morning, Ona'south stepmother begs Jurgis to recollect of his surviving child. With his son in listen, he endeavors again to gain employment despite his blacklisting. For a time, the family unit gets by and Jurgis delights in his son's starting time attempts at speech. One day, Jurgis arrives dwelling house to discover that his son had drowned later on falling off a rotting boardwalk into the muddy streets. Without shedding a tear, he walks away from Chicago.

Jurgis wanders the countryside while the weather is warm, working, foraging, and stealing for food, shelter, and drink. In the fall, he returns to Chicago, sometimes employed, sometimes a tramp. While begging, he chances upon an eccentric rich drunk—the son of the owner of the first manufacturing plant where Jurgis had worked—who entertains him for the nighttime in his luxurious mansion and gives him a ane-hundred-dollar bill (worth about $3000 today). Afterward, when Jurgis spends the bill at a bar, the bartender cheats him. Jurgis attacks the bartender and is sentenced to prison house again, where he over again meets Jack Duane. This time, without a family to anchor him, Jurgis decides to autumn in with him.

Jurgis helps Duane mug a well-off man; his split of the loot is worth over 20 times a day's wages from his beginning task. Though his conscience is pricked by learning of the man'due south injuries in the next mean solar day's papers, he justifies it to himself as necessary in a "dog-swallow-dog" world. Jurgis and so navigates the world of offense; he learns that this includes a substantial abuse of the police department. He becomes a vote fixer for a wealthy political powerhouse, Mike Scully, and arranges for many new Slavic immigrants to vote according to Scully'southward wishes—equally Jurgis one time had. To influence those men, he had taken a job at a mill, which he continues every bit a strikebreaker. One dark, past risk, he runs into Connor, whom he attacks over again. Afterward, he discovers that his buddies cannot fix the trial as Connor is an of import figure under Scully. With the help of a friend, he posts and skips bond.

With no other options, Jurgis returns to begging and chances upon a adult female who had been a invitee to his wedding. She tells him where to find Marija, and Jurgis heads to the accost to observe that information technology is a brothel beingness raided by the constabulary. Marija tells him that she was forced to prostitute herself to feed the children later on they had gotten sick, and Stanislovas—who had drunk also much and passed out at work—had been eaten by rats. After their speedy trial and release, Marija tells Jurgis that she cannot leave the brothel as she cannot save money and has get fond to heroin, equally is typical in the brothel'due south human trafficking.

Marija has a customer, and so Jurgis leaves and finds a political meeting for a warm identify to stay. He begins to nod off. A refined lady gently rouses him, saying, "If you would attempt to heed, comrade, peradventure you would be interested." Startled by her kindness and fascinated past her passion, he listens to the thundering speaker. Enraptured by his spoken communication, Jurgis seeks out the orator later. The orator asks if he is interested in socialism.

A Smooth socialist takes him into his home, conversing with him about his life and socialism. Jurgis returns dwelling house to Ona's stepmother and passionately converts her to socialism; she placatingly goes along with it only because information technology seems to motivate him to find work. He finds work in a small hotel that turns out to be run by a state organizer of the Socialist Party. Jurgis passionately dedicates his life to the crusade of socialism.

Panorama of the beef industry in 1900 by a Chicago-based lensman

Characters [edit]

Men walking on wooden rails between cattle pens in the Chicago stockyard (1909)

Workers in the union stockyards

Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian who immigrates to the Us and struggles to support his family unit.
Ona Lukoszaite Rudkus, Jurgis' teenage married woman.
Marija Berczynskas, Ona's cousin. She dreams of marrying a musician. After Ona's death and Rudkus' abandonment of the family, she becomes a prostitute to help feed the few surviving children.
Teta Elzbieta Lukoszaite, Ona's stepmother. She takes intendance of the children and eventually becomes a beggar.
Grandmother Swan, another Lithuanian immigrant.
Dede Antanas, Jurgis' begetter. He contributes work despite his historic period and poor health; dies from a lung infection.
Jokubas Szedvilas, Lithuanian immigrant who owns a deli on Halsted Street.
Edward Marcinkus, Lithuanian immigrant and friend of the family.
Fisher, Chicago millionaire whose passion is helping poor people in slums.
Tamoszius Kuszleika, a fiddler who becomes Marija'due south fiancé.
Jonas Lukoszas, Teta Elzbieta's brother. He abandons the family in bad times and disappears.
Stanislovas Lukoszas, Elzibeta'due south eldest son; he starts work at 14, with false documents that say he is 16.
Mike Scully (originally Tom Cassidy), the Autonomous Political party "boss" of the stockyards.
Phil Connor, a dominate at the factory where Ona works. Connor rapes Ona and forces her into prostitution.
Miss Henderson, Ona's forelady at the wrapping-room.
Antanas, son of Jurgis and Ona, otherwise known as "Baby".
Vilimas and Nikalojus, Elzbieta's 2nd and third sons.
Kristoforas, a crippled son of Elzbieta.
Juozapas, another bedridden son of Elzbieta.
Kotrina, Elzbieta'southward daughter and Ona's half sister.
Gauge Pat Callahan, a crooked estimate.
Jack Duane, a thief whom Rudkus meets in prison house.
Madame Haupt, a midwife hired to assist Ona.
Freddie Jones, son of a wealthy beef baron.
Buck Halloran, an Irish "political worker" who oversees vote-ownership operations.
Bush Harper, a human who works for Mike Scully as a spousal relationship spy.
Ostrinski, a Polish immigrant and socialist.
Tommy Hinds, the socialist owner of Hinds's Hotel.
Mr. Lucas, a socialist pastor and afoot preacher.
Nicholas Schliemann, a Swedish philosopher and socialist.
Durham, a man of affairs and Jurgis's 2nd employer.

Publication history [edit]

Chicago meat inspectors in early 1906

Sinclair published the book in serial form betwixt February 25, 1905, and November 4, 1905, in Appeal to Reason, the socialist paper that had supported Sinclair's underground investigation the previous year. This investigation had inspired Sinclair to write the novel, simply his efforts to publish the serial as a book met with resistance. An employee at Macmillan wrote,

I advise without hesitation and unreservedly against the publication of this book which is gloom and horror unrelieved. 1 feels that what is at the lesser of his fierceness is not most and then much desire to help the poor equally hatred of the rich.^[5]

V publishers rejected the piece of work every bit it was likewise shocking.^[six] Sinclair was most to cocky-publish a shortened version of the novel in a "Sustainer's Edition" for subscribers when Doubleday, Page came on board; on February 28, 1906 the Doubleday edition was published simultaneously with Sinclair's of 5,000 which appeared nether the imprint of "The Jungle Publishing Company" with the Socialist Party'south symbol embossed on the cover, both using the same plates.^[7] In the first six weeks, the book sold 25,000 copies.^[8] It has been in impress ever since, including iv more than self-published editions (1920, 1935, 1942, 1945).^[7] Sinclair dedicated the book "To the Workingmen of America".^[9]

All works published in the Us before 1924 are in the public domain,^[10] and so there are costless copies of the book available on websites such as Projection Gutenberg^[11] and Wikisource.^[12]

Uncensored editions [edit]

In 1988, St. Lukes Printing, a partition of Peachtree Publishers Ltd, published an edition titled "The Lost Starting time Edition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle" based on the original serialized version of "The Jungle" as seen in "Appeal to Reason". This version was edited by Cistron Degruson of Pittsburg State University, based on a correspondence regarding the novel found in the basement of a farm in Girard, Kansas. The volume included an introductory essay by DeGruson detailing the process of how he "restored" the text. ^[13]

In 2003, See Sharp Press published an edition based on the original serialization of The Jungle in Appeal to Reason, which they described equally the "Uncensored Original Edition" as Sinclair intended it. The foreword and introduction say that the commercial editions were censored to make their political message acceptable to backer publishers.^[fourteen] Others argue that Sinclair had made the revisions himself to brand the novel more accurate and engaging for the reader, corrected the Lithuanian references, and streamlined to eliminate boring parts, equally Sinclair himself said in messages and his memoir American Outpost (1932).^[7]

Reception [edit]

Upton Sinclair intended to expose "the inferno of exploitation [of the typical American manufacturing plant worker at the turn of the 20th Century]",^[15] merely the reading public fixed on food safety every bit the novel's most pressing issue. Sinclair admitted his glory arose "not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not desire to consume tubercular beefiness".^[fifteen]

Sinclair's account of workers falling into rendering tanks and being basis forth with beast parts into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard" gripped the public. The poor working weather, and exploitation of children and women along with men, were taken to expose the abuse in meat packing factories.

The British pol Winston Churchill praised the volume in a review.^[16]

Bertolt Brecht took upwardly the theme of terrible working weather condition at the Chicago Stockyards in his play Saint Joan of the Stockyards (German: Dice heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe), transporting Joan of Arc to that environs.

In 1933, the book became a target of the Nazi volume burnings due to Sinclair's endorsement of socialism.^[17]

Federal response [edit]

President Theodore Roosevelt had described Sinclair as a "crackpot" because of the author'southward socialist positions.^[18] He wrote privately to journalist William Allen White, expressing doubts nearly the accuracy of Sinclair'southward claims: "I take an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. 3-fourths of the things he said were accented falsehoods. For some of the residuum in that location was merely a basis of truth."^[19] After reading The Jungle, Roosevelt agreed with some of Sinclair's conclusions. The president wrote "radical activity must exist taken to do abroad with the efforts of arrogant and selfish greed on the part of the capitalist."^[xx] He assigned the Labor Commissioner Charles P. Neill and social worker James Bronson Reynolds to go to Chicago to investigate some meat packing facilities.

Learning about the visit, owners had their workers thoroughly clean the factories prior to the inspection, but Neill and Reynolds were yet revolted by the conditions. Their oral written report to Roosevelt supported much of what Sinclair portrayed in the novel, excepting the claim of workers falling into rendering vats.^[21] Neill testified before Congress that the men had reported only "such things equally showed the necessity for legislation."^[22] That year, the Agency of Animal Industry issued a report rejecting Sinclair's near severe allegations, characterizing them as "intentionally misleading and fake", "willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact", and "utter absurdity".^[23]

Roosevelt did non release the Neill–Reynolds Study for publication. His administration submitted it directly to Congress on June iv, 1906.^[24] Public pressure led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Deed; the latter established the Bureau of Chemistry (in 1930 renamed as the Food and Drug Assistants).

Sinclair rejected the legislation, which he considered an unjustified boon to large meatpackers. The government (and taxpayers) would bear the costs of inspection, estimated at $30,000,000 annually.^[25] ^[26] He complained about the public'south misunderstanding of the point of his book in Cosmopolitan Mag in Oct 1906 by maxim, "I aimed at the public's center, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."^[27]

Adaptations [edit]

The first film version of the novel was made in 1914, but information technology has since been lost.^[28]

References [edit]

^ Brinkley, Alan (2010). "17: Industrial Supremacy". The Unfinished Nation. McGrawHill. ISBN978-0-07-338552-five.
^ Van Wienen, Marking W. (2012). "American socialist triptych: the literary-political piece of work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, and W.E.B. Du Bois. northward.p.". Volume Review Assimilate Plus (H.W. Wilson). University of Michigan Press.
^ "Upton Sinclair", Social History (biography), archived from the original (blog) on 2012-05-27 .
^ Sinclair, Upton, "Note", 'The Jungle, Dover Thrift, pp. viii–x
^ Upton Sinclair, Spartacus Educational .
^ Gottesman, Ronald. "Introduction". The Jungle. Penguin Classics.
^ ^a ^b ^c Phelps, Christopher. "The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle". History News Network. George Mason University. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
^ "The Jungle and the Progressive Era | The Gilder Lehrman Found of American History". www.gilderlehrman.org. 2012-08-28. Retrieved 2017-10-21 .
^ Bloom, Harold, ed. (2002), Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Infohouse, pp. 50–51, ISBN1604138874 .
^ "Copyright Basics FAQ". Stanford Copyright and Off-white Use Center. 2013-03-27. Retrieved 2020-07-08 .
^ Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 8, 2017.
^ The Jungle – via Wikisource.
^ Sinclair, Upton (1988). The Lost Offset Edition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Atlanta, GA: St. Lukes Printing. ISBN0918518660.
^ Sinclair, Upton (1905). The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition. Tucson, AZ: See Precipitous Printing. p. half-dozen. ISBN1884365302.
^ ^a ^b Sullivan, Mark (1996). Our Times. New York: Scribner. p. 222. ISBN0-684-81573-vii.
^ Arthur, Anthony (2006), Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, New York: Random House, pp. 84–85 .
^ "Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century". American Library Clan. March 26, 2013. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
^ Oursler, Fulton (1964), Behold This Dreamer!, Boston: Little, Brown, p. 417 .
^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1951–54) [July 31, 1906], Morison, Elting E (ed.), The Letters, vol. 5, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 340 .
^ "Sinclair, Upton (1878–1968)". Blackwell Reference Online. Retrieved January 12, 2013.
^ Jacobs, Jane (2006), "Introduction", The Jungle, ISBN0-8129-7623-1 .
^ Hearings Before the Committee on Agronomics... on the Then-chosen "Beveridge Amendment" to the Agricultural Appropriation Bill, U.S. Congress, House, Commission on Agriculture, 1906, p. 102, 59th Congress, 1st Session .
^ Hearings Before the Commission on Agronomics... on the And then-called "Beveridge Amendment" to the Agronomical Appropriation Bill, U.Due south. Congress, House, Committee on Agriculture, 1906, pp. 346–50, 59th Congress, 1st Session .
^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1906), Weather in Chicago Stockyards (PDF)
^ Young, The Squealer That Fell into the Privy, p. 477 .
^ Sinclair, Upton (1906), "The Condemned-Meat Industry: A Reply to Mr. M. Cohn Armour", Everybody's Magazine, vol. XIV, pp. 612–xiii .
^ Bloom, Harold. editor, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Infobase Publishing, 2002, p. 11
^ "The Jungle". silentera.com.

External links [edit]

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Jungle at Standard Ebooks
The Jungle, available at Internet Archive (scanned books first edition)
The Jungle at Project Gutenberg (manifestly text and HTML)
The Jungle public domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Jungle serialized in The Sun paper from the Florida Digital Newspaper Library
PBS special report marking the 100th anniversary of the novel [1]
Northwestern University'due south Medill School of Journalism revisits The Jungle [ii]