Connecting Progressive Era Politics to Current Events & Pop Culture

Upton Sinclair wrote ‘The Jungle’ as a labor exposé. He hoped that the book, which was billed as ‘the ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ of wage slavery,’ would lead to improvements for the people to whom he dedicated it, ‘the workingmen of America.’ But readers of ‘The Jungle’ were less appalled by Sinclair’s accounts of horrific working conditions than by what they learned about their food. ‘I aimed at the public’s heart,’ he famously declared, ‘and by accident I hit it in the stomach.’”