The Jungle

The Jungle by Sinclair, Upton. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781949982459.

They use everything about the hog except the squeal. Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, finds work to support his struggling family in Brown’s Slaughterhouse in Chicago. The conditions are poor and the morale is even poorer. The workers of the slaughterhouse face a depravity that worsens with each passing day. Though Upton Sinclair’s motivation was to showcase the poor working conditions of industrial workers, The Jungle caught the public’s eye for its ways of exposing the health violations and unsanitary practices commonly found in the meat packing industry. The book led directly to the passage of The Meat Inspection Act of 1906.