The Gilded Age was a time in history where, as the name gilded suggest where something is plated with gold, on the outside the time looked amazing but in reality it was rotten. In short, the Gilded Age was a period of great industrialization and technological advances, but also of inequality and maltreat of people. There were those who fought for the rights of people such as figures as Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony, W.E.B. Dubois, and most importantly in regards to this paper Upton Sinclair. Throughout the course of the semester we have discussed the horrors of the Gilded Age such as the events in Southern Horrors and Other Writings and Our Hearts Fell to the Ground, Upton Sinclair exposed the horrors that laid within the working industry. Upton Sinclair, through his muckraking and activism towards not only the food industry but also against capitalist taking advantage over the working class, exposed the Gilded Age for its mistreatment of people and unsanitary food plants.
Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878 in the beginning of the Gilded Age. Sinclair was raised in the timeframe of the gilded age, and through his upbringing we see why his work was so influential. His father was a liquor salesman who not so coincidentally was an alcoholic himself, and his mother was very religious who was strongly against the use of alcohol or other stimulates such as coffee. Sinclair was able to experience two different social settings growing up which greatly affected his writings. Growing up Upton Sinclair experienced the life of wealth through his maternal grandparents, while also being raised by the failures of his father. Being exposed to both the lavish side of life and the poor greatly affected his influence in writing. He would see and understand the rich lifestyle, but yet empathize more with those who were less fortunate. This would play a role in his investigative research into the meatpacking industry. Sinclair wrote up to one hundred books and many other works, each sculpted by socialist views. Although in Sinclair’s later life he would take a more Democrat political view, he was a socialist and his works often displayed this since it was his true objective; to spread socialist views. Upton Sinclair would grow up writing and reading and become an investigative journalist.
Sinclair was considered a muckraker, or journalist who exposed corruption in government and business. In 1904, Sinclair had spent seven weeks gathering information while working incognito in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for the newspaper. This would be the beginning to his work which would be narrated into The Jungle. The Jungle is a fictional narrative that shows Sinclair’s experiences of the meatpacking industry. The story follows an immigrant by the name of Jurgis Rudkis and his life in Chicago. The novel tells the horrors that happened in result of the meatpacking industry. Jurgis’s father dies of food poisoning in result to the unsanitary working conditions of the meatpacking plant. This book cause an uproar in favor for the labor movement, and although Sinclair was wanting to bring awareness to the unfair, unsanitary, and unsafe working conditions of the food plant, his actual goal of the book was to prove that socialism is much more needed and called for than capitalism. Many of those who reviewed Sinclair’s work thought it represented the labor movement very well and in on instance by a man named Jack London he stated, “it is the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage slavery.’ This comment goes with the theme of the heroes of the Gilded Age in a sense that many people through literature fought and influenced for their causes.
Sinclair, through his influence and income from The Jungle also tried to create a utopia that only allowed non-Jewish whites. The utopia was based in Englewood, New Jersey and was called the Helicon Home Colony. The utopia was a place where socialism could run its course and where Sinclair could bring people in and show that this is a utopia. There is not a whole lot of evidence that Upton Sinclair was racist or disliked Jews, but the other shareholders of the utopia clearly disliked people other than non-Jewish whites. In many cases it was said that Sinclair would himself quietly returned one rejected applicant’s money, apologizing that the other members had voted against allowing Jewish people from joining the Helicon Home Colony. Sinclair’s utopia would ultimately fail like most utopias do, but this is one work and way he tried to fix the growing problems in his capitalistic society. A statement by Sinclair which talks about the downfall of the utopia do to reporters would also be stated in a later work by the name The Brass Check.
It was generally taken for granted among the newspapermen of New York that the purpose for which I had started this colony was to have plenty of mistresses handy. They wrote this up on that basis — not in plain words, for that would have been libel — but by innuendo easily understood. So it was with our socialist colony as with the old-time New England colonies — there were Indians hiding in the bushes, seeking to pierce us with sharp arrows of wit. Reporters came in disguise, and went off and wrote false reports; others came as guests, and went off and ridiculed us because we had beans for lunch.
The influence and awareness The Jungle by Sinclair brought to light caused for a lot of the food safety laws in affect today. One major law that was put into effect as a direct cause of his writings was the Food and Drug act. The Food and Drug act states that it is an act for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes. This was a part of a string of legislatives that helped improve consumer goods. This was key piece of Gilded Age legislative that would also be implemented during the same time as the Federal Meat inspection Act that states it is a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions, which also applies to imported goods as well.
These legislative acts are still being used today and often are being improved. Without these laws to regulate out food we would not have things such as expiration dates, nutritional value, or even simple packaging regulations. Upton Sinclair’s muckraking provided also safety regulations for workers as well. The food and Drug acts made it so all food could only contain so much of unwanted things which caused manufacturing plants to improve their health and safety regulations. Factories before were allowing their workers to be injured and if they lost limbs or appendages they would not be compensated. Sinclair exposed what was in food, which caused an uproar by not only normal citizens, but also politicians. Sinclair said at one point, ‘I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach,’ this was said as readers of The Jungle were in a demand for more pure and sanitary food. Upton Sinclair wrote many pieces of work, but is often called a two book author; one being The Jungle and the other being The Brass Check. Sinclair offered solutions to the growing problem to “yellow journalism” that may have helped.
