Upton Sinclair
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Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, to a falling aristocratic family. Uptons family was originally an aristocratic family; however, around the time of his birth the family was declining into poverty. Upton graduated high school early, and started college at City College of New York. Then, at age 15, Upton began writing in order to pay for hist tuition. After he graduated from college, he enrolled in Columbia University as a graduate student in 1897.
Upton Sinclair published 5 novels in a period of 5 years, however, none of them made much success. Then, in 1904, the editors of a socialist newspaper Appeal and Reason asked Sinclair to investigate the Chicago stockyards. Sinclair spent 7 weeks in the citys meatpacking plants, learning every possible detail about the working conditions, the home lives of workers, and the how the business was run. Afterwards, Sinclair wrote The Jungle.
When Sinclair brought The Jungle back to Appeal and Reason, they told him that they would not publish it because it was too shocking a truth, and so Sinclair found a publisher and financed it himself. And in 1906, The Jungle was published.
Sinclair was then called by to be a muckrakers, the name of which President Roosevelt named himself, a category of journalists that dedicated their time to exposing the wrongs in the industrys. Sinclairs novel inspired The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. No other novel since 1851 had made such an impact on societys as Sinclairs, however, the impact that was made on society was not the impact that Sinclair had aimed for. Sinclair was trying to gather support of the socialist movement, and provoke sympathy for the working men. However, this was not the case. Sinclairs quote, ” I aimed for the peoples hearts, and by accident hit them in the stomach”, was entirely true.
Sinclair passed away in 1968, and to this day is still remembered