Upton Sinclair was an American writer. Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. He attended City College of New York. He wrote magazines and dime novels to pay tuition. He also attended Columbia University and he learned speaking several language. He learned Spanish, German, and French. In addition, he was a socialist, Karl Marx, Jack London, and Priscilla Harden influenced him. He had a hard time living as a writer, he began to read about socialism and he started to belive in the idea of revolution in which Americans would vote for the government to take over the ownership of big business. He joined the Socialist Party in 1903. The next year, the editor of the Girard and Kansas, let him write articles or publication based on Socialist newspaper, “Appeal to Reason”.

“The Jungle” is Sinclair’s fictionalized account of Chicago Packing town. Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” to show how bad the condition in the meat-packing industry is. In the story, the narrator is a young man, Jurgis Rudkis, who had currently immigrated to Chicago with a group of relatives and friends from Lithuania. Jurgis hoped for a better life, he married and bought a house on credit. He got a job as a leading Chicago meat packer. While he was working, he saw the men in the pickling room who have skin diseases and have lost their fingers while they use knives. The employer was not responsible to his employees’ injuries. Jurgis met a socialist hotel owner and he listened to the socialist speakers and drew inspiration from socialism. He described the meat-packing industry as a “wage slavery”.

“It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear.” This is an important quotes because it shows the bad condition in his meat-packing industry and how employer was not respecting his employees.

Upton Sinclair wrote about 100 books and several works in diverse genres. Sinclair’s works were well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century. He also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1943. “The Jungle” led to the new federal food safety laws by showing the public that the meats that are used, are diseased, rotten, and contaminated. President Roosevelt recovered meat-packer opposition and pushed through the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The law authorized imspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to avoid any bad or mislabeled meat from entering from foreign countries or trading states to states.

This book made people think about the violation in the working place. Thesedays, lots of people think the codition of working place have been getting better, but in other foreign countries there are still bad environment to work. Therefore, I think if there are more books like “The Jungle” that tells the public about the issue of the bad working place environment.

I think “Why don’t people express that exploitation of labor is unjustified?” is good essential question for Sinclair. It is because he was talking about unfairness in the work place environment in his book. There are lots of people who works in the hard environment in our world especially in developing countries. Employers want to hire people who have lower power than them. Therefore, they do not respect the employees’ human rights and violate their employees. Also, employees usually do not want to get fired from their employers, so they do not express their unfairness in their work.