Sinclair, Upton Beall, Jr.

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SINCLAIR, UPTON BEALL, JR.

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a popular writer and social critic, a muckraker (exposing political and commercial corruption) writing during the first half of the twentieth century. During the sixty years of his life, Sinclair focused on subjects of ordinary American daily life, which he believed involved violations of decency and democracy. His most famous book, The Jungle, helped change the nature of the food processing industry in America by initiating a public outcry that led to strong government legislation regulating food processing and clean meat-packing. A socialist in his politics, he regularly took the side of the ordinary American consumers and he fought consistently for the civil liberties of working people.

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland, the only child of Upton and Priscilla Sinclair. He was born into a distinguished but impoverished Southern family. At age ten Sinclair went with his family to live in New York, where he rushed through eight years of school in just three, and at age fourteen entered City College of New York, where he majored in English literature. While in college, Sinclair began living on his own, supporting himself by writing regularly for comic papers, pulp magazines, and other adventure story magazines of the time.

In 1897, at age nineteen, he graduated from the college with a Bachelor of Arts and entered Columbia University for graduate work, where he studied French, German, and Italian. Sinclair continued to publish his writing while in school, supporting himself and, later, his mother.

Disillusioned by the materialistic atmosphere of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sinclair abandoned the city in 1900 and went to live in a shack in the woods near Quebec, Canada. There he met and married his first wife, Meta Fuller, in 1901. His first and only son was born a year later.

From Canada Sinclair moved to Princeton, New Jersey, one of the intellectual and academic centers of the American Eastern seaboard. He continued writing but focused on socialist ideals and muckraking. His novel, The Jungle, made him famous, exposing in detail the appalling working conditions in the food packing industry. In this book he also graphically depicted the unsanitary conditions of the American meat-packing and meat-handling industry.

The publication of The Jungle awakened the American public to the dangerous practices of an unregulated food industry which was exploited for huge profits by careless businessmen. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) invited Sinclair to the White House. After consulting with Sinclair the president ordered an investigation of the meat and food processing industries, which led to the passage of the first government regulated pure food laws in America.

During this time Sinclair continued to publish books exposing America's social problems and his writing continued to make a strong impact on his readers. In his muckraking style he exposed the shoddy and shallow lifestyles of New York's high society, as well as unethical and illegal practices of some Wall Street financiers.

Sinclair's political concerns were about the increasing problems of democracy trying to survive in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. This, combined with his moral sentiments, led Sinclair to take full advantage of the Progressive era. He aimed to educate Americans, many of them immigrants, as to how they were being cheated. Sinclair also encouraged his readers to join forces. He advocated forming guilds, organizations for democracy, and unions in order to combat those who pursued business merely as single-minded profiteers. Sinclair himself was one of the early founders, along with Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) and Helen Keller (1880–1968), of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization providing legal support in matters concerning civil liberties.

Sinclair's later years continued to be active. He was a vegetarian and maintained good health and vitality into advanced age. Sinclair remained involved with the Democratic Party, though he always regarded himself as a socialist and an anti-communist. Upton Sinclair died in 1968. His writings and advocacy live on in the society he believed he could change for the better.

See also: Cattle Industry, Trust-Busting