Who is upton sinclair and what did he do

He fought for leftist reforms in the s and s. Meanwhile, he wrote a series of 11 novels looking at contemporary history. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! At the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea on September 20, , American diver Greg Louganis wins the gold medal on the springboard despite nearly knocking himself unconscious during a qualifying round dive. With the improbable victory, Louganis—who won gold medals in the The French, commanded by Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, lost men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in The government classified the ruthless attacks as hate crimes because beards and Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia.

In command of five ships and men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a The festival had intended to make its debut in September , but the outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of the inaugural Cannes. Riggs , a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that No workers' compensation existed, and the employer was not responsible for people injured on the job.

Jurgis' life fell apart, and he lost his wife, son, house, and job. Then Jurgis met a socialist hotel owner, who hired him as a porter. Jurgis listened to socialist speakers who appeared at the hotel, attended political rallies, and drew inspiration from socialism. Sinclair used the speeches to express his own views about workers voting for socialist candidates to take over the government and end the evils of capitalist greed and "wage slavery.

In the last scene of the novel, Jurgis attended a celebration of socialist election victories in Packingtown. Jurgis was excited and once again hopeful. A speaker, probably modeled after Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V.

Debs, begged the crowd to "Organize! Chicago will be ours! The Jungle was first published in as a serial in The Appeal to Reason and then as a book in Sales rocketed. It was an international best-seller, published in 17 languages.

Sinclair was dismayed, however, when the public reacted with outrage about the filthy and falsely labeled meat but ignored the plight of the workers. Meat sales dropped sharply. Sinclair thought of himself as a novelist, not as a muckraker who investigated and wrote about economic and social injustices. But The Jungle took on a life of its own as one of the great muckraking works of the Progressive Era.

Sinclair became an "accidental muckraker. The White House was bombarded with mail, calling for reform of the meat-packing industry. The president then appointed a special commission to investigate Chicago's slaughterhouses. The special commission issued its report in May The report confirmed almost all the horrors that Sinclair had written about. One day, the commissioners witnessed a slaughtered hog that fell part way into a worker toilet.

Workers took the carcass out without cleaning it and put it on a hook with the others on the assembly line. The commissioners criticized existing meat-inspection laws that required only confirming the healthfulness of animals at the time of slaughter.

The commissioners recommended that inspections take place at every stage of the processing of meat. They also called for the secretary of agriculture to make rules requiring the "cleanliness and wholesomeness of animal products. President Roosevelt called the conditions revealed in the special commission's report "revolting.

Roosevelt overcame meat-packer opposition and pushed through the Meat Inspection Act of The law authorized inspectors from the U. Department of Agriculture to stop any bad or mislabeled meat from entering interstate and foreign commerce. This law greatly expanded federal government regulation of private enterprise. The meat packers, however, won a provision in the law requiring federal government rather than the companies to pay for the inspection. Sinclair did not like the law's regulation approach.

True to his socialist convictions, he preferred meat-packing plants to be publicly owned and operated by cities, as was commonly the case in Europe. Passage of the Meat Inspection Act opened the way for Congress to approve a long-blocked law to regulate the sale of most other foods and drugs. For over 20 years, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist at the Department of Agriculture, had led a "pure food crusade.

The uproar over The Jungle revived Wiley's lobbying efforts in Congress for federal food and drug regulation. Roosevelt signed a law regulating foods and drugs on June 30, , the same day he signed the Meat Inspection Act.

The Pure Food and Drug Act regulated food additives and prohibited misleading labeling of food and drugs. The two laws ended up increasing consumer confidence in the food and drugs they purchased, which benefitted these businesses. At 21 he married the year-old Meta Fuller. Their son, David, was born the following year, in December Sinclair's several serious novels failed, and his marriage was in trouble when, in , he turned to what he regarded as the secular religion of Socialism.

In his Socialist contacts sent him to Chicago to write about the plight of meatpacking workers. Sinclair used his sudden wealth and fame to support several experiments in communitarian living. He also agitated for various reforms, all detailed in hastily written novels and nonfiction books and articles that did not live up to the promise of "The Jungle. In they moved to Pasadena, Calif. In the productive 12 years that followed, Sinclair wrote nonfiction critiques of American education, religion, journalism, and literature.

Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, From birth, he was exposed to dichotomies that would have a profound effect on his young mind and greatly influence his thinking later in life. By this time, Sinclair had already begun to develop a keen intellect and was a voracious reader, consuming the works of Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley at every waking moment.

After graduating in , he enrolled at Columbia University to continue his studies and, using a pseudonym, wrote dime novels to support himself. Having completed his schooling at age 20, Sinclair made the decision to become a serious novelist while working as a freelance journalist to make ends meet.

In , he also began a family, marrying Meta Fuller, with whom he would have a son, David, the following year. Over the next few years, he would write several more novels—based on topics ranging from Wall Street to the Civil War to autobiography—but all were more or less failures. After spending several weeks conducting undercover research on his subject matter, Sinclair threw himself into the manuscript that would become The Jungle. Initially rejected by publishers, in the novel was finally released by Doubleday to great public acclaim—and shock.

Upon its release, Sinclair enlisted his fellow writer and friend Jack London to help publicize his book and assist in getting his message across to the masses.