Upton Sinclair initially wrote The Jungle about the evils of capitalism, but instead it furthered the progressive agenda. It described the unsanitary conditions of meatpacking factories, from rats and diseased animals to the bodies of workers who'd fallen in being processed into meat. The Jungle became an instant sensation, and the public uproar it caused became a driving force towards the enactment of pure food and drug legislation and a federal meat inspection law.
|
|