Upton Sinclair

528 Words

Upton Sinclair used word selection, sentence structure, and tone to convey his message in his book, "The Jungle." He broke with the Socialist Party in 1917 and supported the First World War effort. He returned to the party by the 1020s. He founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Morovia, California, which is near Los Angeles, with his family in the 1920s. He wanted to pursue politics by running unsuccessfully twice for the United States Congress on the Socialist Party ticket.

He is not to be confused with his contemporary Sinclair Lewis, who is another American novelist.

Upton Bealle Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, and lived until November 25, 1968, which would've made him 90 years old. He was an American writer, political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California, writing nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. In the first half of the 20th century, he was well known and popular, and in 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1906, he exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry in his book, "The Jungle." He acquired particular fame for his classic muck racking novel. He caused a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

The Brass Check, published in 1919, was a muckraking expose of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press in the United States. The first code of ethics for journalism was created four years after the publication of the "Brass Check."

Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."

He is also well remembered for the line, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old-age pensions and other progressive reforms.

Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the Industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's point of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), "The Coal War," (published posthumously), "Oil". (1927) and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.

The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as the publisher of "The Dearborn Independent," King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his role in the 1914 "Ludlow Massacre", in the coalfields of Colorado.

Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for Governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 elections.


Report on Upton Sinclair by Anna Marie Carlson
Taken from Wikipedia