Upton Sinclair

1878-1968 

"You don't have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn't like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I've been trying to change it ever since."

- Upton Sinclair

     Upton Sinclair was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, social advocate, and muckraker whose works have made him an icon in the literary world and also played an integral part in social reform in the early twentieth century. 

    Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 20, 1878. His father, Upton Beall Sinclair, was a native Virginian who came from a long line of naval officers. Sinclair's mother, Priscilla Harden, was raised in Maryland in a Southern Puritan household.  

     When Upton was ten, he moved with his parents to New York City. The family could barely scrape by and spent many years going from boarding house to boarding house, where Sinclair met former aristocratic Southerners like himself.

     At ten he began his formal education and in two years finished eight grades. By the time Sinclair was fifteen he was enrolled at the City College of New York. To pay for tuition and help support his parents, Sinclair would often write jokes to be fillers for newspapers and magazines. He would also do freelance writing. With the money he saved, Sinclair was able to go to Columbia University at the age of 18 where he studied European literature while writing 30,000-word novels.

     The Jungle, was published in 1906 and was the first book to give Sinclair a great deal of notoriety. The book exposed the corruption of the meat-packing industry in Chicago. After receiving a stipend by the newspaper The Appeal to Reason, Sinclair went to Chicago to do research and gain firsthand experience of the injustices workers were experiencing at meat-packing plants. The book focused on a Lithuinian family coming to America in hopes of a better life. The Rudkus family moved to Chicago and quickly made a series of bad decisions that forced their entire family to obtain jobs. Jurgis, the main character, started working at the Chicago stockyard, where the conditions were horrible and workers often fell into rendering tanks and were ground up with animal parts. With The Jungle, Sinclair was able to expose the atrocities of early 20th-century industry and the filth-ridden state of the food the nation was consuming. The public was outraged by the conditions exposed in The Jungle and demanded the government do something. The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act were passed to calm the public and help restore the meat industry. 

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      In 1919, Sinclair published The Brass Check, an expose of journalism in the United States. Sinclair's hatred for newspapers run by wealthy tycoons and conservative editors led him to write The Brass Check.  Sinclair saw newspapers as a slanted news source that only printed stories to promote the interests of the businessmen who owned them and attract advertisers. The Brass Check attacked newspapers and accused them of practicing yellow journalism. Sinclair used the magazine Everybody's as an example of how the press was using articles about muckraking to obtain a wider audience and then progressively changing to a more conservative position to appease to their advertisers. Sinclair also makes note in the book that instead of newsworthy topics, newspapers would waste their space with gossip about his private life. The integrity of the news was being compromised by businessmen who cared more about the profit than the quality of the news being produced. Sinclair's animosity towards this corrupt system was only intensified by the rejection of several of his investigative reports by major newspapers.  "Not hyperbolically and contemptuously, but literally and with scientific precision we define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege," he wrote.

      After gaining popularity with his stomach-churning expose of the meat-packing industry, The Jungle, Sinclair was able to reach a larger audience with The Brass Check and sold more than 150,000 copies. Sinclair wanted to see the news industry reformed and writers and editors accountable for what they printed. He proposed that a law should be put in effect that would make it illegal for newspapers to fake telegraph dispatches. He also wanted to see a law which would require newspapers to print retractions in the same prominence as the false statement they printed. The few reviews The Brass Check received were negative; however, most newspapers refused to even review or advertise the book. Four years after the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. 

     Sinclair continued with his political endeavors after The Brass Check and ran on the socialist ticket for the United States House of Representatives in 1920, but was unsuccessful. He also ran for the United States Senate in 1922 on the socialist ticket, again, but lost that bid as well. However, in 1934, Sinclair ran for the Governor of California as a Democrat and gained the democratic nomination. Sinclair used his platform to organize "End Poverty in California" or EPIC to gain popularity and to reach out to the public. Unforunately, conservatives portrayed him as being a communist and Sinclair lost the race.  After the election, Sinclair started focusing more on his writing and less on politics, and continued to publish books and articles until his death in 1968. 

For more information, please see Press Criticism and Reform. 

                                                           References

Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. New York, NY: Random House, 2006.

This book gives an up to date biography on Upton Sinclair and his life as a Muckraker, Politician and Novelist.

Bloodworth, William A. Upton Sinclair. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1977.

 This book focuses mainly on Upton Sinclair as a novelist and about The Jungle.

Sinclair, Upton. The Brass Check. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

"Upton Sinclair and the Muckrakers." American Writers. Aug. 2001. 15 Nov. 2008 <http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/sinclair.asp>

Yoder, Jon A. Upton Sinclair. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Co., 1975.

 This book is an older biography, which focuses mostly on Sinclair’s time as a Muckraker.