Despite his sympathies, as a middle-class reformer Sinclair was oblivious to the vibrancy of immigrant communities beyond the reach of bosses, where immigrants found solidarity and hope. Throughout the book, as in this chapter, he described with great accuracy the horrifying physical conditions under which immigrant packing plant workers and their families worked and lived, portraying the collapse of immigrant culture under the relentless pressure of industrial capitalism. Yet Sinclair’s primary concern was not with the goods that were produced, but with the workers who produced them. The book is best known for revealing the unsanitary process by which animals became meat products. In 1904, in the midst of a bitter stockyard strike, socialist writer Upton Sinclair’s two-month visit to Chicago’s “Packingtown” area provided him with a wealth of material that he turned into his best-selling novel, The Jungle. Upton Sinclair Hits His Readers in the Stomach
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