Clippings

The appearance of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in 1906 spurred Congress to [pass pure food and drug laws]. Sinclair intended to recruit people to socialism by exposing the plight of workers in the meatpacking industry. The novel contained a brief but dramatic description of the slaughter of cattle infected with tuberculosis, of meat covered with rat dung, and of men falling into cooking vats. Readers paid scant attention to the workers, but their stomachs turned at what they might be eating for breakfast. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 sailed through Congress, and the Meat Inspection Act soon followed.