Upton Sinclair

In 1900, Upton Sinclair, Jr., married his first wife, Meta Fuller. She was the daughter of his mother’s friend. They divorced in 1911, and this unhappy marriage led to the writing of Springtime and Harvest (republished as King Midas), a tale of penniless lovers. At first, he lived with her in poverty, but after the birth of their first son, David, their financial situation got worse. Still, he would not consider any line of work besides writing. The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1904) arose much attention. It was a fictional account of a failed poet that was based mainly on Sinclair’s own experience with writing. He was slowly moving towards a more realistic fiction.

Financially supported by George D. Herron, a journalist and former priest, Sinclair began writing a trilogy on the Civil War. The first book, Manassas, was about a young southern man who joined the Union army and is involved in the battle of Manassas. Even though the book received good marks from critics, Manassas did not sell very well at all, so he decided not to write the other two books.

His most famous book, The Jungle, was written in 1906, after more than 3 months of research on the Chicago meatpacking industry. In the book Jurgis Rudkus, a young Lithuanian immigrant, comes to America with high hopes of prosperity, fame and fortune. He gets a job at a meatpacking factory, and loves his work. However, he’s stumped about why his co-workers don’t love it too. Gradually, Jurgis’ worldview fades in the hopeless “wage-slavery” and the chaos of urban life. He loses his job when he beats up his boss, because he raped Jurgis’ wife. He also loses their second child. Later in his life, Sinclair said this about The Jungle: “I aimed for the public’s heart, but I missed and accidentally hit it’s stomach.”

The book goes into very grotesque, disgusting detail, but that was necessary to convey the message that Sinclair was trying to share. When Teddy Roosevelt read an advance copy of the book, he was disgusted by what was in the book. He sent a team of researchers to investigate and find out if the conditions were really as bad as Sinclair had written. When they came back, they told the president that the conditions were ten times worse. He immediately passed a law that required sanitary factories and clean working conditions. Furthermore, he required that the meat must be inspected by a government organization. That organization is still inspecting meat today. That law is also still in effect today.

Although Sinclair wrote almost 100 books, he still found time later on in life to travel around Europe with his son, run for congress (he came in a distant third – 750 votes), and run for governor in California – which he did not win.

As a candidate for governor, he thought of a reform movement called EPIC – End Poverty In California – and outlined it all in a book called I, Governor of California And How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. Following the election, he wrote and published a book called I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked.

In 1953 Sinclair and his second wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, moved to the remote Arizona village of Buckeye, where his wife died in 1961, and where his third wife died in 1967. Throughout his life, he was known to be careless about his appearance – his wife once complained that in their almost 50-year marriage, he only bought himself one suit! Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. died on November 25, 1968, in Buckeye, Arizona, having left his mark on the world.