JUNGLE, THE

"Practically alone among the American writers of his generation," wrote Edmund W
ilson, "[Sinclair] put to the American public the fundamental questions raised b
y capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them." When it was first p
ublished in 1906, "The Jungle" exposed the inhumane conditions of Chicago's stoc
kyards and the laborer's struggle against industry and "wage slavery." It was an
immediate bestseller and led to new regulations that forever changed workers' r
ights and the meatpacking industry. A direct descendant of Dickens's "Hard Times
," it remains the most influential workingman's novel in American literature.