Ironically, Sinclair himself, as a founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905, was personally suckered by more than a few intellectual charlatans of his day. Given the book’s favorable publicity, it’s not surprising that it has duped a lot of people. Reading The Jungle and assuming it’s a credible news source is like watching The Blair Witch Project because you think it’s a documentary. For many young people, The Jungle is required reading in high-school classes, where they are led to believe that unscrupulous capitalists were routinely tainting our meat, and that moral crusader Upton Sinclair rallied the public and forced government to shift from pusillanimous bystander to heroic do-gooder, valiantly disciplining the marketplace to protect its millions of victims.īut this is a triumph of myth over reality, of ulterior motives over good intentions.

The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in history, or at least in history books, as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.Ī century later, American schoolchildren are still being taught a simplistic and romanticized version of this history. Sinclair’s “jungle” was unregulated enterprise his example was the meat-packing industry his purpose was government regulation. Muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel entitled The Jungle-a tale of greed and abuse that still reverberates as a case against a free economy. (Editor’s Note: Versions of this essay have appeared in print in several places since 1994, notably in FEE’s journal, The Freeman, and Liberty magazine.)Ī little over a century ago, a great and enduring myth was born. #29 – “Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ Proved Regulation Was Required” See the index of the published chapters here. The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government.

Upton sinclair and the jungle