"Cliff Notes - Jungle, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Nonetheless, a number of book publishers refused to handle
The Jungle. One wanted Sinclair to cut out some of the graphic
descriptions of packing-plant operations. Others, no doubt,
wanted nothing to do with a book that aimed to convert the
nation to socialism. Finally, one publisher sent a lawyer to
Chicago to check out Sinclair's facts. The lawyer's report
backed Sinclair, and the firm brought out the book in January
1906.

MUCKRAKERS. The Jungle caused a furor. The book's
revelations became front-page news. Sinclair's shocking picture
of packing-plant conditions made a nation of meat-eaters groan
with pain and anger. President Theodore Roosevelt sent a
commission to Chicago to investigate the charges of this new
"muckraker."

Muckraker was Roosevelt's word for writers like Sinclair, who
exposed business abuses and political corruption. Roosevelt
read their work and even consulted with them. (It was at a
White House lunch with Sinclair that Roosevelt decided to send
his own investigators to Chicago.) But he claimed not to care
much for them, possibly because they attacked many of the
politicians and business leaders he had to work with as
president.

Historians point out that muckrakers served a useful purpose.
Most of them wrote for large-circulation magazines that had the
money to support thorough investigations. Their reports helped
drum up public support for government regulation of the trusts
and for electoral reforms that made politics in the U.S. more
democratic.

Sinclair's muckraking in The Jungle helped clean up the
meat-packing industry. Roosevelt's commission upheld all of
Sinclair's charges, except one about men falling into vats and
being turned into lard. (Sinclair's informants in Chicago
insisted this had happened--not once, but several times.) As a
result, the president put the power of his office behind two
bills designed to reform the industry.

The Pure Food and Drug Act banned the selling of dangerous or
fake drugs and impure food. The Meat Inspection Act required
federal officials to inspect meat slaughtered in one state and
sold in another. Both became law in June 1906, less than six
months after The Jungle appeared in book form.

Sinclair's work had had a major effect--but not the one he
had hoped it would. He felt that the uproar over spoiled and
adulterated meat had caused his readers to miss his larger
message, and he spelled out his disappointment in a magazine