The scandals produced by such provocative writing spurred imitators to publish sensationalistic articles that were deliberately calibrated to arouse public outcry. The writing of these imitators, which resembled modern tabloid copy, prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to publicly condemn irresponsible journalism while giving lip service to soothing social unrest. Citing John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Roosevelt likened sensationalistic journalists to the Man with the Muck Rake—“the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.” The term “muckraking” soon came to be used for all writers who attempted to expose corruption, and The Jungle became the paradigm of the genre.

Seeking to raise public awareness of the inhuman working conditions within the meatpacking industry, the socialist weekly Appeal to Reason hired Upton Sinclair to research Chicago’s meatpacking plants. Fueled by the assignment and his own growing reputation, Sinclair relentlessly chronicled the atrocities suffered by a family of immigrant workers at the hands of the unfeeling meatpacking bosses. After The Jungle was serialized in the weekly, Sinclair was unable at first to procure a deal for the book version and was forced to publish it himself; he even asked his friend and collaborator Jack London to generate publicity for his novel based on the latter’s socialist convictions and compassion for laborers.

In spite of his altruistic intention to bring attention to the plight of the human workers in the packing yards, it was Sinclair’s horrifying descriptions of the unsanitary handling of food that launched him and his novel into the spotlight. Public fervor erupted as the prospect of eating rotten and diseased food became a reality confirmed by Chicago newspapers. The Jungle was largely responsible for the federal Food and Drug Act, which went into effect just months after the novel’s private publication. The passage of this act heightened public awareness of food-borne diseases, as well as ways to prevent them, including regimented hand washing, refrigeration, pasteurization, improved care and feeding of animals, and the use of pesticides. Though Teddy Roosevelt was quick to condemn bad journalism, he was equally quick to implement reform based on what good journalism successfully revealed.

The Jungle can be compared with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) in terms of the immediate social response it catalyzed. It has spawned numerous successors, most recently Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (2001), which illustrates how little has changed since Sinclair’s time as far as industry corruption and monopolizing strategies are concerned.