"There would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white—it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it." — Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
Sinclair's primary intent in writing The Jungle was to expose
- Acheck_circle
the exploitation of immigrant industrial workers under capitalism
- B
unsanitary practices to provoke meat-inspection legislation
- C
corruption among urban political machines in Chicago
- D
the dangers of socialist labor organizing in the stockyards
Explanation
Sinclair was a socialist who hoped to win sympathy for workers, famously saying "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach"—readers focused on meat instead of labor.