The Accidental Food Revolution of 1906
In 1906, upper and middle class housewives exchanged Richards’s adulteration detection manuals for Upton Sinclair’s poignant novel, The Jungle. Initially, Sinclair hoped his book would encourage his white upper and middle class audience to recognize the discrepancies between their standards of living and an impoverished immigrant’s quality of life. However, his readers were more alarmed by the meat-packing industry’s dangerous production methods and hazardous final products. Housekeepers were overwhelmed by the extent of the adulteration scandal and refused to remain responsible for the testing of every food item. In response to the public’s outrage, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, just six months after The Jungle was published (8, 16).
Left: A Portrait of the Young Upton Sinclair by Studio 56 at Fifth Ave., n.d., from Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Sinclair gathered material for The Jungle while working as an undercover journalist in Chicago’s meatpacking district for six months.
Richards and Upton Sinclair, Similar Message, Different Methods
Sickness, we know, is the result of breaking some law of universal nature. What that law may be, investigators in scores of laboratories are endeavoring to determine. In most diseases they have been successful. Those remaining are being attacked on all sides, and it may be confidently predicted that a few years will see success assured.
Why, then does sickness continue to be the greatest drain upon individual and national resources? Because man, through ignorance or unbelief, will not avail himself of this knowledge, or is behind the times in his method. Where wisdom means effort and discomfort, many feel it folly to be wise (5).
His health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor, his joy and power that had mourned and forgotten! It came with a sudden rush, bewildering him, starling him: it was as if his dead childhood had come back to him, laughing and calling! What with plenty to eat and fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy, stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back to him (8).
Their Unified Message and Respective Methods
Richards and Sinclair not only wished to draw attention to the impure food being mass produced in America, but also hoped their works would convince people that the quality of their physical and mental health was determined by the food they ate and the environment the inhabited. Each author, however, chose to convey this message in different ways. While Richards’s writing style made her appear emotionally distant and uncaring, Sinclair’s descriptive and passionate verse caused his readers to sympathize with Jurgis and his struggling family (5, 8).
Richards’s Method: Shaming with Science
Richards integrated this message, which I call her theory of environment, into nearly all of her published works. Instead of encouraging people to improve their lives, Richards sought to shame people into altering their lifestyle:
Sinclair’s Method: Sincerity Leads to Sympathy
Sinclair made this message a central component of the book’s plot. He developed characters that his audience truly cared about and placed these individuals in a variety of living conditions, some horrific and others acceptable, to demonstrate how one’s environment impacted one’s health. For example, while working in packing houses, Jurgis, the main character, became very ill and weak. However, after spending the summer as a vagrant living off the land, Jurgis’s:
