[Upton] Sinclair wrote The Jungle [1906] to ignite a socialist movement on behalf of America’s workers. He did not even pretend to have actually witnessed or verified the horrendous conditions he ascribed to Chicago packing houses. Instead, he relied heavily on both his own imagination and hearsay. Indeed, a congressional investigation at the time found little substance in Sinclair’s allegations.
Ernest C. Pasour: We Can Do Better than Government Inspection of Meat (The Freeman, May 1998)