Upton Sinclair

• Born: 20 September 1878
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: 25 November 1968
• Best Known As: Socialist author of 1906's The Jungle

Upton Beall Sinclair was a prolific American writer known for his affiliation with socialism and famous for his 1906 novel, The Jungle. Sinclair was born in Baltimore, but his family moved to New York when he was a child. When he was a teenager he began writing brief bits for newspapers and magazines. The Jungle was his sixth novel, and its success made him nationally famous. An exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry, the book helped change national regulations on food preparation and earned him enough money to establish the Helicon Home Colony, a socialist community in New Jersey. Although the community only lasted about a year (it burned down in 1907), Sinclair remained committed to social causes and to exposing the dangerous effects of capitalism in realistic fiction, essays and various other writings. In 1915 he moved to California, where he ran unsuccessfully for public office several times, including running for governor as a Democrat in 1934. In the 1940s Sinclair again had popular success with the "Lanny Budd" series of novels, beginning with World's End (1940) and including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dragon's Teeth (1942). In 1953 Sinclair moved to Arizona, where he continued to write books, including working his 1932 autobiography, American Outpost, into The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (1962).

He is not related to Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair.

Upton Beale Sinclair, Jr. (1878-1968), American novelist and political writer, was one of the most influential muckraking writers of the 1900s. He continued to write and speak for reform for many years.

Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 20, 1878. His father, struggling against poverty and liquor, moved the family to New York City when Upton was 10. At 14 Upton entered the College of the City of New York. He graduated in 1897 and went to Columbia University to study law. Through these years he supported himself by writing for adventure-story magazines.

Sinclair moved to Quebec in 1900. His first novel, Springtime and Harvest (1901), was a modest success. Three more novels in the next 4 years failed to provide even a bare living. In 1906, however, The Jungle, exposing unfair labor practices and unsanitary conditions in the packing houses of Chicago, scored a huge success. The novel's protest about the lot of laborers and the socialist solutions it proposed did not have much immediate effect, but its exposé caused a public outcry. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Sinclair to discuss packing-house conditions, and a congressional investigation led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Law.

Sinclair divorced his first wife in 1912. The autobiographical novel Love's Pilgrimage (1911) treats his marriage and the birth of his child with a frankness which shocked some reviewers. He married Mary Craig in 1913. Sylvia and Sylvia's Marriage, a massive two-part story, called for sexual enlightenment. King Coal (1917), based on a coal strike of 1914-1915, returned to labor protest and socialistic polemic. Oil! (1927) dealt with dishonesty in Warren G. Harding's administration. Boston (1928), a novel about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, unearthed much new material and demonstrated the constructive research that always lay beneath Sinclair's protest writings.

Sinclair became a member of the Socialist party in 1902 and was Socialist candidate for Congress from New Jersey in 1906. In 1917 he left the party to support President Woodrow Wilson. He returned to the Socialist camp when Wilson supported Allied intervention in the Soviet Union. In California he stood for Congress on the Socialist ticket (1920), for the Senate (1922), and for governor (1926 and 1930). In 1933, persuaded to campaign seriously for governor, he called his program "End Poverty in California." His cogent presentation of Socialist ideas won him the Democratic nomination, but millions of dollars and a campaign based on falsehood and fear defeated him in the election.

World's End (1940) launched Sinclair's 11-volume novel series attempting to give an insider's view of American government between 1913 and 1949. One of the novels, Dragon's Teeth (1942), a study of the rise of Nazism, won the Pulitzer Prize. Before his death on Nov. 25, 1968, Sinclair had produced more than 90 books which netted at least $1 million, most of it contributed to socialist and reform causes.

Further Reading

Sinclair's My Lifetime in Letters (1960) and The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (1962) are revealing, if not entirely reliable. Sinclair's work is discussed appreciatively in Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature (1942). A brief essay and a rare reprint of the "End Poverty in California" program are in Arthur M. Weinberg, Passport to Utopia: Great Panaceas in American History (1968).

For more information on Upton Beall Sinclair, visit Britannica.com.

Sinclair, Upton (Upton Beall Sinclair), 1878–1968, American novelist and socialist activist, b. Baltimore, grad. College of the City of New York, 1897. He was one of the muckrakers, and a dedication to social and industrial reform underlies most of his writing. The Jungle (1906), a brutally graphic novel of the Chicago stockyards, aroused great public indignation and led to reform of federal food inspection laws. With the money earned from that novel, Sinclair established (1906) a short-lived socialist community, Helicon Home Colony, at Englewood, N.J., and a decade later he moved to Southern California. Among Sinclair's other novels exposing social evils are King Coal (1917), Oil! (1927), Boston (on the Sacco-Vanzetti Case, 1928), and Little Steel (1938). In his social studies, such as The Brass Check (1919), on journalism, and The Goose-Step (1923), on education, he tried to uncover the harmful effects of capitalist economic pressure on institutions of learning and culture.

An ardent socialist, Sinclair was in and out of the American Socialist party and, under its aegis, ran unsuccessfully for congressman, senator, and governor. In 1934 he was again defeated, this time as the Democratic party's candidate for California governor. World's End (1940) is the first of a cycle of 11 novels that deal with world events since 1914 and feature the fictional Lanny Budd as hero; the third, Dragon's Teeth (1942), won a Pulitzer Prize. Many of Sinclair's more than 90 books have been widely translated.

Bibliography

See his autobiography (1962) and reminiscences, American Outpost (1932) and My Lifetime in Letters (1960); biographies by L. Harris (1975), A. Arthur (2006), and K. Mattson (2006); studies by F. Dell (1927, repr. 1970), A. Blinderman, ed. (1975), J. A. Yoder (1975), W. A. Bloodworth, Jr. (1977), and R. N. Mookerjee (1988); bibliography by R. Gottesman (1973).

(1878-1968)

1901	Springtime and Harvest (retitled King Midas). Sinclair's first published novel, like all of his early fiction--Prince Hugen (1903), The Journal of Arthur Stribling (1903), A Captain of Industry (1906), and The Overman (1907)--is chiefly significant for reflecting the evolution of his views on social reform. Sinclair began writing to pay his way through New York's City College.
1904	Manassas. Sinclair's historical novel concerning an idealistic Southern abolitionist represents a turning point in Sinclair's career, expressing his willingness to go against his Southern background and endorse a radical response to a social problem. The book would lead to his masterpiece, The Jungle (1906); after tackling a historical social problem, he turns his attention to a contemporary assessment of "wage slavery."
1906	The Jungle. Sinclair's exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry focuses on the destruction of a hardworking immigrant family. The novel creates a sensation, prompting the Roosevelt administration to mount a federal investigation that would result in legislative reforms.
1908	The Metropolis and The Money-changers. Sinclair publishes two novels somewhat weakened by the author's moral outrage and crusading zeal. The first targets upper-class New York society; the second reflects the affairs of financier J. P. Morgan.
1917	King Coal. As he treated the stockyards in The Jungle (1906), Sinclair exposes the unregulated coal-mining camps of Colorado in a documentary novel based on the author's investigations during the great coal strike of 1914-1915.
1919	Jimmie Higgins. Sinclair's ideological novel, about a committed socialist who enlists to fight the Germans but then is driven to insanity when he speaks out against American intervention in Russia, is significant for its display of American socialist views of the war and the Russian Revolution.
1920	The Brass Check. This is first of what Sinclair would call his Dead Hand series (in contrast to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" of laissez-faire economics) critiquing modern institutions. Sinclair's assessment of contemporary journalism would be followed by The Goose-Step (1923), about education, and Mammonart (1925), an assessment of art and literature.
1927	Oil! Regarded by many as the writer's best novel, this is the story of independent oil operators struggling against monopoly interests. The book reflects the Teapot Dome scandal and the public figures involved in the oil scandals of the Harding administration.
1928	Boston. Sinclair's indignant defense of Sacco and Vanzetti is dramatized through the fictional story of a Boston Brahmin who meets the anarchists and witnesses their arrest and trial.
1930	Mountain City. The novel treats the evils of money in the story of a westerner's drive to become a tycoon. It is, in the words of one reviewer, "exactly the kind of novel Horatio Alger might have written if he had possessed a social conscience."
1931	The Wet Parade. Sinclair presents a tractlike fictional defense of prohibition, which, according to the writer, has failed not because it is wrong but because it has never really been tried, since enforcement is hampered by politics. Preaching to the choir, the book is praised by prohibition advocates as a new Uncle Tom's Cabin and derided by opponents as the worst kind of propaganda.
1932	American Outpost: A Book of Reminiscences. The writer supplies an account of his life and his artistic development.
1937	The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America. Sinclair provides a fictionalized portrait of Henry Ford and his company as seen from the perspective of three generations of Ford's laborers. The United Auto Workers distributes 200,000 copies to union members.
1940	World's End. The first of an eventual sequence of eleven novels tracing the course of twentieth-century history from 1913 through World War II from the perspective of Lanny Budd, the illegitimate son of a munitions manufacturer and a famous beauty. The author's most ambitious work, the novel cycle is an interesting measure of how Sinclair's radical Marxist interpretation of modern history gives way to conventional patriotic sentiment during the course of the war. Other titles in the series are Between Two Worlds (1941), Dragon's Teeth (1942), Wide Is the Gate (1943), Presidential Agent (1944), Dragon Harvest (1945), A World to Win (1946), Presidential Mission (1945), One Clear Call (1948), O Shepherd Speak! (1949), and The Return of Lanny Budd (1953).
1942	Dragon's Teeth. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the third volume in the author's Lanny Budd series covers the years between 1930 and 1934, including Budd's experiences in Germany and his attempt to free a Jewish friend from Dachau.
1962	Autobiography. Sinclair adds several chapters to his previous memoir, American Outpost (1932), providing both an important self-assessment and a record of the progressive era.

(1878-1968)

Famous American novelist, fearless champion of many unpopular causes. He was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland, and later studied at the City College of New York. He was a Socialist candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives (1906, 1920); for the Senate (1922); and for governorship of California (1926, 1930). In 1934, he was narrowly defeated as the Democratic candidate for governor of California.

He published over 80 books, some of which were translated into more than 50 languages. His most well-known books include The Jungle (1906), King Coal (1917), The Brass Check (1919), The Goose Step (1923), Oil (1927), Between Two Worlds (1941), Presidential Agent (1944), Presidential Mission (1947), and O Shepherd Speak (1947).

In his book Mental Radio: Does it Work, and How? (1930), he detailed his investigations into the phenomena of telepathy with his wife, Mary Craig Sinclair. The book, to which William McDougall wrote the introduction to the English edition and Albert Einstein to the German edition, presents a lively account of the abilities of Mary Sinclair as a sensitive, or psychic. She first became aware of her powers after the death of several intimate friends. They were further awakened by her contact with Jan, a Pole, who had studied yoga in India and performed some of the feats of the fakirs. He was, for some time, a guest in the Sinclair home.

Upton Sinclair himself was, for some time, irritated by his wife's gift. In the waking state and in her dreams she could follow her husband and describe his doings. Finally he decided to experiment. The usual method was to make half a dozen drawings of anything that came into his mind. These were folded. His wife, in a dark room, would take them one by one, place them on her abdomen and then write or draw her impression.

The curious thing was that sometimes the second drawing was registered on her mind before she finished with the first one. When, for instance, a necktie was drawn, she added puffs of smoke at the end of the tie. The next object was a burning match.

Sinclair concluded: "We have something more than telepathy, for no human mind knows what drawings she has taken from that envelope. No human mind but her own even knows that she is trying an experiment. Either there is some super-human mind or else there is something that comes from the drawings, some way of 'seeing' other than the way we know and use all the time."

Walter Franklin Prince made the Sinclair experiments the subject matter of the sixteenth bulletin of the Boston Society for Psychic Research, dealing also with a great deal of unpublished material and giving an account of a series of control tests with ten different persons. Upton Sinclair died November 25,1968.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S. and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Prince, Walter Franklin. The Sinclair Experiments Demonstrating Telepathy. Boston: Boston Society for Psychic Research, n.d.

Sinclair, Upton. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. N.p.,1962.

——. Mental Radio: Does it Work, and How? Pasadena, Calif.: The Author, 1930.

Quotes:

"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

"The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery."

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