Inside The Brutal Labor Conditions That Inspired Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle'

Upton Sinclair investigated the Chicago meatpacking industry in the early 1900s and was appalled by what he saw — leading him to write America's most famous muckraking novel.

There were few better representations of the brutal efficiency of American industrialist capitalism at the start of the 20th century than Chicago’s sprawling meatpacking factories. The Union Stockyards alone covered more than a square mile on the city’s South Side, processing millions of animals and employing tens of thousands of workers — though their employment was far from comfortable at the factories.

Not only did these massive facilities turn countless animals into profits with ruthless speed, but they also had a disturbingly high human cost. Workers, mostly impoverished immigrants desperate for any employment