Upton Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. Sinclair was the only child of a liquor salesman, Upton Beall Sinclair , and a strict, strong-willed mother, Priscilla Harden. During his childhood, he grew up on the verge of poverty and experienced the privilege of visiting his mother's family. At the age of ten, Sinclair's father decided to move his family from Baltimore to New York. By this time, Sinclair had already become interested in writers such as William Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Sinclair began selling children's books at the age of fourteen while attending the City College of New York, and after graduating in 1897, he then began attending Columbia University at the age nineteen. In 1900, he married Meta Fuller and had a son named David on December 1, 1901. Later in 1913, after divorcing Meta Fuller in 1911, he remarried Mary Craig Sinclair, and after divorcing Mary Craig in 1961, he remarried for the last time that same year to Mary Elizabeth Hard Willis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Sinclair's political views led to his first literary success and the one for which he is best known. The lack of respect he developed for the upper class as a child led Sinclair to socialism in 1903. In 1904, he was sent to Chicago by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write an expose on mistreatment inflicted on workers in the meat processing industry. For seven consecutive weeks, he frequently visited Packingtown, which was the residential area next to the packing plants and stockyards. Sinclair posed as a laborer and opened packinghouses to gain first-hand knowledge of the work. He then contacted social workers, police officers, doctors and others who were able to talk to him about topics related to the work and lifestyle in Packingtown. Socialists who lived in the area introduced him to other people, who recognized the community and the work done. After those seven weeks, he returned home to New Jersey and began writing his manuscript of “The Jungle.” Unsurprisingly, it was rejected by publishers, but in 1906 the novel was finally published by Doubleday. Sinclair's intention was to expose the plight of meatpacking factory workers, but his vivid descriptions of animal cruelty and unsanitary conditions caused a horrific public outcry, radically changing the way individuals purchased meat. food. Sinclair recounted that people who worked in the packing plant suffered from illnesses such as severed fingers, tuberculosis and blood poisoning. President Theodore Roosevelt read Sinclair's novel, invited him to the White House, and arranged an inspection of the meat processing industry. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were both passed in 1906. Later in 1938, Congress expanded the regulatory functions of the law passed in 1906 and expanded FDA control over processed foods. Then, in 1990, Congress passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which required food products, including processed meat, to carry basic nutrition information. Unlike many previous authors who had stated that the revision of the problems could be solved by the election of "honest men", Sinclair believed in the "rejection of capitalism and.