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Four months after The Jungle’s publication, President Roosevelt triumphantly signed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act into law.
These acts serve as the basis of all United States food and drug regulation, in addition to providing a pathway for monitoring the beef trust.
[Pure Food and Drug Act. 1906.]
[Federal Meat Inspection Act. 1906.]
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[An Awful Case of June Odors. Evening World, 9 Jun. 1906.]
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[New York Times. 12 Jan. 1907.]
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[New York Times. 26 May 1906.]
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“In the passage of the pure-food law the action of the various State food and dairy commissioners showed in striking fashion how much good for the whole people results from the hearty cooperation of the Federal and State officials in securing a given reform.”
[President Theodore Roosevelt. Seventh Annual Message. 3 Dec. 1907.]
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Despite these triumphs for American food safety, Sinclair lamented that the public and the legislature ignored his intentions to inspire change for the laborers of Packingtown with The Jungle.
At the time, the public accepted many inherent workplace dangers; it would take decades of labor movements and unionized struggles before legislation protected every worker.
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“I had objected to Roosevelt that he was giving all his attention to the subject of meat-inspection, and none to the subject of labor-inspection. His answer was that he had power to remedy the former evils, but no power to remedy the latter. ... The Jungle caused the whitewashing of some packing-house walls ... but it left the wage-slaves in those huge brick packing-boxes exactly where they were before.”[Upton Sinclair. The Brass Check. 1919.] |
