Upton Sinclair — whose 1927 novel Oil! was the basis for the film There Will Be Blood starring Daniel Day-Lewis — acts as a sort of American bridge between Charles Dickens and George Orwell. He lived among Chicago meat packers for three months in 1904 and the horrors that he witnessed form the basis of The Jungle, published first in instalments, and then as a book in 1906.
The Jungle earned Sinclair an invitation to the White House because it confirmed President Theodore Roosevelt’s suspicions about meat production. Roosevelt had seen for himself that more American soldiers had died from eating infected