Letter from Upton Sinclair to President Theodore Roosevelt
3/10/1906
Add all page(s) of this document to activity:
Add only page 1 to activity:
Add only page 2 to activity:
Add only page 3 to activity:
Add only page 4 to activity:
Add only page 5 to activity:
Add only page 6 to activity:
Add only page 7 to activity:
In this letter to President Roosevelt, author Upton Sinclair expresses his support for the presence of federal inspectors in the meat-packing houses. He advised that inspectors should come disguised as workingmen to discover the true conditions, as Sinclair did when he researched his book The Jungle.
The Jungle riled up the United States and its President, Teddy Roosevelt, by revealing the unsanitary conditions under which food was made. On June 30, 1906, President Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act, effectively creating the Food and Drug Administration.
Roosevelt had read an advanced copy of The Jungle. But almost before he finished reading it—barely a week after its first publication—Sinclair was peppering the President with letters and recommendations on how to regulate the industry. Roosevelt was sympathetic to Sinclair’s desire to regulate the industry but despised the man’s zealotry. "Tell Sinclair to go home and let me run the country for a while," Roosevelt said. Still, the two shared a lunch at the White House and an extensive correspondence—possibly sharing more letters than any President with an author who wasn’t writing a biography. Sinclair’s passionate descriptions of the meatpacking industry, and Roosevelt’s pursuit of reform in the industry, led to the nation’s first consumer protection laws.
This primary source comes from the Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture.
National Archives Identifier:
301981Full Citation: Letter from Upton Sinclair to President Theodore Roosevelt; 3/10/1906; Letters Received, 1893 - 1906; Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, Record Group 16; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. [Online Version, https://docsteach.org/documents/document/sinclair-roosevelt, April 19, 2024]
Activities that use this document