[NARRATOR:] On the morning of February 10th, 1906,

as Wiley was busily preparing for the coming battle in Congress,

the American public awoke to shocking headlines

about a scandal within the meatpacking industry.

Newspapers were filled with stomach-churning details

of the filthy conditions of Chicago's largest beef companies,

as described in a damning new book called “The Jungle”

by novelist Upton Sinclair.

Sinclair had spent nearly two months working undercover,

documenting the inhumane labor practices and unsanitary conditions on factory floors -

stories of rat infestations,

widespread contaminated and diseased carcasses

and even of human appendages finding their way into processed meat

and onto grocery store shelves.

"The Jungle" was not written as an argument for safe food legislation.

It was written as an argument on behalf of worker’s rights,

but it had unintended consequences.

There were a number of scenes in the novel about rats,

you know, getting into the meat and being turned into sausage,

about how filthy the conditions were.

And Americans were eating a lot of meat.

There were stories of people distracting the inspector

who was there to check for tuberculosis in cows,

so that cows that they knew were tubercular could just be passed through

and end up in the cooling cars.

The book describes mold-covered meat

that’s washed off in a bath of borax

and then goes back into the food supply.

The walls are scummy, with rotting meat that has dried and blood spatter

and germs are growing everywhere.

[LOHMAN:] You have the fresh cuts of meat

on down to, like, the pieces of meat

on down to the scraps of the pieces of the spoiled meat,

and they’re all going into different products

and being canned and sold to different populations

who are completely ignorant of what is or isn’t going into their food.

[NARRATOR:] It was a portrait of an industry run amok,

an extremely worrying depiction of America's food supply

that transfixed the country.

“I aimed for the public's heart,” Sinclair recalled.

“and by accident, I hit it in the stomach.”