Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” in a bygone populist era. In the hope of fomenting a socialist revolution, he attacked a full range of business practices of the time. He heaped particular scorn on the business trusts of the era, which “were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and w[ere] preying upon the people.”

But, as Sinclair himself later conceded, he succeeded only narrowly—his descriptions of the disgusting genesis of processed food were the only thing that sparked popular outrage and attendant government intervention. As he famously put it, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”