From the Vault - Upton Sinclair: Changing America

“When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime, I do not refer them to the newspaper files but to Upton Sinclair’s novels.”
~George Bernard Shaw

In 1906, more than a century ago, at the peak of the gilded age, when fat cats with spats, top hats, and tails ruled the world - and industry was king - an unlikely champion upset the balance forever: author Upton Sinclair, who in that year published his novel The Jungle, a graphic portrait of life in a turn-of-the-century American meat-packing factory. Although public response to the book would lead to the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act, Sinclair’s main focus — a demand for workers rights, labor reform, and gender protection in the workplace — went disappointingly unrealized. Nonetheless, Upton Sinclair’s contribution to literature and social reform is evidenced in the life and work of men and women like Rachel Carson, Jessica Mitford, Ralph Nader, and Pacifca’s own Amy Goodman.

Fast forward to 1962. Now in his eighties, Upton Sinclair took time to lecture on the campus of Pomona College in California before an audience of college students whose book reports on The Jungle were likely still fresh in their minds. Sinclair spoke that day in 1962 with his trademark plainspoken directness of how each and every human being, as an individual among the masses — and often standing against seemingly insurmountable odds — can change a nation, perhaps even the world. This week, on From the Vault, Pacifica Radio Archives proudly showcases it’s historic lecture recording, Upton Sinclair: Changing America, as an important example of Pacifica Radio’s rich broadcast legacy.