Upton Sinclair was born in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 20, 1878. Sinclair was the only son of a liquor salesman, Upton Beall Sinclair, and of a stern, strong-willed mother, Priscilla Harden. During his childhood he grew up on the edge of poverty and was able to experience privilege by visiting his mother's family. At the age of ten, Sinclair's father decided to move his family from Baltimore to New York City; in particular, in this period Sinclair had already begun to show interest in writers such as William Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Sinclair began selling children's books at the age of fourteen while attending the City College of New York, and after graduating in 1897, he began attending Columbia University at the age of nineteen. In 1900, he married Meta Fuller and had a son named David on December 1, 1901. Later in 1913, after divorcing Meta Fuller in 1911, he remarried Mary Craig Sinclair, and, after divorcing Mary Craig in 1961, he remarried for the last time that same year to Mary Elizabeth Hard Willis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Sinclair's political views lead to his first literary success and the one he is best known for. The lack of respect he developed as a child for the upper class led Sinclair to socialism in 1903. In 1904 he was sent to Chicago by the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason to write an article about the mistreatment of workers in the meatpacking industry. For seven consecutive weeks he often visited Packingtown, the residential neighborhood near the packing plants and warehouses. Sinclair posed as a laborer and began packing plants to gain first-hand knowledge of the job. He then pursued social workers, police officers, doctors and others who were able to talk to him about topics related to work and lifestyle in Packingtown. Socialists living in the area introduced him to other people, who recognized the community and the work he had done. After those seven weeks had passed, he returned home to New Jersey and began writing his manuscript of "The Jungle." Not surprisingly, it was rejected by publishers, but in 1906 the novel was finally published by Doubleday. Sinclair's intention was to reveal the plight of workers in meatpacking plants, but instead his vivid descriptions of animal cruelty and unsanitary conditions provoked a horrific public outcry, radically changing the way people bought food. Sinclair said people who worked at the packing house suffered from afflictions such as severed fingers, tuberculosis and blood poisoning. President Theodore Roosevelt read Sinclair's novel and invited Sinclair to the White House and organized an inspection of the meatpacking industry. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were both passed in 1906. Later in 1938, Congress expanded the regulatory functions of the law passed in 1906 and extended the FDA's oversight of processed foods. Then, in 1990, Congress passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which required that food products, including processed meat, have basic nutritional information. Unlike many previous authors who had claimed that the revision of issues could be solved by the election of “honest men”, Sinclair believed “in the rejection of capitalism and the victory of socialism”. He wanted his readers to recognize that the horrors described in his book were due to corporate greed; he believed that.