Upton Sinclair's Effect On The Progressive Movement

Christian Martin November 2, 2015

Upton Sinclair’s Effect on the Progressive Movement

Upton Sinclair Jr. was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the only child of Upton Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Sinclair. Throughout his life he was a devout Christian. His home life was hard since his family was in poverty and his father was an alcoholic. He moved to New York with his family at age ten and began attending New York City College at age fourteen. Once he graduated from there in 1897, he went to study law at Columbia University. While there he aimed his studies toward literature and politics instead of law. He never actually graduated

A progressive is someone who was a part of the progressive movement during that time period whose main goal was to promote change and better life for all Americans. As we know, Sinclair wanted to change the progressive class by making shorter work hours and earn higher pay by writing his book The Jungle. While he didn’t reach that goal he certainly did fix the quality of consumable items. This surely struck change in the lives of Americans not only in those days but it extends all the way until present

These could range from education to becoming more Earth friendly. We can reform education in many ways. We can first start off children with more difficult curriculum in lower grades to get them more prepared for harder and more important subjects. Another way to reform in the classroom is to provide better teachers who will ensure that every student will learn what they are supposed to. We can be more Earth friendly by making more houses use solar power. If more companies built solar panels then the price of solar panels would go down making them more affordable. Once that happens, more houses would have solar power which would greatly cut down on the production of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Another way to be more Earth friendly is to use cars that are battery powered and not gas powered. This would again cut down on the gas being released into the air thus creating a cleaner environment. In every way possible, the idea of change and reformation will always affect our lives in positive or negative ways but it is inevitable and will catch up to us