By the early 1900s, some major magazines in the United States had already begun publishing stifling accounts of unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other crimes; which helped their sales go up. Against this backdrop, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an article on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and began an investigation as he stated: “I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying the conditions there and checking every more small detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as accurate as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To gain first-hand knowledge of the work, he would sneak into packing plants as a fake worker. He walked the streets of Packingtown, the area near the stockyards where the workers live. He approached people, from different backgrounds, who could provide useful information about conditions in Packingtown. After seven weeks he returned home to New Jersey, locked himself in a small cabin, wrote for nine months and produced The Jungle (Cherny).IV-1- The Jungle and the American Dream Sinclair's The Jungle, is his fictionalized relationship Chicago's Packingtown. It follows the story of a Lithuanian immigrant family in Chicago and describes the horrific living and working conditions they endure. Through Jurgis, the protagonist, and his family, Sinclair tells the tragedy of the suffering of all the Packinghouse workers in pursuit of the American dream. It gives a detailed description of their vicissitudes, from lodging in boarding houses to buying the swindled house, ... middle of paper ... it is precisely this smoked sausage that kills Kristoforas, Jurgis' nephew. An hour after eating the smoked sausage, the boy began screaming with exclamations of great pain and convulsions. Within a few minutes he died (138). These were just a few of the many examples in The Jungle of the deception and corruption displayed in the meatpacking industry. Nonetheless, the plants had government inspectors to check for tuberculosis animals, but Sinclair explains that these inspectors were usually the kind of people who were easily distracted by those passing by and did not regret losing dozens of other animals. Therefore, people's trust in government inspectors was betrayed and their health needs were relentlessly ignored. However, Sinclair's exposure of the meddling meatpacking industries has raised awareness of such practices that occur daily.