Since the Townsend Plan and the EPIC supporters were often one and the same people, this was in effect an attack on his own core constituency. Then too, Sinclair felt duty-bound to announce his opposition to the rival Townsend Plan because the Townsend Plan was based on a regressive sales tax. This was perhaps reasonable, but it was impolitic, as it undermined his strongest issue. When President Roosevelt announced in June 1934 that he would propose a national social insurance system in the next session of Congress, Sinclair quite reasonably declared that he would be willing to defer his plan in favor of the President's national solution. He probably would have won, except for two last-minute political errors in judgment. Sinclair was denounced as a "Red" and "crackpot" and the Democratic establishment sought to derail his candidacy.ĭespite all of this, Upton Sinclair was very nearly elected Governor of California in 1934.
Sinclair's candidacy also set off a bitter political battle both within the Democratic party and with many groups who were opposed to various aspects of the EPIC plan. The media virtually demonized Sinclair through a concerted propaganda campaign based largely on smears and falsehoods.
Sinclair's radical candidacy was opposed by just about every establishment force in California. The nomination of an avowed socialist to head the Democratic party ticket was more than the California establishment could tolerate. His contemporary, the writer Edmund Wilson, would say of him: "Practically alone among the American writers of his generation, put to the American public the fundamental questions raised by capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them." He would receive a Pulitzer Prize for a later novel about Hitler's rise to power. Sinclair's interests ranged over a wide variety of topics, in his many books and articles.
"The Jungle" was influential in obtaining passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Upton Sinclair was a famous novelist and social crusader from California, who pioneered the kind of journalism known as "muckraking." His best-known novel was "The Jungle" which was an expose of the appalling and unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry.
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