Practically alone among the American writers of his generation, wrote Edmund Wilson, [Sinclair] put to the American public the fundamental questions raised by capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them. When it was first published in 1906, The Jungle exposed the inhumane conditions of Chicagos stockyards and the laborers struggle against industry and wage slavery. It was an immediate bestseller and led to new regulations that forever changed workers rights and the meatpacking industry. A direct descendant of Dickenss Hard Times, it remains the most influential workingmans novel in American literature.