Upton Sinclair, in his novel The Jungle, examines the desperate lives of meatpacking workers in Packingtown, Illinois, an area southwest of Chicago marked by its abundance of stockyards. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Andrew Mitchell, professor of history at Grove City College, discussed Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle and its impact on the passage of. With about 30 thousand larvae, Sinclair spent seven weeks in the Chicago yards, living in a colony house run by a friend of Jane Addams, often dressing fashionably.