Upton Sinclair's book 'The Jungle' depicts revolting sanitary conditions in the Chicago meatpacking industry at the time. Was it as bad as claimed?

by BreaksFull

Sinclair's book was published to show the plight of early 20th century immigrant workers, famously though the American public was more outraged and atrocious sanitation practised by the Chicago meatpacking industry than the treatment of the workers. I was recently linked to this article which claims the conditions were nothing like Sinclair described and that the Neill-Reynolds that brought forth the 1906 Meat Inspection Act was sloppy and inaccurate. However given that it's from a libertarian think tank I'm a bit skeptical. Is there any accuracy to the articles claim?

ForExes

There's been a few posts about this in the past:

  • /u/raitalin gave an answer here

  • /u/TheLadyEve gave one here

Both of those posts are quite old, and not very in depth, so hopefully someone is able to pop into the comments here and go deeper.