The novel "The Jungle", is a hybrid of history, literature, and propaganda. It was written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair, to demonstrate the control big business had over the average working man, and his family. He attempted to show his idea of the solution to this problem: socialism. At the time Sinclair wrote, communism was not yet around, so the anti-socialistic fears were not yet aroused. The American people were, in a way, open to the suggestion. As the title proposes, the novels is meant to show how American economic power had led big business, trusts, and incorporations to take control of the country, and turn it into a brutal jungle, where the `little guy' had nearly no hope for survival, let alone hope of the American dream of prosperity.

Sinclair wasn't chiefly interested in journalism, as some believe. He paid his way through college writing cheap adventure novels...