work and dedication, Upton Sinclair tells a story about how they were cheated before they even got off the boat. Throughout the story, people preyed on the family’s ignorance. During the passage to America, an agent appeared to be helping them but was really cheating them. After arriving, they were constantly cheated out of their money. The house they bought was a total fraud, full of hidden expenses. Many members of the family were able to get jobs only through bribery. Ona was exploited by Connor, who threatened to have her and Jurgis, and even the rest of the family fired if she refused the relationship.In the book, anyone who earned a living through honesty and hard work was trapped in poverty. Anyone who lied and cheated to make a living was wealthy. This was the way a capitalistic society was presented in the book. It showed that a hard worker was not rewarded, and was disposed of when he/she became a burden. The bookshowed an honest, hardworking lower class, and a dishonest, lazy upper class. No middle class was described. Toward the end of the book, Upton Sinclair shows the reader how to solve Capitalism’s problems: replace it with Socialism. The Socialist party is promoted as an international political party that will solve all of the world’s problems. Every member of the party was told about the “Socialist revolution”, when the entire planet would become Socialist. Not once does the book mention the possibility of failure. It even claimed Socialists would control the country by 1912.The book discusses all the things that were being shipped out to the civilized world as “meat”. Sausages were not really made of sausage meat. They were mostly composed of “potato flour”, an odorless and tasteless potato extract with almost no food value. There were the cattle that had been fed “whiskey malt”, the refuse of breweries. These animals would become co...
