A fellow determined to find the truth for himself about conditions in the mines, runs away from home and adopts the alias "Joe Smith." After being turned away by one coal mine for fear of Hal being a union organizer, he gets a job in another coal mine operated by the General Fuel Company, or GFC. In the mines he befriends many of the workers, and realizes their misery and exploitation at the hands of the bosses. What he found there was abhorrent -- thus begins the tale of unionization and the advocacy workers' rights. Unionization, however, is easier spoken of than it is accomplished. It...

When an injustice befalls the poor, Allan is the first to fight for what is right. But as he continues his lawsuit, he begins to realize that the very people he's fighting with are the very people who rule New York. He must be wily and careful if he is to survive this pursuit of justice.

While most people credit The Jungle for exposing the horrible, unsanitary practices of America's meat-packing industry at the turn of the 19th century, the story spends far more time on the slum conditions and employer abuses heaped upon the immigrants who worked in the slaughterhouses and packing houses at that time. Sinclair wrote Jimmie Higgins in response to the First World War. He broke with the main body of the American Socialist Party at that time, favoring U.S. involvement in WWI, because of the threat of German militarism. After the war, however, he opposed any interference to the...

Sinclair, the prolific socialist author who is best-remembered for his groundbreaking 1906 fictional expose of labor abuses and the American meat-packing industry, The Jungle, began by writing jokes and juvenile adventure stories to finance his education at the City College of New York. Although born to an aristocratic Southern family, Sinclair's father was an alcoholic, so the family's fortunes varied wildly during his youth. A remarkably successful socialist candidate for Governor of California in the 1930s, many of Sinclair's novels revolved around his social concerns. Just as The...