The period from 1850 to 1900 saw a fundamental shift in the U.S. economy from agriculture to industry, resulting in a tremendous concentration of financial power in the hands of fewer people. During this time, the number of factory workers increased tenfold. Large corporations grew prosperous, but their wealth failed to trickle down to the worker, whose real wages dropped behind steadily rising prices. Faced with unsafe, unsanitary, and tenuous working conditions, factory workers lacked both economic and emotional security.
The year 1901 saw the formation of the Socialist Party of America. It was comprised of most of the radical groups outside the Socialist Labor Party, which itself consisted of a small and doctrinaire sect of Marxist purists. Members of the Socialist Party of America, while they embraced many of the ideas contained in the Communist Manifesto, rejected its theories of class struggle and demand for revolution. Sinclair, himself a member of the Socialist Party of America, was no exception; he disapproved of calling for mass rebellion. In The Jungle, the path to socialism is presented not as a fierce revolution but as a political transformation achieved through established channels such as strikes and elections.
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