"What Uncle Tom's Cabin did for black slaves, 'The Jungle' has a large chance to do for the white slaves of today. It is brutal with life. It is written of sweat and blood and groans and tears. It depicts not what man ought to be, but what man is compelled to be, in this our world in the twentieth century. It depicts not what our country ought to be, or what it seems to be in the fancies of Fourth of July spellbinders--the home of liberty and equality, of opportunity--it depicts what our country really is, the home of oppression and injustice, a nightmare of misery, an inferno of suffering, a human hell, a jungle of wild beasts." - Jack London