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The Machine
By: Upton Sinclair
Sinclair set to work upon what he intended to be a trilogy of novels portraying the life of the city of New York. The first of these novels, 'The Metropolis', dealt with what calls itself 'society'; the second, 'The Moneychangers', with 'high finance'; the third, which was to be called 'The Machine,' was to carry its hero through a political career, presenting a study of 'Tammany Hall' and the slums. This work was undertaken at a time when the writer was in wretched health and under great nervous strain. He was unable to make either of the two published volumes what he had intended; and the third volume he was unable to write at all - the most superficial study of the material brought him into contact with so much misery and oppression that he found the attempt was literally wrecking him.
The theme, however, kept haunting him, and conditions which he had discovered cried out for publicity. He found that the work was taking, in his mind, the shape of a play, and so finally it came to be written. He is aware of the fact that two inadequate novels and a play constitute a somewhat dubious literary form. However, 'The Machine' is to be read by itself - he makes the explanation here merely in order that readers of 'The Metropolis' and 'The Moneychangers' may understand why they find the same characters in the play, and may know what was the story to which the two novels were intended to lead up.