What were the problems the Jurgis family has to face in America in The Jungle?

The Rudkis
family faces a myriad of problems when they arrive in Chicago. They immigrate to the United
States from a forest village in Lithuania under the assumption they can grow rich in the land of
opportunity. However, they are innocents, wholly unprepared for what they are up against in a
brutal urban environment.

Sinclair was a socialist and wrote the novel as a
plea for a world with protections for the lowest strata of society, protections we have largely,
if not entirely, implemented since that time. The family, unprotected, is easily cheated and
exploited. They don't understand the terms of a mortgage when they try to buy a house nor do
they realize how shoddily it is built. They don't realize that their "home ownership"
is a scam and that the terms of their repayment are set up to make it impossible for them to
afford the payments on the house so that it is quickly foreclosed on and "sold" to the
next unsuspecting victim.

The novel is also a plea for unions: Jurgis thinks
he can...