The Moneychangers Paperback – June 4, 2013

Upton Sinclair’s novel The Moneychangers, published in 1908, is loosely based on the real-life stock market crash known as the Panic of 1907. The story takes place in New York City. In the opening chapter, Allan Montague, an attorney, is reunited with a childhood friend from Mississippi, Lucy Dupree, who is recently widowed and has decided to settle in New York. Lucy wants Montague’s help being introduced into “Society,” but he soon finds himself assuming the role of protector as the beautiful Lucy is sought after by wealthy, married philanderers. Though there is no romantic connection between the two, Lucy is naive to the big-city ways of the metropolis, and Montague takes it upon himself to defend her honor.The story then makes a segue from chivalry into business. From their days back home in the South, Montague and Lucy are both stockholders in the Northern Mississippi Railroad. Lucy wants to sell her stock, and she asks Montague to act as her financial representative. Though this railroad is a small business, it has the potential to become a lot bigger through a deal with The Mississippi Steel Company. As New York’s wealthy financiers get wind of this, they show an interest in Lucy’s stock and start sniffing into her and Montague’s business. The more he deals with these interested parties, the more Montague learns about the underhanded deals going down in the world of New York finance, and how a handful of wealthy and powerful oligarchs manipulate the market, the courts, and the legislature to their advantage.Compared to other writers of the muckraker era like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair always had his own unique style that was more propagandistic and preachy than his contemporaries. He was never afraid to push his political agenda, no matter how blatantly, even at the expense of plot and characterization. (That’s not a criticism, just an observation; I actually admire him for it.) Here in The Moneychangers, however, Sinclair definitely makes an attempt to craft a satisfying melodrama. Stylistically, the book greatly resembles Dreiser’s novels The Financier and The Titan. Sinclair nevertheless still manages to get his digs into the capitalist class, but not so dogmatically as he does in books like The Jungle, 100%, or The Millennium. This may be because none of the book’s characters are members of the lower, working, or even the middle classes. The story is told entirely through the perspective of lawyers, bankers, and well-to-do businessmen. Having covered the proletariat with due diligence elsewhere in his body of work, perhaps here Sinclair was aiming to educate middle-class readers through subtler persuasive tactics.The Moneychangers isn’t very compelling at first, but it improves considerably as it goes along. The first half is rather slow, and the whole storyline about Lucy and her reputation feels a bit unnecessary to a novel that’s ultimately about finance and greed. The second half of the book, however, is really quite good. The instances of financial, commercial, and political corruption start out small but then gradually snowball into an avalanche. One particularly clever scene of journalistic espionage turns the book into a thriller worthy of a 21st-century film adaptation. Though Sinclair develops his case gradually without resorting to diatribes, by the end of the novel he has presented an ample laundry list of evils perpetrated by the oligarchs of American finance. The Moneychangers proves once again that even Sinclair’s lesser known works are often of high literary merit and loaded with valuable perspective on American history.

Upton Sinclair's first major novel, Manassas, details the end of the antebellum period before delving into battle horrors at the beginning of the Civil War. Why is this relevant? That book's protagonist was Allan Montague. In 1907, following on the heels of his monumentally successful "The Jungle", Sinclair wrote an indictment of a Whartonian high-society in "The Metropolis", and it starred... a character named Allan Montague - a man who appears to be an idealized cipher for Sinclair himself. This book, "The Moneychangers" is the direct sequel to "The Metropolis", much in the same vein though with more of a focus on finance than society.So what about the book? Well, it's a really good book. The prose is really quite precise and assured, with some excellent phrases turned here and there. It flows rapidly from plot point to plot point, and even when it descends into lengthy descriptions of the ornate surroundings and opulent Newport mansions it never becomes boring. Contrary to what Chris Bachelder's hilarious "U.S.!" would indicate, Sinclair's writing was not consistently wooden, but generally lively and erudite. And the lack of style and plot-arc that plagued the last third of The Jungle is nowhere to be found.What is most striking is how much in the way of financial strategy Sinclair works into the novel, and how the shell game of overleveraged assets played in 1907 was nearly identical to the shell game of overleveraged assets played in 2008. Sinclair is highly literate about economics, largely because of his strenuous immersion into Socialism, and he brings to life the complicated and inscrutable economic power plays (read: frauds) that are invisible to the public and most investors. Montague is a good "center mass" for the story because he has a conscience, but nonetheless must peel away the fact-onion underlying the economic tragedy at the same pace as the reader.I don't want to give away too much of the story, but know that it is generally tragic and dour, but there are far more moments of lively characterization and humor than in The Jungle or The Overman, and the book is written in a more mature style than King Coal. In fact, it's my favorite Public Domain (pre-1923) Sinclair novel thus far (and I've now read seven), and probably one of my favorite books, period.Highly recommended.

Easy reading although the background subject is far from simple and shows the money- men haven't changed a lot over the decades.

GREAT 👍

Although I have not read this yet (it is for my husband!)- I have read many books of Upton Sinclair's and find him most intriguing and knowledgable.