He used his passion for literature and school to enter New York City College at the age of fourteen, and used his writing skills to fund his college education. He did this by writing stories for newspapers and magazines, and by the age of seventeen Sinclair had earned enough money to live on his own while supplying his parents with a regular income. Sinclair soon married his first wife, Meta Fuller, in 1902. His life slowed down here within the next two years, which was until 1904 when Fred Warren, the editor of social journal Appeal to Reason, assigned him to write a novel about immigrant workers in the Chicago meat packing houses. The owner of the social journal, Julius Wayland, provided Sinclair with five hundred dollars before he even began writing the novel. The novel took seven weeks to complete, and was published in 1906. In the beginning, the novel was rejected by six different publishers, and was officially published when Sinclair decided to publish the novel himself. The novel was published in seventeen different languages and was a best seller all over the world. Winston Churchill praised the novel and believed that Sinclair was a very talented writer, but he did not agree with Sinclair on his conclusion of socialism. After the novel was published, Sinclair was known nationally and decided to accept an offer of the socialist party to become a candidate for the congress of New Jersey. Not only did this turn out unsuccessful, but his marriage began to fall apart at this time as well. His wife, Meta Fuller, left him for a poet named Harry Kemp. Not long after that, Sinclair married his second wife, Mary Craig Kimbrough, in 1913. They moved to a small town near New York City, and lived in a community of radicals. Many years passed, and the imperialist and socialist began arguing over the First World War, and who started the war. Sinclair, being a socialist, believed that the war had begun because of the Imperialist.
