The Jungle by Upton Sinclair needs a better ending

I just finished the jungle by Upton Sinclair. Took me about a month because it is dense, and I was reading more engaging stuff at the time (Ursala, K. Leguin!). Read it because I have been on a classics binge ever since my son was born and I'm a teacher now too so I gotta get my classics in (I teach science but still). Anyway, this book's ending sucks! It was hard going through the beginning because I was confused by the wedding and didn't know what was going on. I learned about this book when I was in school, that it was the big game changer for the meat industry's regulation. Supposedly this was a horror book about rats and fingers getting ground up and sold as beef and it led to the formation of modern meat laws.

Turns out it is that, but that is just a small part. It is the far more engaging story of a Lithuanian man and his misadventures desperately trying to care for his family as the labor industry breaks him down piece by piece in early 20th century Chicago. That part was good. I was completely confused when all of his family was dead halfway through wondering how will this book even continue. And then it did continue with his continued downward fall and then rise back up as complicit in the broken system as an oppressor. That was good. Then he had another fall and finally discovered socialism. It then became increasingly socialistic propaganda to the point where I just skimmed the last dozen pages. All other characters had been abandoned. Marija and Elzbieta had resigned themselves to working themselves to death while good old Jurgis got a steady job because he is a socialist and his life has meaning because he is a socialist. Now he will spend the last chapter listening to fellow socialists rant. I knew coming into this that Upton Sinclair was a socialist and wanted to partake in this piece of seminal American literature, but damn.

I wonder to myself how it could have better ended. As I'm reading a book and whenever I finish I always wonder what could improve this and I don't know about this one. Maybe if the surviving members of team Lithuania that had been with Jurgis throughout the book did listen and gain hope, joining him in his crusade for worker's rights (and no dozen page rants). It just stopped having a plot in the last chapter. Maybe he starts a new family using the insight and knowledge his has gained through his years of suffering.

Did everyone here enjoy the book and what are your thoughts?