The Horrors of the Meatpacking Industry

The women are forced to turn over at an inhuman pace, lose money if they cannot, and then are fired if they complain (106). The men work in the packinghouses alike slaves in hell. When Jurgis is "lucky" enough to be picked for work, he finds work conditions to merely be fitting of the American Dream for which he left his native Lithuania. Sinclair is relentless in providing page afterwards page of detailed horrors the immigrants faced every day at work:

There were the beef luggers who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator cars, a fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most flop men in a a couple of(prenominal) years. . . . Of . . . all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a somebody who had the use of his thumb (101).

These horrors are intensified by the concomitant that the immigrant workers are paid wages which barely allow them to live. They incubate in crowded tenements hardly fit for human habitation. And the policy-making climate of the era, in terms of its effect on their lives---as twain workers and consumers---was one of rottenness and laissez-faire. The capitalist bosses were essentially allowed by political leaders to do whatever they had to do, or wanted to do, in order to maximize profits. And the corruption of the marriages was mirrored by the corruption of so-called inspectors. With respect to those inspectors, Sinclair is at times blatant in his condemnation, but is other times subtle as he shows life through the still-

The unions in the book are meant to serve as a meat whereby Jurgis can begin to believe that he can reach out a difference in his life and in his working conditions. At first he accepts whatever exploitation comes his way, believe that America is a dream come true. But at long last he is worn down and is ready to join with others in the union in order to effectively fight buns:

If you were a social person, [the inspector] was quite willing to enter into chat with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing by untouched (41).

With respect to Jurgis, however, Sinclair goes on to build up his union dream even more than in order to demonstrate the folly of such a dream. The author wants to show that the unions were a cruel hoax in large part fueled and controlled by the owners of the factories themselves. Jurgis is driven to bunco English to understand what is going on at union meetings, and he imagines that the union is "the beginning of democracy with him, . . . a light republic" (94). His learning of English comes only to allow him to down more clearly the helpless situation he and his broncobuster immigrants are in, and his vision of the union as a infinitesimal democracy only leaves him more crushed than ever at a time he realizes the futility of hoping for help from that union.

With their social, economic and work worlds in ruins and get worse, all the union can do is discuss electing a secretary. No polemical speech about the ineffectiveness and futility of put right through unionism could be one-tenth as powerful as Sinclair's brilliant juxtaposition of Marija's passionate rage and that handling of electing a recording secretary.

How could the immigrants ever hope for help from a union which was the plaything of the bosses themselves? As Sinclair writes:

Sinclair ends the book with cries
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