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Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is an aptly titled book, where the humans in Chicago’s Packingtown of the early 1900’s face essentially the same fate as the animals they butcher and sell to survive.
The story opens with the marriage of Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, two immigrants from Lithuania who met at a fair a year and a half ago in their native country. When they first met Ona was only fourteen and Jurgis was twenty-five. Although Jurgis genuinely loves Ona, he couldn’t marry her in Lithuania because Ona’s fairly wealthy father thought she was too young. However, when Jurgis returns after the harvest Ona’s father is dead and the family’s finances are in a mess. Ona’s step uncle, Jonas, has started to make plans for the family, including Ona’s stepmother, Teta Elzbietha, and her six young children, to move to America. Supposedly an acquaintance of Jonas’ has made his fortune in America. Jurgis decides to travel to America with the family and his father Dede Antanas. The next spring they set off for America, joined at the last minute by Ona’s twenty year old cousin, Marija Berczynskas, an orphan. When they arrive in America they are swindled out of the little money they have and are forced to spend the whole night on the streets, where, the next morning, they are found by a police officer and sent to Packingtown, where the Lithuanian population is centered. There, they find Jonas’ acquaintance, though he is struggling himself, he helps the family find shelter at a filthy, but affordable, boarding house run by Mrs. Jukiene. Standing among the filth and squalor of their new home, Jurgis and Ona dream of employment and prosperity in the twilight.
Jurgis gets a job within the first half hour of his second day in Packingtown. He will be shoveling guts at Browns, a local meat packing plant. Their acquaintance that found them housing also tries to help Jonas and Antanas find jobs. Then all four of them take tours of both Browns and Durham’s plants. At both plants the meat is handled by hundreds of men each performing a specialized task. The whole process seems very unsanitary, especially by today’s standards, and the inspectors aren’t very vigilant at all. The four are told that the meat industry employs thirty thousand men, supports two-hundred and fifty thousand people in the neighborhood and indirectly supports a half million people. Thirty million people consume its products.
Jurgis reports for work the next morning and starts working at seventeen and a half cents an hour and over a dollar and a half a day. Jonas is promised a job by the start of next week and Marija gets a job painting cans at two dollars a day. Dede Antanas cannot find a job and it is unlikely that, at his age, he will ever find a job. After the apparent success of finding jobs so quickly the family [next page]