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"I am Upton Sinclair, and I have come to write the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the labor movement."

that the jungle was actually industrial capitalism. In the serialized version, he states: "the place which is here called The Jungle is not Packingtown, nor is it Chicago, nor is it Illinois, nor is it the United States—it is Civilization."

Tiddy was toying with a light breakfast an' idly turnin' over th' pages iv th' new book with both hands. Suddenly he rose fr'm th' table, an' cryin': 'I'm pizened,' began throwin' sausages out iv th' window. . . . Since thin th' Prisidint, like th' rest iv us, has become a viggytaryan

Competition and low profit margins generate a corporate motive for maximum productivity, and deregulation has shredded health and safety standards.

A study by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS; now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) in 1997 found that one-fourth of the workers in seven meatpacking plants in Iowa and Nebraska had “questionable” documents. The INS's Operation Vanguard in 1999 rounded up immigrants in slaughterhouses, bringing charges that employers and the government colluded to prevent workers from organizing unions.

The progressives revealed how these companies eliminated competition, set high prices, and treated workers as "wage slaves."

When Eric Schlosser came out with Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal in 2001, it was hailed as a modern-day Jungle, and with good reason.

Schlosser did far more, connecting the rise and consolidation of the fast-food industry in America to the declining power of labor unions, sliding blue-collar wages and growing income inequality.

"The basic thinking behind fast food has become the operating system of today's retail economy

The brutalization is underscored by Sinclair’s use of numerous analogies that compare the individuals to wild and hunted animals and of parallels between the fate of the innocent livestock and the fate of the common working person. Factory life is variously compared to an inferno, a bubbling cauldron, and a medieval torture chamber, where it is considered good sport to extract the last ounce of flesh from the hapless workers. The factory, however, is only a reflection of society’s disregard for democratic values and its indifference to truth and justice.

From the beginning, it is clear to the readers that Jurgis and his family are fighting against the odds. Each new detail makes it abundantly clear that the system tempts people with unrealistic dreams and then erects insurmountable barriers to prevent the attainment of those dreams.

In meat and poultry plants across the United States, Human Rights Watch found that many workers face a real danger of losing a limb, or even their lives, in unsafe work conditions.

“A century after Upton Sinclair wrote ‘The Jungle,’ workers in the meatpacking industry still face serious injuries,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch.

“When workers try to defend themselves by forming unions, employers use fear and intimidation to stop them,”

His novel The Jungle, published in 1906, led to institutional changes in the handling of meat, but it did not necessarily have much effect on the protection of workers

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