“The whip that drives [the modern slave – the sweatshop slave] can neither be seen nor heard... This slave is not never hunted by hounds, is not torn to pieces by picturesque scoundrels, nor dies in the ecstasy of religious faith. His religion is but another snare of his oppressors, and the bitterest of his misfortunes; the hounds that hunt him are diseased and accidental, and the villain that kills him is simply the prevailing wage. ”Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In his evocative exposé detailing the evils of Chicago's meatpacking industry, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair delivers a searing indictment of wage slavery. According to Sinclair, the Beef Trust ruthlessly exploited workers, subjecting them to a grueling fate worse than that experienced by chattel slaves. Driven by mere survival with no hope of earning a profit, industrial-era workers had no choice but to stand in line for months praying to be selected to work in one of the dirty, overcrowded factories that filled Chicago's cattle district. After being chosen as one of the “lucky few” to secure a job, workers toiled in the vilest working conditions for wages that could barely support a single person, much less an entire family. Despite being stripped of all human rights and driven like slaves, workers could never be sure that their job positions or their sub-minimum wages were protected. Sinclair argues that American capitalist industrialization promotes a legal form of slavery in which the working class is forced into intolerably inhumane working conditions in order to simply survive. It builds its case against wage labor through its protagonist's rude awakening of the cruel system, its frequent analogy of workers to animals and the packing district to a large machine, as well as providing a litany of labor practices disloyal people who kept the trusts in business. The novel tells the story of a Lithuanian immigrant factory worker named Jurgis, who has recently moved to the Chicago stockyards with high hopes of prosperity in the land of opportunity. Jurgis's perspective on relative prosperity quickly changes when his wedding guests defy the customary giving to the groom and bride because they cannot part with their hard-earned wages on which they depend for survival. He says: “There are strong men who work from early morning until late at night, in frozen cellars with a quarter of an inch of water on the floor. . . who can't earn three hundred dollars in a year? There are small children here. . . who can hardly see the top of the workbenches. . .who don't earn half of three hundred dollars a year, and maybe not even a third. . . Gradually these poor people have given up everything else, but to this [sum] they cling with all the strength of their soul. "Jurgis' once optimistic outlook on life in America quickly turns to desperation as he begins to understand the desperate conditions of work. He notes early on that he will never be a minute late for work as he will be "treated half daily pay,” and to never be more than a minute late or he will be “likely to find his brass check turned against the wall, which will send him to join the hungry crowd that waits at the gates every morning..” Sinclair makes it abundantly clear that workers have no rights or stable wages because employment opportunities are so limited, thus giving tyrannical masters free rein to mistreat and abuse their enslaved workers. The working class had to accept this fate to survive. Sinclair notes: "Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible - that they could never have or expect a single moment's respite from care, a single moment in which they were not haunted by thoughts of money... This actually did not live; it barely existed… They were willing to work all the time and could no longer do anything. When people did their best, they should be able to survive.” as slaves and treated like animals, workers lose the ability to live and become automatons focused simply on survival. To illustrate the miserable working conditions in the stockyards, Sinclair often draws parallels by equating workers with animals they dispute the plight of workers and the cause of unions who claim that workers are trying to “limit the production capacity of factories.” Sinclair responds by saying that no one really understood the unions' message; “newspaper editors, statesmen, and presidents of employers' associations and universities” did not understand that “what the unions were trying to do was to put an end to the killings.” He goes on to explain: “They were slaughtering men up there just like they slaughtered cattle; they ground up their bodies and souls and turned them into dollars and cents. "Sinclair saw the Packing District as a machine with the workers as expendable and changeable parts. He describes Jurgis watching the men work at the killing site, "marveling at their speed and power as if they had been marvelous machines"; Sinclair later notes : "somehow it never occurred to anyone to think about the flesh and blood side of the thing there", the workers were not considered human. Perhaps this was the reason for the inconceivable exploitation of them by the bosses. Men were rewarded no more for continued service to the industry than for diligent, hard work Sinclair says, “the man who minded his own business and did his job, because they would 'speed it up' until they had it. exhausted, then they would just throw him into the gutter." Sinclair reiterates this point when he argues that winter served as a mechanism for filtering out the weak; he says, "All year round they served as cogs in the great packing machine, and now it was the time to renew the car". This suggests Sinclair's perspective that the capitalist industrial society that revolved around these large corporate trusts was predominantly concerned with productivity and minimally, if at all, concerned with the plight of workers who they saw as superfluous parts of the supply chain. production. condemnation of wage slavery came in the form of a detailed catalog of depraved labor practices woven throughout the narrative. He attacks child labor when he states that “three-quarters of the children under fifteen are now engaged in earning a living in this glorious land of freedom.” Sinclair subsequently vividly describes the plight of the elderly through a brutally descriptive account of an old man whose feet were nearly burned to the bone by acid residue on the floor of his workplace. Sinclair also devotes much of his novel to describing the horrific working conditions of each factory, including unplanned extermination plans., 2003