The book begins with a traditional Lithuanian wedding feast and party, described in great detail! Interspersed with that description are details of the people at the rollicking festivities, and they are all poor working class men and women struggling to make ends meet in a harsh Chicago city. Some desperately poor. The twelve hours of fun, dancing, and music are a great escape from their everyday struggles. Even worth spending money that they can’t afford and don’t have!

The groom is a man named Jurgis, and his story is the tale of the book. He comes to the U.S. to work for the "American Dream", but finds only a nightmare. From the horrible working conditions, to the people that prey on the immigrants, to the famine, illness, and unsanitary living conditions, his life, and his families' life quickly falls apart. People die, get maimed, or just drift off into the fringes of society. Drunkenness, prostitution, and crime become ways of life. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Though the book is over one hundred years old, it is pretty much the tale of immigrants now - and the poor and the working class - in the U.S.. Sad, but true.

The meat packing yard where “some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year.” Four or five hundred cattle per hour!
“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

“The officials that ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes.” - Sound familiar???

“Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers;…”

“There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.” ( )

Page 32. In purple prose they know naught of germs, only the power of industry and of things Being Done. Lo! The great American muck-raking novel.

This was a really good read, and I think an important one for everyone. I read it many years ago, and my main memory is of the conditions of working in a meat processing plant, but its so much more. Jurgis, the main character is sort of a Walter Mitty of the early 20th century immigrant experience. He and his family come to America, find a house, get taken advantage of. Work in amazingly poor conditions in the plant, then things start to go wrong, he looses his job, gets arrested, looses his wife and child. He moves from meat packing, to a fertilizer plant, to living as a hobo, is a scab working against labor, then he works for labor, turns to a life of crime, then political corruption, then ultimately Socialism. It was a whirlwind. An excellent read. I had it on the shelf already, but I read it as a memorial read for Anita, it was one of her top 50 reads. ( )

Well that was unexpected. A thorough political narrative that, for me, took an unexpected route. I found it somewhat frustrating and much wished for a sense of justice in the in, which, I suppose, is up to the reader to find. ( )

Functions as more of a political treatise of sorts rather than a straightforward narrative, which exposes the ill-treatment of low-wage workers, particularly cheated immigrants, in early 20th century America. Through the medium of a tragic fable, Sinclair strives to represent Capitalism at its worst, and with bitter and explicit detail, sheds light on the injustice and evils that would be potentially concealed by the untrained eye. He advocates the cause of Socialism in its place and he makes a remarkably convincing argument for the undecided.

Personally, I found the story itself too tedious and predictable, and the characters a bit cold and detached; too much of a cautionary tale to make for a pleasurable read (like Black Beauty or The Red Pony for people). Nonetheless, the book is well-written with a sense of poignancy, and the concepts are both significant and inspiring.
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