eir own, cast out in middle
life to die; of weeping children driven with whips to their ignoble
toil; of disease-producing conditions in winter, only surpassed by the
deadly summer; of people working with their feet upon the ice and their
heads enveloped in hot steam; of the perpetual stench which infests
their nostrils, the sores which universally covered their bodies; of the
terrible pace set by the continual "speeding up" of the pace makers,
goaded to a pitch of frenzy; of accidents commonplace in every family;
of the garbage pile of refuse from the tables of more fortunate
citizens, from which many were forced to satisfy their hunger; of the
terrors of the black list, the shut-down, the strike and the lockout;
and of the universal swindle, whether a man bought a house, or doctored
tea, coffee, sugar or flour.

It is still further a story of the moral enormities and monstrosities of
the almost universal graft, "the plants honeycombed with rottenness. The
bosses grafted off the men and they grafted off each other, and some day
the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would
graft off the boss."

When the men were set to perform some peculiarly immoral act, they would
say, "Now we are working for the church," referring to the benefactions
of the proprietors to religious institutions.

It tells the story of the training of the children in vice, of girls
forced into immorality, so that a girl without virtue would stand a
better chance than a decent one. It is a tale of the terrible ending of
old Antanas by saltpeter poisoning; of Jonas, no one knows how, possibly
he fell into the vats; of little Kristoforas by convulsions; of little
Antanas by falling into a pit before the door of his house; of Marija,
in a house of shame; of Stanislovas, who was eaten by rats; and of
beautiful little Ona, to the description of whose ending no other than
the author's pen could do justice.

The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house,
but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern
commercial and political practises.

No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this.

Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism
will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like
standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to
lower the temperature."

"The Jungle" is the boiling over of our social v