He 'watched the men on their killing beds, marvelling at their speed and power as though they had been wonderful machines. Inside he sees how the rigours of the production line put those muscles to work. 'Do you want me to believe that with these arms' - and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might see the rolling muscles - 'that with these arms people will ever let me starve?' But his American dream of self-reliance soon crashes on the rocks of American reality. At the outset Jurgis, full of youthful vitality and the optimism of a recent immigrant, goes to the gates of the stockyards and compares himself favourably to others waiting for work. The Jungle tells the story of a young Lithuanian couple, Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, who move to Chicago's Packingtown at the turn of the century, where Jurgis finds work in the stockyards. Working in the meat-packing industry is the most dangerous job in America. Since half of his flock were involved in some way in the meat-packing industry, it didn't take long for him to work out the root of the problem.Ī century after Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, arguably one of the most politically influential American novels of the past 100 years, the ethnicity of the protagonists and the location of the story have changed, but the basic narrative of poor working conditions for immigrant labourers in the meat-packing industry and public concern over food quality remains constant. Some would wince others would shift their torsos awkwardly so as not to trouble a painful shoulder a few even had fingers missing. When he went to shake the hands of his congregation at the end of the service, he noticed their grips were not as firm as they might have been.

Around 1995, Father Damian Zuerlein noticed a disturbing trend among his mostly Hispanic parishioners at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in south Omaha, Nebraska.

The jungle sinclair