stumbled, the
hiding places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him. There
were his Packingtown experiences, for instance--what was there about
Packingtown that Ostrinski could not explain! To Jurgis the packers had
been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef
Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed
all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying
upon the people. Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to
Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how
cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he
was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just
what he had been--one of the packers' hogs. What they wanted from a hog
was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they
wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from
the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were
not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the
purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was
especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the
work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity--it was
literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human
lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made himself
familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very quickly, he
would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all sorts of aspects, and he
would find it everywhere the same; it was the incarnation of blind and
insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths,
trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the
spirit of Capitalism made flesh. Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed
as a pirate ship; it had hoisted the black flag and declared war upon
civilization. Bribery and corruption were its everyday methods. In
Chicago the city government was simply one of its branch offices; it
stole billions of gallons of city water openly, it dictated to the
courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it forbade the mayor to
enforce the building laws against it. In the national capital it had
power to prevent inspection of its product, and to falsify government
reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was
threatened it burned its books and sent its criminal agents out of the
country. In the