Literature Log for Chapter 9
    Chapter nine is a chapter in which a lot of the meat packing plants hidden practices are revealed. The chapter started off with Jurgis wanting to learn English. This was a result of him going to the union meetings. He also learns about democracies and elections.
    This was one of the best chapters in the book because of the depth the Upton Sinclair goes into while describing what goes on in the meat packing factories.
    First he describes “Bubbly Creek.” “Bubbly Creek is an arm of the Chicago River and all of the drainage from the packing houses empties into it. He says that what it really is is “a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide.”  Sinclair goes on to describe the gasses that rise from it and the “grease and filth” that occupy its boundaries. The words that he chooses to use are so descriptive that the reader feels as if he can see and smell the creek.
    After describing the creek, Sinclair goes onto the factory. This is where it gets really interesting. When reading the first eight chapters one thinks that the packing houses are just operations that aren’t kept up condition wise by the owners. However, upon reading the ninth chapter, the reader can see that there is really a criminal-like genius behind the whole operation.
The one hundred and sixty meat inspectors that were working were appointed by the packers and were paid by the United States to keep all of the diseased meat in the state. The majority of the steers that were brought into the building had some sort of problem. Some of them were covered in boils, some had tuberculosis, and some of the meat that was sold had been sitting in cellars for years! As bad as that is, it gets worse. The men that worked in the pickle room had to be extremely careful as to what they touched because if they so much as pricked their finger, there was a great possibility that they would lose their life because of the amount of germs that infested that room. The beef boners and trimmers were in even worse shape. Most of them didn't have thumbs and all of them had a multitude of cuts and slashes mapping their hands. Fingernails were a scarcity because most of them had been worn off pulling hides. The wool pluckers could only keep a job for a limited amount of time because the wool that they were supposed pick off was painted with acid so that it would come off easier and that would eat through the worker's hands until there was nothing left.
    The list goes on and by the time one finishes the chapter, they have a new found respect for the people living back in those days. The reader can see that the hardships came from every single direction and that there was barely any time to enjoy the "great" world that the characters thought they were going to be living in.