# XXVI explained — The Jungle

> Chapter companion for The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

## What happens

Jurgis becomes a strikebreaker and is promoted to a boss in the killing-room during a major strike at the stockyards. He organizes a chaotic workforce of criminals, negroes, and low foreigners, while the packers exploit the situation. Violence erupts when Jurgis and others venture outside for a drink, leading to media sensationalism. The chapter depicts the squalid, debauched conditions in the yards, with gambling, prizefighting, and rampant disease, as the packers crush the union and Jurgis descends into drinking and self-loathing.

## Themes in this chapter

### Exploitation of Labor

Jurgis is used as a boss to exploit desperate strikebreakers, while the packers maximize profits at the expense of worker safety and dignity.

### Corruption and Injustice

The packers use injunctions to evade health laws, police protect strikebreakers, and the media distorts events to serve business interests.

### Health and Safety Hazards

The stockyards become a breeding ground for disease and violence, with unsanitary conditions, open sewers, and rampant venereal disease among workers handling food.

## Character check-ins

### Jurgis Rudkus

Becomes a strikebreaker and boss in the killing-room, organizing a chaotic workforce and later drinking heavily.

### Mr. Connor

Mentioned indirectly as a foreman who went back on the union; Jurgis takes his place.

### Brown

Brown's packing plant is the site of the strikebreaking and the debauchery described.

### Mike Scully

Not directly mentioned in this chapter.

## Key lines

> better class of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city, besides negroes and the lowest foreigners⁠—Greeks, Romanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks.

The strikebreakers were not skilled workers but rather criminals, thugs, African Americans, and poor immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.

_Highlights the packers' reliance on marginalized groups to break the strike._

> The police, and the strikers also, were determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary⁠—and that was the press.

Both police and strikers wanted peace, but the newspapers incited violence for sensational stories.

_Critique of media's role in labor conflicts._

> They lodged men and women on the same floor; and with the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery⁠—scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America.

Men and women were housed together, leading to orgies and widespread vice.

_Depicts the moral decay and exploitation in the stockyards during the strike._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_jungle_se/chapters/xxvi
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_jungle_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_jungle_se/chapters