Although The Jungle became famous as an exposé of lax standards and cut corners in the meatpacking industry, Sinclair’s intended target was much broader. By the turn of the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution had transformed the U.S. economy, leading to the emergence of two distinct classes: those who made their money off their ownership of factories, warehouses, and transport, and the wage laborers who worked in those industries. This private control of and profit from the “means of production” is the defining feature of modern capitalism, and at the time Sinclair was writing, it was virtually unregulated. For Sinclair, the horrors of the meatpacking industry are therefore important for what they reveal about the evils of American capitalism writ large—namely, its brutality and corruption.

The meatpacking plants themselves are quite literally violent places, and Sinclair portrays the plight of the butchered animals in a sympathetic light, saying of the hogs, “they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights!” (38). As this passage implies, however, the slaughter of livestock is a metaphor for the equally brutal way in which the meatpackers treat their human workers in their efforts to turn a profit.