the new religion of humanity -- or you might say it was
the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the
literal application of all the teachings of Christ.

Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conver~
sation of his new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful
experience to him -- an almost supernatural experience.
It was like encountering an inhabitant of the fourth dimen~
sion of space, a being who was free from all one's own
limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis had been wander~
ing and blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here,
suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and lifted
him out of it, and set him upon a mountain-top, from
which he could survey it all, -- could see the paths from
which he had wandered, the morasses into which he had
stumbled, the hiding-places of the beasts of prey that had
fallen upon him. There were his Packingtown experi~
ences, 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 combi~
nation 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 working-man, 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 pur~
chaser 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

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