Often, there is nothing more than bone to retrieve.
These men work in the most appalling smell with vats full of chemicals.But worst of all are the men who process animal bones for fertilizer.The chemicals they use to brine meat or treat wool or leather eat away at their hands and knives slip and leave open wounds prone to infection.But it's not just the cattle that are diseased in Packingtown it's the laborers themselves.The canneries use lots of tricks to pass off spoiled or scrap meat as prime product to the American consumer.
Beef from these cattle, the narrator suggests, has killed more American soldiers than the Spaniards of the Spanish-American War (1898).A lot of the beef used in canneries is from old, crippled, or diseased cattle. Things are even worse for meat used only for canning.Inspectors who object to bad meat immediately get replaced at the meatpackers' request.What's more, of course the politicians who appoint these inspectors are in the pay of the rich men of Chicago.Yet these inspectors have been appointed at the request of the meatpacking management, and they also have very little authority.Speaking of things that are horrible in the meatpacking industry, everyone thinks meat has been certified safe by the government because there are inspectors onsite at all the factories.This is actually an ongoing environmental problem – check out these photos of Cleveland's Cuyahoga River catching fire repeatedly thanks to dire pollution.) (This part of the Chicago River is called "Bubbly Creek," and it is so badly polluted that its surface sometimes catches fire.When the city tried to make the packers cover over the part of the Chicago River where all the meatpacking plants dump their waste, the packers had to ask Mike Scully to intervene with the city council to keep it from happening.Apparently, even the packers are afraid of Mike Scully.The person who manages the politics of Packingtown is a man called Mike Scully, a rich Irishman with lots of friends who runs what he calls the "War Whoop League.".One way that they do this is by buying votes for their candidates all unknowing, Jurgis became one of those votes.The two main political parties are so committed to beating each other that they cheat in elections all the time.They tell him that the United States is a democracy, with political parties. At the union, Jurgis's friends explain what has happened.Jurgis tells this story to Jonas, who privately approaches this night watchman to offer to vote three times for $4.And then, when election day comes, this night watchman leads Jurgis and a bunch of other guys to a polling station to vote exactly as he tells them to vote.About a month later, this man tells Jurgis to register to vote.So, Jurgis turns up alongside a bunch of other new immigrants, takes an oath he doesn't understand, and becomes a citizen.
This man told him to show up at a certain time to take an oath of citizenship this would get Jurgis half a day's pay with no hard labor, and he would be a citizen of the United States.When Jurgis first arrived at Brown's, he was approached by one of the night watchmen.The union also teaches Jurgis to be interested in politics.