Upton Sinclair

When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with Szedvilas, he […] found that each one of these lesser industries was a separate little inferno, in its way as horrible as the killing beds, the source and fountain of them all[, and t]he workers in each of them had their own peculiar diseases.

Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the dingy killing beds of Durham’s became a very purgatory; one time, in a single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke.

To Jurgis this man’s whole presence reeked of the crime he had committed; the touch of his body […] set every nerve of him a-tremble […]