
	I believe that The Jungle shows how human beings deep down inside are naturally greedy and self-centered. They only want to look out for themselves and make their lives as good as possible, but never look out for anyone lower then themselves. The Jungle shows this in many ways. The main obvious area is the owners and managers of the great factories.  All they want to do is make their companies and factories as big and great as they can be. They do not care about anyone or anything that gets in their way or anything that gets hurt because of their advancements. According to Upton Sinclair's work, "The line of the buildings stood clear-cut and black against the sky; here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys, with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world". Sinclair is trying to paint a picture of the great damage that this pollution is creating. He shows that the owners have no regard for any person or animal that might get hurt. They do not care about the great plumes of smoke billowing out of the factories or the animal feces and urine runoff from the thousands of pens around Packingtown. 
The owners and managers also did not care about their employees working to make them rich. They would do anything to make or save an extra buck, "So from the top to bottom the place is simply a seething cauldron of jealousies and hatreds; there is no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there is no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar". They force their employees to work awful hours and then without even a day's notice they might layoff multitudes of people at a time without any compensation or help finding a job. During the era The Jungle is set in there were not many, if any, laws or regulations protecting the workers safety or well being. This allowed the managers and owners to run wild, forcing their employees to speed up progress and work in terrible conditions. Although the book never says it directly, the people who lived and worked themselves to death in Packingtown were simply expected to deal with the horrible conditions both while working in the factories and living around them. There were no agencies or organizations set up to provide information or help to the workingman. There were unions that were formed, but these often did more harm than help as they made money off of the poor workers. The workers were so badly treated and had no way of escaping the system of Packingtown that they were described as slaves, "Here is a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances, immorality is exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it is under the system of chattel slavery."