"...Nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a rule — if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a kna… - Upton Sinclair

Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would soon find out his error — for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a rule — if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave.

Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor, — for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting, — sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

...but he had been round the world enough to know that a man has to shift for himself in it, and that if he gets the worst of it, there is nobody to listen to him holler.

It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.