At the beginning of chapter eight, immediately the reader is delved into the new found love between Marija and Tamoszius. As one can imagine the pair, a big burly woman and this puny little man, they are quite an unconventional pair. But, hey, love is love. The description of their courtship is quite bubbly. They blush and are jealous of one another, as young lovers are, and they plan on being married quite soon. This relationship is seemingly beneficial not only to Marija, but also to the entirety of the family in more than one way as well.
"There was no place to entertain company except in the kitchen, in the midst of the family, and Tamoszius would sit there with his hat between his knees, never saying more than half a dozen words at the time, and turning red in the face before he managed to say those, until finally Jurgis would clap him upon the back, in his hearty way, cryring, 'Come now, brother, give us a tune.' And then Tamoszius's face would light up and he would get out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin, and play."
"There were other benefits accruing to Marija from this friendship- benefits of a more substantial nature. People paid Tamoszius big money to come and make music on state occasions..."
All of Marija's good fortune unfortunately receives a hard blow suddenly. The factory in which she paints cans shuts down, and she loses her job. This only begins to go into the description of the unsteady working conditions that all of the factory workers in the town are under. It seems that all of the workers are living under subjection to their job, almost as if they had unknowingly sold their souls to the meat packing industry. Jurgis would go to work at 7 A.M. sharp, if one minute late, and hour's pay was docked. During the bone chilling winter months, the workers would have to wait hours to even begin working, and those lost hours without pay or benefit to them. The hours that they did get were never sure. Sometimes they would be working until four in the evening, and sometimes it would be one in the morning.
These conditions led the family to join the workers union for the meat packing factories. This effort jump-started a swelling of pride in the family's freedom. They were just now realizing what it meant to have rights. Jurgis makes a comparison between the union and the Gospel:
"He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago- after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms."
Jurgis's great splurge of pride gives him a desire of more. He becomes a citizen of the United States, and he also is paid two dollars to vote. He begins to take some classes at a night school where he learns to read a little and speak English. All of these happenings cause him to reflect on his past in Lithuania concerning politics under the Russian empire.
The mention of the cesspool dubbed "Bubbly Creek" leads to the abhorring descriptions of the terrible health conditions concerning the factory workers of Packingtown. Despite the factory's "government inspectors", unmentionable actions do take place. Rancid,diseased meat is used. Many products were made chemically, not even containing the said meats they were even supposed to be. The health of the workers was unimaginable. Chemicals would deteriorate their skin away; fingernails would be eaten away; rheumatism would cause a man to be bedridden; blood poisoning was a major issue; backs would be bent out of shape; men would even fall into vats of boiling water.
Obviously, this industry was not the most desirable field of work, but the workers were under the spell of this job, and no matter what they did, they could not get away from it.
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