The Jungle by Upton Sinclair?

I thought the bear was hilarious. It was similar to Mike and the Steams Shovel. It made me wonder if feral children would survive to an old age.

I wondered if today's meatpacking plants are efficient enough to process the squeal now. It reminded me a liiiitle bit of Down and Out in Paris and London and a little bit of Crime and Punishment, but that was probably just the poverty and social injustice motifs, nothing too deep. The idea of food with no nutritional value (sausages made from virtually nothing but sawdust) made me question the surface value of consumed goods, and the whole expose thing made the robber-baron stuff I was learning in history at the time all the more vivid.

Sorry if that comes off as a bit vague--I haven't read that book in forever, but I did love it.