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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Jungle
-
-Author: Upton Sinclair
-
-Release Date: June, 1994 [eBook #140]
-[Most recently updated: January 17, 2021]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: David Meltzer, Christy Phillips, Scott Coulter, Leroy Smith and David Widger
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUNGLE ***
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-The Jungle
-
-by Upton Sinclair
-
-(1906)
-
-TO THE WORKINGMEN OF AMERICA
-
-
-Contents
-
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- CHAPTER XV
- CHAPTER XVI
- CHAPTER XVII
- CHAPTER XVIII
- CHAPTER XIX
- CHAPTER XX
- CHAPTER XXI
- CHAPTER XXII
- CHAPTER XXIII
- CHAPTER XXIV
- CHAPTER XXV
- CHAPTER XXVI
- CHAPTER XXVII
- CHAPTER XXVIII
- CHAPTER XXIX
- CHAPTER XXX
- CHAPTER XXXI
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-
-It was four o’clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began
-to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the
-exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon
-Marija’s broad shoulders—it was her task to see that all things went in
-due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither
-and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and
-exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to
-see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself.
-She had left the church last of all, and, desiring to arrive first at
-the hall, had issued orders to the coachman to drive faster. When that
-personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Marija had
-flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out, proceeded to
-tell him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not
-understand, and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of
-her in altitude, the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to
-attempt to speak; and the result had been a furious altercation, which,
-continuing all the way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of
-urchins to the cortege at each side street for half a mile.
-
-This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door.
-The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull
-“broom, broom” of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied
-with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the
-throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the
-ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage,
-plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once within, she
-turned and began to push the other way, roaring, meantime, “_Eik! Eik!
-Uzdaryk-duris!_” in tones which made the orchestral uproar sound like
-fairy music.
-
-“Z. Graiczunas, Pasilinksminimams darzas. Vynas. Sznapsas. Wines and
-Liquors. Union Headquarters”—that was the way the signs ran. The
-reader, who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of
-far-off Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was
-the rear room of a saloon in that part of Chicago known as “back of the
-yards.” This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact;
-but how pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood
-that it was also the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of
-God’s gentlest creatures, the scene of the wedding feast and the
-joy-transfiguration of little Ona Lukoszaite!
-
-She stood in the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from
-pushing through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon.
-There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her
-otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress,
-conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders.
-There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright
-green rose leaves. There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands,
-and as she stood staring about her she twisted them together
-feverishly. It was almost too much for her—you could see the pain of
-too great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was
-so young—not quite sixteen—and small for her age, a mere child; and she
-had just been married—and married to Jurgis,[1] of all men, to Jurgis
-Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new black
-suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands.
-
- [1] Pronounced _Yoorghis_
-
-
-Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Jurgis had great black eyes with
-beetling brows, and thick black hair that curled in waves about his
-ears—in short, they were one of those incongruous and impossible
-married couples with which Mother Nature so often wills to confound all
-prophets, before and after. Jurgis could take up a
-two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car
-without a stagger, or even a thought; and now he stood in a far corner,
-frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his lips with his
-tongue each time before he could answer the congratulations of his
-friends.
-
-Gradually there was effected a separation between the spectators and
-the guests—a separation at least sufficiently complete for working
-purposes. There was no time during the festivities which ensued when
-there were not groups of onlookers in the doorways and the corners; and
-if any one of these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked
-sufficiently hungry, a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the
-feast. It was one of the laws of the _veselija_ that no one goes
-hungry; and, while a rule made in the forests of Lithuania is hard to
-apply in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its quarter of a
-million inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children who
-ran in from the street, and even the dogs, went out again happier. A
-charming informality was one of the characteristics of this
-celebration. The men wore their hats, or, if they wished, they took
-them off, and their coats with them; they ate when and where they
-pleased, and moved as often as they pleased. There were to be speeches
-and singing, but no one had to listen who did not care to; if he
-wished, meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was perfectly free. The
-resulting medley of sound distracted no one, save possibly alone the
-babies, of which there were present a number equal to the total
-possessed by all the guests invited. There was no other place for the
-babies to be, and so part of the preparations for the evening consisted
-of a collection of cribs and carriages in one corner. In these the
-babies slept, three or four together, or wakened together, as the case
-might be. Those who were still older, and could reach the tables,
-marched about munching contentedly at meat bones and bologna sausages.
-
-The room is about thirty feet square, with whitewashed walls, bare save
-for a calendar, a picture of a race horse, and a family tree in a
-gilded frame. To the right there is a door from the saloon, with a few
-loafers in the doorway, and in the corner beyond it a bar, with a
-presiding genius clad in soiled white, with waxed black mustaches and a
-carefully oiled curl plastered against one side of his forehead. In the
-opposite corner are two tables, filling a third of the room and laden
-with dishes and cold viands, which a few of the hungrier guests are
-already munching. At the head, where sits the bride, is a snow-white
-cake, with an Eiffel tower of constructed decoration, with sugar roses
-and two angels upon it, and a generous sprinkling of pink and green and
-yellow candies. Beyond opens a door into the kitchen, where there is a
-glimpse to be had of a range with much steam ascending from it, and
-many women, old and young, rushing hither and thither. In the corner to
-the left are the three musicians, upon a little platform, toiling
-heroically to make some impression upon the hubbub; also the babies,
-similarly occupied, and an open window whence the populace imbibes the
-sights and sounds and odors.
-
-Suddenly some of the steam begins to advance, and, peering through it,
-you discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona’s stepmother—Teta Elzbieta, as they
-call her—bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is
-Kotrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar
-burden; and half a minute later there appears old Grandmother
-Majauszkiene, with a big yellow bowl of smoking potatoes, nearly as big
-as herself. So, bit by bit, the feast takes form—there is a ham and a
-dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice, macaroni, bologna sausages, great
-piles of penny buns, bowls of milk, and foaming pitchers of beer. There
-is also, not six feet from your back, the bar, where you may order all
-you please and do not have to pay for it. “_Eiksz! Graicziau!_” screams
-Marija Berczynskas, and falls to work herself—for there is more upon
-the stove inside that will be spoiled if it be not eaten.
-
-So, with laughter and shouts and endless badinage and merriment, the
-guests take their places. The young men, who for the most part have
-been huddled near the door, summon their resolution and advance; and
-the shrinking Jurgis is poked and scolded by the old folks until he
-consents to seat himself at the right hand of the bride. The two
-bridesmaids, whose insignia of office are paper wreaths, come next, and
-after them the rest of the guests, old and young, boys and girls. The
-spirit of the occasion takes hold of the stately bartender, who
-condescends to a plate of stewed duck; even the fat policeman—whose
-duty it will be, later in the evening, to break up the fights—draws up
-a chair to the foot of the table. And the children shout and the babies
-yell, and every one laughs and sings and chatters—while above all the
-deafening clamor Cousin Marija shouts orders to the musicians.
-
-The musicians—how shall one begin to describe them? All this time they
-have been there, playing in a mad frenzy—all of this scene must be
-read, or said, or sung, to music. It is the music which makes it what
-it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a
-saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little
-corner of the high mansions of the sky.
-
-The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is
-out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an
-inspired man—the hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays
-like one possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can feel
-them in the air round about him, capering frenetically; with their
-invisible feet they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the
-orchestra rises on end, and his eyeballs start from their sockets, as
-he toils to keep up with them.
-
-Tamoszius Kuszleika is his name, and he has taught himself to play the
-violin by practicing all night, after working all day on the “killing
-beds.” He is in his shirt sleeves, with a vest figured with faded gold
-horseshoes, and a pink-striped shirt, suggestive of peppermint candy. A
-pair of military trousers, light blue with a yellow stripe, serve to
-give that suggestion of authority proper to the leader of a band. He is
-only about five feet high, but even so these trousers are about eight
-inches short of the ground. You wonder where he can have gotten them or
-rather you would wonder, if the excitement of being in his presence
-left you time to think of such things.
-
-For he is an inspired man. Every inch of him is inspired—you might
-almost say inspired separately. He stamps with his feet, he tosses his
-head, he sways and swings to and fro; he has a wizened-up little face,
-irresistibly comical; and, when he executes a turn or a flourish, his
-brows knit and his lips work and his eyelids wink—the very ends of his
-necktie bristle out. And every now and then he turns upon his
-companions, nodding, signaling, beckoning frantically—with every inch
-of him appealing, imploring, in behalf of the muses and their call.
-
-For they are hardly worthy of Tamoszius, the other two members of the
-orchestra. The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with
-black-rimmed spectacles and the mute and patient look of an overdriven
-mule; he responds to the whip but feebly, and then always falls back
-into his old rut. The third man is very fat, with a round, red,
-sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a
-look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello,
-and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the
-treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note
-after another, from four o’clock in the afternoon until nearly the same
-hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one dollar per
-hour.
-
-Before the feast has been five minutes under way, Tamoszius Kuszleika
-has risen in his excitement; a minute or two more and you see that he
-is beginning to edge over toward the tables. His nostrils are dilated
-and his breath comes fast—his demons are driving him. He nods and
-shakes his head at his companions, jerking at them with his violin,
-until at last the long form of the second violinist also rises up. In
-the end all three of them begin advancing, step by step, upon the
-banqueters, Valentinavyczia, the cellist, bumping along with his
-instrument between notes. Finally all three are gathered at the foot of
-the tables, and there Tamoszius mounts upon a stool.
-
-Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene. Some of the people are
-eating, some are laughing and talking—but you will make a great mistake
-if you think there is one of them who does not hear him. His notes are
-never true, and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and
-scratches on the high; but these things they heed no more than they
-heed the dirt and noise and squalor about them—it is out of this
-material that they have to build their lives, with it that they have to
-utter their souls. And this is their utterance; merry and boisterous,
-or mournful and wailing, or passionate and rebellious, this music is
-their music, music of home. It stretches out its arms to them, they
-have only to give themselves up. Chicago and its saloons and its slums
-fade away—there are green meadows and sunlit rivers, mighty forests and
-snow-clad hills. They behold home landscapes and childhood scenes
-returning; old loves and friendships begin to waken, old joys and
-griefs to laugh and weep. Some fall back and close their eyes, some
-beat upon the table. Now and then one leaps up with a cry and calls for
-this song or that; and then the fire leaps brighter in Tamoszius’ eyes,
-and he flings up his fiddle and shouts to his companions, and away they
-go in mad career. The company takes up the choruses, and men and women
-cry out like all possessed; some leap to their feet and stamp upon the
-floor, lifting their glasses and pledging each other. Before long it
-occurs to some one to demand an old wedding song, which celebrates the
-beauty of the bride and the joys of love. In the excitement of this
-masterpiece Tamoszius Kuszleika begins to edge in between the tables,
-making his way toward the head, where sits the bride. There is not a
-foot of space between the chairs of the guests, and Tamoszius is so
-short that he pokes them with his bow whenever he reaches over for the
-low notes; but still he presses in, and insists relentlessly that his
-companions must follow. During their progress, needless to say, the
-sounds of the cello are pretty well extinguished; but at last the three
-are at the head, and Tamoszius takes his station at the right hand of
-the bride and begins to pour out his soul in melting strains.
-
-Little Ona is too excited to eat. Once in a while she tastes a little
-something, when Cousin Marija pinches her elbow and reminds her; but,
-for the most part, she sits gazing with the same fearful eyes of
-wonder. Teta Elzbieta is all in a flutter, like a hummingbird; her
-sisters, too, keep running up behind her, whispering, breathless. But
-Ona seems scarcely to hear them—the music keeps calling, and the
-far-off look comes back, and she sits with her hands pressed together
-over her heart. Then the tears begin to come into her eyes; and as she
-is ashamed to wipe them away, and ashamed to let them run down her
-cheeks, she turns and shakes her head a little, and then flushes red
-when she sees that Jurgis is watching her. When in the end Tamoszius
-Kuszleika has reached her side, and is waving his magic wand above her,
-Ona’s cheeks are scarlet, and she looks as if she would have to get up
-and run away.
-
-In this crisis, however, she is saved by Marija Berczynskas, whom the
-muses suddenly visit. Marija is fond of a song, a song of lovers’
-parting; she wishes to hear it, and, as the musicians do not know it,
-she has risen, and is proceeding to teach them. Marija is short, but
-powerful in build. She works in a canning factory, and all day long she
-handles cans of beef that weigh fourteen pounds. She has a broad Slavic
-face, with prominent red cheeks. When she opens her mouth, it is
-tragical, but you cannot help thinking of a horse. She wears a blue
-flannel shirt-waist, which is now rolled up at the sleeves, disclosing
-her brawny arms; she has a carving fork in her hand, with which she
-pounds on the table to mark the time. As she roars her song, in a voice
-of which it is enough to say that it leaves no portion of the room
-vacant, the three musicians follow her, laboriously and note by note,
-but averaging one note behind; thus they toil through stanza after
-stanza of a lovesick swain’s lamentation:—
-
-“Sudiev’ kvietkeli, tu brangiausis;
-Sudiev’ ir laime, man biednam,
-Matau—paskyre teip Aukszcziausis,
-Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!”
-
-
-When the song is over, it is time for the speech, and old Dede Antanas
-rises to his feet. Grandfather Anthony, Jurgis’ father, is not more
-than sixty years of age, but you would think that he was eighty. He has
-been only six months in America, and the change has not done him good.
-In his manhood he worked in a cotton mill, but then a coughing fell
-upon him, and he had to leave; out in the country the trouble
-disappeared, but he has been working in the pickle rooms at Durham’s,
-and the breathing of the cold, damp air all day has brought it back.
-Now as he rises he is seized with a coughing fit, and holds himself by
-his chair and turns away his wan and battered face until it passes.
-
-Generally it is the custom for the speech at a _veselija_ to be taken
-out of one of the books and learned by heart; but in his youthful days
-Dede Antanas used to be a scholar, and really make up all the love
-letters of his friends. Now it is understood that he has composed an
-original speech of congratulation and benediction, and this is one of
-the events of the day. Even the boys, who are romping about the room,
-draw near and listen, and some of the women sob and wipe their aprons
-in their eyes. It is very solemn, for Antanas Rudkus has become
-possessed of the idea that he has not much longer to stay with his
-children. His speech leaves them all so tearful that one of the guests,
-Jokubas Szedvilas, who keeps a delicatessen store on Halsted Street,
-and is fat and hearty, is moved to rise and say that things may not be
-as bad as that, and then to go on and make a little speech of his own,
-in which he showers congratulations and prophecies of happiness upon
-the bride and groom, proceeding to particulars which greatly delight
-the young men, but which cause Ona to blush more furiously than ever.
-Jokubas possesses what his wife complacently describes as “poetiszka
-vaidintuve”—a poetical imagination.
-
-Now a good many of the guests have finished, and, since there is no
-pretense of ceremony, the banquet begins to break up. Some of the men
-gather about the bar; some wander about, laughing and singing; here and
-there will be a little group, chanting merrily, and in sublime
-indifference to the others and to the orchestra as well. Everybody is
-more or less restless—one would guess that something is on their minds.
-And so it proves. The last tardy diners are scarcely given time to
-finish, before the tables and the debris are shoved into the corner,
-and the chairs and the babies piled out of the way, and the real
-celebration of the evening begins. Then Tamoszius Kuszleika, after
-replenishing himself with a pot of beer, returns to his platform, and,
-standing up, reviews the scene; he taps authoritatively upon the side
-of his violin, then tucks it carefully under his chin, then waves his
-bow in an elaborate flourish, and finally smites the sounding strings
-and closes his eyes, and floats away in spirit upon the wings of a
-dreamy waltz. His companion follows, but with his eyes open, watching
-where he treads, so to speak; and finally Valentinavyczia, after
-waiting for a little and beating with his foot to get the time, casts
-up his eyes to the ceiling and begins to saw—“Broom! broom! broom!”
-
-The company pairs off quickly, and the whole room is soon in motion.
-Apparently nobody knows how to waltz, but that is nothing of any
-consequence—there is music, and they dance, each as he pleases, just as
-before they sang. Most of them prefer the “two-step,” especially the
-young, with whom it is the fashion. The older people have dances from
-home, strange and complicated steps which they execute with grave
-solemnity. Some do not dance anything at all, but simply hold each
-other’s hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express
-itself with their feet. Among these are Jokubas Szedvilas and his wife,
-Lucija, who together keep the delicatessen store, and consume nearly as
-much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the
-middle of the floor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking
-slowly from side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of
-toothless and perspiring ecstasy.
-
-Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail of
-home—an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily colored
-handkerchief, or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons. All these
-things are carefully avoided by the young, most of whom have learned to
-speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing. The girls
-wear ready-made dresses or shirt waists, and some of them look quite
-pretty. Some of the young men you would take to be Americans, of the
-type of clerks, but for the fact that they wear their hats in the room.
-Each of these younger couples affects a style of its own in dancing.
-Some hold each other tightly, some at a cautious distance. Some hold
-their hands out stiffly, some drop them loosely at their sides. Some
-dance springily, some glide softly, some move with grave dignity. There
-are boisterous couples, who tear wildly about the room, knocking every
-one out of their way. There are nervous couples, whom these frighten,
-and who cry, “Nusfok! Kas yra?” at them as they pass. Each couple is
-paired for the evening—you will never see them change about. There is
-Alena Jasaityte, for instance, who has danced unending hours with
-Juozas Raczius, to whom she is engaged. Alena is the beauty of the
-evening, and she would be really beautiful if she were not so proud.
-She wears a white shirtwaist, which represents, perhaps, half a week’s
-labor painting cans. She holds her skirt with her hand as she dances,
-with stately precision, after the manner of the _grandes dames_. Juozas
-is driving one of Durham’s wagons, and is making big wages. He affects
-a “tough” aspect, wearing his hat on one side and keeping a cigarette
-in his mouth all the evening. Then there is Jadvyga Marcinkus, who is
-also beautiful, but humble. Jadvyga likewise paints cans, but then she
-has an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by it, and so
-she does not spend her wages for shirtwaists. Jadvyga is small and
-delicate, with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter twisted into a
-little knot and tied on the top of her head. She wears an old white
-dress which she has made herself and worn to parties for the past five
-years; it is high-waisted—almost under her arms, and not very
-becoming,—but that does not trouble Jadvyga, who is dancing with her
-Mikolas. She is small, while he is big and powerful; she nestles in his
-arms as if she would hide herself from view, and leans her head upon
-his shoulder. He in turn has clasped his arms tightly around her, as if
-he would carry her away; and so she dances, and will dance the entire
-evening, and would dance forever, in ecstasy of bliss. You would smile,
-perhaps, to see them—but you would not smile if you knew all the story.
-This is the fifth year, now, that Jadvyga has been engaged to Mikolas,
-and her heart is sick. They would have been married in the beginning,
-only Mikolas has a father who is drunk all day, and he is the only
-other man in a large family. Even so they might have managed it (for
-Mikolas is a skilled man) but for cruel accidents which have almost
-taken the heart out of them. He is a beef-boner, and that is a
-dangerous trade, especially when you are on piecework and trying to
-earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and
-you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you
-strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a
-fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly
-contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within
-the last three years, Mikolas has been lying at home with blood
-poisoning—once for three months and once for nearly seven. The last
-time, too, he lost his job, and that meant six weeks more of standing
-at the doors of the packing houses, at six o’clock on bitter winter
-mornings, with a foot of snow on the ground and more in the air. There
-are learned people who can tell you out of the statistics that
-beef-boners make forty cents an hour, but, perhaps, these people have
-never looked into a beef-boner’s hands.
-
-When Tamoszius and his companions stop for a rest, as perforce they
-must, now and then, the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently.
-They never seem to tire; and there is no place for them to sit down if
-they did. It is only for a minute, anyway, for the leader starts up
-again, in spite of all the protests of the other two. This time it is
-another sort of a dance, a Lithuanian dance. Those who prefer to, go on
-with the two-step, but the majority go through an intricate series of
-motions, resembling more fancy skating than a dance. The climax of it
-is a furious _prestissimo_, at which the couples seize hands and begin
-a mad whirling. This is quite irresistible, and every one in the room
-joins in, until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies
-quite dazzling to look upon. But the sight of sights at this moment is
-Tamoszius Kuszleika. The old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest, but
-Tamoszius has no mercy. The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he
-bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race. His body shakes
-and throbs like a runaway steam engine, and the ear cannot follow the
-flying showers of notes—there is a pale blue mist where you look to see
-his bowing arm. With a most wonderful rush he comes to the end of the
-tune, and flings up his hands and staggers back exhausted; and with a
-final shout of delight the dancers fly apart, reeling here and there,
-bringing up against the walls of the room.
-
-After this there is beer for every one, the musicians included, and the
-revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the
-evening, which is the _acziavimas_. The _acziavimas_ is a ceremony
-which, once begun, will continue for three or four hours, and it
-involves one uninterrupted dance. The guests form a great ring, locking
-hands, and, when the music starts up, begin to move around in a circle.
-In the center stands the bride, and, one by one, the men step into the
-enclosure and dance with her. Each dances for several minutes—as long
-as he pleases; it is a very merry proceeding, with laughter and
-singing, and when the guest has finished, he finds himself face to face
-with Teta Elzbieta, who holds the hat. Into it he drops a sum of
-money—a dollar, or perhaps five dollars, according to his power, and
-his estimate of the value of the privilege. The guests are expected to
-pay for this entertainment; if they be proper guests, they will see
-that there is a neat sum left over for the bride and bridegroom to
-start life upon.
-
-Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of this
-entertainment. They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and
-maybe three hundred; and three hundred dollars is more than the year’s
-income of many a person in this room. There are able-bodied men here
-who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold cellars
-with a quarter of an inch of water on the floor—men who for six or
-seven months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon
-till the next Sunday morning—and who cannot earn three hundred dollars
-in a year. There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who
-can hardly see the top of the work benches—whose parents have lied to
-get them their places—and who do not make the half of three hundred
-dollars a year, and perhaps not even the third of it. And then to spend
-such a sum, all in a single day of your life, at a wedding feast! (For
-obviously it is the same thing, whether you spend it at once for your
-own wedding, or in a long time, at the weddings of all your friends.)
-
-It is very imprudent, it is tragic—but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by
-bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they
-cling with all the power of their souls—they cannot give up the
-_veselija!_ To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
-acknowledge defeat—and the difference between these two things is what
-keeps the world going. The _veselija_ has come down to them from a
-far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the
-cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he
-could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun;
-provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that
-life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after
-all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one
-may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a
-thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having
-known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil
-and live upon the memory all his days.
-
-Endlessly the dancers swung round and round—when they were dizzy they
-swung the other way. Hour after hour this had continued—the darkness
-had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
-The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only
-one tune, wearily, ploddingly. There were twenty bars or so of it, and
-when they came to the end they began again. Once every ten minutes or
-so they would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back
-exhausted; a circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and
-terrifying scene, that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his
-sleeping place behind the door.
-
-It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who
-cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day
-long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was
-leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of
-Faust, “Stay, thou art fair!” Whether it was by beer, or by shouting,
-or by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she
-would go back to the chase of it—and no sooner be fairly started than
-her chariot would be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the
-stupidity of those thrice accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would
-emit a howl and fly at them, shaking her fists in their faces, stamping
-upon the floor, purple and incoherent with rage. In vain the frightened
-Tamoszius would attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the
-flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist,
-in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. “Szalin!” Marija would scream.
-“Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children of hell?” And so,
-in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would
-return to her place and take up her task.
-
-She bore all the burden of the festivities now. Ona was kept up by her
-excitement, but all of the women and most of the men were tired—the
-soul of Marija was alone unconquered. She drove on the dancers—what had
-once been the ring had now the shape of a pear, with Marija at the
-stem, pulling one way and pushing the other, shouting, stamping,
-singing, a very volcano of energy. Now and then some one coming in or
-out would leave the door open, and the night air was chill; Marija as
-she passed would stretch out her foot and kick the doorknob, and slam
-would go the door! Once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of
-which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim. Little
-Sebastijonas, aged three, had been wandering about oblivious to all
-things, holding turned up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as
-“pop,” pink-colored, ice-cold, and delicious. Passing through the
-doorway the door smote him full, and the shriek which followed brought
-the dancing to a halt. Marija, who threatened horrid murder a hundred
-times a day, and would weep over the injury of a fly, seized little
-Sebastijonas in her arms and bid fair to smother him with kisses. There
-was a long rest for the orchestra, and plenty of refreshments, while
-Marija was making her peace with her victim, seating him upon the bar,
-and standing beside him and holding to his lips a foaming schooner of
-beer.
-
-In the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an
-anxious conference between Teta Elzbieta and Dede Antanas, and a few of
-the more intimate friends of the family. A trouble was come upon them.
-The _veselija_ is a compact, a compact not expressed, but therefore
-only the more binding upon all. Every one’s share was different—and yet
-every one knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a
-little more. Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all
-this was changing; it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in
-the air that one breathed here—it was affecting all the young men at
-once. They would come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner,
-and then sneak off. One would throw another’s hat out of the window,
-and both would go out to get it, and neither could be seen again. Or
-now and then half a dozen of them would get together and march out
-openly, staring at you, and making fun of you to your face. Still
-others, worse yet, would crowd about the bar, and at the expense of the
-host drink themselves sodden, paying not the least attention to any
-one, and leaving it to be thought that either they had danced with the
-bride already, or meant to later on.
-
-All these things were going on now, and the family was helpless with
-dismay. So long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made! Ona
-stood by, her eyes wide with terror. Those frightful bills—how they had
-haunted her, each item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her
-rest at night. How often she had named them over one by one and figured
-on them as she went to work—fifteen dollars for the hall, twenty-two
-dollars and a quarter for the ducks, twelve dollars for the musicians,
-five dollars at the church, and a blessing of the Virgin besides—and so
-on without an end! Worst of all was the frightful bill that was still
-to come from Graiczunas for the beer and liquor that might be consumed.
-One could never get in advance more than a guess as to this from a
-saloon-keeper—and then, when the time came he always came to you
-scratching his head and saying that he had guessed too low, but that he
-had done his best—your guests had gotten so very drunk. By him you were
-sure to be cheated unmercifully, and that even though you thought
-yourself the dearest of the hundreds of friends he had. He would begin
-to serve your guests out of a keg that was half full, and finish with
-one that was half empty, and then you would be charged for two kegs of
-beer. He would agree to serve a certain quality at a certain price, and
-when the time came you and your friends would be drinking some horrible
-poison that could not be described. You might complain, but you would
-get nothing for your pains but a ruined evening; while, as for going to
-law about it, you might as well go to heaven at once. The saloon-keeper
-stood in with all the big politics men in the district; and when you
-had once found out what it meant to get into trouble with such people,
-you would know enough to pay what you were told to pay and shut up.
-
-What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few
-that had really done their best. There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for
-instance—he had already given five dollars, and did not every one know
-that Jokubas Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for
-two hundred dollars to meet several months’ overdue rent? And then
-there was withered old poni Aniele—who was a widow, and had three
-children, and the rheumatism besides, and did washing for the
-tradespeople on Halsted Street at prices it would break your heart to
-hear named. Aniele had given the entire profit of her chickens for
-several months. Eight of them she owned, and she kept them in a little
-place fenced around on her backstairs. All day long the children of
-Aniele were raking in the dump for food for these chickens; and
-sometimes, when the competition there was too fierce, you might see
-them on Halsted Street walking close to the gutters, and with their
-mother following to see that no one robbed them of their finds. Money
-could not tell the value of these chickens to old Mrs. Jukniene—she
-valued them differently, for she had a feeling that she was getting
-something for nothing by means of them—that with them she was getting
-the better of a world that was getting the better of her in so many
-other ways. So she watched them every hour of the day, and had learned
-to see like an owl at night to watch them then. One of them had been
-stolen long ago, and not a month passed that some one did not try to
-steal another. As the frustrating of this one attempt involved a score
-of false alarms, it will be understood what a tribute old Mrs. Jukniene
-brought, just because Teta Elzbieta had once loaned her some money for
-a few days and saved her from being turned out of her house.
-
-More and more friends gathered round while the lamentation about these
-things was going on. Some drew nearer, hoping to overhear the
-conversation, who were themselves among the guilty—and surely that was
-a thing to try the patience of a saint. Finally there came Jurgis,
-urged by some one, and the story was retold to him. Jurgis listened in
-silence, with his great black eyebrows knitted. Now and then there
-would come a gleam underneath them and he would glance about the room.
-Perhaps he would have liked to go at some of those fellows with his big
-clenched fists; but then, doubtless, he realized how little good it
-would do him. No bill would be any less for turning out any one at this
-time; and then there would be the scandal—and Jurgis wanted nothing
-except to get away with Ona and to let the world go its own way. So his
-hands relaxed and he merely said quietly: “It is done, and there is no
-use in weeping, Teta Elzbieta.” Then his look turned toward Ona, who
-stood close to his side, and he saw the wide look of terror in her
-eyes. “Little one,” he said, in a low voice, “do not worry—it will not
-matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.” That
-was always what Jurgis said. Ona had grown used to it as the solution
-of all difficulties—“I will work harder!” He had said that in Lithuania
-when one official had taken his passport from him, and another had
-arrested him for being without it, and the two had divided a third of
-his belongings. He had said it again in New York, when the
-smooth-spoken agent had taken them in hand and made them pay such high
-prices, and almost prevented their leaving his place, in spite of their
-paying. Now he said it a third time, and Ona drew a deep breath; it was
-so wonderful to have a husband, just like a grown woman—and a husband
-who could solve all problems, and who was so big and strong!
-
-The last sob of little Sebastijonas has been stifled, and the orchestra
-has once more been reminded of its duty. The ceremony begins again—but
-there are few now left to dance with, and so very soon the collection
-is over and promiscuous dances once more begin. It is now after
-midnight, however, and things are not as they were before. The dancers
-are dull and heavy—most of them have been drinking hard, and have long
-ago passed the stage of exhilaration. They dance in monotonous measure,
-round after round, hour after hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if
-they were only half conscious, in a constantly growing stupor. The men
-grasp the women very tightly, but there will be half an hour together
-when neither will see the other’s face. Some couples do not care to
-dance, and have retired to the corners, where they sit with their arms
-enlaced. Others, who have been drinking still more, wander about the
-room, bumping into everything; some are in groups of two or three,
-singing, each group its own song. As time goes on there is a variety of
-drunkenness, among the younger men especially. Some stagger about in
-each other’s arms, whispering maudlin words—others start quarrels upon
-the slightest pretext, and come to blows and have to be pulled apart.
-Now the fat policeman wakens definitely, and feels of his club to see
-that it is ready for business. He has to be prompt—for these
-two-o’clock-in-the-morning fights, if they once get out of hand, are
-like a forest fire, and may mean the whole reserves at the station. The
-thing to do is to crack every fighting head that you see, before there
-are so many fighting heads that you cannot crack any of them. There is
-but scant account kept of cracked heads in back of the yards, for men
-who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the
-habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families,
-between times. This makes it a cause for congratulation that by modern
-methods a very few men can do the painfully necessary work of
-head-cracking for the whole of the cultured world.
-
-There is no fight that night—perhaps because Jurgis, too, is
-watchful—even more so than the policeman. Jurgis has drunk a great
-deal, as any one naturally would on an occasion when it all has to be
-paid for, whether it is drunk or not; but he is a very steady man, and
-does not easily lose his temper. Only once there is a tight shave—and
-that is the fault of Marija Berczynskas. Marija has apparently
-concluded about two hours ago that if the altar in the corner, with the
-deity in soiled white, be not the true home of the muses, it is, at any
-rate, the nearest substitute on earth attainable. And Marija is just
-fighting drunk when there come to her ears the facts about the villains
-who have not paid that night. Marija goes on the warpath straight off,
-without even the preliminary of a good cursing, and when she is pulled
-off it is with the coat collars of two villains in her hands.
-Fortunately, the policeman is disposed to be reasonable, and so it is
-not Marija who is flung out of the place.
-
-All this interrupts the music for not more than a minute or two. Then
-again the merciless tune begins—the tune that has been played for the
-last half-hour without one single change. It is an American tune this
-time, one which they have picked up on the streets; all seem to know
-the words of it—or, at any rate, the first line of it, which they hum
-to themselves, over and over again without rest: “In the good old
-summertime—in the good old summertime! In the good old summertime—in
-the good old summertime!” There seems to be something hypnotic about
-this, with its endlessly recurring dominant. It has put a stupor upon
-every one who hears it, as well as upon the men who are playing it. No
-one can get away from it, or even think of getting away from it; it is
-three o’clock in the morning, and they have danced out all their joy,
-and danced out all their strength, and all the strength that unlimited
-drink can lend them—and still there is no one among them who has the
-power to think of stopping. Promptly at seven o’clock this same Monday
-morning they will every one of them have to be in their places at
-Durham’s or Brown’s or Jones’s, each in his working clothes. If one of
-them be a minute late, he will be docked an hour’s pay, and if he be
-many minutes late, he will be apt to find his brass check turned to the
-wall, which will send him out to join the hungry mob that waits every
-morning at the gates of the packing houses, from six o’clock until
-nearly half-past eight. There is no exception to this rule, not even
-little Ona—who has asked for a holiday the day after her wedding day, a
-holiday without pay, and been refused. While there are so many who are
-anxious to work as you wish, there is no occasion for incommoding
-yourself with those who must work otherwise.
-
-Little Ona is nearly ready to faint—and half in a stupor herself,
-because of the heavy scent in the room. She has not taken a drop, but
-every one else there is literally burning alcohol, as the lamps are
-burning oil; some of the men who are sound asleep in their chairs or on
-the floor are reeking of it so that you cannot go near them. Now and
-then Jurgis gazes at her hungrily—he has long since forgotten his
-shyness; but then the crowd is there, and he still waits and watches
-the door, where a carriage is supposed to come. It does not, and
-finally he will wait no longer, but comes up to Ona, who turns white
-and trembles. He puts her shawl about her and then his own coat. They
-live only two blocks away, and Jurgis does not care about the carriage.
-
-There is almost no farewell—the dancers do not notice them, and all of
-the children and many of the old folks have fallen asleep of sheer
-exhaustion. Dede Antanas is asleep, and so are the Szedvilases, husband
-and wife, the former snoring in octaves. There is Teta Elzbieta, and
-Marija, sobbing loudly; and then there is only the silent night, with
-the stars beginning to pale a little in the east. Jurgis, without a
-word, lifts Ona in his arms, and strides out with her, and she sinks
-her head upon his shoulder with a moan. When he reaches home he is not
-sure whether she has fainted or is asleep, but when he has to hold her
-with one hand while he unlocks the door, he sees that she has opened
-her eyes.
-
-“You shall not go to Brown’s today, little one,” he whispers, as he
-climbs the stairs; and she catches his arm in terror, gasping: “No! No!
-I dare not! It will ruin us!”
-
-But he answers her again: “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn
-more money—I will work harder.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-
-Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young. They told him
-stories about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of
-Chicago, and of what had happened to them afterward—stories to make
-your flesh creep, but Jurgis would only laugh. He had only been there
-four months, and he was young, and a giant besides. There was too much
-health in him. He could not even imagine how it would feel to be
-beaten. “That is well enough for men like you,” he would say,
-“_silpnas_, puny fellows—but my back is broad.”
-
-Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was the sort of man
-the bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they
-cannot get hold of. When he was told to go to a certain place, he would
-go there on the run. When he had nothing to do for the moment, he would
-stand round fidgeting, dancing, with the overflow of energy that was in
-him. If he were working in a line of men, the line always moved too
-slowly for him, and you could pick him out by his impatience and
-restlessness. That was why he had been picked out on one important
-occasion; for Jurgis had stood outside of Brown and Company’s “Central
-Time Station” not more than half an hour, the second day of his arrival
-in Chicago, before he had been beckoned by one of the bosses. Of this
-he was very proud, and it made him more disposed than ever to laugh at
-the pessimists. In vain would they all tell him that there were men in
-that crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a
-month—yes, many months—and not been chosen yet. “Yes,” he would say,
-“but what sort of men? Broken-down tramps and good-for-nothings,
-fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to get more
-for it. Do you want me to believe that with these arms”—and he would
-clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might see the
-rolling muscles—“that with these arms people will ever let me starve?”
-
-“It is plain,” they would answer to this, “that you have come from the
-country, and from very far in the country.” And this was the fact, for
-Jurgis had never seen a city, and scarcely even a fair-sized town,
-until he had set out to make his fortune in the world and earn his
-right to Ona. His father, and his father’s father before him, and as
-many ancestors back as legend could go, had lived in that part of
-Lithuania known as _Brelovicz_, the Imperial Forest. This is a great
-tract of a hundred thousand acres, which from time immemorial has been
-a hunting preserve of the nobility. There are a very few peasants
-settled in it, holding title from ancient times; and one of these was
-Antanas Rudkus, who had been reared himself, and had reared his
-children in turn, upon half a dozen acres of cleared land in the midst
-of a wilderness. There had been one son besides Jurgis, and one sister.
-The former had been drafted into the army; that had been over ten years
-ago, but since that day nothing had ever been heard of him. The sister
-was married, and her husband had bought the place when old Antanas had
-decided to go with his son.
-
-It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse
-fair a hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get
-married—he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into;
-but here, without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than
-the exchange of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the
-face with embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to
-him for his wife—and offering his father’s two horses he had been sent
-to the fair to sell. But Ona’s father proved as a rock—the girl was yet
-a child, and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in
-that way. So Jurgis went home with a heavy heart, and that spring and
-summer toiled and tried hard to forget. In the fall, after the harvest
-was over, he saw that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight’s
-journey that lay between him and Ona.
-
-He found an unexpected state of affairs—for the girl’s father had died,
-and his estate was tied up with creditors; Jurgis’ heart leaped as he
-realized that now the prize was within his reach. There was Elzbieta
-Lukoszaite, Teta, or Aunt, as they called her, Ona’s stepmother, and
-there were her six children, of all ages. There was also her brother
-Jonas, a dried-up little man who had worked upon the farm. They were
-people of great consequence, as it seemed to Jurgis, fresh out of the
-woods; Ona knew how to read, and knew many other things that he did not
-know, and now the farm had been sold, and the whole family was
-adrift—all they owned in the world being about seven hundred rubles
-which is half as many dollars. They would have had three times that,
-but it had gone to court, and the judge had decided against them, and
-it had cost the balance to get him to change his decision.
-
-Ona might have married and left them, but she would not, for she loved
-Teta Elzbieta. It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America,
-where a friend of his had gotten rich. He would work, for his part, and
-the women would work, and some of the children, doubtless—they would
-live somehow. Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country
-where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis
-figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as they were
-where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and
-marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor,
-a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he
-did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials—he might do as
-he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. So America was
-a place of which lovers and young people dreamed. If one could only
-manage to get the price of a passage, he could count his troubles at an
-end.
-
-It was arranged that they should leave the following spring, and
-meantime Jurgis sold himself to a contractor for a certain time, and
-tramped nearly four hundred miles from home with a gang of men to work
-upon a railroad in Smolensk. This was a fearful experience, with filth
-and bad food and cruelty and overwork; but Jurgis stood it and came out
-in fine trim, and with eighty rubles sewed up in his coat. He did not
-drink or fight, because he was thinking all the time of Ona; and for
-the rest, he was a quiet, steady man, who did what he was told to, did
-not lose his temper often, and when he did lose it made the offender
-anxious that he should not lose it again. When they paid him off he
-dodged the company gamblers and dramshops, and so they tried to kill
-him; but he escaped, and tramped it home, working at odd jobs, and
-sleeping always with one eye open.
-
-So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last
-moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona’s.
-Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer
-of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that
-it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up
-and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.
-
-There were twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children—and
-Ona, who was a little of both. They had a hard time on the passage;
-there was an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got
-them into a trap with some officials, and cost them a good deal of
-their precious money, which they clung to with such horrible fear. This
-happened to them again in New York—for, of course, they knew nothing
-about the country, and had no one to tell them, and it was easy for a
-man in a blue uniform to lead them away, and to take them to a hotel
-and keep them there, and make them pay enormous charges to get away.
-The law says that the rate card shall be on the door of a hotel, but it
-does not say that it shall be in Lithuanian.
-
-It was in the stockyards that Jonas’ friend had gotten rich, and so to
-Chicago the party was bound. They knew that one word, Chicago and that
-was all they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city.
-Then, tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off
-than before; they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with
-its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize
-that they had arrived, and why, when they said “Chicago,” people no
-longer pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or
-laughed, or went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in
-their helplessness; above all things they stood in deadly terror of any
-sort of person in official uniform, and so whenever they saw a
-policeman they would cross the street and hurry by. For the whole of
-the first day they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion,
-utterly lost; and it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of
-a house, they were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the
-station. In the morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken
-and put upon a car, and taught a new word—“stockyards.” Their delight
-at discovering that they were to get out of this adventure without
-losing another share of their possessions it would not be possible to
-describe.
-
-They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which
-seemed to run on forever, mile after mile—thirty-four of them, if they
-had known it—and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched
-little two-story frame buildings. Down every side street they could
-see, it was the same—never a hill and never a hollow, but always the
-same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and
-there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud
-shores and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a
-railroad crossing, with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing,
-and rattling freight cars filing by; here and there would be a great
-factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows in it, and immense
-volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys, darkening the air above and
-making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these interruptions,
-the desolate procession would begin again—the procession of dreary
-little buildings.
-
-A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note
-the perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time,
-and upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute,
-as the train sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields
-were grown parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and bare. And
-along with the thickening smoke they began to notice another
-circumstance, a strange, pungent odor. They were not sure that it was
-unpleasant, this odor; some might have called it sickening, but their
-taste in odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it was
-curious. Now, sitting in the trolley car, they realized that they were
-on their way to the home of it—that they had traveled all the way from
-Lithuania to it. It was now no longer something far off and faint, that
-you caught in whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell
-it—you could take hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure.
-They were divided in their opinions about it. It was an elemental odor,
-raw and crude; it was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There
-were some who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant; there were
-others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces. The new emigrants
-were still tasting it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came to a
-halt, and the door was flung open, and a voice shouted—“Stockyards!”
-
-They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street
-there were two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half a
-dozen chimneys, tall as the tallest of buildings, touching the very
-sky—and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily,
-and black as night. It might have come from the center of the world,
-this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder. It came as if
-self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was
-inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great
-streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing,
-curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the
-sky, stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach.
-
-Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like
-the color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of
-ten thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first—it sunk
-into your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like
-the murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest;
-it suggested endless activity, the rumblings of a world in motion. It
-was only by an effort that one could realize that it was made by
-animals, that it was the distant lowing of ten thousand cattle, the
-distant grunting of ten thousand swine.
-
-They would have liked to follow it up, but, alas, they had no time for
-adventures just then. The policeman on the corner was beginning to
-watch them; and so, as usual, they started up the street. Scarcely had
-they gone a block, however, before Jonas was heard to give a cry, and
-began pointing excitedly across the street. Before they could gather
-the meaning of his breathless ejaculations he had bounded away, and
-they saw him enter a shop, over which was a sign: “J. Szedvilas,
-Delicatessen.” When he came out again it was in company with a very
-stout gentleman in shirt sleeves and an apron, clasping Jonas by both
-hands and laughing hilariously. Then Teta Elzbieta recollected suddenly
-that Szedvilas had been the name of the mythical friend who had made
-his fortune in America. To find that he had been making it in the
-delicatessen business was an extraordinary piece of good fortune at
-this juncture; though it was well on in the morning, they had not
-breakfasted, and the children were beginning to whimper.
-
-Thus was the happy ending to a woeful voyage. The two families
-literally fell upon each other’s necks—for it had been years since
-Jokubas Szedvilas had met a man from his part of Lithuania. Before half
-the day they were lifelong friends. Jokubas understood all the pitfalls
-of this new world, and could explain all of its mysteries; he could
-tell them the things they ought to have done in the different
-emergencies—and what was still more to the point, he could tell them
-what to do now. He would take them to poni Aniele, who kept a
-boardinghouse the other side of the yards; old Mrs. Jukniene, he
-explained, had not what one would call choice accommodations, but they
-might do for the moment. To this Teta Elzbieta hastened to respond that
-nothing could be too cheap to suit them just then; for they were quite
-terrified over the sums they had had to expend. A very few days of
-practical experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to
-make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a land of high
-prices, and that in it the poor man was almost as poor as in any other
-corner of the earth; and so there vanished in a night all the wonderful
-dreams of wealth that had been haunting Jurgis. What had made the
-discovery all the more painful was that they were spending, at American
-prices, money which they had earned at home rates of wages—and so were
-really being cheated by the world! The last two days they had all but
-starved themselves—it made them quite sick to pay the prices that the
-railroad people asked them for food.
-
-Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but
-recoil, even so, in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as
-this. Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of
-two-story frame tenements that lie “back of the yards.” There were four
-such flats in each building, and each of the four was a “boardinghouse”
-for the occupancy of foreigners—Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or
-Bohemians. Some of these places were kept by private persons, some were
-cooperative. There would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each
-room—sometimes there were thirteen or fourteen to one room, fifty or
-sixty to a flat. Each one of the occupants furnished his own
-accommodations—that is, a mattress and some bedding. The mattresses
-would be spread upon the floor in rows—and there would be nothing else
-in the place except a stove. It was by no means unusual for two men to
-own the same mattress in common, one working by day and using it by
-night, and the other working at night and using it in the daytime. Very
-frequently a lodging house keeper would rent the same beds to double
-shifts of men.
-
-Mrs. Jukniene was a wizened-up little woman, with a wrinkled face. Her
-home was unthinkably filthy; you could not enter by the front door at
-all, owing to the mattresses, and when you tried to go up the
-backstairs you found that she had walled up most of the porch with old
-boards to make a place to keep her chickens. It was a standing jest of
-the boarders that Aniele cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in
-the rooms. Undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin, but it seemed
-probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old lady regarded
-it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms. The truth
-was that she had definitely given up the idea of cleaning anything,
-under pressure of an attack of rheumatism, which had kept her doubled
-up in one corner of her room for over a week; during which time eleven
-of her boarders, heavily in her debt, had concluded to try their
-chances of employment in Kansas City. This was July, and the fields
-were green. One never saw the fields, nor any green thing whatever, in
-Packingtown; but one could go out on the road and “hobo it,” as the men
-phrased it, and see the country, and have a long rest, and an easy time
-riding on the freight cars.
-
-Such was the home to which the new arrivals were welcomed. There was
-nothing better to be had—they might not do so well by looking further,
-for Mrs. Jukniene had at least kept one room for herself and her three
-little children, and now offered to share this with the women and the
-girls of the party. They could get bedding at a secondhand store, she
-explained; and they would not need any, while the weather was so
-hot—doubtless they would all sleep on the sidewalk such nights as this,
-as did nearly all of her guests. “Tomorrow,” Jurgis said, when they
-were left alone, “tomorrow I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get
-one also; and then we can get a place of our own.”
-
-Later that afternoon he and Ona went out to take a walk and look about
-them, to see more of this district which was to be their home. In back
-of the yards the dreary two-story frame houses were scattered farther
-apart, and there were great spaces bare—that seemingly had been
-overlooked by the great sore of a city as it spread itself over the
-surface of the prairie. These bare places were grown up with dingy,
-yellow weeds, hiding innumerable tomato cans; innumerable children
-played upon them, chasing one another here and there, screaming and
-fighting. The most uncanny thing about this neighborhood was the number
-of the children; you thought there must be a school just out, and it
-was only after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that
-there was no school, but that these were the children of the
-neighborhood—that there were so many children to the block in
-Packingtown that nowhere on its streets could a horse and buggy move
-faster than a walk!
-
-It could not move faster anyhow, on account of the state of the
-streets. Those through which Jurgis and Ona were walking resembled
-streets less than they did a miniature topographical map. The roadway
-was commonly several feet lower than the level of the houses, which
-were sometimes joined by high board walks; there were no
-pavements—there were mountains and valleys and rivers, gullies and
-ditches, and great hollows full of stinking green water. In these pools
-the children played, and rolled about in the mud of the streets; here
-and there one noticed them digging in it, after trophies which they had
-stumbled on. One wondered about this, as also about the swarms of flies
-which hung about the scene, literally blackening the air, and the
-strange, fetid odor which assailed one’s nostrils, a ghastly odor, of
-all the dead things of the universe. It impelled the visitor to
-questions and then the residents would explain, quietly, that all this
-was “made” land, and that it had been “made” by using it as a dumping
-ground for the city garbage. After a few years the unpleasant effect of
-this would pass away, it was said; but meantime, in hot weather—and
-especially when it rained—the flies were apt to be annoying. Was it not
-unhealthful? the stranger would ask, and the residents would answer,
-“Perhaps; but there is no telling.”
-
-A little way farther on, and Jurgis and Ona, staring open-eyed and
-wondering, came to the place where this “made” ground was in process of
-making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square, and with
-long files of garbage wagons creeping into it. The place had an odor
-for which there are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over with
-children, who raked in it from dawn till dark. Sometimes visitors from
-the packing houses would wander out to see this “dump,” and they would
-stand by and debate as to whether the children were eating the food
-they got, or merely collecting it for the chickens at home. Apparently
-none of them ever went down to find out.
-
-Beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys.
-First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up
-again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous
-arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A
-little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and
-not yet filled up. This held water, and all summer it stood there, with
-the near-by soil draining into it, festering and stewing in the sun;
-and then, when winter came, somebody cut the ice on it, and sold it to
-the people of the city. This, too, seemed to the newcomers an
-economical arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and their
-heads were not full of troublesome thoughts about “germs.”
-
-They stood there while the sun went down upon this scene, and the sky
-in the west turned blood-red, and the tops of the houses shone like
-fire. Jurgis and Ona were not thinking of the sunset, however—their
-backs were turned to it, and all their thoughts were of Packingtown,
-which they could see so plainly in the distance. 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. It was a study in colors now, this smoke;
-in the sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple. All the
-sordid suggestions of the place were gone—in the twilight it was a
-vision of power. To the two who stood watching while the darkness
-swallowed it up, it seemed a dream of wonder, with its talc of human
-energy, of things being done, of employment for thousands upon
-thousands of men, of opportunity and freedom, of life and love and joy.
-When they came away, arm in arm, Jurgis was saying, “Tomorrow I shall
-go there and get a job!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-
-In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many
-acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by
-Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment.
-Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could
-get some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, after
-consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and with
-Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself,
-unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in
-this. He had gone to Brown’s and stood there not more than half an hour
-before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and
-signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the
-point:
-
-“Speak English?”
-
-“No; Lit-uanian.” (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.)
-
-“Job?”
-
-“Je.” (A nod.)
-
-“Worked here before?”
-
-“No ’stand.”
-
-(Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorous shakes of
-the head by Jurgis.)
-
-“Shovel guts?”
-
-“No ’stand.” (More shakes of the head.)
-
-“Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!” (Imitative motions.)
-
-“Je.”
-
-“See door. Durys?” (Pointing.)
-
-“Je.”
-
-“To-morrow, seven o’clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys! Septyni!”
-
-“Dekui, tamistai!” (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis turned
-away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph
-swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a
-run. He had a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if
-upon wings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the
-numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep.
-
-Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received
-encouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be done
-that day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband
-sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas
-did this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of
-visitors over his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these
-wonders had grown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in
-them. The packers might own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and
-there was no one to say nay to this.
-
-They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was still
-early morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity. A
-steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate—employees of
-the higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such. For
-the women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set off at a
-gallop as fast as they were filled. In the distance there was heard
-again the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling.
-They followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circus
-menagerie—which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled. They crossed
-the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pens
-full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurried
-them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from which
-everything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with
-wonder.
-
-There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half
-of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can
-reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled—so many
-cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black,
-white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing
-bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and
-fierce, long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all
-the barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them—it would have
-taken all day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys,
-blocked at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of
-these gates was twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently been reading
-a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that, and he
-was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with
-wonder. Jurgis too had a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just
-gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this
-marvelous machine? Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon
-horseback, booted, and carrying long whips; they were very busy,
-calling to each other, and to those who were driving the cattle. They
-were drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far states, and
-brokers and commission merchants, and buyers for all the big packing
-houses.
-
-Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there
-would be a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drop
-his whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his
-little book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning.
-Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be
-weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds
-at once and record it automatically. It was near to the east entrance
-that they stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the
-railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All
-night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by
-tonight they would all be empty, and the same thing would be done
-again.
-
-“And what will become of all these creatures?” cried Teta Elzbieta.
-
-“By tonight,” Jokubas answered, “they will all be killed and cut up;
-and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more
-railroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away.”
-
-There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their
-guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of
-cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep—which meant
-some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year.
-One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the
-tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were
-groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about
-fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the
-stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them,
-pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our
-friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors
-of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it
-all. The chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up—to the very
-top of the distant buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went
-up by the power of their own legs, and then their weight carried them
-back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork.
-
-“They don’t waste anything here,” said the guide, and then he laughed
-and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated
-friends should take to be his own: “They use everything about the hog
-except the squeal.” In front of Brown’s General Office building there
-grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of
-green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his
-squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor
-that you will find there.
-
-After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street,
-to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These
-buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of
-Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from
-which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of
-many of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those
-products with the wonders of which they pestered him so—by placards
-that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring
-advertisements in the newspapers and magazines—by silly little jingles
-that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked
-for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown’s
-Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown’s Dressed Beef, Brown’s Excelsior
-Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard, of
-Durham’s Breakfast Bacon, Durham’s Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled
-Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!
-
-Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other
-visitors waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them
-through the place. They make a great feature of showing strangers
-through the packing plants, for it is a good advertisement. But Ponas
-Jokubas whispered maliciously that the visitors did not see any more
-than the packers wanted them to. They climbed a long series of
-stairways outside of the building, to the top of its five or six
-stories. Here was the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently
-toiling upward; there was a place for them to rest to cool off, and
-then through another passageway they went into a room from which there
-is no returning for hogs.
-
-It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At
-the head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in
-circumference, with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both
-sides of this wheel there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs
-at the end of their journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly
-Negro, bare-armed and bare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for
-the wheel had stopped while men were cleaning up. In a minute or two,
-however, it began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of
-it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of
-the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of
-the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly
-jerked off his feet and borne aloft.
-
-At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek;
-the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back.
-The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing—for
-once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of
-the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the
-room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another,
-until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and
-kicking in frenzy—and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to
-the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to
-hold—that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high
-squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a
-momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up
-to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors—the men
-would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand
-with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the
-tears starting in their eyes.
-
-Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were
-going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors
-made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and
-one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a
-long line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together;
-until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a
-huge vat of boiling water.
-
-It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was
-porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet
-somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the
-hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they
-were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their
-rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult
-to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this
-cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without
-the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this
-slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some
-horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried
-out of sight and of memory.
-
-One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical,
-without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog
-squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was
-nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where
-they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a
-separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were
-brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and
-lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his
-own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of
-self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And
-trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while
-a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway.
-Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg.
-Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were
-nothing to it—it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his
-feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched
-him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was
-nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to
-whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this
-hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done,
-and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all
-this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to
-go on with the rest of the party, and muttered: “Dieve—but I’m glad I’m
-not a hog!”
-
-The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it
-fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful
-machine with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size
-and shape of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly
-all of its bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery,
-and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines
-of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single
-thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a
-leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift
-stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head,
-which fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a
-slit down the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw
-cut the breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them
-out—and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to
-scrape each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean
-the carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one
-saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in
-length; and for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were
-after him. At the end of this hog’s progress every inch of the carcass
-had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into the
-chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a
-stranger might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs.
-
-Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a
-government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in
-the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the
-manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted
-by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his
-testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter
-into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of
-the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was
-talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a
-dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue
-uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to
-the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the
-things which were done in Durham’s.
-
-Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring
-open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest
-of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed
-by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he
-took it all in guilelessly—even to the conspicuous signs demanding
-immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the
-cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments,
-offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went
-to be doctored.
-
-The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste
-materials were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and
-washed clean for sausage casings; men and women worked here in the
-midst of a sickening stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by,
-gasping. To another room came all the scraps to be “tanked,” which
-meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and lard; below
-they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region in which the
-visitors did not linger. In still other places men were engaged in
-cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms.
-First there were the “splitters,” the most expert workmen in the plant,
-who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did not a thing all day
-except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were “cleaver men,” great
-giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to attend him—to slide
-the half carcass in front of him on the table, and hold it while he
-chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he might chop it once
-more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he never made
-but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement did not
-smite through and dull itself—there was just enough force for a perfect
-cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slipped to the
-floor below—to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another sides
-of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms,
-where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with
-their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt pork—there
-were whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling.
-In yet other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and
-wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing
-them. From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the
-platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out
-there and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground
-floor of this enormous building.
-
-Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of
-beef—where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into
-meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one
-floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to
-the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from
-one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a
-picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great
-room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running
-over the center.
-
-Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the
-floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads
-which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures
-were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them
-no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging,
-over the top of the pen there leaned one of the “knockers,” armed with
-a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room
-echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking
-of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the “knocker” passed
-on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the
-pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out
-to the “killing bed.” Here a man put shackles about one leg, and
-pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There
-were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple
-of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then
-once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out
-of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men
-upon the killing beds had to get out of the way.
-
-The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never
-forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the
-run—at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a
-football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his
-task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific
-cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses,
-making these cuts upon each. First there came the “butcher,” to bleed
-them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see
-it—only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the
-man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was
-pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with
-blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it
-through holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could
-have guessed this by watching the men at work.
-
-The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost,
-however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was
-always ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the
-“headsman,” whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three
-swift strokes. Then came the “floorsman,” to make the first cut in the
-skin; and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and
-then half a dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning.
-After they were through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a
-man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been
-cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the
-inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There
-were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape
-it clean inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling
-water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final
-touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finished beef was run into
-the chilling room, to hang its appointed time.
-
-The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows,
-labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors—and
-some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign
-of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the
-orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the
-building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material
-that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the
-salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice
-meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be
-eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went
-outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done
-the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing
-needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for
-themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity
-plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was
-a building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard;
-and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for
-making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were
-cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things;
-there was a building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was
-another where heads and feet were made into glue, and another where
-bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter
-was wasted in Durham’s. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs,
-buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other
-big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for
-pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made
-the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings,
-and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin,
-isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil.
-They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a “wool pullery”
-for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and
-albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling
-entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they
-first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease,
-and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industries were
-gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and railroads
-with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they had handled
-nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding of the
-plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you counted
-with it the other big plants—and they were now really all one—it was,
-so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor and capital
-ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it
-supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its
-neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its
-products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the
-food for no less than thirty million people!
-
-To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed—it seemed
-to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have
-been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost
-profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was
-a thing as tremendous as the universe—the laws and ways of its working
-no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a
-mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this
-as he found it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a
-share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as
-one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad
-that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for he
-felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had
-been admitted—he was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this
-whole huge establishment had taken him under its protection, and had
-become responsible for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant
-of the nature of business, that he did not even realize that he had
-become an employee of Brown’s, and that Brown and Durham were supposed
-by all the world to be deadly rivals—were even required to be deadly
-rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to try to ruin each other
-under penalty of fine and imprisonment!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-
-Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to
-the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for
-nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said
-this, and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that
-he came upon Jurgis. He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not
-understand a word of it he did not object. He followed the boss, who
-showed him where to put his street clothes, and waited while he donned
-the working clothes he had bought in a secondhand shop and brought with
-him in a bundle; then he led him to the “killing beds.” The work which
-Jurgis was to do here was very simple, and it took him but a few
-minutes to learn it. He was provided with a stiff besom, such as is
-used by street sweepers, and it was his place to follow down the line
-the man who drew out the smoking entrails from the carcass of the
-steer; this mass was to be swept into a trap, which was then closed, so
-that no one might slip into it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of
-the morning were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely
-time to look about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work.
-It was a sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot
-blood—one waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering,
-but to Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul was dancing with joy—he
-was at work at last! He was at work and earning money! All day long he
-was figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and
-a half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked until
-nearly seven o’clock in the evening, he went home to the family with
-the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a
-single day!
-
-At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that
-there was quite a celebration in Aniele’s hall bedroom. Jonas had been
-to have an interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had
-introduced him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with
-the result that one had promised him a job the beginning of the next
-week. And then there was Marija Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy
-by the success of Jurgis, had set out upon her own responsibility to
-get a place. Marija had nothing to take with her save her two brawny
-arms and the word “job,” laboriously learned; but with these she had
-marched about Packingtown all day, entering every door where there were
-signs of activity. Out of some she had been ordered with curses; but
-Marija was not afraid of man or devil, and asked every one she
-saw—visitors and strangers, or work-people like herself, and once or
-twice even high and lofty office personages, who stared at her as if
-they thought she was crazy. In the end, however, she had reaped her
-reward. In one of the smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where
-scores of women and girls were sitting at long tables preparing smoked
-beef in cans; and wandering through room after room, Marija came at
-last to the place where the sealed cans were being painted and labeled,
-and here she had the good fortune to encounter the “forelady.” Marija
-did not understand then, as she was destined to understand later, what
-there was attractive to a “forelady” about the combination of a face
-full of boundless good nature and the muscles of a dray horse; but the
-woman had told her to come the next day and she would perhaps give her
-a chance to learn the trade of painting cans. The painting of cans
-being skilled piecework, and paying as much as two dollars a day,
-Marija burst in upon the family with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and
-fell to capering about the room so as to frighten the baby almost into
-convulsions.
-
-Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was
-only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta
-Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help
-her. He would not have Ona working—he was not that sort of a man, he
-said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing
-if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of the
-board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the
-children go to work—there were schools here in America for children,
-Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. That the priest
-would object to these schools was something of which he had as yet no
-idea, and for the present his mind was made up that the children of
-Teta Elzbieta should have as fair a chance as any other children. The
-oldest of them, little Stanislovas, was but thirteen, and small for his
-age at that; and while the oldest son of Szedvilas was only twelve, and
-had worked for over a year at Jones’s, Jurgis would have it that
-Stanislovas should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled
-man.
-
-So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest too,
-but he was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and,
-besides, the old man would not hear it spoken of—it was his whim to
-insist that he was as lively as any boy. He had come to America as full
-of hope as the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that
-worried his son. For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it
-was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown.
-Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had
-grown old in their own service—to say nothing of taking on new ones.
-And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in
-America, so far as he knew. To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the
-policeman, and brought back the message that the thing was not to be
-thought of. They had not told this to old Anthony, who had consequently
-spent the two days wandering about from one part of the yards to
-another, and had now come home to hear about the triumph of the others,
-smiling bravely and saying that it would be his turn another day.
-
-Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a
-home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held
-consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty
-subject. Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two
-boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that
-there were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled
-it up and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had
-been talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with
-the result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.
-
-He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was
-nearly two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of
-colors so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of
-the placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and
-dazzling. The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold;
-the house itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a
-two-story building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork
-around the edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the
-doorknob, and there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains
-in the windows. Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a
-husband and wife in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a
-cradle, with fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub
-hovering upon silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of
-all this should be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and
-German—“_Dom. Namai. Heim._” “Why pay rent?” the linguistic circular
-went on to demand. “Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can
-buy one for less than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which
-are now occupied by happy families.”—So it became eloquent, picturing
-the blissfulness of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It
-even quoted “Home, Sweet Home,” and made bold to translate it into
-Polish—though for some reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this.
-Perhaps the translator found it a difficult matter to be sentimental in
-a language in which a sob is known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a
-nusiszypsojimas.
-
-Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its
-contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a
-basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the
-lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down,
-the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These
-were frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked
-about such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a
-rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was no way of doing
-better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two rooms,
-as at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever,
-and be no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra
-expense in the beginning, there would at last come a time when they
-would not have any rent to pay for the rest of their lives.
-
-They figured it up. There was a little left of the money belonging to
-Teta Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis. Marija had about
-fifty dollars pinned up somewhere in her stockings, and Grandfather
-Anthony had part of the money he had gotten for his farm. If they all
-combined, they would have enough to make the first payment; and if they
-had employment, so that they could be sure of the future, it might
-really prove the best plan. It was, of course, not a thing even to be
-talked of lightly; it was a thing they would have to sift to the
-bottom. And yet, on the other hand, if they were going to make the
-venture, the sooner they did it the better, for were they not paying
-rent all the time, and living in a most horrible way besides? Jurgis
-was used to dirt—there was nothing could scare a man who had been with
-a railroad gang, where one could gather up the fleas off the floor of
-the sleeping room by the handful. But that sort of thing would not do
-for Ona. They must have a better place of some sort soon—Jurgis said it
-with all the assurance of a man who had just made a dollar and
-fifty-seven cents in a single day. Jurgis was at a loss to understand
-why, with wages as they were, so many of the people of this district
-should live the way they did.
-
-The next day Marija went to see her “forelady,” and was told to report
-the first of the week, and learn the business of can-painter. Marija
-went home, singing out loud all the way, and was just in time to join
-Ona and her stepmother as they were setting out to go and make inquiry
-concerning the house. That evening the three made their report to the
-men—the thing was altogether as represented in the circular, or at any
-rate so the agent had said. The houses lay to the south, about a mile
-and a half from the yards; they were wonderful bargains, the gentleman
-had assured them—personally, and for their own good. He could do this,
-so he explained to them, for the reason that he had himself no interest
-in their sale—he was merely the agent for a company that had built
-them. These were the last, and the company was going out of business,
-so if any one wished to take advantage of this wonderful no-rent plan,
-he would have to be very quick. As a matter of fact there was just a
-little uncertainty as to whether there was a single house left; for the
-agent had taken so many people to see them, and for all he knew the
-company might have parted with the last. Seeing Teta Elzbieta’s evident
-grief at this news, he added, after some hesitation, that if they
-really intended to make a purchase, he would send a telephone message
-at his own expense, and have one of the houses kept. So it had finally
-been arranged—and they were to go and make an inspection the following
-Sunday morning.
-
-That was Thursday; and all the rest of the week the killing gang at
-Brown’s worked at full pressure, and Jurgis cleared a dollar
-seventy-five every day. That was at the rate of ten and one-half
-dollars a week, or forty-five a month. Jurgis was not able to figure,
-except it was a very simple sum, but Ona was like lightning at such
-things, and she worked out the problem for the family. Marija and Jonas
-were each to pay sixteen dollars a month board, and the old man
-insisted that he could do the same as soon as he got a place—which
-might be any day now. That would make ninety-three dollars. Then Marija
-and Jonas were between them to take a third share in the house, which
-would leave only eight dollars a month for Jurgis to contribute to the
-payment. So they would have eighty-five dollars a month—or, supposing
-that Dede Antanas did not get work at once, seventy dollars a
-month—which ought surely to be sufficient for the support of a family
-of twelve.
-
-An hour before the time on Sunday morning the entire party set out.
-They had the address written on a piece of paper, which they showed to
-some one now and then. It proved to be a long mile and a half, but they
-walked it, and half an hour or so later the agent put in an appearance.
-He was a smooth and florid personage, elegantly dressed, and he spoke
-their language freely, which gave him a great advantage in dealing with
-them. He escorted them to the house, which was one of a long row of the
-typical frame dwellings of the neighborhood, where architecture is a
-luxury that is dispensed with. Ona’s heart sank, for the house was not
-as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was different, for one
-thing, and then it did not seem quite so big. Still, it was freshly
-painted, and made a considerable show. It was all brand-new, so the
-agent told them, but he talked so incessantly that they were quite
-confused, and did not have time to ask many questions. There were all
-sorts of things they had made up their minds to inquire about, but when
-the time came, they either forgot them or lacked the courage. The other
-houses in the row did not seem to be new, and few of them seemed to be
-occupied. When they ventured to hint at this, the agent’s reply was
-that the purchasers would be moving in shortly. To press the matter
-would have seemed to be doubting his word, and never in their lives had
-any one of them ever spoken to a person of the class called “gentleman”
-except with deference and humility.
-
-The house had a basement, about two feet below the street line, and a
-single story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps. In
-addition there was an attic, made by the peak of the roof, and having
-one small window in each end. The street in front of the house was
-unpaved and unlighted, and the view from it consisted of a few exactly
-similar houses, scattered here and there upon lots grown up with dingy
-brown weeds. The house inside contained four rooms, plastered white;
-the basement was but a frame, the walls being unplastered and the floor
-not laid. The agent explained that the houses were built that way, as
-the purchasers generally preferred to finish the basements to suit
-their own taste. The attic was also unfinished—the family had been
-figuring that in case of an emergency they could rent this attic, but
-they found that there was not even a floor, nothing but joists, and
-beneath them the lath and plaster of the ceiling below. All of this,
-however, did not chill their ardor as much as might have been expected,
-because of the volubility of the agent. There was no end to the
-advantages of the house, as he set them forth, and he was not silent
-for an instant; he showed them everything, down to the locks on the
-doors and the catches on the windows, and how to work them. He showed
-them the sink in the kitchen, with running water and a faucet,
-something which Teta Elzbieta had never in her wildest dreams hoped to
-possess. After a discovery such as that it would have seemed ungrateful
-to find any fault, and so they tried to shut their eyes to other
-defects.
-
-Still, they were peasant people, and they hung on to their money by
-instinct; it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness—they
-would see, they would see, they told him, they could not decide until
-they had had more time. And so they went home again, and all day and
-evening there was figuring and debating. It was an agony to them to
-have to make up their minds in a matter such as this. They never could
-agree all together; there were so many arguments upon each side, and
-one would be obstinate, and no sooner would the rest have convinced him
-than it would transpire that his arguments had caused another to waver.
-Once, in the evening, when they were all in harmony, and the house was
-as good as bought, Szedvilas came in and upset them again. Szedvilas
-had no use for property owning. He told them cruel stories of people
-who had been done to death in this “buying a home” swindle. They would
-be almost sure to get into a tight place and lose all their money; and
-there was no end of expense that one could never foresee; and the house
-might be good-for-nothing from top to bottom—how was a poor man to
-know? Then, too, they would swindle you with the contract—and how was a
-poor man to understand anything about a contract? It was all nothing
-but robbery, and there was no safety but in keeping out of it. And pay
-rent? asked Jurgis. Ah, yes, to be sure, the other answered, that too
-was robbery. It was all robbery, for a poor man. After half an hour of
-such depressing conversation, they had their minds quite made up that
-they had been saved at the brink of a precipice; but then Szedvilas
-went away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little man, reminded them that
-the delicatessen business was a failure, according to its proprietor,
-and that this might account for his pessimistic views. Which, of
-course, reopened the subject!
-
-The controlling factor was that they could not stay where they
-were—they had to go somewhere. And when they gave up the house plan and
-decided to rent, the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month
-forever they found just as hard to face. All day and all night for
-nearly a whole week they wrestled with the problem, and then in the end
-Jurgis took the responsibility. Brother Jonas had gotten his job, and
-was pushing a truck in Durham’s; and the killing gang at Brown’s
-continued to work early and late, so that Jurgis grew more confident
-every hour, more certain of his mastership. It was the kind of thing
-the man of the family had to decide and carry through, he told himself.
-Others might have failed at it, but he was not the failing kind—he
-would show them how to do it. He would work all day, and all night,
-too, if need be; he would never rest until the house was paid for and
-his people had a home. So he told them, and so in the end the decision
-was made.
-
-They had talked about looking at more houses before they made the
-purchase; but then they did not know where any more were, and they did
-not know any way of finding out. The one they had seen held the sway in
-their thoughts; whenever they thought of themselves in a house, it was
-this house that they thought of. And so they went and told the agent
-that they were ready to make the agreement. They knew, as an abstract
-proposition, that in matters of business all men are to be accounted
-liars; but they could not but have been influenced by all they had
-heard from the eloquent agent, and were quite persuaded that the house
-was something they had run a risk of losing by their delay. They drew a
-deep breath when he told them that they were still in time.
-
-They were to come on the morrow, and he would have the papers all drawn
-up. This matter of papers was one in which Jurgis understood to the
-full the need of caution; yet he could not go himself—every one told
-him that he could not get a holiday, and that he might lose his job by
-asking. So there was nothing to be done but to trust it to the women,
-with Szedvilas, who promised to go with them. Jurgis spent a whole
-evening impressing upon them the seriousness of the occasion—and then
-finally, out of innumerable hiding places about their persons and in
-their baggage, came forth the precious wads of money, to be done up
-tightly in a little bag and sewed fast in the lining of Teta Elzbieta’s
-dress.
-
-Early in the morning they sallied forth. Jurgis had given them so many
-instructions and warned them against so many perils, that the women
-were quite pale with fright, and even the imperturbable delicatessen
-vender, who prided himself upon being a businessman, was ill at ease.
-The agent had the deed all ready, and invited them to sit down and read
-it; this Szedvilas proceeded to do—a painful and laborious process,
-during which the agent drummed upon the desk. Teta Elzbieta was so
-embarrassed that the perspiration came out upon her forehead in beads;
-for was not this reading as much as to say plainly to the gentleman’s
-face that they doubted his honesty? Yet Jokubas Szedvilas read on and
-on; and presently there developed that he had good reason for doing so.
-For a horrible suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his
-brows more and more as he read. This was not a deed of sale at all, so
-far as he could see—it provided only for the renting of the property!
-It was hard to tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had
-never heard before; but was not this plain—“the party of the first part
-hereby covenants and agrees to rent to the said party of the second
-part!” And then again—“a monthly _rental_ of twelve dollars, for a
-period of eight years and four months!” Then Szedvilas took off his
-spectacles, and looked at the agent, and stammered a question.
-
-The agent was most polite, and explained that that was the usual
-formula; that it was always arranged that the property should be merely
-rented. He kept trying to show them something in the next paragraph;
-but Szedvilas could not get by the word “rental”—and when he translated
-it to Teta Elzbieta, she too was thrown into a fright. They would not
-own the home at all, then, for nearly nine years! The agent, with
-infinite patience, began to explain again; but no explanation would do
-now. Elzbieta had firmly fixed in her mind the last solemn warning of
-Jurgis: “If there is anything wrong, do not give him the money, but go
-out and get a lawyer.” It was an agonizing moment, but she sat in the
-chair, her hands clenched like death, and made a fearful effort,
-summoning all her powers, and gasped out her purpose.
-
-Jokubas translated her words. She expected the agent to fly into a
-passion, but he was, to her bewilderment, as ever imperturbable; he
-even offered to go and get a lawyer for her, but she declined this.
-They went a long way, on purpose to find a man who would not be a
-confederate. Then let any one imagine their dismay, when, after half an
-hour, they came in with a lawyer, and heard him greet the agent by his
-first name! They felt that all was lost; they sat like prisoners
-summoned to hear the reading of their death warrant. There was nothing
-more that they could do—they were trapped! The lawyer read over the
-deed, and when he had read it he informed Szedvilas that it was all
-perfectly regular, that the deed was a blank deed such as was often
-used in these sales. And was the price as agreed? the old man
-asked—three hundred dollars down, and the balance at twelve dollars a
-month, till the total of fifteen hundred dollars had been paid? Yes,
-that was correct. And it was for the sale of such and such a house—the
-house and lot and everything? Yes,—and the lawyer showed him where that
-was all written. And it was all perfectly regular—there were no tricks
-about it of any sort? They were poor people, and this was all they had
-in the world, and if there was anything wrong they would be ruined. And
-so Szedvilas went on, asking one trembling question after another,
-while the eyes of the women folks were fixed upon him in mute agony.
-They could not understand what he was saying, but they knew that upon
-it their fate depended. And when at last he had questioned until there
-was no more questioning to be done, and the time came for them to make
-up their minds, and either close the bargain or reject it, it was all
-that poor Teta Elzbieta could do to keep from bursting into tears.
-Jokubas had asked her if she wished to sign; he had asked her twice—and
-what could she say? How did she know if this lawyer were telling the
-truth—that he was not in the conspiracy? And yet, how could she say
-so—what excuse could she give? The eyes of every one in the room were
-upon her, awaiting her decision; and at last, half blind with her
-tears, she began fumbling in her jacket, where she had pinned the
-precious money. And she brought it out and unwrapped it before the men.
-All of this Ona sat watching, from a corner of the room, twisting her
-hands together, meantime, in a fever of fright. Ona longed to cry out
-and tell her stepmother to stop, that it was all a trap; but there
-seemed to be something clutching her by the throat, and she could not
-make a sound. And so Teta Elzbieta laid the money on the table, and the
-agent picked it up and counted it, and then wrote them a receipt for it
-and passed them the deed. Then he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and rose
-and shook hands with them all, still as smooth and polite as at the
-beginning. Ona had a dim recollection of the lawyer telling Szedvilas
-that his charge was a dollar, which occasioned some debate, and more
-agony; and then, after they had paid that, too, they went out into the
-street, her stepmother clutching the deed in her hand. They were so
-weak from fright that they could not walk, but had to sit down on the
-way.
-
-So they went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and
-that evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the
-end. Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and
-he tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill
-the agent that very night. In the end he seized the paper and rushed
-out of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street.
-He dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together they rushed to
-consult another lawyer. When they entered his office the lawyer sprang
-up, for Jurgis looked like a crazy person, with flying hair and
-bloodshot eyes. His companion explained the situation, and the lawyer
-took the paper and began to read it, while Jurgis stood clutching the
-desk with knotted hands, trembling in every nerve.
-
-Once or twice the lawyer looked up and asked a question of Szedvilas;
-the other did not know a word that he was saying, but his eyes were
-fixed upon the lawyer’s face, striving in an agony of dread to read his
-mind. He saw the lawyer look up and laugh, and he gave a gasp; the man
-said something to Szedvilas, and Jurgis turned upon his friend, his
-heart almost stopping.
-
-“Well?” he panted.
-
-“He says it is all right,” said Szedvilas.
-
-“All right!”
-
-“Yes, he says it is just as it should be.” And Jurgis, in his relief,
-sank down into a chair.
-
-“Are you sure of it?” he gasped, and made Szedvilas translate question
-after question. He could not hear it often enough; he could not ask
-with enough variations. Yes, they had bought the house, they had really
-bought it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it
-would be all right. Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for
-there were tears in his eyes, and he felt like a fool. But he had had
-such a horrible fright; strong man as he was, it left him almost too
-weak to stand up.
-
-The lawyer explained that the rental was a form—the property was said
-to be merely rented until the last payment had been made, the purpose
-being to make it easier to turn the party out if he did not make the
-payments. So long as they paid, however, they had nothing to fear, the
-house was all theirs.
-
-Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked
-without winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to
-the family. He found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the
-whole house in an uproar—for it had been believed by all that he had
-gone to murder the agent. It was hours before the excitement could be
-calmed; and all through that cruel night Jurgis would wake up now and
-then and hear Ona and her stepmother in the next room, sobbing softly
-to themselves.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-
-They had bought their home. It was hard for them to realize that the
-wonderful house was theirs to move into whenever they chose. They spent
-all their time thinking about it, and what they were going to put into
-it. As their week with Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time
-in getting ready. They had to make some shift to furnish it, and every
-instant of their leisure was given to discussing this.
-
-A person who had such a task before him would not need to look very far
-in Packingtown—he had only to walk up the avenue and read the signs, or
-get into a streetcar, to obtain full information as to pretty much
-everything a human creature could need. It was quite touching, the zeal
-of people to see that his health and happiness were provided for. Did
-the person wish to smoke? There was a little discourse about cigars,
-showing him exactly why the Thomas Jefferson Five-cent Perfecto was the
-only cigar worthy of the name. Had he, on the other hand, smoked too
-much? Here was a remedy for the smoking habit, twenty-five doses for a
-quarter, and a cure absolutely guaranteed in ten doses. In innumerable
-ways such as this, the traveler found that somebody had been busied to
-make smooth his paths through the world, and to let him know what had
-been done for him. In Packingtown the advertisements had a style all of
-their own, adapted to the peculiar population. One would be tenderly
-solicitous. “Is your wife pale?” it would inquire. “Is she discouraged,
-does she drag herself about the house and find fault with everything?
-Why do you not tell her to try Dr. Lanahan’s Life Preservers?” Another
-would be jocular in tone, slapping you on the back, so to speak. “Don’t
-be a chump!” it would exclaim. “Go and get the Goliath Bunion Cure.”
-“Get a move on you!” would chime in another. “It’s easy, if you wear
-the Eureka Two-fifty Shoe.”
-
-Among these importunate signs was one that had caught the attention of
-the family by its pictures. It showed two very pretty little birds
-building themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to
-read it to her, and told them that it related to the furnishing of a
-house. “Feather your nest,” it ran—and went on to say that it could
-furnish all the necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the
-ludicrously small sum of seventy-five dollars. The particularly
-important thing about this offer was that only a small part of the
-money need be had at once—the rest one might pay a few dollars every
-month. Our friends had to have some furniture, there was no getting
-away from that; but their little fund of money had sunk so low that
-they could hardly get to sleep at night, and so they fled to this as
-their deliverance. There was more agony and another paper for Elzbieta
-to sign, and then one night when Jurgis came home, he was told the
-breathless tidings that the furniture had arrived and was safely stowed
-in the house: a parlor set of four pieces, a bedroom set of three
-pieces, a dining room table and four chairs, a toilet set with
-beautiful pink roses painted all over it, an assortment of crockery,
-also with pink roses—and so on. One of the plates in the set had been
-found broken when they unpacked it, and Ona was going to the store the
-first thing in the morning to make them change it; also they had
-promised three saucepans, and there had only two come, and did Jurgis
-think that they were trying to cheat them?
-
-The next day they went to the house; and when the men came from work
-they ate a few hurried mouthfuls at Aniele’s, and then set to work at
-the task of carrying their belongings to their new home. The distance
-was in reality over two miles, but Jurgis made two trips that night,
-each time with a huge pile of mattresses and bedding on his head, with
-bundles of clothing and bags and things tied up inside. Anywhere else
-in Chicago he would have stood a good chance of being arrested; but the
-policemen in Packingtown were apparently used to these informal
-movings, and contented themselves with a cursory examination now and
-then. It was quite wonderful to see how fine the house looked, with all
-the things in it, even by the dim light of a lamp: it was really home,
-and almost as exciting as the placard had described it. Ona was fairly
-dancing, and she and Cousin Marija took Jurgis by the arm and escorted
-him from room to room, sitting in each chair by turns, and then
-insisting that he should do the same. One chair squeaked with his great
-weight, and they screamed with fright, and woke the baby and brought
-everybody running. Altogether it was a great day; and tired as they
-were, Jurgis and Ona sat up late, contented simply to hold each other
-and gaze in rapture about the room. They were going to be married as
-soon as they could get everything settled, and a little spare money put
-by; and this was to be their home—that little room yonder would be
-theirs!
-
-It was in truth a never-ending delight, the fixing up of this house.
-They had no money to spend for the pleasure of spending, but there were
-a few absolutely necessary things, and the buying of these was a
-perpetual adventure for Ona. It must always be done at night, so that
-Jurgis could go along; and even if it were only a pepper cruet, or half
-a dozen glasses for ten cents, that was enough for an expedition. On
-Saturday night they came home with a great basketful of things, and
-spread them out on the table, while every one stood round, and the
-children climbed up on the chairs, or howled to be lifted up to see.
-There were sugar and salt and tea and crackers, and a can of lard and a
-milk pail, and a scrubbing brush, and a pair of shoes for the second
-oldest boy, and a can of oil, and a tack hammer, and a pound of nails.
-These last were to be driven into the walls of the kitchen and the
-bedrooms, to hang things on; and there was a family discussion as to
-the place where each one was to be driven. Then Jurgis would try to
-hammer, and hit his fingers because the hammer was too small, and get
-mad because Ona had refused to let him pay fifteen cents more and get a
-bigger hammer; and Ona would be invited to try it herself, and hurt her
-thumb, and cry out, which necessitated the thumb’s being kissed by
-Jurgis. Finally, after every one had had a try, the nails would be
-driven, and something hung up. Jurgis had come home with a big packing
-box on his head, and he sent Jonas to get another that he had bought.
-He meant to take one side out of these tomorrow, and put shelves in
-them, and make them into bureaus and places to keep things for the
-bedrooms. The nest which had been advertised had not included feathers
-for quite so many birds as there were in this family.
-
-They had, of course, put their dining table in the kitchen, and the
-dining room was used as the bedroom of Teta Elzbieta and five of her
-children. She and the two youngest slept in the only bed, and the other
-three had a mattress on the floor. Ona and her cousin dragged a
-mattress into the parlor and slept at night, and the three men and the
-oldest boy slept in the other room, having nothing but the very level
-floor to rest on for the present. Even so, however, they slept
-soundly—it was necessary for Teta Elzbieta to pound more than once on
-the door at a quarter past five every morning. She would have ready a
-great pot full of steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and
-smoked sausages; and then she would fix them their dinner pails with
-more thick slices of bread with lard between them—they could not afford
-butter—and some onions and a piece of cheese, and so they would tramp
-away to work.
-
-This was the first time in his life that he had ever really worked, it
-seemed to Jurgis; it was the first time that he had ever had anything
-to do which took all he had in him. Jurgis had stood with the rest up
-in the gallery and watched the men on the killing beds, marveling at
-their speed and power as if they had been wonderful machines; it
-somehow never occurred to one to think of the flesh-and-blood side of
-it—that is, not until he actually got down into the pit and took off
-his coat. Then he saw things in a different light, he got at the inside
-of them. The pace they set here, it was one that called for every
-faculty of a man—from the instant the first steer fell till the
-sounding of the noon whistle, and again from half-past twelve till
-heaven only knew what hour in the late afternoon or evening, there was
-never one instant’s rest for a man, for his hand or his eye or his
-brain. Jurgis saw how they managed it; there were portions of the work
-which determined the pace of the rest, and for these they had picked
-men whom they paid high wages, and whom they changed frequently. You
-might easily pick out these pacemakers, for they worked under the eye
-of the bosses, and they worked like men possessed. This was called
-“speeding up the gang,” and if any man could not keep up with the pace,
-there were hundreds outside begging to try.
-
-Yet Jurgis did not mind it; he rather enjoyed it. It saved him the
-necessity of flinging his arms about and fidgeting as he did in most
-work. He would laugh to himself as he ran down the line, darting a
-glance now and then at the man ahead of him. It was not the pleasantest
-work one could think of, but it was necessary work; and what more had a
-man the right to ask than a chance to do something useful, and to get
-good pay for doing it?
-
-So Jurgis thought, and so he spoke, in his bold, free way; very much to
-his surprise, he found that it had a tendency to get him into trouble.
-For most of the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing.
-He was quite dismayed when he first began to find it out—that most of
-the men _hated_ their work. It seemed strange, it was even terrible,
-when you came to find out the universality of the sentiment; but it was
-certainly the fact—they hated their work. They hated the bosses and
-they hated the owners; they hated the whole place, the whole
-neighborhood—even the whole city, with an all-inclusive hatred, bitter
-and fierce. Women and little children would fall to cursing about it;
-it was rotten, rotten as hell—everything was rotten. When Jurgis would
-ask them what they meant, they would begin to get suspicious, and
-content themselves with saying, “Never mind, you stay here and see for
-yourself.”
-
-One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions.
-He had had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained
-to him that the men were banded together for the purpose of fighting
-for their rights. Jurgis asked them what they meant by their rights, a
-question in which he was quite sincere, for he had not any idea of any
-rights that he had, except the right to hunt for a job, and do as he
-was told when he got it. Generally, however, this harmless question
-would only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and call him a
-fool. There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers’ union who came to
-see Jurgis to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he
-would have to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and
-the delegate, who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of
-Lithuanian, lost his temper and began to threaten him. In the end
-Jurgis got into a fine rage, and made it sufficiently plain that it
-would take more than one Irishman to scare him into a union. Little by
-little he gathered that the main thing the men wanted was to put a stop
-to the habit of “speeding-up”; they were trying their best to force a
-lessening of the pace, for there were some, they said, who could not
-keep up with it, whom it was killing. But Jurgis had no sympathy with
-such ideas as this—he could do the work himself, and so could the rest
-of them, he declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn’t
-do it, let them go somewhere else. Jurgis had not studied the books,
-and he would not have known how to pronounce “laissez faire”; 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.
-
-Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore by
-Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief
-fund in time of a famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned
-the unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart
-because of his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the
-yards begging for a chance to earn his bread. Old Antanas had been a
-worker ever since he was a child; he had run away from home when he was
-twelve, because his father beat him for trying to learn to read. And he
-was a faithful man, too; he was a man you might leave alone for a
-month, if only you had made him understand what you wanted him to do in
-the meantime. And now here he was, worn out in soul and body, and with
-no more place in the world than a sick dog. He had his home, as it
-happened, and some one who would care for him if he never got a job;
-but his son could not help thinking, suppose this had not been the
-case. Antanas Rudkus had been into every building in Packingtown by
-this time, and into nearly every room; he had stood mornings among the
-crowd of applicants till the very policemen had come to know his face
-and to tell him to go home and give it up. He had been likewise to all
-the stores and saloons for a mile about, begging for some little thing
-to do; and everywhere they had ordered him out, sometimes with curses,
-and not once even stopping to ask him a question.
-
-So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis’ faith
-in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was
-hunting a job—and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one
-evening the old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the
-tale that he had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of
-the pickle rooms of Durham’s, and asked what he would pay to get a job.
-He had not known what to make of this at first; but the man had gone on
-with matter-of-fact frankness to say that he could get him a job,
-provided that he were willing to pay one-third of his wages for it. Was
-he a boss? Antanas had asked; to which the man had replied that that
-was nobody’s business, but that he could do what he said.
-
-Jurgis had made some friends by this time, and he sought one of them
-and asked what this meant. The friend, who was named Tamoszius
-Kuszleika, was a sharp little man who folded hides on the killing beds,
-and he listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all
-surprised. They were common enough, he said, such cases of petty graft.
-It was simply some boss who proposed to add a little to his income.
-After Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants were
-simply honeycombed with rottenness of that sort—the bosses grafted off
-the men, and they grafted off each other; and some day the
-superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would graft
-off the boss. Warming to the subject, Tamoszius went on to explain the
-situation. Here was Durham’s, for instance, owned by a man who was
-trying to make as much money out of it as he could, and did not care in
-the least how he did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades
-like an army, were managers and superintendents and foremen, each one
-driving the man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much
-work as possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against
-each other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man
-lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than
-he. So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of
-jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about
-it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a
-dollar. And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any
-honesty. The reason for that? Who could say? It must have been old
-Durham in the beginning; it was a heritage which the self-made merchant
-had left to his son, along with his millions.
-
-Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
-enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
-was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
-like all the rest. 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. That man who had been sent to
-Jurgis’ father by the boss, _he_ would rise; the man who told tales and
-spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own
-business and did his work—why, they would “speed him up” till they had
-worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.
-
-Jurgis went home with his head buzzing. Yet he could not bring himself
-to believe such things—no, it could not be so. Tamoszius was simply
-another of the grumblers. He was a man who spent all his time fiddling;
-and he would go to parties at night and not get home till sunrise, and
-so of course he did not feel like work. Then, too, he was a puny little
-chap; and so he had been left behind in the race, and that was why he
-was sore. And yet so many strange things kept coming to Jurgis’ notice
-every day!
-
-He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer.
-But old Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage
-was gone; he wanted a job, any sort of a job. So the next day he went
-and found the man who had spoken to him, and promised to bring him a
-third of all he earned; and that same day he was put to work in
-Durham’s cellars. It was a “pickle room,” where there was never a dry
-spot to stand upon, and so he had to take nearly the whole of his first
-week’s earnings to buy him a pair of heavy-soled boots. He was a
-“squeedgie” man; his job was to go about all day with a long-handled
-mop, swabbing up the floor. Except that it was damp and dark, it was
-not an unpleasant job, in summer.
-
-Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and
-so Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said,
-that his father had been at work only two days before he came home as
-bitter as any of them, and cursing Durham’s with all the power of his
-soul. For they had set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family
-sat round and listened in wonder while he told them what that meant. It
-seemed that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef
-for canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men
-with great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken
-to the cooking room. When they had speared out all they could reach,
-they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the
-balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet they
-set Antanas with his mop slopping the “pickle” into a hole that
-connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever;
-and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all
-the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every
-few days it was the old man’s task to clean these out, and shovel their
-contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!
-
-This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and
-Marija with tales to tell. Marija was working for one of the
-independent packers, and was quite beside herself and outrageous with
-triumph over the sums of money she was making as a painter of cans. But
-one day she walked home with a pale-faced little woman who worked
-opposite to her, Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga told her how
-she, Marija, had chanced to get her job. She had taken the place of an
-Irishwoman who had been working in that factory ever since any one
-could remember. For over fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis
-was her name, and a long time ago she had been seduced, and had a
-little boy; he was a cripple, and an epileptic, but still he was all
-that she had in the world to love, and they had lived in a little room
-alone somewhere back of Halsted Street, where the Irish were. Mary had
-had consumption, and all day long you might hear her coughing as she
-worked; of late she had been going all to pieces, and when Marija came,
-the “forelady” had suddenly decided to turn her off. The forelady had
-to come up to a certain standard herself, and could not stop for sick
-people, Jadvyga explained. The fact that Mary had been there so long
-had not made any difference to her—it was doubtful if she even knew
-that, for both the forelady and the superintendent were new people,
-having only been there two or three years themselves. Jadvyga did not
-know what had become of the poor creature; she would have gone to see
-her, but had been sick herself. She had pains in her back all the time,
-Jadvyga explained, and feared that she had womb trouble. It was not fit
-work for a woman, handling fourteen-pound cans all day.
-
-It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by
-the misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with
-hams from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing
-rooms. The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about
-threescore hams on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a
-ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a man to start one of these
-trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once started he
-naturally tried his best to keep it going. There was always the boss
-prowling about, and if there was a second’s delay he would fall to
-cursing; Lithuanians and Slovaks and such, who could not understand
-what was said to them, the bosses were wont to kick about the place
-like so many dogs. Therefore these trucks went for the most part on the
-run; and the predecessor of Jonas had been jammed against the wall by
-one and crushed in a horrible and nameless manner.
-
-All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to
-what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he had
-noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts;
-which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to
-come a “slunk” calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows
-that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is
-not fit for food. A good many of these came every day to the packing
-houses—and, of course, if they had chosen, it would have been an easy
-matter for the packers to keep them till they were fit for food. But
-for the saving of time and fodder, it was the law that cows of that
-sort came along with the others, and whoever noticed it would tell the
-boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government
-inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice the carcass of
-the cow would be cleaned out, and entrails would have vanished; it was
-Jurgis’ task to slide them into the trap, calves and all, and on the
-floor below they took out these “slunk” calves, and butchered them for
-meat, and used even the skins of them.
-
-One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the
-last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving,
-Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work which this
-injured man had usually done. It was late, almost dark, and the
-government inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two
-of men on the floor. That day they had killed about four thousand
-cattle, and these cattle had come in freight trains from far states,
-and some of them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and
-some with gored sides; there were some that had died, from what cause
-no one could say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness
-and silence. “Downers,” the men called them; and the packing house had
-a special elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds,
-where the gang proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike
-nonchalance which said plainer than any words that it was a matter of
-everyday routine. It took a couple of hours to get them out of the way,
-and in the end Jurgis saw them go into the chilling rooms with the rest
-of the meat, being carefully scattered here and there so that they
-could not be identified. When he came home that night he was in a very
-somber mood, having begun to see at last how those might be right who
-had laughed at him for his faith in America.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time—it
-was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the
-criterion of its helping or hindering their union. All his thoughts
-were there; he accepted the family because it was a part of Ona. And he
-was interested in the house because it was to be Ona’s home. Even the
-tricks and cruelties he saw at Durham’s had little meaning for him just
-then, save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.
-
-The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but
-this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast,
-and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the old
-people. To Teta Elzbieta especially the very suggestion was an
-affliction. What! she would cry. To be married on the roadside like a
-parcel of beggars! No! No!—Elzbieta had some traditions behind her; she
-had been a person of importance in her girlhood—had lived on a big
-estate and had servants, and might have married well and been a lady,
-but for the fact that there had been nine daughters and no sons in the
-family. Even so, however, she knew what was decent, and clung to her
-traditions with desperation. They were not going to lose all caste,
-even if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown; and that
-Ona had even talked of omitting a _veselija_ was enough to keep her
-stepmother lying awake all night. It was in vain for them to say that
-they had so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and
-then the friends would talk about it. They must not give up what was
-right for a little money—if they did, the money would never do them any
-good, they could depend upon that. And Elzbieta would call upon Dede
-Antanas to support her; there was a fear in the souls of these two,
-lest this journey to a new country might somehow undermine the old home
-virtues of their children. The very first Sunday they had all been
-taken to mass; and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to
-invest a little of her resources in a representation of the babe of
-Bethlehem, made in plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though it
-was only a foot high, there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples,
-and the Virgin standing with her child in her arms, and the kings and
-shepherds and wise men bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents;
-but Elzbieta had a feeling that money spent for such things was not to
-be counted too closely, it would come back in hidden ways. The piece
-was beautiful on the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home
-without some sort of ornament.
-
-The cost of the wedding feast would, of course, be returned to them;
-but the problem was to raise it even temporarily. They had been in the
-neighborhood so short a time that they could not get much credit, and
-there was no one except Szedvilas from whom they could borrow even a
-little. Evening after evening Jurgis and Ona would sit and figure the
-expenses, calculating the term of their separation. They could not
-possibly manage it decently for less than two hundred dollars, and even
-though they were welcome to count in the whole of the earnings of
-Marija and Jonas, as a loan, they could not hope to raise this sum in
-less than four or five months. So Ona began thinking of seeking
-employment herself, saying that if she had even ordinarily good luck,
-she might be able to take two months off the time. They were just
-beginning to adjust themselves to this necessity, when out of the clear
-sky there fell a thunderbolt upon them—a calamity that scattered all
-their hopes to the four winds.
-
-About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family,
-consisting of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was
-Majauszkis, and our friends struck up an acquaintance with them before
-long. One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first
-subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its
-history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called,
-proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their
-blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage—she must have been
-eighty—and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums,
-she seemed a very old witch to them. Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived
-in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element,
-and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people
-might about weddings and holidays.
-
-The thing came gradually. In the first place as to the house they had
-bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about
-fifteen years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint,
-which was so bad that it needed to be put on new every year or two. The
-house was one of a whole row that was built by a company which existed
-to make money by swindling poor people. The family had paid fifteen
-hundred dollars for it, and it had not cost the builders five hundred,
-when it was new. Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that because her son
-belonged to a political organization with a contractor who put up
-exactly such houses. They used the very flimsiest and cheapest
-material; they built the houses a dozen at a time, and they cared about
-nothing at all except the outside shine. The family could take her word
-as to the trouble they would have, for she had been through it all—she
-and her son had bought their house in exactly the same way. They had
-fooled the company, however, for her son was a skilled man, who made as
-high as a hundred dollars a month, and as he had had sense enough not
-to marry, they had been able to pay for the house.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this
-remark; they did not quite see how paying for the house was “fooling
-the company.” Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the
-houses were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought
-them would not be able to pay for them. When they failed—if it were
-only by a single month—they would lose the house and all that they had
-paid on it, and then the company would sell it over again. And did they
-often get a chance to do that? _Dieve!_ (Grandmother Majauszkiene
-raised her hands.) They did it—how often no one could say, but
-certainly more than half of the time. They might ask any one who knew
-anything at all about Packingtown as to that; she had been living here
-ever since this house was built, and she could tell them all about it.
-And had it ever been sold before? _Susimilkie!_ Why, since it had been
-built, no less than four families that their informant could name had
-tried to buy it and failed. She would tell them a little about it.
-
-The first family had been Germans. The families had all been of
-different nationalities—there had been a representative of several
-races that had displaced each other in the stockyards. Grandmother
-Majauszkiene had come to America with her son at a time when so far as
-she knew there was only one other Lithuanian family in the district;
-the workers had all been Germans then—skilled cattle butchers that the
-packers had brought from abroad to start the business. Afterward, as
-cheaper labor had come, these Germans had moved away. The next were the
-Irish—there had been six or eight years when Packingtown had been a
-regular Irish city. There were a few colonies of them still here,
-enough to run all the unions and the police force and get all the
-graft; but most of those who were working in the packing houses had
-gone away at the next drop in wages—after the big strike. The Bohemians
-had come then, and after them the Poles. People said that old man
-Durham himself was responsible for these immigrations; he had sworn
-that he would fix the people of Packingtown so that they would never
-again call a strike on him, and so he had sent his agents into every
-city and village in Europe to spread the tale of the chances of work
-and high wages at the stockyards. The people had come in hordes; and
-old Durham had squeezed them tighter and tighter, speeding them up and
-grinding them to pieces and sending for new ones. The Poles, who had
-come by tens of thousands, had been driven to the wall by the
-Lithuanians, and now the Lithuanians were giving way to the Slovaks.
-Who there was poorer and more miserable than the Slovaks, Grandmother
-Majauszkiene had no idea, but the packers would find them, never fear.
-It was easy to bring them, for wages were really much higher, and it
-was only when it was too late that the poor people found out that
-everything else was higher too. They were like rats in a trap, that was
-the truth; and more of them were piling in every day. By and by they
-would have their revenge, though, for the thing was getting beyond
-human endurance, and the people would rise and murder the packers.
-Grandmother Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some such strange thing;
-another son of hers was working in the mines of Siberia, and the old
-lady herself had made speeches in her time—which made her seem all the
-more terrible to her present auditors.
-
-They called her back to the story of the house. The German family had
-been a good sort. To be sure there had been a great many of them, which
-was a common failing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard, and the
-father had been a steady man, and they had a good deal more than half
-paid for the house. But he had been killed in an elevator accident in
-Durham’s.
-
-Then there had come the Irish, and there had been lots of them, too;
-the husband drank and beat the children—the neighbors could hear them
-shrieking any night. They were behind with their rent all the time, but
-the company was good to them; there was some politics back of that,
-Grandmother Majauszkiene could not say just what, but the Laffertys had
-belonged to the “War Whoop League,” which was a sort of political club
-of all the thugs and rowdies in the district; and if you belonged to
-that, you could never be arrested for anything. Once upon a time old
-Lafferty had been caught with a gang that had stolen cows from several
-of the poor people of the neighborhood and butchered them in an old
-shanty back of the yards and sold them. He had been in jail only three
-days for it, and had come out laughing, and had not even lost his place
-in the packing house. He had gone all to ruin with the drink, however,
-and lost his power; one of his sons, who was a good man, had kept him
-and the family up for a year or two, but then he had got sick with
-consumption.
-
-That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted
-herself—this house was unlucky. Every family that lived in it, some one
-was sure to get consumption. Nobody could tell why that was; there must
-be something about the house, or the way it was built—some folks said
-it was because the building had been begun in the dark of the moon.
-There were dozens of houses that way in Packingtown. Sometimes there
-would be a particular room that you could point out—if anybody slept in
-that room he was just as good as dead. With this house it had been the
-Irish first; and then a Bohemian family had lost a child of it—though,
-to be sure, that was uncertain, since it was hard to tell what was the
-matter with children who worked in the yards. In those days there had
-been no law about the age of children—the packers had worked all but
-the babies. At this remark the family looked puzzled, and Grandmother
-Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation—that it was against the
-law for children to work before they were sixteen. What was the sense
-of that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little
-Stanislovas go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother
-Majauszkiene said—the law made no difference except that it forced
-people to lie about the ages of their children. One would like to know
-what the lawmakers expected them to do; there were families that had no
-possible means of support except the children, and the law provided
-them no other way of getting a living. Very often a man could get no
-work in Packingtown for months, while a child could go and get a place
-easily; there was always some new machine, by which the packers could
-get as much work out of a child as they had been able to get out of a
-man, and for a third of the pay.
-
-To come back to the house again, it was the woman of the next family
-that had died. That was after they had been there nearly four years,
-and this woman had had twins regularly every year—and there had been
-more than you could count when they moved in. After she died the man
-would go to work all day and leave them to shift for themselves—the
-neighbors would help them now and then, for they would almost freeze to
-death. At the end there were three days that they were alone, before it
-was found out that the father was dead. He was a “floorsman” at
-Jones’s, and a wounded steer had broken loose and mashed him against a
-pillar. Then the children had been taken away, and the company had sold
-the house that very same week to a party of emigrants.
-
-So this grim old woman went on with her tale of horrors. How much of it
-was exaggeration—who could tell? It was only too plausible. There was
-that about consumption, for instance. They knew nothing about
-consumption whatever, except that it made people cough; and for two
-weeks they had been worrying about a coughing-spell of Antanas. It
-seemed to shake him all over, and it never stopped; you could see a red
-stain wherever he had spit upon the floor.
-
-And yet all these things were as nothing to what came a little later.
-They had begun to question the old lady as to why one family had been
-unable to pay, trying to show her by figures that it ought to have been
-possible; and Grandmother Majauszkiene had disputed their figures—“You
-say twelve dollars a month; but that does not include the interest.”
-
-Then they stared at her. “Interest!” they cried.
-
-“Interest on the money you still owe,” she answered.
-
-“But we don’t have to pay any interest!” they exclaimed, three or four
-at once. “We only have to pay twelve dollars each month.”
-
-And for this she laughed at them. “You are like all the rest,” she
-said; “they trick you and eat you alive. They never sell the houses
-without interest. Get your deed, and see.”
-
-Then, with a horrible sinking of the heart, Teta Elzbieta unlocked her
-bureau and brought out the paper that had already caused them so many
-agonies. Now they sat round, scarcely breathing, while the old lady,
-who could read English, ran over it. “Yes,” she said, finally, “here it
-is, of course: ‘With interest thereon monthly, at the rate of seven per
-cent per annum.’”
-
-And there followed a dead silence. “What does that mean?” asked Jurgis
-finally, almost in a whisper.
-
-“That means,” replied the other, “that you have to pay them seven
-dollars next month, as well as the twelve dollars.”
-
-Then again there was not a sound. It was sickening, like a nightmare,
-in which suddenly something gives way beneath you, and you feel
-yourself sinking, sinking, down into bottomless abysses. As if in a
-flash of lightning they saw themselves—victims of a relentless fate,
-cornered, trapped, in the grip of destruction. All the fair structure
-of their hopes came crashing about their ears.—And all the time the old
-woman was going on talking. They wished that she would be still; her
-voice sounded like the croaking of some dismal raven. Jurgis sat with
-his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his forehead, and there
-was a great lump in Ona’s throat, choking her. Then suddenly Teta
-Elzbieta broke the silence with a wail, and Marija began to wring her
-hands and sob, “_Ai! Ai! Beda man!_”
-
-All their outcry did them no good, of course. There sat Grandmother
-Majauszkiene, unrelenting, typifying fate. No, of course it was not
-fair, but then fairness had nothing to do with it. And of course they
-had not known it. They had not been intended to know it. But it was in
-the deed, and that was all that was necessary, as they would find when
-the time came.
-
-Somehow or other they got rid of their guest, and then they passed a
-night of lamentation. The children woke up and found out that something
-was wrong, and they wailed and would not be comforted. In the morning,
-of course, most of them had to go to work, the packing houses would not
-stop for their sorrows; but by seven o’clock Ona and her stepmother
-were standing at the door of the office of the agent. Yes, he told
-them, when he came, it was quite true that they would have to pay
-interest. And then Teta Elzbieta broke forth into protestations and
-reproaches, so that the people outside stopped and peered in at the
-window. The agent was as bland as ever. He was deeply pained, he said.
-He had not told them, simply because he had supposed they would
-understand that they had to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter
-of course.
-
-So they came away, and Ona went down to the yards, and at noontime saw
-Jurgis and told him. Jurgis took it stolidly—he had made up his mind to
-it by this time. It was part of fate; they would manage it somehow—he
-made his usual answer, “I will work harder.” It would upset their plans
-for a time; and it would perhaps be necessary for Ona to get work after
-all. Then Ona added that Teta Elzbieta had decided that little
-Stanislovas would have to work too. It was not fair to let Jurgis and
-her support the family—the family would have to help as it could.
-Previously Jurgis had scouted this idea, but now knit his brows and
-nodded his head slowly—yes, perhaps it would be best; they would all
-have to make some sacrifices now.
-
-So Ona set out that day to hunt for work; and at night Marija came home
-saying that she had met a girl named Jasaityte who had a friend that
-worked in one of the wrapping rooms in Brown’s, and might get a place
-for Ona there; only the forelady was the kind that takes presents—it
-was no use for any one to ask her for a place unless at the same time
-they slipped a ten-dollar bill into her hand. Jurgis was not in the
-least surprised at this now—he merely asked what the wages of the place
-would be. So negotiations were opened, and after an interview Ona came
-home and reported that the forelady seemed to like her, and had said
-that, while she was not sure, she thought she might be able to put her
-at work sewing covers on hams, a job at which she would earn as much as
-eight or ten dollars a week. That was a bid, so Marija reported, after
-consulting her friend; and then there was an anxious conference at
-home. The work was done in one of the cellars, and Jurgis did not want
-Ona to work in such a place; but then it was easy work, and one could
-not have everything. So in the end Ona, with a ten-dollar bill burning
-a hole in her palm, had another interview with the forelady.
-
-Meantime Teta Elzbieta had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten a
-certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was; and
-with it the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in the
-world. It chanced that Durham had just put in a wonderful new lard
-machine, and when the special policeman in front of the time station
-saw Stanislovas and his document, he smiled to himself and told him to
-go—“Czia! Czia!” pointing. And so Stanislovas went down a long stone
-corridor, and up a flight of stairs, which took him into a room lighted
-by electricity, with the new machines for filling lard cans at work in
-it. The lard was finished on the floor above, and it came in little
-jets, like beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of unpleasant odor.
-There were several kinds and sizes of jets, and after a certain precise
-quantity had come out, each stopped automatically, and the wonderful
-machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet, and so on,
-until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly, and
-smoothed off. To attend to all this and fill several hundred cans of
-lard per hour, there were necessary two human creatures, one of whom
-knew how to place an empty lard can on a certain spot every few
-seconds, and the other of whom knew how to take a full lard can off a
-certain spot every few seconds and set it upon a tray.
-
-And so, after little Stanislovas had stood gazing timidly about him for
-a few minutes, a man approached him, and asked what he wanted, to which
-Stanislovas said, “Job.” Then the man said “How old?” and Stanislovas
-answered, “Sixtin.” Once or twice every year a state inspector would
-come wandering through the packing plants, asking a child here and
-there how old he was; and so the packers were very careful to comply
-with the law, which cost them as much trouble as was now involved in
-the boss’s taking the document from the little boy, and glancing at it,
-and then sending it to the office to be filed away. Then he set some
-one else at a different job, and showed the lad how to place a lard can
-every time the empty arm of the remorseless machine came to him; and so
-was decided the place in the universe of little Stanislovas, and his
-destiny till the end of his days. Hour after hour, day after day, year
-after year, it was fated that he should stand upon a certain square
-foot of floor from seven in the morning until noon, and again from
-half-past twelve till half-past five, making never a motion and
-thinking never a thought, save for the setting of lard cans. In summer
-the stench of the warm lard would be nauseating, and in winter the cans
-would all but freeze to his naked little fingers in the unheated
-cellar. Half the year it would be dark as night when he went in to
-work, and dark as night again when he came out, and so he would never
-know what the sun looked like on weekdays. And for this, at the end of
-the week, he would carry home three dollars to his family, being his
-pay at the rate of five cents per hour—just about his proper share of
-the total earnings of the million and three-quarters of children who
-are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.
-
-And meantime, because they were young, and hope is not to be stifled
-before its time, Jurgis and Ona were again calculating; for they had
-discovered that the wages of Stanislovas would a little more than pay
-the interest, which left them just about as they had been before! It
-would be but fair to them to say that the little boy was delighted with
-his work, and at the idea of earning a lot of money; and also that the
-two were very much in love with each other.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-
-All summer long the family toiled, and in the fall they had money
-enough for Jurgis and Ona to be married according to home traditions of
-decency. In the latter part of November they hired a hall, and invited
-all their new acquaintances, who came and left them over a hundred
-dollars in debt.
-
-It was a bitter and cruel experience, and it plunged them into an agony
-of despair. Such a time, of all times, for them to have it, when their
-hearts were made tender! Such a pitiful beginning it was for their
-married life; they loved each other so, and they could not have the
-briefest respite! It was a time when everything cried out to them that
-they ought to be happy; when wonder burned in their hearts, and leaped
-into flame at the slightest breath. They were shaken to the depths of
-them, with the awe of love realized—and was it so very weak of them
-that they cried out for a little peace? They had opened their hearts,
-like flowers to the springtime, and the merciless winter had fallen
-upon them. They wondered if ever any love that had blossomed in the
-world had been so crushed and trampled!
-
-Over them, relentless and savage, there cracked the lash of want; the
-morning after the wedding it sought them as they slept, and drove them
-out before daybreak to work. Ona was scarcely able to stand with
-exhaustion; but if she were to lose her place they would be ruined, and
-she would surely lose it if she were not on time that day. They all had
-to go, even little Stanislovas, who was ill from overindulgence in
-sausages and sarsaparilla. All that day he stood at his lard machine,
-rocking unsteadily, his eyes closing in spite of him; and he all but
-lost his place even so, for the foreman booted him twice to waken him.
-
-It was fully a week before they were all normal again, and meantime,
-with whining children and cross adults, the house was not a pleasant
-place to live in. Jurgis lost his temper very little, however, all
-things considered. It was because of Ona; the least glance at her was
-always enough to make him control himself. She was so sensitive—she was
-not fitted for such a life as this; and a hundred times a day, when he
-thought of her, he would clench his hands and fling himself again at
-the task before him. She was too good for him, he told himself, and he
-was afraid, because she was his. So long he had hungered to possess
-her, but now that the time had come he knew that he had not earned the
-right; that she trusted him so was all her own simple goodness, and no
-virtue of his. But he was resolved that she should never find this out,
-and so was always on the watch to see that he did not betray any of his
-ugly self; he would take care even in little matters, such as his
-manners, and his habit of swearing when things went wrong. The tears
-came so easily into Ona’s eyes, and she would look at him so
-appealingly—it kept Jurgis quite busy making resolutions, in addition
-to all the other things he had on his mind. It was true that more
-things were going on at this time in the mind of Jurgis than ever had
-in all his life before.
-
-He had to protect her, to do battle for her against the horror he saw
-about them. He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she
-would be lost; he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her
-from the world. He had learned the ways of things about him now. It was
-a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not
-give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you.
-You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you
-understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying
-to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps
-with. The store-keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of
-lies to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and
-telegraph poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation
-which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top
-to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.
-
-So Jurgis said that he understood it; and yet it was really pitiful,
-for the struggle was so unfair—some had so much the advantage! Here he
-was, for instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save Ona from
-harm, and only a week later she was suffering atrociously, and from the
-blow of an enemy that he could not possibly have thwarted. There came a
-day when the rain fell in torrents; and it being December, to be wet
-with it and have to sit all day long in one of the cold cellars of
-Brown’s was no laughing matter. Ona was a working girl, and did not own
-waterproofs and such things, and so Jurgis took her and put her on the
-streetcar. Now it chanced that this car line was owned by gentlemen who
-were trying to make money. And the city having passed an ordinance
-requiring them to give transfers, they had fallen into a rage; and
-first they had made a rule that transfers could be had only when the
-fare was paid; and later, growing still uglier, they had made
-another—that the passenger must ask for the transfer, the conductor was
-not allowed to offer it. Now Ona had been told that she was to get a
-transfer; but it was not her way to speak up, and so she merely waited,
-following the conductor about with her eyes, wondering when he would
-think of her. When at last the time came for her to get out, she asked
-for the transfer, and was refused. Not knowing what to make of this,
-she began to argue with the conductor, in a language of which he did
-not understand a word. After warning her several times, he pulled the
-bell and the car went on—at which Ona burst into tears. At the next
-corner she got out, of course; and as she had no more money, she had to
-walk the rest of the way to the yards in the pouring rain. And so all
-day long she sat shivering, and came home at night with her teeth
-chattering and pains in her head and back. For two weeks afterward she
-suffered cruelly—and yet every day she had to drag herself to her work.
-The forewoman was especially severe with Ona, because she believed that
-she was obstinate on account of having been refused a holiday the day
-after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her “forelady” did not like to
-have her girls marry—perhaps because she was old and ugly and unmarried
-herself.
-
-There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.
-Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could
-they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage
-of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that
-the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and
-doctored with formaldehyde besides? When the children were not well at
-home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was
-obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts—and how was she to know
-that they were all adulterated? How could they find out that their tea
-and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned
-peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with
-aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it have
-done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any
-other sort was to be had? The bitter winter was coming, and they had to
-save money to get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in
-the least how much they saved, they could not get anything to keep them
-warm. All the clothing that was to be had in the stores was made of
-cotton and shoddy, which is made by tearing old clothes to pieces and
-weaving the fiber again. If they paid higher prices, they might get
-frills and fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not
-obtain for love nor money. A young friend of Szedvilas’, recently come
-from abroad, had become a clerk in a store on Ashland Avenue, and he
-narrated with glee a trick that had been played upon an unsuspecting
-countryman by his boss. The customer had desired to purchase an alarm
-clock, and the boss had shown him two exactly similar, telling him that
-the price of one was a dollar and of the other a dollar seventy-five.
-Upon being asked what the difference was, the man had wound up the
-first halfway and the second all the way, and showed the customer how
-the latter made twice as much noise; upon which the customer remarked
-that he was a sound sleeper, and had better take the more expensive
-clock!
-
-There is a poet who sings that
-
-
-“Deeper their heart grows and nobler their bearing,
-Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.”
-
-
-But it was not likely that he had reference to the kind of anguish that
-comes with destitution, that is so endlessly bitter and cruel, and yet
-so sordid and petty, so ugly, so humiliating—unredeemed by the
-slightest touch of dignity or even of pathos. It is a kind of anguish
-that poets have not commonly dealt with; its very words are not
-admitted into the vocabulary of poets—the details of it cannot be told
-in polite society at all. How, for instance, could any one expect to
-excite sympathy among lovers of good literature by telling how a family
-found their home alive with vermin, and of all the suffering and
-inconvenience and humiliation they were put to, and the hard-earned
-money they spent, in efforts to get rid of them? After long hesitation
-and uncertainty they paid twenty-five cents for a big package of insect
-powder—a patent preparation which chanced to be ninety-five per cent
-gypsum, a harmless earth which had cost about two cents to prepare. Of
-course it had not the least effect, except upon a few roaches which had
-the misfortune to drink water after eating it, and so got their inwards
-set in a coating of plaster of Paris. The family, having no idea of
-this, and no more money to throw away, had nothing to do but give up
-and submit to one more misery for the rest of their days.
-
-Then there was old Antanas. The winter came, and the place where he
-worked was a dark, unheated cellar, where you could see your breath all
-day, and where your fingers sometimes tried to freeze. So the old man’s
-cough grew every day worse, until there came a time when it hardly ever
-stopped, and he had become a nuisance about the place. Then, too, a
-still more dreadful thing happened to him; he worked in a place where
-his feet were soaked in chemicals, and it was not long before they had
-eaten through his new boots. Then sores began to break out on his feet,
-and grow worse and worse. Whether it was that his blood was bad, or
-there had been a cut, he could not say; but he asked the men about it,
-and learned that it was a regular thing—it was the saltpeter. Every one
-felt it, sooner or later, and then it was all up with him, at least for
-that sort of work. The sores would never heal—in the end his toes would
-drop off, if he did not quit. Yet old Antanas would not quit; he saw
-the suffering of his family, and he remembered what it had cost him to
-get a job. So he tied up his feet, and went on limping about and
-coughing, until at last he fell to pieces, all at once and in a heap,
-like the One-Horse Shay. They carried him to a dry place and laid him
-on the floor, and that night two of the men helped him home. The poor
-old man was put to bed, and though he tried it every morning until the
-end, he never could get up again. He would lie there and cough and
-cough, day and night, wasting away to a mere skeleton. There came a
-time when there was so little flesh on him that the bones began to poke
-through—which was a horrible thing to see or even to think of. And one
-night he had a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his
-mouth. The family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a
-dollar to be told that there was nothing to be done. Mercifully the
-doctor did not say this so that the old man could hear, for he was
-still clinging to the faith that tomorrow or next day he would be
-better, and could go back to his job. The company had sent word to him
-that they would keep it for him—or rather Jurgis had bribed one of the
-men to come one Sunday afternoon and say they had. Dede Antanas
-continued to believe it, while three more hemorrhages came; and then at
-last one morning they found him stiff and cold. Things were not going
-well with them then, and though it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta’s heart,
-they were forced to dispense with nearly all the decencies of a
-funeral; they had only a hearse, and one hack for the women and
-children; and Jurgis, who was learning things fast, spent all Sunday
-making a bargain for these, and he made it in the presence of
-witnesses, so that when the man tried to charge him for all sorts of
-incidentals, he did not have to pay. For twenty-five years old Antanas
-Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest together, and it was hard to
-part in this way; perhaps it was just as well that Jurgis had to give
-all his attention to the task of having a funeral without being
-bankrupted, and so had no time to indulge in memories and grief.
-
-Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer
-long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them
-lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow
-and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches. Just so it
-was in Packingtown; the whole district braced itself for the struggle
-that was an agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes.
-All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing
-machine; and now was the time for the renovating of it, and the
-replacing of damaged parts. There came pneumonia and grippe, stalking
-among them, seeking for weakened constitutions; there was the annual
-harvest of those whom tuberculosis had been dragging down. There came
-cruel, cold, and biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing
-relentlessly for failing muscles and impoverished blood. Sooner or
-later came the day when the unfit one did not report for work; and
-then, with no time lost in waiting, and no inquiries or regrets, there
-was a chance for a new hand.
-
-The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the
-packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came,
-literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each
-other for a chance for life. Blizzards and cold made no difference to
-them, they were always on hand; they were on hand two hours before the
-sun rose, an hour before the work began. Sometimes their faces froze,
-sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all
-together—but still they came, for they had no other place to go. One
-day Durham advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice; and
-all that day the homeless and starving of the city came trudging
-through the snow from all over its two hundred square miles. That night
-forty score of them crowded into the station house of the stockyards
-district—they filled the rooms, sleeping in each other’s laps, toboggan
-fashion, and they piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the
-police shut the doors and left some to freeze outside. On the morrow,
-before daybreak, there were three thousand at Durham’s, and the police
-reserves had to be sent for to quell the riot. Then Durham’s bosses
-picked out twenty of the biggest; the “two hundred” proved to have been
-a printer’s error.
-
-Four or five miles to the eastward lay the lake, and over this the
-bitter winds came raging. Sometimes the thermometer would fall to ten
-or twenty degrees below zero at night, and in the morning the streets
-would be piled with snowdrifts up to the first-floor windows. The
-streets through which our friends had to go to their work were all
-unpaved and full of deep holes and gullies; in summer, when it rained
-hard, a man might have to wade to his waist to get to his house; and
-now in winter it was no joke getting through these places, before light
-in the morning and after dark at night. They would wrap up in all they
-owned, but they could not wrap up against exhaustion; and many a man
-gave out in these battles with the snowdrifts, and lay down and fell
-asleep.
-
-And if it was bad for the men, one may imagine how the women and
-children fared. Some would ride in the cars, if the cars were running;
-but when you are making only five cents an hour, as was little
-Stanislovas, you do not like to spend that much to ride two miles. The
-children would come to the yards with great shawls about their ears,
-and so tied up that you could hardly find them—and still there would be
-accidents. One bitter morning in February the little boy who worked at
-the lard machine with Stanislovas came about an hour late, and
-screaming with pain. They unwrapped him, and a man began vigorously
-rubbing his ears; and as they were frozen stiff, it took only two or
-three rubs to break them short off. As a result of this, little
-Stanislovas conceived a terror of the cold that was almost a mania.
-Every morning, when it came time to start for the yards, he would begin
-to cry and protest. Nobody knew quite how to manage him, for threats
-did no good—it seemed to be something that he could not control, and
-they feared sometimes that he would go into convulsions. In the end it
-had to be arranged that he always went with Jurgis, and came home with
-him again; and often, when the snow was deep, the man would carry him
-the whole way on his shoulders. Sometimes Jurgis would be working until
-late at night, and then it was pitiful, for there was no place for the
-little fellow to wait, save in the doorways or in a corner of the
-killing beds, and he would all but fall asleep there, and freeze to
-death.
-
-There was no heat upon the killing beds; the men might exactly as well
-have worked out of doors all winter. For that matter, there was very
-little heat anywhere in the building, except in the cooking rooms and
-such places—and it was the men who worked in these who ran the most
-risk of all, because whenever they had to pass to another room they had
-to go through ice-cold corridors, and sometimes with nothing on above
-the waist except a sleeveless undershirt. On the killing beds you were
-apt to be covered with blood, and it would freeze solid; if you leaned
-against a pillar, you would freeze to that, and if you put your hand
-upon the blade of your knife, you would run a chance of leaving your
-skin on it. The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old
-sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked
-again, and so on, until by nighttime a man would be walking on great
-lumps the size of the feet of an elephant. Now and then, when the
-bosses were not looking, you would see them plunging their feet and
-ankles into the steaming hot carcass of the steer, or darting across
-the room to the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that
-nearly all of them—all of those who used knives—were unable to wear
-gloves, and their arms would be white with frost and their hands would
-grow numb, and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air
-would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that
-you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing
-about at the speed they kept up on the killing beds, and all with
-butcher knives, like razors, in their hands—well, it was to be counted
-as a wonder that there were not more men slaughtered than cattle.
-
-And yet all this inconvenience they might have put up with, if only it
-had not been for one thing—if only there had been some place where they
-might eat. Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which
-he had worked, or else to rush, as did all his companions, to any one
-of the hundreds of liquor stores which stretched out their arms to him.
-To the west of the yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken
-line of saloons—“Whiskey Row,” they called it; to the north was
-Forty-seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and
-at the angle of the two was “Whiskey Point,” a space of fifteen or
-twenty acres, and containing one glue factory and about two hundred
-saloons.
-
-One might walk among these and take his choice: “Hot pea-soup and
-boiled cabbage today.” “Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Walk in.”
-“Bean soup and stewed lamb. Welcome.” All of these things were printed
-in many languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were
-infinite in their variety and appeal. There was the “Home Circle” and
-the “Cosey Corner”; there were “Firesides” and “Hearthstones” and
-“Pleasure Palaces” and “Wonderlands” and “Dream Castles” and “Love’s
-Delights.” Whatever else they were called, they were sure to be called
-“Union Headquarters,” and to hold out a welcome to workingmen; and
-there was always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some friends to
-laugh and talk with. There was only one condition attached,—you must
-drink. If you went in not intending to drink, you would be put out in
-no time, and if you were slow about going, like as not you would get
-your head split open with a beer bottle in the bargain. But all of the
-men understood the convention and drank; they believed that by it they
-were getting something for nothing—for they did not need to take more
-than one drink, and upon the strength of it they might fill themselves
-up with a good hot dinner. This did not always work out in practice,
-however, for there was pretty sure to be a friend who would treat you,
-and then you would have to treat him. Then some one else would come
-in—and, anyhow, a few drinks were good for a man who worked hard. As he
-went back he did not shiver so, he had more courage for his task; the
-deadly brutalizing monotony of it did not afflict him so,—he had ideas
-while he worked, and took a more cheerful view of his circumstances. On
-the way home, however, the shivering was apt to come on him again; and
-so he would have to stop once or twice to warm up against the cruel
-cold. As there were hot things to eat in this saloon too, he might get
-home late to his supper, or he might not get home at all. And then his
-wife might set out to look for him, and she too would feel the cold;
-and perhaps she would have some of the children with her—and so a whole
-family would drift into drinking, as the current of a river drifts
-downstream. As if to complete the chain, the packers all paid their men
-in checks, refusing all requests to pay in coin; and where in
-Packingtown could a man go to have his check cashed but to a saloon,
-where he could pay for the favor by spending a part of the money?
-
-From all of these things Jurgis was saved because of Ona. He never
-would take but the one drink at noontime; and so he got the reputation
-of being a surly fellow, and was not quite welcome at the saloons, and
-had to drift about from one to another. Then at night he would go
-straight home, helping Ona and Stanislovas, or often putting the former
-on a car. And when he got home perhaps he would have to trudge several
-blocks, and come staggering back through the snowdrifts with a bag of
-coal upon his shoulder. Home was not a very attractive place—at least
-not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was
-a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the
-bitterest weather. This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta all day, and for
-the children when they could not get to school. At night they would sit
-huddled round this stove, while they ate their supper off their laps;
-and then Jurgis and Jonas would smoke a pipe, after which they would
-all crawl into their beds to get warm, after putting out the fire to
-save the coal. Then they would have some frightful experiences with the
-cold. They would sleep with all their clothes on, including their
-overcoats, and put over them all the bedding and spare clothing they
-owned; the children would sleep all crowded into one bed, and yet even
-so they could not keep warm. The outside ones would be shivering and
-sobbing, crawling over the others and trying to get down into the
-center, and causing a fight. This old house with the leaky
-weatherboards was a very different thing from their cabins at home,
-with great thick walls plastered inside and outside with mud; and the
-cold which came upon them was a living thing, a demon-presence in the
-room. They would waken in the midnight hours, when everything was
-black; perhaps they would hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there
-would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could
-feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them
-with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower,
-and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come;
-a grisly thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power
-primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to
-chaos and destruction. It was cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they
-would cringe in its grasp, alone, alone. There would be no one to hear
-them if they cried out; there would be no help, no mercy. And so on
-until morning—when they would go out to another day of toil, a little
-weaker, a little nearer to the time when it would be their turn to be
-shaken from the tree.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-
-Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from
-sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the great
-adventure befell Marija.
-
-The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, who played the violin. Everybody
-laughed at them, for Tamoszius was petite and frail, and Marija could
-have picked him up and carried him off under one arm. But perhaps that
-was why she fascinated him; the sheer volume of Marija’s energy was
-overwhelming. That first night at the wedding Tamoszius had hardly
-taken his eyes off her; and later on, when he came to find that she had
-really the heart of a baby, her voice and her violence ceased to
-terrify him, and he got the habit of coming to pay her visits on Sunday
-afternoons. 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
-a 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,
-crying, “Come now, brother, give us a tune.” And then Tamoszius’ face
-would light up and he would get out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin,
-and play. And forthwith the soul of him would flame up and become
-eloquent—it was almost an impropriety, for all the while his gaze would
-be fixed upon Marija’s face, until she would begin to turn red and
-lower her eyes. There was no resisting the music of Tamoszius, however;
-even the children would sit awed and wondering, and the tears would run
-down Teta Elzbieta’s cheeks. A wonderful privilege it was to be thus
-admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the
-ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life.
-
-Then 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; and also they
-would invite him to parties and festivals, knowing well that he was too
-good-natured to come without his fiddle, and that having brought it, he
-could be made to play while others danced. Once he made bold to ask
-Marija to accompany him to such a party, and Marija accepted, to his
-great delight—after which he never went anywhere without her, while if
-the celebration were given by friends of his, he would invite the rest
-of the family also. In any case Marija would bring back a huge
-pocketful of cakes and sandwiches for the children, and stories of all
-the good things she herself had managed to consume. She was compelled,
-at these parties, to spend most of her time at the refreshment table,
-for she could not dance with anybody except other women and very old
-men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament, and afflicted with a
-frantic jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured to put his arm
-about the ample waist of Marija would be certain to throw the orchestra
-out of tune.
-
-It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be able
-to look forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights. The
-family was too poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances; in
-Packingtown, as a rule, people know only their near neighbors and
-shopmates, and so the place is like a myriad of little country
-villages. But now there was a member of the family who was permitted to
-travel and widen her horizon; and so each week there would be new
-personalities to talk about,—how so-and-so was dressed, and where she
-worked, and what she got, and whom she was in love with; and how this
-man had jilted his girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl,
-and what had passed between them; and how another man beat his wife,
-and spent all her earnings upon drink, and pawned her very clothes.
-Some people would have scorned this talk as gossip; but then one has to
-talk about what one knows.
-
-It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding,
-that Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the
-street and spoke his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms.
-She told them all about it the next day, and fairly cried with
-happiness, for she said that Tamoszius was a lovely man. After that he
-no longer made love to her with his fiddle, but they would sit for
-hours in the kitchen, blissfully happy in each other’s arms; it was the
-tacit convention of the family to know nothing of what was going on in
-that corner.
-
-They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garret of
-the house fixed up, and live there. Tamoszius made good wages; and
-little by little the family were paying back their debt to Marija, so
-she ought soon to have enough to start life upon—only, with her
-preposterous softheartedness, she would insist upon spending a good
-part of her money every week for things which she saw they needed.
-Marija was really the capitalist of the party, for she had become an
-expert can painter by this time—she was getting fourteen cents for
-every hundred and ten cans, and she could paint more than two cans
-every minute. Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the
-throttle, and the neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.
-
-Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one
-could not count upon such good fortune forever—there were accidents
-that always happened. But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went
-on planning and dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for
-her home; and so, when the crash did come, her grief was painful to
-see.
-
-For her canning factory shut down! Marija would about as soon have
-expected to see the sun shut down—the huge establishment had been to
-her a thing akin to the planets and the seasons. But now it was shut!
-And they had not given her any explanation, they had not even given her
-a day’s warning; they had simply posted a notice one Saturday that all
-hands would be paid off that afternoon, and would not resume work for
-at least a month! And that was all that there was to it—her job was
-gone!
-
-It was the holiday rush that was over, the girls said in answer to
-Marija’s inquiries; after that there was always a slack. Sometimes the
-factory would start up on half time after a while, but there was no
-telling—it had been known to stay closed until way into the summer. The
-prospects were bad at present, for truckmen who worked in the
-storerooms said that these were piled up to the ceilings, so that the
-firm could not have found room for another week’s output of cans. And
-they had turned off three-quarters of these men, which was a still
-worse sign, since it meant that there were no orders to be filled. It
-was all a swindle, can-painting, said the girls—you were crazy with
-delight because you were making twelve or fourteen dollars a week, and
-saving half of it; but you had to spend it all keeping alive while you
-were out, and so your pay was really only half what you thought.
-
-Marija came home, and because she was a person who could not rest
-without danger of explosion, they first had a great house cleaning, and
-then she set out to search Packingtown for a job to fill up the gap. As
-nearly all the canning establishments were shut down, and all the girls
-hunting work, it will be readily understood that Marija did not find
-any. Then she took to trying the stores and saloons, and when this
-failed she even traveled over into the far-distant regions near the
-lake front, where lived the rich people in great palaces, and begged
-there for some sort of work that could be done by a person who did not
-know English.
-
-The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which
-had turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way
-which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big
-packers did not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning
-factories; but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours. They
-had always required the men to be on the killing beds and ready for
-work at seven o’clock, although there was almost never any work to be
-done till the buyers out in the yards had gotten to work, and some
-cattle had come over the chutes. That would often be ten or eleven
-o’clock, which was bad enough, in all conscience; but now, in the slack
-season, they would perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till
-late in the afternoon. And so they would have to loaf around, in a
-place where the thermometer might be twenty degrees below zero! At
-first one would see them running about, or skylarking with each other,
-trying to keep warm; but before the day was over they would become
-quite chilled through and exhausted, and, when the cattle finally came,
-so near frozen that to move was an agony. And then suddenly the place
-would spring into activity, and the merciless “speeding-up” would
-begin!
-
-There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day as
-this with not more than two hours’ work to his credit—which meant about
-thirty-five cents. There were many days when the total was less than
-half an hour, and others when there was none at all. The general
-average was six hours a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a
-week; and this six hours of work would be done after standing on the
-killing bed till one o’clock, or perhaps even three or four o’clock, in
-the afternoon. Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the
-very end of the day, which the men would have to dispose of before they
-went home, often working by electric light till nine or ten, or even
-twelve or one o’clock, and without a single instant for a bite of
-supper. The men were at the mercy of the cattle. Perhaps the buyers
-would be holding off for better prices—if they could scare the shippers
-into thinking that they meant to buy nothing that day, they could get
-their own terms. For some reason the cost of fodder for cattle in the
-yards was much above the market price—and you were not allowed to bring
-your own fodder! Then, too, a number of cars were apt to arrive late in
-the day, now that the roads were blocked with snow, and the packers
-would buy their cattle that night, to get them cheaper, and then would
-come into play their ironclad rule, that all cattle must be killed the
-same day they were bought. There was no use kicking about this—there
-had been one delegation after another to see the packers about it, only
-to be told that it was the rule, and that there was not the slightest
-chance of its ever being altered. And so on Christmas Eve Jurgis worked
-till nearly one o’clock in the morning, and on Christmas Day he was on
-the killing bed at seven o’clock.
-
-All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hard
-work a man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once been
-among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;
-and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was
-precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity. One of
-the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute late
-was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to work
-the balance of the hour—he was not allowed to stand round and wait. And
-on the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for
-that—though often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen
-minutes before the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to
-the end of the day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour—for
-“broken time.” A man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no
-work to fill out the hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of
-every day was a sort of lottery—a struggle, all but breaking into open
-war between the bosses and the men, the former trying to rush a job
-through and the latter trying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the
-bosses for this, though the truth to be told it was not always their
-fault; for the packers kept them frightened for their lives—and when
-one was in danger of falling behind the standard, what was easier than
-to catch up by making the gang work awhile “for the church”? This was a
-savage witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to
-him. Old man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so
-whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men
-would wink at each other and say, “Now we’re working for the church!”
-
-One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no
-longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.
-He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the
-butcher-helpers’ union came to him a second time, he received him in a
-far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this of
-the men—that by combining they might be able to make a stand and
-conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and
-when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America,
-he got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase “a free country.”
-The delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to
-get every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis
-signified that he was willing to do his share. Before another month was
-by, all the working members of his family had union cards, and wore
-their union buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week they
-were quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant
-an end to all their troubles.
-
-But only ten days after she had joined, Marija’s canning factory closed
-down, and that blow quite staggered them. They could not understand why
-the union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended a
-meeting Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a business
-meeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference to
-Marija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the
-chairman’s gavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not
-prevail. Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a
-general sense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of
-the packers, and what she thought of a world where such things were
-allowed to happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the
-shock of her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and
-the meeting gathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the
-election of a recording secretary.
-
-Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting,
-but it was not of his own seeking. Jurgis had gone with the desire to
-get into an inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this
-attitude of silent and open-eyed attention had marked him out for a
-victim. Tommy Finnegan was a little Irishman, with big staring eyes and
-a wild aspect, a “hoister” by trade, and badly cracked. Somewhere back
-in the far-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange experience,
-and the burden of it rested upon him. All the balance of his life he
-had done nothing but try to make it understood. When he talked he
-caught his victim by the buttonhole, and his face kept coming closer
-and closer—which was trying, because his teeth were so bad. Jurgis did
-not mind that, only he was frightened. The method of operation of the
-higher intelligences was Tom Finnegan’s theme, and he desired to find
-out if Jurgis had ever considered that the representation of things in
-their present similarity might be altogether unintelligible upon a more
-elevated plane. There were assuredly wonderful mysteries about the
-developing of these things; and then, becoming confidential, Mr.
-Finnegan proceeded to tell of some discoveries of his own. “If ye have
-iver had onything to do wid shperrits,” said he, and looked inquiringly
-at Jurgis, who kept shaking his head. “Niver mind, niver mind,”
-continued the other, “but their influences may be operatin’ upon ye;
-it’s shure as I’m tellin’ ye, it’s them that has the reference to the
-immejit surroundin’s that has the most of power. It was vouchsafed to
-me in me youthful days to be acquainted with shperrits” and so Tommy
-Finnegan went on, expounding a system of philosophy, while the
-perspiration came out on Jurgis’ forehead, so great was his agitation
-and embarrassment. In the end one of the men, seeing his plight, came
-over and rescued him; but it was some time before he was able to find
-any one to explain things to him, and meanwhile his fear lest the
-strange little Irishman should get him cornered again was enough to
-keep him dodging about the room the whole evening.
-
-He never missed a meeting, however. He had picked up a few words of
-English by this time, and friends would help him to understand. They
-were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming at
-once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all
-desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he
-understood that a fight was on, and that it was his fight. Since the
-time of his disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except
-in his own family; but here he discovered that he had brothers in
-affliction, and allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so
-the struggle became a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member
-of the church, because it was the right thing to be, but the church had
-never touched him, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a
-new religion—one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of
-him; and with all the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a
-missionary. There were many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and
-with these he would labor and wrestle in prayer, trying to show them
-the right. Sometimes they would be obstinate and refuse to see it, and
-Jurgis, alas, was not always patient! 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.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-
-One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that
-Jurgis became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know what was
-going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in them, and so
-he began to look about him, and to try to pick up words. The children,
-who were at school, and learning fast, would teach him a few; and a
-friend loaned him a little book that had some in it, and Ona would read
-them to him. Then Jurgis became sorry that he could not read himself;
-and later on in the winter, when some one told him that there was a
-night school that was free, he went and enrolled. After that, every
-evening that he got home from the yards in time, he would go to the
-school; he would go even if he were in time for only half an hour. They
-were teaching him both to read and to speak English—and they would have
-taught him other things, if only he had had a little time.
-
-Also the union made another great difference with him—it made him begin
-to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracy with
-him. It was a little state, the union, a miniature republic; its
-affairs were every man’s affairs, and every man had a real say about
-them. In other words, in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics. In
-the place where he had come from there had not been any politics—in
-Russia one thought of the government as an affliction like the
-lightning and the hail. “Duck, little brother, duck,” the wise old
-peasants would whisper; “everything passes away.” And when Jurgis had
-first come to America he had supposed that it was the same. He had
-heard people say that it was a free country—but what did that mean? He
-found that here, precisely as in Russia, there were rich men who owned
-everything; and if one could not find any work, was not the hunger he
-began to feel the same sort of hunger?
-
-When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown’s, there had
-come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman,
-and who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization
-papers and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but
-the man explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost
-him anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just
-the same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote—and
-there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and
-so the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused
-for the rest of the day. When, later on, he wanted a holiday to get
-married he could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just the
-same—what power had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However, he
-went with the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants,
-Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood
-a great four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in
-it. It was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party
-had a merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they
-drove downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in
-which they interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with
-only the names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of
-which he did not understand a word, and then was presented with a
-handsome ornamented document with a big red seal and the shield of the
-United States upon it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the
-Republic and the equal of the President himself.
-
-A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,
-who told him where to go to “register.” And then finally, when election
-day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to
-vote might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night
-watchman took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a
-saloon, and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and
-then gave each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where
-there was a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through
-all right. Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home
-and met Jonas, who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him,
-offering to vote three times for four dollars, which offer had been
-accepted.
-
-And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to
-him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its
-government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who
-ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there
-were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the
-one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the
-election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In
-the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in
-local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The
-ruler of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little
-Irishman named Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in
-the state, and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was
-his boast that he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an
-enormously rich man—he had a hand in all the big graft in the
-neighborhood. It was Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which
-Jurgis and Ona had seen the first day of their arrival. Not only did he
-own the dump, but he owned the brick factory as well, and first he took
-out the clay and made it into bricks, and then he had the city bring
-garbage to fill up the hole, so that he could build houses to sell to
-the people. Then, too, he sold the bricks to the city, at his own
-price, and the city came and got them in its own wagons. And also he
-owned the other hole near by, where the stagnant water was; and it was
-he who cut the ice and sold it; and what was more, if the men told
-truth, he had not had to pay any taxes for the water, and he had built
-the ice-house out of city lumber, and had not had to pay anything for
-that. The newspapers had got hold of that story, and there had been a
-scandal; but Scully had hired somebody to confess and take all the
-blame, and then skip the country. It was said, too, that he had built
-his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmen were on the city
-payroll while they did it; however, one had to press closely to get
-these things out of the men, for it was not their business, and Mike
-Scully was a good man to stand in with. A note signed by him was equal
-to a job any time at the packing houses; and also he employed a good
-many men himself, and worked them only eight hours a day, and paid them
-the highest wages. This gave him many friends—all of whom he had gotten
-together into the “War Whoop League,” whose clubhouse you might see
-just outside of the yards. It was the biggest clubhouse, and the
-biggest club, in all Chicago; and they had prizefights every now and
-then, and cockfights and even dogfights. The policemen in the district
-all belonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they
-sold tickets for them. The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized
-was one of these “Indians,” as they were called; and on election day
-there would be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in
-their pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district. That was
-another thing, the men said—all the saloon-keepers had to be “Indians,”
-and to put up on demand, otherwise they could not do business on
-Sundays, nor have any gambling at all. In the same way Scully had all
-the jobs in the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of
-the city graft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of
-flats somewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it
-for him was drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers. The city
-inspector of water pipes had been dead and buried for over a year, but
-somebody was still drawing his pay. The city inspector of sidewalks was
-a barkeeper at the War Whoop Cafe—and maybe he could make it
-uncomfortable for any tradesman who did not stand in with Scully!
-
-Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave them
-pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people’s man, and
-boasted of it boldly when election day came. The packers had wanted a
-bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till
-they had seen Scully; and it was the same with “Bubbly Creek,” which
-the city had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scully had
-come to their aid. “Bubbly Creek” is an arm of the Chicago River, and
-forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the
-square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a
-great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is
-blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and
-chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange
-transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in
-motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans
-disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will
-rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide.
-Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek
-looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many
-times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished
-temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every
-now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and
-the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however,
-an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows,
-to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an
-injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it themselves. The banks
-of “Bubbly Creek” are plastered thick with hairs, and this also the
-packers gather and clean.
-
-And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip
-of the men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole
-billions of gallons of the city’s water. The newspapers had been full
-of this scandal—once there had even been an investigation, and an
-actual uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the
-thing went right on. And then there was the condemned meat industry,
-with its endless horrors. The people of Chicago saw the government
-inspectors in Packingtown, and they all took that to mean that they
-were protected from diseased meat; they did not understand that these
-hundred and sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at the request of
-the packers, and that they were paid by the United States government to
-certify that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They had no
-authority beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the
-city and state the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three
-henchmen of the local political machine![2] And shortly afterward one
-of these, a physician, made the discovery that the carcasses of steers
-which had been condemned as tubercular by the government inspectors,
-and which therefore contained ptomaines, which are deadly poisons, were
-left upon an open platform and carted away to be sold in the city; and
-so he insisted that these carcasses be treated with an injection of
-kerosene—and was ordered to resign the same week! So indignant were the
-packers that they went farther, and compelled the mayor to abolish the
-whole bureau of inspection; so that since then there has not been even
-a pretense of any interference with the graft. There was said to be two
-thousand dollars a week hush money from the tubercular steers alone;
-and as much again from the hogs which had died of cholera on the
-trains, and which you might see any day being loaded into boxcars and
-hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana, where they made a
-fancy grade of lard.
-
- [2] Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and Their
- Products. United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal
- Industries, Order No. 125:—
-    Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting,
-    packing, or rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of
-    cattle, sheep, or swine, or the packing of any of their products,
-    _the carcasses or products of which are to become subjects of
-    interstate or foreign commerce_, shall make application to the
-    Secretary of Agriculture for inspection of said animals and their
-    products....
-    Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be
-    removed by the owners from the pens containing animals which have
-    been inspected and found to be free from disease and fit for human
-    food, and _shall be disposed of in accordance with the laws,
-    ordinances, and regulations of the state and municipality in which
-    said rejected or condemned animals are located_....
-
-    Section 25. A microscopic examination for trichinae shall be made
-    of all swine products exported to countries requiring such
-    examination. _No microscopic examination will be made of hogs
-    slaughtered for interstate trade, but this examination shall be
-    confined to those intended for the export trade._
-
-
-Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of those
-who were obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed as if every time you met
-a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new
-crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher
-for the plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning
-only; and to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place
-would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they
-must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled
-and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed
-on “whisky-malt,” the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the
-men called “steerly”—which means covered with boils. It was a nasty job
-killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would
-burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a man’s
-sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it, how was
-he ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It
-was stuff such as this that made the “embalmed beef” that had killed
-several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the
-Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was
-old stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.
-
-Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen
-stove, and talking with an old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and
-who worked in the canning rooms at Durham’s; and so Jurgis learned a
-few things about the great and only Durham canned goods, which had
-become a national institution. They were regular alchemists at
-Durham’s; they advertised a mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it
-did not know what a mushroom looked like. They advertised “potted
-chicken,”—and it was like the boardinghouse soup of the comic papers,
-through which a chicken had walked with rubbers on. Perhaps they had a
-secret process for making chickens chemically—who knows? said Jurgis’
-friend; the things that went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat
-of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of beef, and finally the waste ends
-of veal, when they had any. They put these up in several grades, and
-sold them at several prices; but the contents of the cans all came out
-of the same hopper. And then there was “potted game” and “potted
-grouse,” “potted ham,” and “deviled ham”—de-vyled, as the men called
-it. “De-vyled” ham was made out of the waste ends of smoked beef that
-were too small to be sliced by the machines; and also tripe, dyed with
-chemicals so that it would not show white; and trimmings of hams and
-corned beef; and potatoes, skins and all; and finally the hard
-cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the tongues had been cut out. All
-this ingenious mixture was ground up and flavored with spices to make
-it taste like something. Anybody who could invent a new imitation had
-been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said Jurgis’ informant; but it
-was hard to think of anything new in a place where so many sharp wits
-had been at work for so long; where men welcomed tuberculosis in the
-cattle they were feeding, because it made them fatten more quickly; and
-where they bought up all the old rancid butter left over in the grocery
-stores of a continent, and “oxidized” it by a forced-air process, to
-take away the odor, rechurned it with skim milk, and sold it in bricks
-in the cities! Up to a year or two ago it had been the custom to kill
-horses in the yards—ostensibly for fertilizer; but after long agitation
-the newspapers had been able to make the public realize that the horses
-were being canned. Now it was against the law to kill horses in
-Packingtown, and the law was really complied with—for the present, at
-any rate. Any day, however, one might see sharp-horned and
-shaggy-haired creatures running with the sheep and yet what a job you
-would have to get the public to believe that a good part of what it
-buys for lamb and mutton is really goat’s flesh!
-
-There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might
-have gathered in Packingtown—those of the various afflictions of the
-workers. When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with
-Szedvilas, he had marveled while he listened to the tale of all the
-things that were made out of the carcasses of animals, and of all the
-lesser industries that were maintained there; now 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. The workers in each of them had their own peculiar diseases. And
-the wandering visitor might be skeptical about all the swindles, but he
-could not be skeptical about these, for the worker bore the evidence of
-them about on his own person—generally he had only to hold out his
-hand.
-
-There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas
-had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of
-horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a
-truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him
-out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the
-acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and
-trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a
-person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it
-had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the
-man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be
-criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count
-them or to trace them. They would have no nails,—they had worn them off
-pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread
-out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the
-midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms
-the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was
-renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried
-two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind
-of work, that began at four o’clock in the morning, and that wore out
-the most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in
-the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time
-limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five
-years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even
-sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had
-to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had
-to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten
-their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned
-meat; and their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut
-represented a chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at the stamping
-machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the
-pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part
-of his hand chopped off. There were the “hoisters,” as they were
-called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead
-cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down
-through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham’s architects had not
-built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every
-few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the
-one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in
-a few years they would be walking like chimpanzees. 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!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-
-During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to
-live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings
-of Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there
-was no longer anything to spare. The winter went, and the spring came,
-and found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by
-day, with literally not a month’s wages between them and starvation.
-Marija was in despair, for there was still no word about the reopening
-of the canning factory, and her savings were almost entirely gone. She
-had had to give up all idea of marrying then; the family could not get
-along without her—though for that matter she was likely soon to become
-a burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they would
-have to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and
-Teta Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night,
-trying to figure how they could manage this too without starving.
-
-Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they
-might never have nor expect a single instant’s respite from worry, a
-single instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money.
-They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty, than
-a new one would come into view. In addition to all their physical
-hardships, there was thus a constant strain upon their minds; they were
-harried all day and nearly all night by worry and fear. This was in
-truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it
-was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all
-the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to
-keep alive?
-
-There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to
-the unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst;
-and when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a
-terrifying flood in their house. It happened while the men were away,
-and poor Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for
-she did not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether
-they were ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as the latter, they
-found in the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents an
-hour, and seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched
-him, and included all the time the two had been going and coming, and
-also a charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again,
-when they went to pay their January’s installment on the house, the
-agent terrified them by asking them if they had had the insurance
-attended to yet. In answer to their inquiry he showed them a clause in
-the deed which provided that they were to keep the house insured for
-one thousand dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out, which
-would happen in a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell the
-blow, demanded how much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man
-said; and that night came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that
-the agent would be good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all
-the expenses they were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said,
-with sarcasm proper to the new way of life he had learned—the deed was
-signed, and so the agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping
-quiet. And Jurgis looked the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the
-fellow wasted no time in conventional protests, but read him the deed.
-They would have to renew the insurance every year; they would have to
-pay the taxes, about ten dollars a year; they would have to pay the
-water tax, about six dollars a year—(Jurgis silently resolved to shut
-off the hydrant). This, besides the interest and the monthly
-installments, would be all—unless by chance the city should happen to
-decide to put in a sewer or to lay a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent,
-they would have to have these, whether they wanted them or not, if the
-city said so. The sewer would cost them about twenty-two dollars, and
-the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood, twenty-five if it were cement.
-
-So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any
-rate, so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw
-now how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was no
-turning back. They could only go on and make the fight and win—for
-defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.
-
-When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
-and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the
-money they would not have to pay for coal—and it was just at this time
-that Marija’s board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought
-trials of its own; each season had its trials, as they found. In the
-spring there were cold rains, that turned the streets into canals and
-bogs; the mud would be so deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs,
-so that half a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it
-was impossible for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was
-bad for men that were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women
-and children. 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. All day long the rivers
-of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the
-air motionless, the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old
-smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat—for there was
-never any washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were
-caked with the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing
-beds would come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of
-them fifty feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent,
-the most careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in
-uncleanness. There was not even a place where a man could wash his
-hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When
-they were at work they could not even wipe off their faces—they were as
-helpless as newly born babes in that respect; and it may seem like a
-small matter, but when the sweat began to run down their necks and
-tickle them, or a fly to bother them, it was a torture like being
-burned alive. Whether it was the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were
-responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there
-descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague of flies; there
-could be no describing this—the houses would be black with them. There
-was no escaping; you might provide all your doors and windows with
-screens, but their buzzing outside would be like the swarming of bees,
-and whenever you opened the door they would rush in as if a storm of
-wind were driving them.
-
-Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions
-of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such
-suggestion for the people in the yards. The great packing machine
-ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men
-and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing,
-not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue
-waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have
-been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then
-they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing
-machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
-clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never
-from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A
-poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham’s for twenty
-years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for
-twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman,
-as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing
-beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town,
-and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make
-sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was
-due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who
-worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.
-
-In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once
-more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on
-a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or
-two later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three
-days after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.
-
-It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her
-activity in the union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the
-unions, and in addition they made a practice of buying up a certain
-number of the union officials, as many as they thought they needed. So
-every week they received reports as to what was going on, and often
-they knew things before the members of the union knew them. Any one who
-was considered to be dangerous by them would find that he was not a
-favorite with his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going
-after the foreign people and preaching to them. However that might be,
-the known facts were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija
-had been cheated out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls
-worked at a long table, and behind them walked a woman with pencil and
-notebook, keeping count of the number they finished. This woman was, of
-course, only human, and sometimes made mistakes; when this happened,
-there was no redress—if on Saturday you got less money than you had
-earned, you had to make the best of it. But Marija did not understand
-this, and made a disturbance. Marija’s disturbances did not mean
-anything, and while she had known only Lithuanian and Polish, they had
-done no harm, for people only laughed at her and made her cry. But now
-Marija was able to call names in English, and so she got the woman who
-made the mistake to disliking her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she
-made mistakes on purpose after that; at any rate, she made them, and
-the third time it happened Marija went on the warpath and took the
-matter first to the forelady, and when she got no satisfaction there,
-to the superintendent. This was unheard-of presumption, but the
-superintendent said he would see about it, which Marija took to mean
-that she was going to get her money; after waiting three days, she went
-to see the superintendent again. This time the man frowned, and said
-that he had not had time to attend to it; and when Marija, against the
-advice and warning of every one, tried it once more, he ordered her
-back to her work in a passion. Just how things happened after that
-Marija was not sure, but that afternoon the forelady told her that her
-services would not be any longer required. Poor Marija could not have
-been more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the head; at first
-she could not believe what she heard, and then she grew furious and
-swore that she would come anyway, that her place belonged to her. In
-the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and wailed.
-
-It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong—she should have
-listened to those who had had experience. The next time she would know
-her place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija went out, and
-the family faced the problem of an existence again.
-
-It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before
-long, and Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this. He had
-heard dreadful stories of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas in
-Packingtown; and he had made up his mind that Ona must have a
-man-doctor. Jurgis could be very obstinate when he wanted to, and he
-was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who felt that a
-man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really belonged to
-them. The cheapest doctor they could find would charge them fifteen
-dollars, and perhaps more when the bill came in; and here was Jurgis,
-declaring that he would pay it, even if he had to stop eating in the
-meantime!
-
-Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left. Day after day she
-wandered about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope of
-finding it. Marija could do the work of an able-bodied man, when she
-was cheerful, but discouragement wore her out easily, and she would
-come home at night a pitiable object. She learned her lesson this time,
-poor creature; she learned it ten times over. All the family learned it
-along with her—that when you have once got a job in Packingtown, you
-hang on to it, come what will.
-
-Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she
-stopped paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the
-union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged
-into one. She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul, when
-somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place as a
-“beef-trimmer.” She got this because the boss saw that she had the
-muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and put Marija to do his
-work, paying her a little more than half what he had been paying
-before.
-
-When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such work
-as this. She was in another canning factory, and her work was to trim
-the meat of those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been told about not
-long before. She was shut up in one of the rooms where the people
-seldom saw the daylight; beneath her were the chilling rooms, where the
-meat was frozen, and above her were the cooking rooms; and so she stood
-on an ice-cold floor, while her head was often so hot that she could
-scarcely breathe. Trimming beef off the bones by the hundred-weight,
-while standing up from early morning till late at night, with heavy
-boots on and the floor always damp and full of puddles, liable to be
-thrown out of work indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade,
-liable again to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till
-she trembled in every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and
-gave herself a poisoned wound—that was the new life that unfolded
-itself before Marija. But because Marija was a human horse she merely
-laughed and went at it; it would enable her to pay her board again, and
-keep the family going. And as for Tamoszius—well, they had waited a
-long time, and they could wait a little longer. They could not possibly
-get along upon his wages alone, and the family could not live without
-hers. He could come and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her
-hand, and he must manage to be content with that. But day by day the
-music of Tamoszius’ violin became more passionate and heartbreaking;
-and Marija would sit with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and all
-her body a-tremble, hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the
-unborn generations which cried out in her for life.
-
-Marija’s lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate. Ona,
-too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason than
-Marija. She did not tell half of her story at home, because she saw it
-was a torment to Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do. For a
-long time Ona had seen that Miss Henderson, the forelady in her
-department, did not like her. At first she thought it was the old-time
-mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to get married. Then she
-concluded it must be because she did not give the forelady a present
-occasionally—she was the kind that took presents from the girls, Ona
-learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor of those who
-gave them. In the end, however, Ona discovered that it was even worse
-than that. Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was some time before
-rumor made her out; but finally it transpired that she was a kept
-woman, the former mistress of the superintendent of a department in the
-same building. He had put her there to keep her quiet, it seemed—and
-that not altogether with success, for once or twice they had been heard
-quarreling. She had the temper of a hyena, and soon the place she ran
-was a witch’s caldron. There were some of the girls who were of her own
-sort, who were willing to toady to her and flatter her; and these would
-carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were unchained in the
-place. Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdy-house downtown, with
-a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the
-loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went
-to and from their work. In the slack seasons some of them would go with
-Miss Henderson to this house downtown—in fact, it would not be too much
-to say that she managed her department at Brown’s in conjunction with
-it. Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of
-decent girls, and after other decent girls had been turned off to make
-room for them. When you worked in this woman’s department the house
-downtown was never out of your thoughts all day—there were always
-whiffs of it to be caught, like the odor of the Packingtown rendering
-plants at night, when the wind shifted suddenly. There would be stories
-about it going the rounds; the girls opposite you would be telling them
-and winking at you. In such a place Ona would not have stayed a day,
-but for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that she could
-stay the next day. She understood now that the real reason that Miss
-Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she
-knew that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same
-reason, and were doing their best to make her life miserable.
-
-But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was
-particular about things of this sort; there was no place in it where a
-prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl. Here was 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 was exactly as inevitable,
-and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things
-that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the
-time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show,
-as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color
-between master and slave.
-
-One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according
-to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an
-enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it
-seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by
-the hour, unable to believe that it had really happened.
-
-The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him
-irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he
-might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men
-in the saloons. There was nothing he cared for now so much as to sit
-and look at the baby. This was very curious, for Jurgis had never been
-interested in babies before. But then, this was a very unusual sort of
-a baby. He had the brightest little black eyes, and little black
-ringlets all over his head; he was the living image of his father,
-everybody said—and Jurgis found this a fascinating circumstance. It was
-sufficiently perplexing that this tiny mite of life should have come
-into the world at all in the manner that it had; that it should have
-come with a comical imitation of its father’s nose was simply uncanny.
-
-Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his
-baby; that it was his and Ona’s, to care for all its life. Jurgis had
-never possessed anything nearly so interesting—a baby was, when you
-came to think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession. It would grow
-up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of
-its own! Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with all
-sorts of strange and almost painful excitements. He was wonderfully
-proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all the details of
-him—the washing and the dressing and the eating and the sleeping of
-him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him quite a while
-to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little
-creature’s legs.
-
-Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt the
-chains about him more than just then. When he came home at night, the
-baby would be asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke
-before Jurgis had to go to sleep himself. Then in the morning there was
-no time to look at him, so really the only chance the father had was on
-Sundays. This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought to have stayed home
-and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own health as well as the
-baby’s; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him for Teta Elzbieta to
-feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at the corner
-grocery. Ona’s confinement lost her only a week’s wages—she would go to
-the factory the second Monday, and the best that Jurgis could persuade
-her was to ride in the car, and let him run along behind and help her
-to Brown’s when she alighted. After that it would be all right, said
-Ona, it was no strain sitting still sewing hams all day; and if she
-waited longer she might find that her dreadful forelady had put some
-one else in her place. That would be a greater calamity than ever now,
-Ona continued, on account of the baby. They would all have to work
-harder now on his account. It was such a responsibility—they must not
-have the baby grow up to suffer as they had. And this indeed had been
-the first thing that Jurgis had thought of himself—he had clenched his
-hands and braced himself anew for the struggle, for the sake of that
-tiny mite of human possibility.
-
-And so Ona went back to Brown’s and saved her place and a week’s wages;
-and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
-group under the title of “womb trouble,” and was never again a well
-person as long as she lived. It is difficult to convey in words all
-that this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the
-punishment was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one
-else ever connected the two. “Womb trouble” to Ona did not mean a
-specialist’s diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps an
-operation or two; it meant simply headaches and pains in the back, and
-depression and heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work
-in the rain. The great majority of the women who worked in Packingtown
-suffered in the same way, and from the same cause, so it was not deemed
-a thing to see the doctor about; instead Ona would try patent
-medicines, one after another, as her friends told her about them. As
-these all contained alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that
-they all did her good while she took them; and so she was always
-chasing the phantom of good health, and losing it because she was too
-poor to continue.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-
-During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and
-Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the
-previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men
-every week, it seemed—it was a regular system; and this number they
-would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have
-less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the
-floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very
-cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would
-some day come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so
-poor that they could not prepare for the trial!
-
-But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier
-work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing
-more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices
-to crowd the work on—it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of
-the mediæval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay
-them more; they would drive the men on with new machinery—it was said
-that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was
-determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day.
-In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a
-shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers
-had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate
-of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this
-so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly
-desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two
-years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break
-any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the
-canning factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the
-girls’ earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the
-indignation at this that they marched out without even a parley, and
-organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere
-that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so
-they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A
-new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike
-went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the
-end of it the girl who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a
-position in a great department store, at a salary of two dollars and a
-half a week.
-
-Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no
-telling when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been
-rumors that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to
-fifteen cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn
-would come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was
-really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef
-Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and compared
-notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one
-standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price
-they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat
-in the country; but that was something he did not understand or care
-about.
-
-The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who congratulated
-herself, somewhat naïvely, that there had been one in her place only a
-short time before she came. Marija was getting to be a skilled
-beef-trimmer, and was mounting to the heights again. During the summer
-and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her back the last penny they
-owed her, and so she began to have a bank account. Tamoszius had a bank
-account also, and they ran a race, and began to figure upon household
-expenses once more.
-
-The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities,
-however, as poor Marija found out. She had taken the advice of a friend
-and invested her savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue. Of course she
-knew nothing about it, except that it was big and imposing—what
-possible chance has a poor foreign working girl to understand the
-banking business, as it is conducted in this land of frenzied finance?
-So Marija lived in a continual dread lest something should happen to
-her bank, and would go out of her way mornings to make sure that it was
-still there. Her principal thought was of fire, for she had deposited
-her money in bills, and was afraid that if they were burned up the bank
-would not give her any others. Jurgis made fun of her for this, for he
-was a man and was proud of his superior knowledge, telling her that the
-bank had fireproof vaults, and all its millions of dollars hidden
-safely away in them.
-
-However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror
-and dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the
-avenue solid for half a block. All the blood went out of her face for
-terror. She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what was
-the matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had
-come to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance.
-There was a “run on the bank,” they told her then, but she did not know
-what that was, and turned from one person to another, trying in an
-agony of fear to make out what they meant. Had something gone wrong
-with the bank? Nobody was sure, but they thought so. Couldn’t she get
-her money? There was no telling; the people were afraid not, and they
-were all trying to get it. It was too early yet to tell anything—the
-bank would not open for nearly three hours. So in a frenzy of despair
-Marija began to claw her way toward the doors of this building, through
-a throng of men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was
-a scene of wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and
-fainting, and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way.
-In the midst of the mêlée Marija recollected that she did not have her
-bankbook, and could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out
-and started on a run for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few
-minutes later the police reserves arrived.
-
-In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
-breathless with running and sick with fear. The crowd was now formed in
-a line, extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen
-keeping guard, and so there was nothing for them to do but to take
-their places at the end of it. At nine o’clock the bank opened and
-began to pay the waiting throng; but then, what good did that do
-Marija, who saw three thousand people before her—enough to take out the
-last penny of a dozen banks?
-
-To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them to the
-skin; yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly toward the
-goal—all the afternoon they stood there, heartsick, seeing that the
-hour of closing was coming, and that they were going to be left out.
-Marija made up her mind that, come what might, she would stay there and
-keep her place; but as nearly all did the same, all through the long,
-cold night, she got very little closer to the bank for that. Toward
-evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the children, and he
-brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little easier.
-
-The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever, and
-more policemen from downtown. Marija held on like grim death, and
-toward afternoon she got into the bank and got her money—all in big
-silver dollars, a handkerchief full. When she had once got her hands on
-them her fear vanished, and she wanted to put them back again; but the
-man at the window was savage, and said that the bank would receive no
-more deposits from those who had taken part in the run. So Marija was
-forced to take her dollars home with her, watching to right and left,
-expecting every instant that some one would try to rob her; and when
-she got home she was not much better off. Until she could find another
-bank there was nothing to do but sew them up in her clothes, and so
-Marija went about for a week or more, loaded down with bullion, and
-afraid to cross the street in front of the house, because Jurgis told
-her she would sink out of sight in the mud. Weighted this way she made
-her way to the yards, again in fear, this time to see if she had lost
-her place; but fortunately about ten per cent of the working people of
-Packingtown had been depositors in that bank, and it was not convenient
-to discharge that many at once. The cause of the panic had been the
-attempt of a policeman to arrest a drunken man in a saloon next door,
-which had drawn a crowd at the hour the people were on their way to
-work, and so started the “run.”
-
-About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account. Besides
-having paid Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture,
-and could have that little sum to count on. So long as each of them
-could bring home nine or ten dollars a week, they were able to get
-along finely. Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half
-a week’s wages out of that, all net profit. It was a very close
-election that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to
-Packingtown. The two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set off
-fireworks and made speeches, to try to get the people interested in the
-matter. Although Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by
-this time to realize that it was not supposed to be right to sell your
-vote. However, as every one did it, and his refusal to join would not
-have made the slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing
-would have seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.
-
-Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter
-was coming again. It seemed as if the respite had been too short—they
-had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came,
-inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes of
-little Stanislovas. The prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis
-also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and the
-snowdrifts this year. And suppose that some day when a blizzard struck
-them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to give up, and
-should come the next day to find that her place had been given to some
-one who lived nearer and could be depended on?
-
-It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then
-the soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion. There were
-four days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days,
-for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really
-opposed. He had faced difficulties before, but they had been child’s
-play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies were unchained
-within him. The first morning they set out two hours before dawn, Ona
-wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder like a sack of
-meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight, hanging by his
-coat-tails. There was a raging blast beating in his face, and the
-thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his knees,
-and in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits. It would
-catch his feet and try to trip him; it would build itself into a wall
-before him to beat him back; and he would fling himself into it,
-plunging like a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage. So foot
-by foot he drove his way, and when at last he came to Durham’s he was
-staggering and almost blind, and leaned against a pillar, gasping, and
-thanking God that the cattle came late to the killing beds that day. In
-the evening the same thing had to be done again; and because Jurgis
-could not tell what hour of the night he would get off, he got a
-saloon-keeper to let Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was
-eleven o’clock at night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.
-
-That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for
-work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any
-one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met
-the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.—So it
-might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes
-in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the
-night-time.
-
-A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose.
-Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the
-animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it would get
-upon its feet and run amuck. Then there would be a yell of warning—the
-men would drop everything and dash for the nearest pillar, slipping
-here and there on the floor, and tumbling over each other. This was bad
-enough in the summer, when a man could see; in wintertime it was enough
-to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that
-you could not make anything out five feet in front of you. To be sure,
-the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent on
-hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife,
-while nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the
-climax, the floor boss would come rushing up with a rifle and begin
-blazing away!
-
-It was in one of these mêlées that Jurgis fell into his trap. That is
-the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to be
-foreseen. At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight
-accident—simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.
-There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not
-coddle himself. When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it
-was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen
-out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his
-shoe. Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and
-wrapped his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car. It
-chanced to be a rush day at Durham’s, and all the long morning he
-limped about with his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great
-that it made him faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he
-was fairly beaten, and had to tell the boss. They sent for the company
-doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed,
-adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by his folly.
-The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held
-responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the
-doctor was concerned.
-
-Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an
-awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged his
-injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her
-dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and told
-them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only be
-for a week or two, and that they would pull him through.
-
-When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen
-fire and talked it over in frightened whispers. They were in for a
-siege, that was plainly to be seen. Jurgis had only about sixty dollars
-in the bank, and the slack season was upon them. Both Jonas and Marija
-might soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and
-besides that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the
-little boy. There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture;
-there was the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after
-sack of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face
-privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her
-work now? She might lose her place—she was almost certain to lose it.
-And then little Stanislovas began to whimper—who would take care of
-him?
-
-It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help,
-should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily
-food and drink of Jurgis. It was of no use for them to try to deceive
-him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he knew that
-the family might literally starve to death. The worry of it fairly ate
-him up—he began to look haggard the first two or three days of it. In
-truth, it was almost maddening for a strong man like him, a fighter, to
-have to lie there helpless on his back. It was for all the world the
-old story of Prometheus bound. As Jurgis lay on his bed, hour after
-hour there came to him emotions that he had never known before. Before
-this he had met life with a welcome—it had its trials, but none that a
-man could not face. But now, in the nighttime, when he lay tossing
-about, there would come stalking into his chamber a grisly phantom, the
-sight of which made his flesh curl and his hair to bristle up. It was
-like seeing the world fall away from underneath his feet; like plunging
-down into a bottomless abyss into yawning caverns of despair. It might
-be true, then, after all, what others had told him about life, that the
-best powers of a man might not be equal to it! It might be true that,
-strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be
-destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the
-thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those
-who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and
-there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was
-true, it was true,—that here in this huge city, with its stores of
-heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and destroyed by
-the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever they were in the
-days of the cave men!
-
-Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas about
-thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and Marija, about
-forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent, interest, and
-installments on the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and
-deducting the coal, they had fifty. They did without everything that
-human beings could do without; they went in old and ragged clothing,
-that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the children’s shoes
-wore out, they tied them up with string. Half invalid as she was, Ona
-would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold when she ought to
-have ridden; they bought literally nothing but food—and still they
-could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month. They might have done it,
-if only they could have gotten pure food, and at fair prices; or if
-only they had known what to get—if they had not been so pitifully
-ignorant! But they had come to a new country, where everything was
-different, including the food. They had always been accustomed to eat a
-great deal of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they
-bought in America was not the same—that its color was made by
-chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full
-of “potato flour” besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after
-the starch and alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value
-than so much wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal
-offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every
-year. It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed
-every day, by eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was
-simply not enough to feed them, and there was no use trying; and so
-each week they made an inroad upon the pitiful little bank account that
-Ona had begun. Because the account was in her name, it was possible for
-her to keep this a secret from her husband, and to keep the
-heartsickness of it for her own.
-
-It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had not
-been able to think. For he had no resources such as most invalids have;
-all he could do was to lie there and toss about from side to side. Now
-and then he would break into cursing, regardless of everything; and now
-and then his impatience would get the better of him, and he would try
-to get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta would have to plead with him in a
-frenzy. Elzbieta was all alone with him the greater part of the time.
-She would sit and smooth his forehead by the hour, and talk to him and
-try to make him forget. Sometimes it would be too cold for the children
-to go to school, and they would have to play in the kitchen, where
-Jurgis was, because it was the only room that was half warm. These were
-dreadful times, for Jurgis would get as cross as any bear; he was
-scarcely to be blamed, for he had enough to worry him, and it was hard
-when he was trying to take a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish
-children.
-
-Elzbieta’s only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed, it
-would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if it had
-not been for little Antanas. It was the one consolation of Jurgis’ long
-imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby. Teta Elzbieta
-would put the clothes-basket in which the baby slept alongside of his
-mattress, and Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and watch him by the
-hour, imagining things. Then little Antanas would open his eyes—he was
-beginning to take notice of things now; and he would smile—how he would
-smile! So Jurgis would begin to forget and be happy because he was in a
-world where there was a thing so beautiful as the smile of little
-Antanas, and because such a world could not but be good at the heart of
-it. He looked more like his father every hour, Elzbieta would say, and
-said it many times a day, because she saw that it pleased Jurgis; the
-poor little terror-stricken woman was planning all day and all night to
-soothe the prisoned giant who was intrusted to her care. Jurgis, who
-knew nothing about the age-long and everlasting hypocrisy of woman,
-would take the bait and grin with delight; and then he would hold his
-finger in front of little Antanas’ eyes, and move it this way and that,
-and laugh with glee to see the baby follow it. There is no pet quite so
-fascinating as a baby; he would look into Jurgis’ face with such
-uncanny seriousness, and Jurgis would start and cry: “_Palauk!_ Look,
-Muma, he knows his papa! He does, he does! _Tu mano szirdele_, the
-little rascal!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-
-For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a
-very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
-still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could contain
-himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day,
-laboring to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments could
-stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was going
-back to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown’s, where he found
-that the boss had kept his place—that is, was willing to turn out into
-the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now and
-then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till
-nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that
-he could not go on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do
-it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two
-of the men had to help him to the car, and when he got out he had to
-sit down and wait in the snow till some one came along.
-
-So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to
-have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon
-out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention. Then
-he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and
-turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at
-his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him that he
-would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if he went to work
-before that time he might lame himself for life.
-
-Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and
-Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour
-before daybreak, to try to get to the yards. About noon the last two
-came back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers were all frosted,
-it seemed. They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and had
-nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to do was to hold
-the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas spent most
-of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a
-passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he
-would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the family
-was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places;
-and in the morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little
-fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis. There could be no
-trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of life and death; little
-Stanislovas could not be expected to realize that he might a great deal
-better freeze in the snowdrift than lose his job at the lard machine.
-Ona was quite certain that she would find her place gone, and was all
-unnerved when she finally got to Brown’s, and found that the forelady
-herself had failed to come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.
-
-One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of
-three of the little boy’s fingers were permanently disabled, and
-another that thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to
-work, whenever there was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called
-upon to do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a
-vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper.
-They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all
-the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do
-all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to
-curse everything.
-
-This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry,
-Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless
-ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling
-into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his
-appearance. His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft
-and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him
-with delicacies. It was better, he said, that he should not eat, it was
-a saving. About the end of March he had got hold of Ona’s bankbook, and
-learned that there was only three dollars left to them in the world.
-
-But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that
-they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared.
-One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their
-efforts to get trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at
-Durham’s that he had gotten his week’s money and left there. That might
-not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man
-had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned.
-When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks
-and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there
-was no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy. More
-probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had deserted them, and
-gone on the road, seeking happiness. He had been discontented for a
-long time, and not without some cause. He paid good board, and was yet
-obliged to live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And Marija
-would keep giving them all her money, and of course he could not but
-feel that he was called upon to do the same. Then there were crying
-brats, and all sorts of misery; a man would have had to be a good deal
-of a hero to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the
-least a hero—he was simply a weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have
-a good supper and sit in the corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in
-peace before he went to bed. Here there was not room by the fire, and
-through the winter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for comfort.
-So, with the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea
-of escaping had come to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horse
-to a half-ton truck in Durham’s dark cellars, with never a rest, save
-on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word of
-thanks—only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog would
-have stood. And now the winter was over, and the spring winds were
-blowing—and with a day’s walk a man might put the smoke of Packingtown
-behind him forever, and be where the grass was green and the flowers
-all the colors of the rainbow!
-
-But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and
-the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off
-than ever. Also they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up
-her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and
-happiness. And they were even going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika
-and letting him impoverish himself. Poor Tamoszius was a man without
-any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides, and he ought to
-have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love, and so given
-hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too.
-
-So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to
-leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a
-girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys,
-Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last
-were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should
-starve when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their
-own livings. So one morning they were given a quarter apiece and a roll
-with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy with good advice,
-were sent out to make their way to the city and learn to sell
-newspapers. They came back late at night in tears, having walked for
-the five or six miles to report that a man had offered to take them to
-a place where they sold newspapers, and had taken their money and gone
-into a store to get them, and nevermore been seen. So they both
-received a whipping, and the next morning set out again. This time they
-found the newspaper place, and procured their stock; and after
-wandering about till nearly noontime, saying “Paper?” to every one they
-saw, they had all their stock taken away and received a thrashing
-besides from a big newsman upon whose territory they had trespassed.
-Fortunately, however, they had already sold some papers, and came back
-with nearly as much as they started with.
-
-After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to
-learn the ways of the trade—the names of the different papers, and how
-many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to, and
-where to go and where to stay away from. After this, leaving home at
-four o’clock in the morning, and running about the streets, first with
-morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late at
-night with twenty or thirty cents apiece—possibly as much as forty
-cents. From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the distance
-was so great; but after a while they made friends, and learned still
-more, and then they would save their carfare. They would get on a car
-when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd; and three
-times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing
-them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask, they would
-hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either have
-their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on
-a new car. All this was fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that
-at the hours when workingmen were going to their work and back, the
-cars were so crowded that the conductors could not collect all the
-fares? And besides, the companies were thieves, people said—had stolen
-all their franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians!
-
-Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and
-no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children
-into when they cried, and enough money to get along from week to week
-with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been. A man can get used to
-anything in the course of time, and Jurgis had gotten used to lying
-about the house. Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his
-peace of mind, by letting him know how very much pain she was
-suffering. It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often
-to ride to her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler
-every day, and sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained
-her that Jurgis did not notice it. She wondered if he cared for her as
-much as ever, if all this misery was not wearing out his love. She had
-to be away from him all the time, and bear her own troubles while he
-was bearing his; and then, when she came home, she was so worn out; and
-whenever they talked they had only their worries to talk of—truly it
-was hard, in such a life, to keep any sentiment alive. The woe of this
-would flame up in Ona sometimes—at night she would suddenly clasp her
-big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to
-know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more
-matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know
-what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he
-had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob
-herself to sleep.
-
-The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a
-bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to
-work. It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for
-when he showed up on the killing floor of Brown’s, he was told by the
-foreman that it had not been possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis
-knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to
-do the work as well and did not want to bother to make a change. He
-stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and
-companions at work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and
-took his place with the mob of the unemployed.
-
-This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor
-the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the
-throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard,
-and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were
-hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering
-about Packingtown for months begging for work. This was a critical time
-in Jurgis’ life, and if he had been a weaker man he would have gone the
-way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the
-packing houses every morning till the police drove them away, and then
-they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the nerve to
-face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
-buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the
-morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the
-rest of the day and night. Jurgis was saved from all this—partly, to be
-sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to be
-indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful
-little face of his wife. He must get work, he told himself, fighting
-the battle with despair every hour of the day. He must get work! He
-must have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter
-came.
-
-But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his
-union—Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this—and begged them to
-speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a
-chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings;
-and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into
-every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not a job
-anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been a change in
-the places he had first visited, and began the round all over; till
-finally the watchmen and the “spotters” of the companies came to know
-him by sight and to order him out with threats. Then there was nothing
-more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep in
-the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and
-play with little Kotrina and the baby.
-
-The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the
-meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he
-had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged
-article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best
-of him—they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their
-carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make
-the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they
-had all had the same experience. There were some, of course, who had
-wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills;
-there were others who were out from their own fault—some, for instance,
-who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast
-majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great
-merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the
-pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had
-come when they could not keep up with it any more. Some had been
-frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed;
-others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence;
-with most, however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis. They
-had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had
-laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood
-poisoning, or met with some other accident. When a man came back after
-that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss. To
-this there was no exception, save when the accident was one for which
-the firm was liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to
-see him, first to try to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was
-too smart for that, to promise him that he and his should always be
-provided with work. This promise they would keep, strictly and to the
-letter—for two years. Two years was the “statute of limitations,” and
-after that the victim could not sue.
-
-What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the
-circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would
-probably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men, the
-“splitters,” made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six
-dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A man
-could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen
-splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family
-of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like
-their father. For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the
-rush seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the
-number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried man could save, if he
-did not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish—that is, if he paid no
-heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and
-sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the
-members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be
-starving to death next door.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-
-During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of
-little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both
-Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having
-lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital
-dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk.
-He was the last of Teta Elzbieta’s children, and perhaps he had been
-intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough. At any rate
-he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though
-he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child of
-one. All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little
-dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he
-was always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran. This made
-him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family. For his
-mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children,
-and made a perpetual fuss over him—would let him do anything
-undisturbed, and would burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis
-wild.
-
-And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that
-morning—which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork
-that was condemned as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after
-eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he
-was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was
-all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a while a
-doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one
-was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable.
-Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have
-to be buried by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at
-this the poor woman almost went out of her senses, wringing her hands
-and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried in a
-pauper’s grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by and hear it said
-without protesting! It was enough to make Ona’s father rise up out of
-his grave to rebuke her! If it had come to this, they might as well
-give up at once, and be buried all of them together! . . . In the end
-Marija said that she would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis being
-still obdurate, Elzbieta went in tears and begged the money from the
-neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a mass and a hearse with white
-plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to
-mark the place. The poor mother was not the same for months after that;
-the mere sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled about
-would make her weep. He had never had a fair chance, poor little
-fellow, she would say. He had been handicapped from his birth. If only
-she had heard about it in time, so that she might have had that great
-doctor to cure him of his lameness! . . . Some time ago, Elzbieta was
-told, a Chicago billionaire had paid a fortune to bring a great
-European surgeon over to cure his little daughter of the same disease
-from which Kristoforas had suffered. And because this surgeon had to
-have bodies to demonstrate upon, he announced that he would treat the
-children of the poor, a piece of magnanimity over which the papers
-became quite eloquent. Elzbieta, alas, did not read the papers, and no
-one had told her; but perhaps it was as well, for just then they would
-not have had the carfare to spare to go every day to wait upon the
-surgeon, nor for that matter anybody with the time to take the child.
-
-All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow
-hanging over Jurgis; as if a savage beast were lurking somewhere in the
-pathway of his life, and he knew it, and yet could not help approaching
-the place. There are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown,
-and he faced in dread the prospect of reaching the lowest. There is a
-place that waits for the lowest man—the fertilizer plant!
-
-The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers. Not more than one
-in ten had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented
-themselves with hearsay evidence and a peep through the door. There
-were some things worse than even starving to death. They would ask
-Jurgis if he had worked there yet, and if he meant to; and Jurgis would
-debate the matter with himself. As poor as they were, and making all
-the sacrifices that they were, would he dare to refuse any sort of work
-that was offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could? Would he
-dare to go home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona, weak and
-complaining as she was, knowing that he had been given a chance, and
-had not had the nerve to take it?—And yet he might argue that way with
-himself all day, and one glimpse into the fertilizer works would send
-him away again shuddering. He was a man, and he would do his duty; he
-went and made application—but surely he was not also required to hope
-for success!
-
-The fertilizer works of Durham’s lay away from the rest of the plant.
-Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking
-like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell.
-To this part of the yards came all the “tankage” and the waste products
-of all sorts; here they dried out the bones,—and in suffocating cellars
-where the daylight never came you might see men and women and children
-bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts
-of shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to
-die, every one of them, within a certain definite time. Here they made
-the blood into albumen, and made other foul-smelling things into things
-still more foul-smelling. In the corridors and caverns where it was
-done you might lose yourself as in the great caves of Kentucky. In the
-dust and the steam the electric lights would shine like far-off
-twinkling stars—red and blue-green and purple stars, according to the
-color of the mist and the brew from which it came. For the odors of
-these ghastly charnel houses there may be words in Lithuanian, but
-there are none in English. The person entering would have to summon his
-courage as for a cold-water plunge. He would go in like a man swimming
-under water; he would put his handkerchief over his face, and begin to
-cough and choke; and then, if he were still obstinate, he would find
-his head beginning to ring, and the veins in his forehead to throb,
-until finally he would be assailed by an overpowering blast of ammonia
-fumes, and would turn and run for his life, and come out half-dazed.
-
-On top of this were the rooms where they dried the “tankage,” the mass
-of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the
-carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried
-material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had
-mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which
-they brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that
-purpose, the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out to
-the world as any one of a hundred different brands of standard bone
-phosphate. And then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas would
-buy this, at say twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with his corn;
-and for several days after the operation the fields would have a strong
-odor, and the farmer and his wagon and the very horses that had hauled
-it would all have it too. In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure,
-instead of being a flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on
-several acres under the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of
-tons of it in one building, heaped here and there in haystack piles,
-covering the floor several inches deep, and filling the air with a
-choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm when the wind stirs.
-
-It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an
-unseen hand. The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and his
-secret prayers were granted; but early in June there came a
-record-breaking hot spell, and after that there were men wanted in the
-fertilizer mill.
-
-The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and
-had marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about
-two o’clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm of pain
-shoot through him—the boss beckoned to him! In ten minutes more Jurgis
-had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth together and
-gone to work. Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer!
-
-His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of the
-vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground—rushing
-forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung
-forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen
-others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That
-others were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he
-sometimes collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have
-been there, for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet
-in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope
-around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he
-continued to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course,
-a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie
-over his mouth, so that he could breathe, but the sponge did not
-prevent his lips and eyelids from caking up with it and his ears from
-filling solid. He looked like a brown ghost at twilight—from hair to
-shoes he became the color of the building and of everything in it, and
-for that matter a hundred yards outside it. The building had to be left
-open, and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a great deal of
-fertilizer.
-
-Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a
-hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis’ skin,
-and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed.
-The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine’s throbbing; there
-was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly
-control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four months’ siege
-behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an
-hour later he began to vomit—he vomited until it seemed as if his
-inwards must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the
-fertilizer mill, the boss had said, if he would make up his mind to it;
-but Jurgis now began to see that it was a question of making up his
-stomach.
-
-At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to
-catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his
-bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a
-saloon—they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one
-class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking—he could only make
-his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor,
-and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to
-board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill
-to notice it—how the people in the car began to gasp and sputter, to
-put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious
-glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up
-and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on
-each side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was
-nearly empty—those passengers who could not get room on the platform
-having gotten out to walk.
-
-Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute
-after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin—his whole
-system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of
-scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was,
-he could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest
-discovery of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an
-unlimited time, without being itself in the least diminished in power.
-He smelled so that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the
-whole family to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could
-keep anything upon his stomach—he might wash his hands, and use a knife
-and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?
-
-And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would
-stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to
-shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he
-was a fertilizer man for life—he was able to eat again, and though his
-head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not
-work.
-
-So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over
-the country, and the country ate generously of packing house products,
-and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the
-packers’ efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able
-to pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there were
-one or two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long—it
-was too bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age. It
-was utterly useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without
-knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They
-were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick
-up cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling
-with pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the
-location of all the houses of prostitution on the “Lêvée,” and the
-names of the “madames” who kept them, and the days when they gave their
-state banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
-attended. If a visiting “country customer” were to ask them, they could
-show him which was “Hinkydink’s” famous saloon, and could even point
-out to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and “hold-up men”
-who made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were
-getting out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use,
-they would ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare
-riding out to the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant
-and they could crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep
-exactly as well? So long as they brought home a half dollar for each
-day, what mattered it when they brought it? But Jurgis declared that
-from this to ceasing to come at all would not be a very long step, and
-so it was decided that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in
-the fall, and that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work,
-her place at home being taken by her younger daughter.
-
-Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made
-old; she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and
-also of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and
-clean house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the
-evening. She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all
-this without a murmur; and her mother went out, and after trudging a
-couple of days about the yards, settled down as a servant of a “sausage
-machine.”
-
-Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for
-the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven
-o’clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till
-half-past five. For the first few days it seemed to her that she could
-not stand it—she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the
-fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling.
-Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric
-light, and the dampness, too, was deadly—there were always puddles of
-water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room.
-The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature,
-whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of
-snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a
-stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who
-worked in this department were precisely the color of the “fresh
-country sausage” they made.
-
-The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three
-minutes, and provided that you did not look at the people; the machines
-were perhaps the most wonderful things in the entire plant. Presumably
-sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would be
-interesting to know how many workers had been displaced by these
-inventions. On one side of the room were the hoppers, into which men
-shoveled loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of spices; in these great
-bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand revolutions a minute,
-and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated with potato flour,
-and well mixed with water, it was forced to the stuffing machines on
-the other side of the room. The latter were tended by women; there was
-a sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose, and one of the women would
-take a long string of “casing” and put the end over the nozzle and then
-work the whole thing on, as one works on the finger of a tight glove.
-This string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would
-have it all on in a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press
-a lever, and a stream of sausage meat would be shot out, taking the
-casing with it as it came. Thus one might stand and see appear,
-miraculously born from the machine, a wriggling snake of sausage of
-incredible length. In front was a big pan which caught these creatures,
-and two more women who seized them as fast as they appeared and twisted
-them into links. This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work
-of all; for all that the woman had to give was a single turn of the
-wrist; and in some way she contrived to give it so that instead of an
-endless chain of sausages, one after another, there grew under her
-hands a bunch of strings, all dangling from a single center. It was
-quite like the feat of a prestidigitator—for the woman worked so fast
-that the eye could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist
-of motion, and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing. In the midst
-of the mist, however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set
-face, with the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly
-pallor of the cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect that it was
-time he was going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed right
-there—hour after hour, day after day, year after year, twisting sausage
-links and racing with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have
-a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had
-arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did,
-with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance
-at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as
-at some wild beast in a menagerie.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-
-With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a
-sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great
-majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found,
-whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything
-else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what
-had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they
-could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside,
-and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest—that
-they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
-
-Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
-often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take
-away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of
-all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort
-of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor
-and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious
-apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the
-plant—a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by
-plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man
-could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of
-this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so
-bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump
-into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which
-destroyed the odor—a process known to the workers as “giving them
-thirty per cent.” Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be
-found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as
-“Number Three Grade,” but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a
-new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad
-part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this
-invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade—there
-was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such
-schemes—they had what they called “boneless hams,” which were all the
-odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and “California hams,”
-which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the
-meat cut out; and fancy “skinned hams,” which were made of the oldest
-hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy
-them—that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled
-“head cheese!”
-
-It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
-department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute
-flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was
-in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention
-paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back
-from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and
-white—it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the
-hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat
-that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the
-workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
-There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from
-leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about
-on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man
-could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of
-the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers
-would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats,
-bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy
-story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man
-who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he
-saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with
-which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to
-wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a
-practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
-sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of
-corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that
-would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under
-the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some
-jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was
-the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in
-the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and
-cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the
-hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some
-of it they would make into “smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took
-time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry
-department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to
-make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when
-they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for
-this they would charge two cents more a pound.
-
-Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such
-was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing
-work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was
-part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed
-for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was
-only one mercy about the cruel grind—that it gave her the gift of
-insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor—she fell silent.
-She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk
-home together, often without saying a word. Ona, too, was falling into
-a habit of silence—Ona, who had once gone about singing like a bird.
-She was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength
-enough to drag herself home. And there they would eat what they had to
-eat, and afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of,
-they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until
-it was time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to
-the machines. They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much
-from hunger, now; only the children continued to fret when the food ran
-short.
-
-Yet the soul of Ona was not dead—the souls of none of them were dead,
-but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were
-cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open—old joys would stretch
-out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and
-they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its
-forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it;
-but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It
-was a thing scarcely to be spoken—a thing never spoken by all the
-world, that will not know its own defeat.
-
-They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was
-not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with
-wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a
-chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean,
-to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone—it
-would never be! They had played the game and they had lost. Six years
-more of toil they had to face before they could expect the least
-respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how cruelly
-certain it was that they could never stand six years of such a life as
-they were living! They were lost, they were going down—and there was no
-deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it gave them the vast
-city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a wilderness,
-a desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the
-nighttime, when something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the
-beating of her own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of the old
-primeval terror of life. Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was
-tired and cross. After that she learned to weep silently—their moods so
-seldom came together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in
-separate graves.
-
-Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter
-following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one
-else to speak of it—he had never acknowledged its existence to himself.
-Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had—and once or
-twice, alas, a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
-
-He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
-week—until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work
-without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day
-and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went
-down the street. And from all the unending horror of this there was a
-respite, a deliverance—he could drink! He could forget the pain, he
-could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be
-master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would
-stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with
-his companions—he would be a man again, and master of his life.
-
-It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three
-drinks. With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade
-himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another
-meal—but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then to
-pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the
-age-long instincts of his hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he
-took the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went
-home half “piped,” as the men phrase it. He was happier than he had
-been in a year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would not
-last, he was savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the
-world, and with his life; and then again, beneath this, he was sick
-with the shame of himself. Afterward, when he saw the despair of his
-family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came into his
-eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.
-
-It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one. But Jurgis
-did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for
-reflection. He simply knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in
-misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was to be
-put upon the rack. There was surely a saloon on the corner—perhaps on
-all four corners, and some in the middle of the block as well; and each
-one stretched out a hand to him each one had a personality of its own,
-allurements unlike any other. Going and coming—before sunrise and after
-dark—there was warmth and a glow of light, and the steam of hot food,
-and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of good cheer. Jurgis
-developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went out on
-the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast. It was
-pitiful to have Ona know of this—it drove him wild to think of it; the
-thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not
-understand. Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself
-wishing that she might learn what it was, so that he need not be
-ashamed in her presence. They might drink together, and escape from the
-horror—escape for a while, come what would.
-
-So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis
-consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor. He would have ugly
-moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in
-his way. He was a fool to have married; he had tied himself down, had
-made himself a slave. It was all because he was a married man that he
-was compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not been for that he
-might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers. There
-were few single men in the fertilizer mill—and those few were working
-only for a chance to escape. Meantime, too, they had something to think
-about while they worked,—they had the memory of the last time they had
-been drunk, and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again. As
-for Jurgis, he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not
-even go with the men at noontime—he was supposed to sit down and eat
-his dinner on a pile of fertilizer dust.
-
-This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family. But
-just now was a time of trial. Poor little Antanas, for instance—who had
-never failed to win him with a smile—little Antanas was not smiling
-just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples. He had had all the
-diseases that babies are heir to, in quick succession, scarlet fever,
-mumps, and whooping cough in the first year, and now he was down with
-the measles. There was no one to attend him but Kotrina; there was no
-doctor to help him, because they were too poor, and children did not
-die of the measles—at least not often. Now and then Kotrina would find
-time to sob over his woes, but for the greater part of the time he had
-to be left alone, barricaded upon the bed. The floor was full of
-drafts, and if he caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down,
-lest he should kick the covers off him, while the family lay in their
-stupor of exhaustion. He would lie and scream for hours, almost in
-convulsions; and then, when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering
-and wailing in his torment. He was burning up with fever, and his eyes
-were running sores; in the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to
-behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a great purple lump of misery.
-
-Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was,
-little Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family. He was
-quite able to bear his sufferings—it was as if he had all these
-complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of
-his parents’ youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer’s rosebush,
-and all the world was his oyster. In general, he toddled around the
-kitchen all day with a lean and hungry look—the portion of the family’s
-allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was unrestrainable in
-his demand for more. Antanas was but little over a year old, and
-already no one but his father could manage him.
-
-It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother’s strength—had left
-nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again
-now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and
-despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies
-were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.
-
-For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was
-developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She
-had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
-streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
-beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than
-that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would
-have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she
-would come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling
-herself down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was
-quite beside herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad
-with fright. Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped,
-that a woman was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he
-was hardly to be persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had
-happened. She had never been like this before, he would argue—it was
-monstrous and unthinkable. It was the life she had to live, the
-accursed work she had to do, that was killing her by inches. She was
-not fitted for it—no woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be
-allowed to do such work; if the world could not keep them alive any
-other way it ought to kill them at once and be done with it. They ought
-not to marry, to have children; no workingman ought to marry—if he,
-Jurgis, had known what a woman was like, he would have had his eyes
-torn out first. So he would carry on, becoming half hysterical himself,
-which was an unbearable thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull
-herself together and fling herself into his arms, begging him to stop,
-to be still, that she would be better, it would be all right. So she
-would lie and sob out her grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at
-her, as helpless as a wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV
-
-
-The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each
-time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not
-happen again—but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more
-frightened, more disposed to distrust Elzbieta’s consolations, and to
-believe that there was some terrible thing about all this that he was
-not allowed to know. Once or twice in these outbreaks he caught Ona’s
-eye, and it seemed to him like the eye of a hunted animal; there were
-broken phrases of anguish and despair now and then, amid her frantic
-weeping. It was only because he was so numb and beaten himself that
-Jurgis did not worry more about this. But he never thought of it,
-except when he was dragged to it—he lived like a dumb beast of burden,
-knowing only the moment in which he was.
-
-The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever. It
-was October, and the holiday rush had begun. It was necessary for the
-packing machines to grind till late at night to provide food that would
-be eaten at Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta and Ona, as
-part of the machine, began working fifteen or sixteen hours a day.
-There was no choice about this—whatever work there was to be done they
-had to do, if they wished to keep their places; besides that, it added
-another pittance to their incomes. So they staggered on with the awful
-load. They would start work every morning at seven, and eat their
-dinners at noon, and then work until ten or eleven at night without
-another mouthful of food. Jurgis wanted to wait for them, to help them
-home at night, but they would not think of this; the fertilizer mill
-was not running overtime, and there was no place for him to wait save
-in a saloon. Each would stagger out into the darkness, and make her way
-to the corner, where they met; or if the others had already gone, would
-get into a car, and begin a painful struggle to keep awake. When they
-got home they were always too tired either to eat or to undress; they
-would crawl into bed with their shoes on, and lie like logs. If they
-should fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held out, they might
-have enough coal for the winter.
-
-A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm. It began
-in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen. Jurgis tried to
-wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took two
-drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon; there he
-lay down to wait for them, and instantly fell asleep. When he opened
-his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare, and found Elzbieta
-shaking him and crying out. At first he could not realize what she was
-saying—Ona had not come home. What time was it, he asked. It was
-morning—time to be up. Ona had not been home that night! And it was
-bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.
-
-Jurgis sat up with a start. Marija was crying with fright and the
-children were wailing in sympathy—little Stanislovas in addition,
-because the terror of the snow was upon him. Jurgis had nothing to put
-on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was out of the
-door. Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that
-he had no idea where to go. It was still dark as midnight, and the
-thick snowflakes were sifting down—everything was so silent that he
-could hear the rustle of them as they fell. In the few seconds that he
-stood there hesitating he was covered white.
-
-He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in
-the saloons that were open. Ona might have been overcome on the way; or
-else she might have met with an accident in the machines. When he got
-to the place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen—there
-had not been any accident, so far as the man had heard. At the time
-office, which he found already open, the clerk told him that Ona’s
-check had been turned in the night before, showing that she had left
-her work.
-
-After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and
-forth in the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing. Already the yards
-were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in the
-distance, and across the way the “beef-luggers” were toiling in the
-darkness, carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the
-refrigerator cars. Before the first streaks of daylight there came the
-crowding throngs of workingmen, shivering, and swinging their dinner
-pails as they hurried by. Jurgis took up his stand by the time-office
-window, where alone there was light enough for him to see; the snow
-fell so quick that it was only by peering closely that he could make
-sure that Ona did not pass him.
-
-Seven o’clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to
-move. Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill;
-but instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona. It was
-fifteen minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow
-mist, and sprang toward it with a cry. It was she, running swiftly; as
-she saw him, she staggered forward, and half fell into his outstretched
-arms.
-
-“What has been the matter?” he cried, anxiously. “Where have you been?”
-
-It was several seconds before she could get breath to answer him. “I
-couldn’t get home,” she exclaimed. “The snow—the cars had stopped.”
-
-“But where were you then?” he demanded.
-
-“I had to go home with a friend,” she panted—“with Jadvyga.”
-
-Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing and
-trembling—as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so. “But
-what’s the matter?” he cried. “What has happened?”
-
-“Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!” she said, clinging to him wildly. “I
-have been so worried!”
-
-They were near the time station window, and people were staring at
-them. Jurgis led her away. “How do you mean?” he asked, in perplexity.
-
-“I was afraid—I was just afraid!” sobbed Ona. “I knew you wouldn’t know
-where I was, and I didn’t know what you might do. I tried to get home,
-but I was so tired. Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!”
-
-He was so glad to get her back that he could not think clearly about
-anything else. It did not seem strange to him that she should be so
-very much upset; all her fright and incoherent protestations did not
-matter since he had her back. He let her cry away her tears; and then,
-because it was nearly eight o’clock, and they would lose another hour
-if they delayed, he left her at the packing house door, with her
-ghastly white face and her haunted eyes of terror.
-
-There was another brief interval. Christmas was almost come; and
-because the snow still held, and the searching cold, morning after
-morning Jurgis half carried his wife to her post, staggering with her
-through the darkness; until at last, one night, came the end.
-
-It lacked but three days of the holidays. About midnight Marija and
-Elzbieta came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found that Ona had
-not come. The two had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting, had gone
-to the room where she worked; only to find that the ham-wrapping girls
-had quit work an hour before, and left. There was no snow that night,
-nor was it especially cold; and still Ona had not come! Something more
-serious must be wrong this time.
-
-They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story.
-She must have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived only
-two blocks from the yards, and perhaps she had been tired. Nothing
-could have happened to her—and even if there had, there was nothing
-could be done about it until morning. Jurgis turned over in his bed,
-and was snoring again before the two had closed the door.
-
-In the morning, however, he was up and out nearly an hour before the
-usual time. Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards,
-beyond Halsted Street, with her mother and sisters, in a single
-basement room—for Mikolas had recently lost one hand from blood
-poisoning, and their marriage had been put off forever. The door of the
-room was in the rear, reached by a narrow court, and Jurgis saw a light
-in the window and heard something frying as he passed; he knocked, half
-expecting that Ona would answer.
-
-Instead there was one of Jadvyga’s little sisters, who gazed at him
-through a crack in the door. “Where’s Ona?” he demanded; and the child
-looked at him in perplexity. “Ona?” she said.
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis, “isn’t she here?”
-
-“No,” said the child, and Jurgis gave a start. A moment later came
-Jadvyga, peering over the child’s head. When she saw who it was, she
-slid around out of sight, for she was not quite dressed. Jurgis must
-excuse her, she began, her mother was very ill—
-
-“Ona isn’t here?” Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for her to
-finish.
-
-“Why, no,” said Jadvyga. “What made you think she would be here? Had
-she said she was coming?”
-
-“No,” he answered. “But she hasn’t come home—and I thought she would be
-here the same as before.”
-
-“As before?” echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity.
-
-“The time she spent the night here,” said Jurgis.
-
-“There must be some mistake,” she answered, quickly. “Ona has never
-spent the night here.”
-
-He was only half able to realize the words. “Why—why—” he exclaimed.
-“Two weeks ago. Jadvyga! She told me so the night it snowed, and she
-could not get home.”
-
-“There must be some mistake,” declared the girl, again; “she didn’t
-come here.”
-
-He steadied himself by the door-sill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety—for
-she was fond of Ona—opened the door wide, holding her jacket across her
-throat. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand her?” she cried. “She
-must have meant somewhere else. She—”
-
-“She said here,” insisted Jurgis. “She told me all about you, and how
-you were, and what you said. Are you sure? You haven’t forgotten? You
-weren’t away?”
-
-“No, no!” she exclaimed—and then came a peevish voice—“Jadvyga, you are
-giving the baby a cold. Shut the door!” Jurgis stood for half a minute
-more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth of an inch of crack;
-and then, as there was really nothing more to be said, he excused
-himself and went away.
-
-He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went. Ona had
-deceived him! She had lied to him! And what could it mean—where had she
-been? Where was she now? He could hardly grasp the thing—much less try
-to solve it; but a hundred wild surmises came to him, a sense of
-impending calamity overwhelmed him.
-
-Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office
-to watch again. He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then
-went to the room where Ona worked to make inquiries of Ona’s
-“forelady.” The “forelady,” he found, had not yet come; all the lines
-of cars that came from downtown were stalled—there had been an accident
-in the powerhouse, and no cars had been running since last night.
-Meantime, however, the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one
-else in charge of them. The girl who answered Jurgis was busy, and as
-she talked she looked to see if she were being watched. Then a man came
-up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for Ona’s husband, and was curious
-about the mystery.
-
-“Maybe the cars had something to do with it,” he suggested—“maybe she
-had gone down-town.”
-
-“No,” said Jurgis, “she never went down-town.”
-
-“Perhaps not,” said the man. Jurgis thought he saw him exchange a swift
-glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly. “What do you
-know about it?”
-
-But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on
-again, pushing his truck. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said,
-over his shoulder. “How should I know where your wife goes?”
-
-Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and down before the building.
-All the morning he stayed there, with no thought of his work. About
-noon he went to the police station to make inquiries, and then came
-back again for another anxious vigil. Finally, toward the middle of the
-afternoon, he set out for home once more.
-
-He was walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running
-again, and several passed him, packed to the steps with people. The
-sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man’s sarcastic
-remark; and half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars—with
-the result that he gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped
-short in his tracks.
-
-Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car, only
-a little ways behind. That rusty black hat with the drooping red
-flower, it might not be Ona’s, but there was very little likelihood of
-it. He would know for certain very soon, for she would get out two
-blocks ahead. He slowed down, and let the car go on.
-
-She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street
-Jurgis broke into a run. Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was not
-ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home, and
-then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch steps of the
-house. After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced up and
-down, his hands clenched tightly and his lips set, his mind in a
-turmoil. Then he went home and entered.
-
-As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for
-Ona, and had come home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger
-on her lips. Jurgis waited until she was close to him.
-
-“Don’t make any noise,” she whispered, hurriedly.
-
-“What’s the matter’?” he asked. “Ona is asleep,” she panted. “She’s
-been very ill. I’m afraid her mind’s been wandering, Jurgis. She was
-lost on the street all night, and I’ve only just succeeded in getting
-her quiet.”
-
-“When did she come in?” he asked.
-
-“Soon after you left this morning,” said Elzbieta.
-
-“And has she been out since?”
-
-“No, of course not. She’s so weak, Jurgis, she—”
-
-And he set his teeth hard together. “You are lying to me,” he said.
-
-Elzbieta started, and turned pale. “Why!” she gasped. “What do you
-mean?”
-
-But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the
-bedroom door and opened it.
-
-Ona was sitting on the bed. She turned a startled look upon him as he
-entered. He closed the door in Elzbieta’s face, and went toward his
-wife. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
-
-She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her face
-was as white as paper, and drawn with pain. She gasped once or twice as
-she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low, and swiftly.
-“Jurgis, I—I think I have been out of my mind. I started to come last
-night, and I could not find the way. I walked—I walked all night, I
-think, and—and I only got home—this morning.”
-
-“You needed a rest,” he said, in a hard tone. “Why did you go out
-again?”
-
-He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden
-fear and wild uncertainty that leaped into her eyes. “I—I had to go
-to—to the store,” she gasped, almost in a whisper, “I had to go—”
-
-“You are lying to me,” said Jurgis. Then he clenched his hands and took
-a step toward her. “Why do you lie to me?” he cried, fiercely. “What
-are you doing that you have to lie to me?”
-
-“Jurgis!” she exclaimed, starting up in fright. “Oh, Jurgis, how can
-you?”
-
-“You have lied to me, I say!” he cried. “You told me you had been to
-Jadvyga’s house that other night, and you hadn’t. You had been where
-you were last night—somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off the car.
-Where were you?”
-
-It was as if he had struck a knife into her. She seemed to go all to
-pieces. For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying, staring at
-him with horror in her eyes; then, with a cry of anguish, she tottered
-forward, stretching out her arms to him. But he stepped aside,
-deliberately, and let her fall. She caught herself at the side of the
-bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her hands and bursting
-into frantic weeping.
-
-There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often dismayed
-him. Ona sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building themselves up
-into long climaxes. Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over
-her, shaking her as the tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all
-her frame would quiver and throb with them—it was as if some dreadful
-thing rose up within her and took possession of her, torturing her,
-tearing her. This thing had been wont to set Jurgis quite beside
-himself; but now he stood with his lips set tightly and his hands
-clenched—she might weep till she killed herself, but she should not
-move him this time—not an inch, not an inch. Because the sounds she
-made set his blood to running cold and his lips to quivering in spite
-of himself, he was glad of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta, pale with
-fright, opened the door and rushed in; yet he turned upon her with an
-oath. “Go out!” he cried, “go out!” And then, as she stood hesitating,
-about to speak, he seized her by the arm, and half flung her from the
-room, slamming the door and barring it with a table. Then he turned
-again and faced Ona, crying—“Now, answer me!”
-
-Yet she did not hear him—she was still in the grip of the fiend. Jurgis
-could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching, roaming here
-and there over the bed at will, like living things; he could see
-convulsive shudderings start in her body and run through her limbs. She
-was sobbing and choking—it was as if there were too many sounds for one
-throat, they came chasing each other, like waves upon the sea. Then her
-voice would begin to rise into screams, louder and louder until it
-broke in wild, horrible peals of laughter. Jurgis bore it until he
-could bear it no longer, and then he sprang at her, seizing her by the
-shoulders and shaking her, shouting into her ear: “Stop it, I say! Stop
-it!”
-
-She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at his
-feet. She caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts to step
-aside, and with her face upon the floor lay writhing. It made a choking
-in Jurgis’ throat to hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than
-before: “Stop it, I say!”
-
-This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent, save
-for the gasping sobs that wrenched all her frame. For a long minute she
-lay there, perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized her husband,
-thinking that she was dying. Suddenly, however, he heard her voice,
-faintly: “Jurgis! Jurgis!”
-
-“What is it?” he said.
-
-He had to bend down to her, she was so weak. She was pleading with him,
-in broken phrases, painfully uttered: “Have faith in me! Believe me!”
-
-“Believe what?” he cried.
-
-“Believe that I—that I know best—that I love you! And do not ask
-me—what you did. Oh, Jurgis, please, please! It is for the best—it is—”
-
-He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading him
-off. “If you will only do it! If you will only—only believe me! It
-wasn’t my fault—I couldn’t help it—it will be all right—it is
-nothing—it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis—please, please!”
-
-She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him; he
-could feel the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the
-bosom she pressed against him. She managed to catch one of his hands
-and gripped it convulsively, drawing it to her face, and bathing it in
-her tears. “Oh, believe me, believe me!” she wailed again; and he
-shouted in fury, “I will not!”
-
-But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: “Oh, Jurgis,
-think what you are doing! It will ruin us—it will ruin us! Oh, no, you
-must not do it! No, don’t, don’t do it. You must not do it! It will
-drive me mad—it will kill me—no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy—it is nothing.
-You do not really need to know. We can be happy—we can love each other
-just the same. Oh, please, please, believe me!”
-
-Her words fairly drove him wild. He tore his hands loose, and flung her
-off. “Answer me,” he cried. “God damn it, I say—answer me!”
-
-She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again. It was like
-listening to the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it.
-He smote his fist upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her,
-“Answer me!”
-
-She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast:
-“Ah! Ah! I can’t! I can’t do it!”
-
-“Why can’t you do it?” he shouted.
-
-“I don’t know how!”
-
-He sprang and caught her by the arm, lifting her up, and glaring into
-her face. “Tell me where you were last night!” he panted. “Quick, out
-with it!”
-
-Then she began to whisper, one word at a time: “I—was in—a
-house—downtown—”
-
-“What house? What do you mean?”
-
-She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her. “Miss Henderson’s
-house,” she gasped. He did not understand at first. “Miss Henderson’s
-house,” he echoed. And then suddenly, as in an explosion, the horrible
-truth burst over him, and he reeled and staggered back with a scream.
-He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his forehead,
-staring about him, and whispering, “Jesus! Jesus!”
-
-An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet. He
-seized her by the throat. “Tell me!” he gasped, hoarsely. “Quick! Who
-took you to that place?”
-
-She tried to get away, making him furious; he thought it was fear, of
-the pain of his clutch—he did not understand that it was the agony of
-her shame. Still she answered him, “Connor.”
-
-“Connor,” he gasped. “Who is Connor?”
-
-“The boss,” she answered. “The man—”
-
-He tightened his grip, in his frenzy, and only when he saw her eyes
-closing did he realize that he was choking her. Then he relaxed his
-fingers, and crouched, waiting, until she opened her lids again. His
-breath beat hot into her face.
-
-“Tell me,” he whispered, at last, “tell me about it.”
-
-She lay perfectly motionless, and he had to hold his breath to catch
-her words. “I did not want—to do it,” she said; “I tried—I tried not to
-do it. I only did it—to save us. It was our only chance.”
-
-Again, for a space, there was no sound but his panting. Ona’s eyes
-closed and when she spoke again she did not open them. “He told me—he
-would have me turned off. He told me he would—we would all of us lose
-our places. We could never get anything to do—here—again. He—he meant
-it—he would have ruined us.”
-
-Jurgis’ arms were shaking so that he could scarcely hold himself up,
-and lurched forward now and then as he listened. “When—when did this
-begin?” he gasped.
-
-“At the very first,” she said. She spoke as if in a trance. “It was
-all—it was their plot—Miss Henderson’s plot. She hated me. And he—he
-wanted me. He used to speak to me—out on the platform. Then he began
-to—to make love to me. He offered me money. He begged me—he said he
-loved me. Then he threatened me. He knew all about us, he knew we would
-starve. He knew your boss—he knew Marija’s. He would hound us to death,
-he said—then he said if I would—if I—we would all of us be sure of
-work—always. Then one day he caught hold of me—he would not let
-go—he—he—”
-
-“Where was this?”
-
-“In the hallway—at night—after every one had gone. I could not help it.
-I thought of you—of the baby—of mother and the children. I was afraid
-of him—afraid to cry out.”
-
-A moment ago her face had been ashen gray, now it was scarlet. She was
-beginning to breathe hard again. Jurgis made not a sound.
-
-“That was two months ago. Then he wanted me to come—to that house. He
-wanted me to stay there. He said all of us—that we would not have to
-work. He made me come there—in the evenings. I told you—you thought I
-was at the factory. Then—one night it snowed, and I couldn’t get back.
-And last night—the cars were stopped. It was such a little thing—to
-ruin us all. I tried to walk, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to
-know. It would have—it would have been all right. We could have gone
-on—just the same—you need never have known about it. He was getting
-tired of me—he would have let me alone soon. I am going to have a
-baby—I am getting ugly. He told me that—twice, he told me, last night.
-He kicked me—last night—too. And now you will kill him—you—you will
-kill him—and we shall die.”
-
-All this she had said without a quiver; she lay still as death, not an
-eyelid moving. And Jurgis, too, said not a word. He lifted himself by
-the bed, and stood up. He did not stop for another glance at her, but
-went to the door and opened it. He did not see Elzbieta, crouching
-terrified in the corner. He went out, hatless, leaving the street door
-open behind him. The instant his feet were on the sidewalk he broke
-into a run.
-
-He ran like one possessed, blindly, furiously, looking neither to the
-right nor left. He was on Ashland Avenue before exhaustion compelled
-him to slow down, and then, noticing a car, he made a dart for it and
-drew himself aboard. His eyes were wild and his hair flying, and he was
-breathing hoarsely, like a wounded bull; but the people on the car did
-not notice this particularly—perhaps it seemed natural to them that a
-man who smelled as Jurgis smelled should exhibit an aspect to
-correspond. They began to give way before him as usual. The conductor
-took his nickel gingerly, with the tips of his fingers, and then left
-him with the platform to himself. Jurgis did not even notice it—his
-thoughts were far away. Within his soul it was like a roaring furnace;
-he stood waiting, waiting, crouching as if for a spring.
-
-He had some of his breath back when the car came to the entrance of the
-yards, and so he leaped off and started again, racing at full speed.
-People turned and stared at him, but he saw no one—there was the
-factory, and he bounded through the doorway and down the corridor. He
-knew the room where Ona worked, and he knew Connor, the boss of the
-loading-gang outside. He looked for the man as he sprang into the room.
-
-The truckmen were hard at work, loading the freshly packed boxes and
-barrels upon the cars. Jurgis shot one swift glance up and down the
-platform—the man was not on it. But then suddenly he heard a voice in
-the corridor, and started for it with a bound. In an instant more he
-fronted the boss.
-
-He was a big, red-faced Irishman, coarse-featured, and smelling of
-liquor. He saw Jurgis as he crossed the threshold, and turned white. He
-hesitated one second, as if meaning to run; and in the next his
-assailant was upon him. He put up his hands to protect his face, but
-Jurgis, lunging with all the power of his arm and body, struck him
-fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward. The next moment he
-was on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.
-
-To Jurgis this man’s whole presence reeked of the crime he had
-committed; the touch of his body was madness to him—it set every nerve
-of him a-tremble, it aroused all the demon in his soul. It had worked
-its will upon Ona, this great beast—and now he had it, he had it! It
-was his turn now! Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud
-in his fury, lifting his victim and smashing his head upon the floor.
-
-The place, of course, was in an uproar; women fainting and shrieking,
-and men rushing in. Jurgis was so bent upon his task that he knew
-nothing of this, and scarcely realized that people were trying to
-interfere with him; it was only when half a dozen men had seized him by
-the legs and shoulders and were pulling at him, that he understood that
-he was losing his prey. In a flash he had bent down and sunk his teeth
-into the man’s cheek; and when they tore him away he was dripping with
-blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his mouth.
-
-They got him down upon the floor, clinging to him by his arms and legs,
-and still they could hardly hold him. He fought like a tiger, writhing
-and twisting, half flinging them off, and starting toward his
-unconscious enemy. But yet others rushed in, until there was a little
-mountain of twisted limbs and bodies, heaving and tossing, and working
-its way about the room. In the end, by their sheer weight, they choked
-the breath out of him, and then they carried him to the company police
-station, where he lay still until they had summoned a patrol wagon to
-take him away.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI
-
-
-When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough. He was exhausted and
-half-dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the policemen. He
-drove in a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching him; keeping
-as far away as possible, however, on account of the fertilizer. Then he
-stood before the sergeant’s desk and gave his name and address, and saw
-a charge of assault and battery entered against him. On his way to his
-cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down the wrong
-corridor, and then added a kick when he was not quick enough;
-nevertheless, Jurgis did not even lift his eyes—he had lived two years
-and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were. It was as
-much as a man’s very life was worth to anger them, here in their inmost
-lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at once, and pound his
-face into a pulp. It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull
-cracked in the mêlée—in which case they would report that he had been
-drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to know the
-difference or to care.
-
-So a barred door clanged upon Jurgis and he sat down upon a bench and
-buried his face in his hands. He was alone; he had the afternoon and
-all of the night to himself.
-
-At first he was like a wild beast that has glutted itself; he was in a
-dull stupor of satisfaction. He had done up the scoundrel pretty
-well—not as well as he would have if they had given him a minute more,
-but pretty well, all the same; the ends of his fingers were still
-tingling from their contact with the fellow’s throat. But then, little
-by little, as his strength came back and his senses cleared, he began
-to see beyond his momentary gratification; that he had nearly killed
-the boss would not help Ona—not the horrors that she had borne, nor the
-memory that would haunt her all her days. It would not help to feed her
-and her child; she would certainly lose her place, while he—what was to
-happen to him God only knew.
-
-Half the night he paced the floor, wrestling with this nightmare; and
-when he was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding
-instead, for the first time in his life, that his brain was too much
-for him. In the cell next to him was a drunken wife-beater and in the
-one beyond a yelling maniac. At midnight they opened the station house
-to the homeless wanderers who were crowded about the door, shivering in
-the winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor outside of the
-cells. Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare stone floor
-and fell to snoring, others sat up, laughing and talking, cursing and
-quarreling. The air was fetid with their breath, yet in spite of this
-some of them smelled Jurgis and called down the torments of hell upon
-him, while he lay in a far corner of his cell, counting the throbbings
-of the blood in his forehead.
-
-They had brought him his supper, which was “duffers and dope”—being
-hunks of dry bread on a tin plate, and coffee, called “dope” because it
-was drugged to keep the prisoners quiet. Jurgis had not known this, or
-he would have swallowed the stuff in desperation; as it was, every
-nerve of him was a-quiver with shame and rage. Toward morning the place
-fell silent, and he got up and began to pace his cell; and then within
-the soul of him there rose up a fiend, red-eyed and cruel, and tore out
-the strings of his heart.
-
-It was not for himself that he suffered—what did a man who worked in
-Durham’s fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do to
-him! What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny of the
-past, of the thing that had happened and could not be recalled, of the
-memory that could never be effaced! The horror of it drove him mad; he
-stretched out his arms to heaven, crying out for deliverance from
-it—and there was no deliverance, there was no power even in heaven that
-could undo the past. It was a ghost that would not drown; it followed
-him, it seized upon him and beat him to the ground. Ah, if only he
-could have foreseen it—but then, he would have foreseen it, if he had
-not been a fool! He smote his hands upon his forehead, cursing himself
-because he had ever allowed Ona to work where she had, because he had
-not stood between her and a fate which every one knew to be so common.
-He should have taken her away, even if it were to lie down and die of
-starvation in the gutters of Chicago’s streets! And now—oh, it could
-not be true; it was too monstrous, too horrible.
-
-It was a thing that could not be faced; a new shuddering seized him
-every time he tried to think of it. No, there was no bearing the load
-of it, there was no living under it. There would be none for her—he
-knew that he might pardon her, might plead with her on his knees, but
-she would never look him in the face again, she would never be his wife
-again. The shame of it would kill her—there could be no other
-deliverance, and it was best that she should die.
-
-This was simple and clear, and yet, with cruel inconsistency, whenever
-he escaped from this nightmare it was to suffer and cry out at the
-vision of Ona starving. They had put him in jail, and they would keep
-him here a long time, years maybe. And Ona would surely not go to work
-again, broken and crushed as she was. And Elzbieta and Marija, too,
-might lose their places—if that hell fiend Connor chose to set to work
-to ruin them, they would all be turned out. And even if he did not,
-they could not live—even if the boys left school again, they could
-surely not pay all the bills without him and Ona. They had only a few
-dollars now—they had just paid the rent of the house a week ago, and
-that after it was two weeks overdue. So it would be due again in a
-week! They would have no money to pay it then—and they would lose the
-house, after all their long, heartbreaking struggle. Three times now
-the agent had warned him that he would not tolerate another delay.
-Perhaps it was very base of Jurgis to be thinking about the house when
-he had the other unspeakable thing to fill his mind; yet, how much he
-had suffered for this house, how much they had all of them suffered! It
-was their one hope of respite, as long as they lived; they had put all
-their money into it—and they were working people, poor people, whose
-money was their strength, the very substance of them, body and soul,
-the thing by which they lived and for lack of which they died.
-
-And they would lose it all; they would be turned out into the streets,
-and have to hide in some icy garret, and live or die as best they
-could! Jurgis had all the night—and all of many more nights—to think
-about this, and he saw the thing in its details; he lived it all, as if
-he were there. They would sell their furniture, and then run into debt
-at the stores, and then be refused credit; they would borrow a little
-from the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen store was tottering on the
-brink of ruin; the neighbors would come and help them a little—poor,
-sick Jadvyga would bring a few spare pennies, as she always did when
-people were starving, and Tamoszius Kuszleika would bring them the
-proceeds of a night’s fiddling. So they would struggle to hang on until
-he got out of jail—or would they know that he was in jail, would they
-be able to find out anything about him? Would they be allowed to see
-him—or was it to be part of his punishment to be kept in ignorance
-about their fate?
-
-His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and
-tortured, Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get to
-work for the snow, the whole family turned out on the street. God
-Almighty! would they actually let them lie down in the street and die?
-Would there be no help even then—would they wander about in the snow
-till they froze? Jurgis had never seen any dead bodies in the streets,
-but he had seen people evicted and disappear, no one knew where; and
-though the city had a relief bureau, though there was a charity
-organization society in the stockyards district, in all his life there
-he had never heard of either of them. They did not advertise their
-activities, having more calls than they could attend to without that.
-
-—So on until morning. Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon,
-along with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several “plain
-drunks” and “saloon fighters,” a burglar, and two men who had been
-arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses. Along with them he
-was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and crowded.
-In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a stout,
-florid-faced personage, with a nose broken out in purple blotches.
-
-Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried. He wondered
-what for—whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they
-would do with him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death—nothing
-would have surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws. Yet he had
-picked up gossip enough to have it occur to him that the loud-voiced
-man upon the bench might be the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom
-the people of Packingtown spoke with bated breath.
-
-“Pat” Callahan—“Growler” Pat, as he had been known before he ascended
-the bench—had begun life as a butcher boy and a bruiser of local
-reputation; he had gone into politics almost as soon as he had learned
-to talk, and had held two offices at once before he was old enough to
-vote. If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan was the first finger of the
-unseen hand whereby the packers held down the people of the district.
-No politician in Chicago ranked higher in their confidence; he had been
-at it a long time—had been the business agent in the city council of
-old Durham, the self-made merchant, way back in the early days, when
-the whole city of Chicago had been up at auction. “Growler” Pat had
-given up holding city offices very early in his career—caring only for
-party power, and giving the rest of his time to superintending his
-dives and brothels. Of late years, however, since his children were
-growing up, he had begun to value respectability, and had had himself
-made a magistrate; a position for which he was admirably fitted,
-because of his strong conservatism and his contempt for “foreigners.”
-
-Jurgis sat gazing about the room for an hour or two; he was in hopes
-that some one of the family would come, but in this he was
-disappointed. Finally, he was led before the bar, and a lawyer for the
-company appeared against him. Connor was under the doctor’s care, the
-lawyer explained briefly, and if his Honor would hold the prisoner for
-a week—“Three hundred dollars,” said his Honor, promptly.
-
-Jurgis was staring from the judge to the lawyer in perplexity. “Have
-you any one to go on your bond?” demanded the judge, and then a clerk
-who stood at Jurgis’ elbow explained to him what this meant. The latter
-shook his head, and before he realized what had happened the policemen
-were leading him away again. They took him to a room where other
-prisoners were waiting and here he stayed until court adjourned, when
-he had another long and bitterly cold ride in a patrol wagon to the
-county jail, which is on the north side of the city, and nine or ten
-miles from the stockyards.
-
-Here they searched Jurgis, leaving him only his money, which consisted
-of fifteen cents. Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for
-a bath; after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated
-cell doors of the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the
-latter—the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many
-and diverting were the comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the
-bath longer than any one, in the vain hope of getting out of him a few
-of his phosphates and acids. The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but
-that day there was one left over, and he was the one.
-
-The cells were in tiers, opening upon galleries. His cell was about
-five feet by seven in size, with a stone floor and a heavy wooden bench
-built into it. There was no window—the only light came from windows
-near the roof at one end of the court outside. There were two bunks,
-one above the other, each with a straw mattress and a pair of gray
-blankets—the latter stiff as boards with filth, and alive with fleas,
-bedbugs, and lice. When Jurgis lifted up the mattress he discovered
-beneath it a layer of scurrying roaches, almost as badly frightened as
-himself.
-
-Here they brought him more “duffers and dope,” with the addition of a
-bowl of soup. Many of the prisoners had their meals brought in from a
-restaurant, but Jurgis had no money for that. Some had books to read
-and cards to play, with candles to burn by night, but Jurgis was all
-alone in darkness and silence. He could not sleep again; there was the
-same maddening procession of thoughts that lashed him like whips upon
-his naked back. When night fell he was pacing up and down his cell like
-a wild beast that breaks its teeth upon the bars of its cage. Now and
-then in his frenzy he would fling himself against the walls of the
-place, beating his hands upon them. They cut him and bruised him—they
-were cold and merciless as the men who had built them.
-
-In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the hours one
-by one. When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor with
-his head in his arms, listening. Instead of falling silent at the end,
-the bell broke into a sudden clangor. Jurgis raised his head; what
-could that mean—a fire? God! Suppose there were to be a fire in this
-jail! But then he made out a melody in the ringing; there were chimes.
-And they seemed to waken the city—all around, far and near, there were
-bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute Jurgis lay lost in
-wonder, before, all at once, the meaning of it broke over him—that this
-was Christmas Eve!
-
-Christmas Eve—he had forgotten it entirely! There was a breaking of
-floodgates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into his
-mind. In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to
-him as if it had been yesterday—himself a little child, with his lost
-brother and his dead father in the cabin—in the deep black forest,
-where the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the
-world. It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania, but it was not
-too far for peace and good will to men, for the wonder-bearing vision
-of the Christ Child. And even in Packingtown they had not forgotten
-it—some gleam of it had never failed to break their darkness. Last
-Christmas Eve and all Christmas Day Jurgis had toiled on the killing
-beds, and Ona at wrapping hams, and still they had found strength
-enough to take the children for a walk upon the avenue, to see the
-store windows all decorated with Christmas trees and ablaze with
-electric lights. In one window there would be live geese, in another
-marvels in sugar—pink and white canes big enough for ogres, and cakes
-with cherubs upon them; in a third there would be rows of fat yellow
-turkeys, decorated with rosettes, and rabbits and squirrels hanging; in
-a fourth would be a fairyland of toys—lovely dolls with pink dresses,
-and woolly sheep and drums and soldier hats. Nor did they have to go
-without their share of all this, either. The last time they had had a
-big basket with them and all their Christmas marketing to do—a roast of
-pork and a cabbage and some rye bread, and a pair of mittens for Ona,
-and a rubber doll that squeaked, and a little green cornucopia full of
-candy to be hung from the gas jet and gazed at by half a dozen pairs of
-longing eyes.
-
-Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had
-not been able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was a
-choking in Jurgis’ throat as he recalled that the very night Ona had
-not come home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him an old
-valentine that she had picked up in a paper store for three cents—dingy
-and shopworn, but with bright colors, and figures of angels and doves.
-She had wiped all the specks off this, and was going to set it on the
-mantel, where the children could see it. Great sobs shook Jurgis at
-this memory—they would spend their Christmas in misery and despair,
-with him in prison and Ona ill and their home in desolation. Ah, it was
-too cruel! Why at least had they not left him alone—why, after they had
-shut him in jail, must they be ringing Christmas chimes in his ears!
-
-But no, their bells were not ringing for him—their Christmas was not
-meant for him, they were simply not counting him at all. He was of no
-consequence—he was flung aside, like a bit of trash, the carcass of
-some animal. It was horrible, horrible! His wife might be dying, his
-baby might be starving, his whole family might be perishing in the
-cold—and all the while they were ringing their Christmas chimes! And
-the bitter mockery of it—all this was punishment for him! They put him
-in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not
-eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink—why, in the name
-of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail
-and leave him outside—why could they find no better way to punish him
-than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and
-freeze? That was their law, that was their justice!
-
-Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and
-his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten
-thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice—it was a lie, it
-was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any
-world but a world of nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery.
-There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it—it was only
-force, it was tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and
-unrestrained! They had ground him beneath their heel, they had devoured
-all his substance; they had murdered his old father, they had broken
-and wrecked his wife, they had crushed and cowed his whole family; and
-now they were through with him, they had no further use for him—and
-because he had interfered with them, had gotten in their way, this was
-what they had done to him! They had put him behind bars, as if he had
-been a wild beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights,
-without affections, without feelings. Nay, they would not even have
-treated a beast as they had treated him! Would any man in his senses
-have trapped a wild thing in its lair, and left its young behind to
-die?
-
-These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the
-beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no
-wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources—he could not say
-that it was the thing men have called “the system” that was crushing
-him to the earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had bought
-up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from
-the seat of justice. He only knew that he was wronged, and that the
-world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers,
-had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker,
-every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging,
-frenzied hate.
-
-The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
-    Bloom well in prison air;
-It is only what is good in Man
-    That wastes and withers there;
-Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
-    And the Warder is Despair.
-
-
-So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice—
-
-I know not whether Laws be right,
-    Or whether Laws be wrong;
-All that we know who lie in gaol
-    Is that the wall is strong.
-And they do well to hide their hell,
-    For in it things are done
-That Son of God nor son of Man
-    Ever should look upon!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII
-
-
-At seven o’clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to
-wash his cell—a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of
-the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells became so
-filthy that the guards interposed. Then he had more “duffers and dope,”
-and afterward was allowed three hours for exercise, in a long,
-cement-walked court roofed with glass. Here were all the inmates of the
-jail crowded together. At one side of the court was a place for
-visitors, cut off by two heavy wire screens, a foot apart, so that
-nothing could be passed in to the prisoners; here Jurgis watched
-anxiously, but there came no one to see him.
-
-Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let in
-another prisoner. He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown
-mustache and blue eyes, and a graceful figure. He nodded to Jurgis, and
-then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began gazing critically
-about him.
-
-“Well, pal,” he said, as his glance encountered Jurgis again, “good
-morning.”
-
-“Good morning,” said Jurgis.
-
-“A rum go for Christmas, eh?” added the other.
-
-Jurgis nodded.
-
-The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted up
-the mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation. “My God!” he
-said, “that’s the worst yet.”
-
-He glanced at Jurgis again. “Looks as if it hadn’t been slept in last
-night. Couldn’t stand it, eh?”
-
-“I didn’t want to sleep last night,” said Jurgis.
-
-“When did you come in?”
-
-“Yesterday.”
-
-The other had another look around, and then wrinkled up his nose.
-“There’s the devil of a stink in here,” he said, suddenly. “What is
-it?”
-
-“It’s me,” said Jurgis.
-
-“You?”
-
-“Yes, me.”
-
-“Didn’t they make you wash?”
-
-“Yes, but this don’t wash.”
-
-“What is it?”
-
-“Fertilizer.”
-
-“Fertilizer! The deuce! What are you?”
-
-“I work in the stockyards—at least I did until the other day. It’s in
-my clothes.”
-
-“That’s a new one on me,” said the newcomer. “I thought I’d been up
-against ‘em all. What are you in for?”
-
-“I hit my boss.”
-
-“Oh—that’s it. What did he do?”
-
-“He—he treated me mean.”
-
-“I see. You’re what’s called an honest workingman!”
-
-“What are you?” Jurgis asked.
-
-“I?” The other laughed. “They say I’m a cracksman,” he said.
-
-“What’s that?” asked Jurgis.
-
-“Safes, and such things,” answered the other.
-
-“Oh,” said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stared at the speaker in awe. “You
-mean you break into them—you—you—”
-
-“Yes,” laughed the other, “that’s what they say.”
-
-He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis found
-afterward, he was thirty. He spoke like a man of education, like what
-the world calls a “gentleman.”
-
-“Is that what you’re here for?” Jurgis inquired.
-
-“No,” was the answer. “I’m here for disorderly conduct. They were mad
-because they couldn’t get any evidence.
-
-“What’s your name?” the young fellow continued after a pause. “My
-name’s Duane—Jack Duane. I’ve more than a dozen, but that’s my company
-one.” He seated himself on the floor with his back to the wall and his
-legs crossed, and went on talking easily; he soon put Jurgis on a
-friendly footing—he was evidently a man of the world, used to getting
-on, and not too proud to hold conversation with a mere laboring man. He
-drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one
-unmentionable thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He
-was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to
-jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had “done time”
-twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What
-with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could
-afford to rest now and then.
-
-Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for Jurgis by the
-arrival of a cell mate. He could not turn his face to the wall and
-sulk, he had to speak when he was spoken to; nor could he help being
-interested in the conversation of Duane—the first educated man with
-whom he had ever talked. How could he help listening with wonder while
-the other told of midnight ventures and perilous escapes, of feastings
-and orgies, of fortunes squandered in a night? The young fellow had an
-amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too, had
-felt the world’s injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had
-struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time—there was
-war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter, living off the
-enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but then
-defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break his spirit.
-
-Withal he was a goodhearted fellow—too much so, it appeared. His story
-came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the long hours
-that dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk and nothing
-to talk of but themselves. Jack Duane was from the East; he was a
-college-bred man—had been studying electrical engineering. Then his
-father had met with misfortune in business and killed himself; and
-there had been his mother and a younger brother and sister. Also, there
-was an invention of Duane’s; Jurgis could not understand it clearly,
-but it had to do with telegraphing, and it was a very important
-thing—there were fortunes in it, millions upon millions of dollars. And
-Duane had been robbed of it by a great company, and got tangled up in
-lawsuits and lost all his money. Then somebody had given him a tip on a
-horse race, and he had tried to retrieve his fortune with another
-person’s money, and had to run away, and all the rest had come from
-that. The other asked him what had led him to safe-breaking—to Jurgis a
-wild and appalling occupation to think about. A man he had met, his
-cell mate had replied—one thing leads to another. Didn’t he ever wonder
-about his family, Jurgis asked. Sometimes, the other answered, but not
-often—he didn’t allow it. Thinking about it would make it no better.
-This wasn’t a world in which a man had any business with a family;
-sooner or later Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight
-and shift for himself.
-
-Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate
-was as open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him
-adventures, he was so full of wonder and admiration, he was so new to
-the ways of the country. Duane did not even bother to keep back names
-and places—he told all his triumphs and his failures, his loves and his
-griefs. Also he introduced Jurgis to many of the other prisoners,
-nearly half of whom he knew by name. The crowd had already given Jurgis
-a name—they called him “the stinker.” This was cruel, but they meant no
-harm by it, and he took it with a good-natured grin.
-
-Our friend had caught now and then a whiff from the sewers over which
-he lived, but this was the first time that he had ever been splashed by
-their filth. This jail was a Noah’s ark of the city’s crime—there were
-murderers, “hold-up men” and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and
-forgers, bigamists, “shoplifters,” “confidence men,” petty thieves and
-pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and
-drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and
-natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened criminals
-and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not
-yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer
-of society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to. All
-life had turned to rottenness and stench in them—love was a
-beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled
-here and there about the courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them. He was
-ignorant and they were wise; they had been everywhere and tried
-everything. They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth
-the inner soul of a city in which justice and honor, women’s bodies and
-men’s souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed
-and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which
-lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering
-and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast
-tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken
-part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was
-no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were
-loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they
-had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of
-millions of dollars.
-
-To most of this Jurgis tried not to listen. They frightened him with
-their savage mockery; and all the while his heart was far away, where
-his loved ones were calling. Now and then in the midst of it his
-thoughts would take flight; and then the tears would come into his
-eyes—and he would be called back by the jeering laughter of his
-companions.
-
-He spent a week in this company, and during all that time he had no
-word from his home. He paid one of his fifteen cents for a postal card,
-and his companion wrote a note to the family, telling them where he was
-and when he would be tried. There came no answer to it, however, and at
-last, the day before New Year’s, Jurgis bade good-by to Jack Duane. The
-latter gave him his address, or rather the address of his mistress, and
-made Jurgis promise to look him up. “Maybe I could help you out of a
-hole some day,” he said, and added that he was sorry to have him go.
-Jurgis rode in the patrol wagon back to Justice Callahan’s court for
-trial.
-
-One of the first things he made out as he entered the room was Teta
-Elzbieta and little Kotrina, looking pale and frightened, seated far in
-the rear. His heart began to pound, but he did not dare to try to
-signal to them, and neither did Elzbieta. He took his seat in the
-prisoners’ pen and sat gazing at them in helpless agony. He saw that
-Ona was not with them, and was full of foreboding as to what that might
-mean. He spent half an hour brooding over this—and then suddenly he
-straightened up and the blood rushed into his face. A man had come
-in—Jurgis could not see his features for the bandages that swathed him,
-but he knew the burly figure. It was Connor! A trembling seized him,
-and his limbs bent as if for a spring. Then suddenly he felt a hand on
-his collar, and heard a voice behind him: “Sit down, you son of a—!”
-
-He subsided, but he never took his eyes off his enemy. The fellow was
-still alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it was
-pleasant to see him, all in penitential plasters. He and the company
-lawyer, who was with him, came and took seats within the judge’s
-railing; and a minute later the clerk called Jurgis’ name, and the
-policeman jerked him to his feet and led him before the bar, gripping
-him tightly by the arm, lest he should spring upon the boss.
-
-Jurgis listened while the man entered the witness chair, took the oath,
-and told his story. The wife of the prisoner had been employed in a
-department near him, and had been discharged for impudence to him. Half
-an hour later he had been violently attacked, knocked down, and almost
-choked to death. He had brought witnesses—
-
-“They will probably not be necessary,” observed the judge and he turned
-to Jurgis. “You admit attacking the plaintiff?” he asked.
-
-“Him?” inquired Jurgis, pointing at the boss.
-
-“Yes,” said the judge. “I hit him, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Say ‘your Honor,’” said the officer, pinching his arm hard.
-
-“Your Honor,” said Jurgis, obediently.
-
-“You tried to choke him?”
-
-“Yes, sir, your Honor.”
-
-“Ever been arrested before?”
-
-“No, sir, your Honor.”
-
-“What have you to say for yourself?”
-
-Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had
-learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had never
-included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his
-wife. He tried once or twice, stammering and balking, to the annoyance
-of the judge, who was gasping from the odor of fertilizer. Finally, the
-prisoner made it understood that his vocabulary was inadequate, and
-there stepped up a dapper young man with waxed mustaches, bidding him
-speak in any language he knew.
-
-Jurgis began; supposing that he would be given time, he explained how
-the boss had taken advantage of his wife’s position to make advances to
-her and had threatened her with the loss of her place. When the
-interpreter had translated this, the judge, whose calendar was crowded,
-and whose automobile was ordered for a certain hour, interrupted with
-the remark: “Oh, I see. Well, if he made love to your wife, why didn’t
-she complain to the superintendent or leave the place?”
-
-Jurgis hesitated, somewhat taken aback; he began to explain that they
-were very poor—that work was hard to get—
-
-“I see,” said Justice Callahan; “so instead you thought you would knock
-him down.” He turned to the plaintiff, inquiring, “Is there any truth
-in this story, Mr. Connor?”
-
-“Not a particle, your Honor,” said the boss. “It is very
-unpleasant—they tell some such tale every time you have to discharge a
-woman—”
-
-“Yes, I know,” said the judge. “I hear it often enough. The fellow
-seems to have handled you pretty roughly. Thirty days and costs. Next
-case.”
-
-Jurgis had been listening in perplexity. It was only when the policeman
-who had him by the arm turned and started to lead him away that he
-realized that sentence had been passed. He gazed round him wildly.
-“Thirty days!” he panted and then he whirled upon the judge. “What will
-my family do?” he cried frantically. “I have a wife and baby, sir, and
-they have no money—my God, they will starve to death!”
-
-“You would have done well to think about them before you committed the
-assault,” said the judge dryly, as he turned to look at the next
-prisoner.
-
-Jurgis would have spoken again, but the policeman had seized him by the
-collar and was twisting it, and a second policeman was making for him
-with evidently hostile intentions. So he let them lead him away. Far
-down the room he saw Elzbieta and Kotrina, risen from their seats,
-staring in fright; he made one effort to go to them, and then, brought
-back by another twist at his throat, he bowed his head and gave up the
-struggle. They thrust him into a cell room, where other prisoners were
-waiting; and as soon as court had adjourned they led him down with them
-into the “Black Maria,” and drove him away.
-
-This time Jurgis was bound for the “Bridewell,” a petty jail where Cook
-County prisoners serve their time. It was even filthier and more
-crowded than the county jail; all the smaller fry out of the latter had
-been sifted into it—the petty thieves and swindlers, the brawlers and
-vagrants. For his cell mate Jurgis had an Italian fruit seller who had
-refused to pay his graft to the policeman, and been arrested for
-carrying a large pocketknife; as he did not understand a word of
-English our friend was glad when he left. He gave place to a Norwegian
-sailor, who had lost half an ear in a drunken brawl, and who proved to
-be quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis because he moved in his bunk and caused
-the roaches to drop upon the lower one. It would have been quite
-intolerable, staying in a cell with this wild beast, but for the fact
-that all day long the prisoners were put at work breaking stone.
-
-Ten days of his thirty Jurgis spent thus, without hearing a word from
-his family; then one day a keeper came and informed him that there was
-a visitor to see him. Jurgis turned white, and so weak at the knees
-that he could hardly leave his cell.
-
-The man led him down the corridor and a flight of steps to the
-visitors’ room, which was barred like a cell. Through the grating
-Jurgis could see some one sitting in a chair; and as he came into the
-room the person started up, and he saw that it was little Stanislovas.
-At the sight of some one from home the big fellow nearly went to
-pieces—he had to steady himself by a chair, and he put his other hand
-to his forehead, as if to clear away a mist. “Well?” he said, weakly.
-
-Little Stanislovas was also trembling, and all but too frightened to
-speak. “They—they sent me to tell you—” he said, with a gulp.
-
-“Well?” Jurgis repeated. He followed the boy’s glance to where the
-keeper was standing watching them. “Never mind that,” Jurgis cried,
-wildly. “How are they?”
-
-“Ona is very sick,” Stanislovas said; “and we are almost starving. We
-can’t get along; we thought you might be able to help us.”
-
-Jurgis gripped the chair tighter; there were beads of perspiration on
-his forehead, and his hand shook. “I—can’t help you,” he said.
-
-“Ona lies in her room all day,” the boy went on, breathlessly. “She
-won’t eat anything, and she cries all the time. She won’t tell what is
-the matter and she won’t go to work at all. Then a long time ago the
-man came for the rent. He was very cross. He came again last week. He
-said he would turn us out of the house. And then Marija—”
-
-A sob choked Stanislovas, and he stopped. “What’s the matter with
-Marija?” cried Jurgis.
-
-“She’s cut her hand!” said the boy. “She’s cut it bad, this time, worse
-than before. She can’t work and it’s all turning green, and the company
-doctor says she may—she may have to have it cut off. And Marija cries
-all the time—her money is nearly all gone, too, and we can’t pay the
-rent and the interest on the house; and we have no coal and nothing
-more to eat, and the man at the store, he says—”
-
-The little fellow stopped again, beginning to whimper. “Go on!” the
-other panted in frenzy—“Go on!”
-
-“I—I will,” sobbed Stanislovas. “It’s so—so cold all the time. And last
-Sunday it snowed again—a deep, deep snow—and I couldn’t—couldn’t get to
-work.”
-
-“God!” Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child. There
-was an old hatred between them because of the snow—ever since that
-dreadful morning when the boy had had his fingers frozen and Jurgis had
-had to beat him to send him to work. Now he clenched his hands, looking
-as if he would try to break through the grating. “You little villain,”
-he cried, “you didn’t try!”
-
-“I did—I did!” wailed Stanislovas, shrinking from him in terror. “I
-tried all day—two days. Elzbieta was with me, and she couldn’t either.
-We couldn’t walk at all, it was so deep. And we had nothing to eat, and
-oh, it was so cold! I tried, and then the third day Ona went with me—”
-
-“Ona!”
-
-“Yes. She tried to get to work, too. She had to. We were all starving.
-But she had lost her place—”
-
-Jurgis reeled, and gave a gasp. “She went back to that place?” he
-screamed. “She tried to,” said Stanislovas, gazing at him in
-perplexity. “Why not, Jurgis?”
-
-The man breathed hard, three or four times. “Go—on,” he panted,
-finally.
-
-“I went with her,” said Stanislovas, “but Miss Henderson wouldn’t take
-her back. And Connor saw her and cursed her. He was still bandaged
-up—why did you hit him, Jurgis?” (There was some fascinating mystery
-about this, the little fellow knew; but he could get no satisfaction.)
-
-Jurgis could not speak; he could only stare, his eyes starting out.
-“She has been trying to get other work,” the boy went on; “but she’s so
-weak she can’t keep up. And my boss would not take me back, either—Ona
-says he knows Connor, and that’s the reason; they’ve all got a grudge
-against us now. So I’ve got to go downtown and sell papers with the
-rest of the boys and Kotrina—”
-
-“Kotrina!”
-
-“Yes, she’s been selling papers, too. She does best, because she’s a
-girl. Only the cold is so bad—it’s terrible coming home at night,
-Jurgis. Sometimes they can’t come home at all—I’m going to try to find
-them tonight and sleep where they do, it’s so late and it’s such a long
-ways home. I’ve had to walk, and I didn’t know where it was—I don’t
-know how to get back, either. Only mother said I must come, because you
-would want to know, and maybe somebody would help your family when they
-had put you in jail so you couldn’t work. And I walked all day to get
-here—and I only had a piece of bread for breakfast, Jurgis. Mother
-hasn’t any work either, because the sausage department is shut down;
-and she goes and begs at houses with a basket, and people give her
-food. Only she didn’t get much yesterday; it was too cold for her
-fingers, and today she was crying—”
-
-So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood,
-gripping the table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his
-head would burst; it was like having weights piled upon him, one after
-another, crushing the life out of him. He struggled and fought within
-himself—as if in some terrible nightmare, in which a man suffers an
-agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry out, but feels that he is
-going mad, that his brain is on fire—
-
-Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would kill
-him, little Stanislovas stopped. “You cannot help us?” he said weakly.
-
-Jurgis shook his head.
-
-“They won’t give you anything here?”
-
-He shook it again.
-
-“When are you coming out?”
-
-“Three weeks yet,” Jurgis answered.
-
-And the boy gazed around him uncertainly. “Then I might as well go,” he
-said.
-
-Jurgis nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into his
-pocket and drew it out, shaking. “Here,” he said, holding out the
-fourteen cents. “Take this to them.”
-
-And Stanislovas took it, and after a little more hesitation, started
-for the door. “Good-by, Jurgis,” he said, and the other noticed that he
-walked unsteadily as he passed out of sight.
-
-For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to his chair, reeling and
-swaying; then the keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and went
-back to breaking stone.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII
-
-
-Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had
-expected. To his sentence there were added “court costs” of a dollar
-and a half—he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him in
-jail, and not having the money, was obliged to work it off by three
-days more of toil. Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him this—only
-after counting the days and looking forward to the end in an agony of
-impatience, when the hour came that he expected to be free he found
-himself still set at the stone heap, and laughed at when he ventured to
-protest. Then he concluded he must have counted wrong; but as another
-day passed, he gave up all hope—and was sunk in the depths of despair,
-when one morning after breakfast a keeper came to him with the word
-that his time was up at last. So he doffed his prison garb, and put on
-his old fertilizer clothing, and heard the door of the prison clang
-behind him.
-
-He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it
-was true,—that the sky was above him again and the open street before
-him; that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through
-his clothes, and he started quickly away.
-
-There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety
-rain was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone. He
-had not stopped for his-overcoat when he set out to “do up” Connor, and
-so his rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences; his
-clothing was old and worn thin, and it never had been very warm. Now as
-he trudged on the rain soon wet it through; there were six inches of
-watery slush on the sidewalks, so that his feet would soon have been
-soaked, even had there been no holes in his shoes.
-
-Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been the
-least trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago; but even
-so, he had not grown strong—the fear and grief that had preyed upon his
-mind had worn him thin. Now he shivered and shrunk from the rain,
-hiding his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders together.
-The Bridewell grounds were on the outskirts of the city and the country
-around them was unsettled and wild—on one side was the big drainage
-canal, and on the other a maze of railroad tracks, and so the wind had
-full sweep.
-
-After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
-“Hey, sonny!” The boy cocked one eye at him—he knew that Jurgis was a
-“jailbird” by his shaven head. “Wot yer want?” he queried.
-
-“How do you go to the stockyards?” Jurgis demanded.
-
-“I don’t go,” replied the boy.
-
-Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, “I mean which is
-the way?”
-
-“Why don’t yer say so then?” was the response, and the boy pointed to
-the northwest, across the tracks. “That way.”
-
-“How far is it?” Jurgis asked. “I dunno,” said the other. “Mebbe twenty
-miles or so.”
-
-“Twenty miles!” Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk every
-foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his
-pockets.
-
-Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking,
-he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful
-imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind
-at once. The agony was almost over—he was going to find out; and he
-clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his flying
-desire, almost at a run. Ona—the baby—the family—the house—he would
-know the truth about them all! And he was coming to the rescue—he was
-free again! His hands were his own, and he could help them, he could do
-battle for them against the world.
-
-For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him.
-He seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning
-into a country road, leading out to the westward; there were
-snow-covered fields on either side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving
-a two-horse wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.
-
-“Is this the way to the stockyards?” he asked.
-
-The farmer scratched his head. “I dunno jest where they be,” he said.
-“But they’re in the city somewhere, and you’re going dead away from it
-now.”
-
-Jurgis looked dazed. “I was told this was the way,” he said.
-
-“Who told you?”
-
-“A boy.”
-
-“Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye. The best thing ye kin do is
-to go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman. I’d take ye in,
-only I’ve come a long ways an’ I’m loaded heavy. Git up!”
-
-So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning he
-began to see Chicago again. Past endless blocks of two-story shanties
-he walked, along wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways treacherous with
-deep slush holes. Every few blocks there would be a railroad crossing
-on the level with the sidewalk, a deathtrap for the unwary; long
-freight trains would be passing, the cars clanking and crashing
-together, and Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up with a fever
-of impatience. Occasionally the cars would stop for some minutes, and
-wagons and streetcars would crowd together waiting, the drivers
-swearing at each other, or hiding beneath umbrellas out of the rain; at
-such times Jurgis would dodge under the gates and run across the tracks
-and between the cars, taking his life into his hands.
-
-He crossed a long bridge over a river frozen solid and covered with
-slush. Not even on the river bank was the snow white—the rain which
-fell was a diluted solution of smoke, and Jurgis’ hands and face were
-streaked with black. Then he came into the business part of the city,
-where the streets were sewers of inky blackness, with horses sleeping
-and plunging, and women and children flying across in panic-stricken
-droves. These streets were huge canyons formed by towering black
-buildings, echoing with the clang of car gongs and the shouts of
-drivers; the people who swarmed in them were as busy as ants—all
-hurrying breathlessly, never stopping to look at anything nor at each
-other. The solitary trampish-looking foreigner, with water-soaked
-clothing and haggard face and anxious eyes, was as much alone as he
-hurried past them, as much unheeded and as lost, as if he had been a
-thousand miles deep in a wilderness.
-
-A policeman gave him his direction and told him that he had five miles
-to go. He came again to the slum districts, to avenues of saloons and
-cheap stores, with long dingy red factory buildings, and coal-yards and
-railroad tracks; and then Jurgis lifted up his head and began to sniff
-the air like a startled animal—scenting the far-off odor of home. It
-was late afternoon then, and he was hungry, but the dinner invitations
-hung out of the saloons were not for him.
-
-So he came at last to the stockyards, to the black volcanoes of smoke
-and the lowing cattle and the stench. Then, seeing a crowded car, his
-impatience got the better of him and he jumped aboard, hiding behind
-another man, unnoticed by the conductor. In ten minutes more he had
-reached his street, and home.
-
-He was half running as he came round the corner. There was the house,
-at any rate—and then suddenly he stopped and stared. What was the
-matter with the house?
-
-Jurgis looked twice, bewildered; then he glanced at the house next door
-and at the one beyond—then at the saloon on the corner. Yes, it was the
-right place, quite certainly—he had not made any mistake. But the
-house—the house was a different color!
-
-He came a couple of steps nearer. Yes; it had been gray and now it was
-yellow! The trimmings around the windows had been red, and now they
-were green! It was all newly painted! How strange it made it seem!
-
-Jurgis went closer yet, but keeping on the other side of the street. A
-sudden and horrible spasm of fear had come over him. His knees were
-shaking beneath him, and his mind was in a whirl. New paint on the
-house, and new weatherboards, where the old had begun to rot off, and
-the agent had got after them! New shingles over the hole in the roof,
-too, the hole that had for six months been the bane of his soul—he
-having no money to have it fixed and no time to fix it himself, and the
-rain leaking in, and overflowing the pots and pans he put to catch it,
-and flooding the attic and loosening the plaster. And now it was fixed!
-And the broken windowpane replaced! And curtains in the windows! New,
-white curtains, stiff and shiny!
-
-Then suddenly the front door opened. Jurgis stood, his chest heaving as
-he struggled to catch his breath. A boy had come out, a stranger to
-him; a big, fat, rosy-cheeked youngster, such as had never been seen in
-his home before.
-
-Jurgis stared at the boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling,
-kicking off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and
-then leaned against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later he
-looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile
-glance, the boy evidently thinking that the other had suspicions of the
-snowball. When Jurgis started slowly across the street toward him, he
-gave a quick glance about, meditating retreat, but then he concluded to
-stand his ground.
-
-Jurgis took hold of the railing of the steps, for he was a little
-unsteady. “What—what are you doing here?” he managed to gasp.
-
-“Go on!” said the boy.
-
-“You—” Jurgis tried again. “What do you want here?”
-
-“Me?” answered the boy, angrily. “I live here.”
-
-“You live here!” Jurgis panted. He turned white and clung more tightly
-to the railing. “You live here! Then where’s my family?”
-
-The boy looked surprised. “Your family!” he echoed.
-
-And Jurgis started toward him. “I—this is my house!” he cried.
-
-“Come off!” said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened, and
-he called: “Hey, ma! Here’s a fellow says he owns this house.”
-
-A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. “What’s that?” she
-demanded.
-
-Jurgis turned toward her. “Where is my family?” he cried, wildly. “I
-left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?”
-
-The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought she
-was dealing with a maniac—Jurgis looked like one. “Your home!” she
-echoed.
-
-“My home!” he half shrieked. “I lived here, I tell you.”
-
-“You must be mistaken,” she answered him. “No one ever lived here. This
-is a new house. They told us so. They—”
-
-“What have they done with my family?” shouted Jurgis, frantically.
-
-A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts
-of what “they” had told her. “I don’t know where your family is,” she
-said. “I bought the house only three days ago, and there was nobody
-here, and they told me it was all new. Do you really mean you had ever
-rented it?”
-
-“Rented it!” panted Jurgis. “I bought it! I paid for it! I own it! And
-they—my God, can’t you tell me where my people went?”
-
-She made him understand at last that she knew nothing. Jurgis’ brain
-was so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his
-family had been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving to be
-dream people, who never had existed at all. He was quite lost—but then
-suddenly he thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next
-block. She would know! He turned and started at a run.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She cried out when
-she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes, yes, she could tell him.
-The family had moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they
-had been turned out into the snow, and the house had been repainted and
-sold again the next week. No, she had not heard how they were, but she
-could tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene, with whom
-they had stayed when they first came to the yards. Wouldn’t Jurgis come
-in and rest? It was certainly too bad—if only he had not got into jail—
-
-And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go very far round
-the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a
-saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry,
-racking sobs.
-
-Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage,
-overwhelmed him—what was any imagination of the thing to this
-heartbreaking, crushing reality of it—to the sight of strange people
-living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring at
-him with hostile eyes! It was monstrous, it was unthinkable—they could
-not do it—it could not be true! Only think what he had suffered for
-that house—what miseries they had all suffered for it—the price they
-had paid for it!
-
-The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the
-beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together,
-all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and
-starvation! And then their toil, month by month, to get together the
-twelve dollars, and the interest as well, and now and then the taxes,
-and the other charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why, they had put
-their very souls into their payments on that house, they had paid for
-it with their sweat and tears—yes, more, with their very lifeblood.
-Dede Antanas had died of the struggle to earn that money—he would have
-been alive and strong today if he had not had to work in Durham’s dark
-cellars to earn his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and
-strength to pay for it—she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so
-was he, who had been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat
-here shivering, broken, cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah!
-they had cast their all into the fight; and they had lost, they had
-lost! All that they had paid was gone—every cent of it. And their house
-was gone—they were back where they had started from, flung out into the
-cold to starve and freeze!
-
-Jurgis could see all the truth now—could see himself, through the whole
-long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn
-into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and
-tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the
-horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He
-and his family, helpless women and children, struggling to live,
-ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they were—and the enemies that
-had been lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for
-their blood! That first lying circular, that smooth-tongued slippery
-agent! That trap of the extra payments, the interest, and all the other
-charges that they had not the means to pay, and would never have
-attempted to pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their
-masters, the tyrants who ruled them—the shutdowns and the scarcity of
-work, the irregular hours and the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of
-wages, the raising of prices! The mercilessness of nature about them,
-of heat and cold, rain and snow; the mercilessness of the city, of the
-country in which they lived, of its laws and customs that they did not
-understand! All of these things had worked together for the company
-that had marked them for its prey and was waiting for its chance. And
-now, with this last hideous injustice, its time had come, and it had
-turned them out bag and baggage, and taken their house and sold it
-again! And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot—the law
-was against them, the whole machinery of society was at their
-oppressors’ command! If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them,
-back he would go into that wild-beast pen from which he had just
-escaped!
-
-To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave
-the strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering
-in the rain for hours before he could do that, had it not been for the
-thought of his family. It might be that he had worse things yet to
-learn—and so he got to his feet and started away, walking on, wearily,
-half-dazed.
-
-To Aniele’s house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles; the
-distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the
-familiar dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the
-steps and began to hammer upon the door.
-
-The old woman herself came to open it. She had shrunk all up with her
-rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow parchment
-face stared up at him from a little above the level of the doorknob.
-She gave a start when she saw him. “Is Ona here?” he cried,
-breathlessly.
-
-“Yes,” was the answer, “she’s here.”
-
-“How—” Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching convulsively at
-the side of the door. From somewhere within the house had come a sudden
-cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish. And the voice was Ona’s. For a
-moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright; then he bounded past
-the old woman and into the room.
-
-It was Aniele’s kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a dozen
-women, pale and frightened. One of them started to her feet as Jurgis
-entered; she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one arm tied up in
-bandages—he hardly realized that it was Marija. He looked first for
-Ona; then, not seeing her, he stared at the women, expecting them to
-speak. But they sat dumb, gazing back at him, panic-stricken; and a
-second later came another piercing scream.
-
-It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs. Jurgis bounded to a
-door of the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading through
-a trap door to the garret, and he was at the foot of it when suddenly
-he heard a voice behind him, and saw Marija at his heels. She seized
-him by the sleeve with her good hand, panting wildly, “No, no, Jurgis!
-Stop!”
-
-“What do you mean?” he gasped.
-
-“You mustn’t go up,” she cried.
-
-Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright. “What’s the
-matter?” he shouted. “What is it?”
-
-Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning
-above, and he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for her
-reply. “No, no,” she rushed on. “Jurgis! You mustn’t go up! It’s—it’s
-the child!”
-
-“The child?” he echoed in perplexity. “Antanas?”
-
-Marija answered him, in a whisper: “The new one!”
-
-And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder. He stared
-at her as if she were a ghost. “The new one!” he gasped. “But it isn’t
-time,” he added, wildly.
-
-Marija nodded. “I know,” she said; “but it’s come.”
-
-And then again came Ona’s scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
-making him wince and turn white. Her voice died away into a wail—then
-he heard her sobbing again, “My God—let me die, let me die!” And Marija
-hung her arms about him, crying: “Come out! Come away!”
-
-She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had
-gone all to pieces. It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen
-in—he was blasted with horror. In the room he sank into a chair,
-trembling like a leaf, Marija still holding him, and the women staring
-at him in dumb, helpless fright.
-
-And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here,
-and he staggered to his feet. “How long has this been going on?” he
-panted.
-
-“Not very long,” Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele,
-she rushed on: “You go away, Jurgis you can’t help—go away and come
-back later. It’s all right—it’s—”
-
-“Who’s with her?” Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating,
-he cried again, “Who’s with her?”
-
-“She’s—she’s all right,” she answered. “Elzbieta’s with her.”
-
-“But the doctor!” he panted. “Some one who knows!”
-
-He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath a
-whisper as she replied, “We—we have no money.” Then, frightened at the
-look on his face, she exclaimed: “It’s all right, Jurgis! You don’t
-understand—go away—go away! Ah, if you only had waited!”
-
-Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of his
-mind. It was all new to him, raw and horrible—it had fallen upon him
-like a lightning stroke. When little Antanas was born he had been at
-work, and had known nothing about it until it was over; and now he was
-not to be controlled. The frightened women were at their wits’ end; one
-after another they tried to reason with him, to make him understand
-that this was the lot of woman. In the end they half drove him out into
-the rain, where he began to pace up and down, bareheaded and frantic.
-Because he could hear Ona from the street, he would first go away to
-escape the sounds, and then come back because he could not help it. At
-the end of a quarter of an hour he rushed up the steps again, and for
-fear that he would break in the door they had to open it and let him
-in.
-
-There was no arguing with him. They could not tell him that all was
-going well—how could they know, he cried—why, she was dying, she was
-being torn to pieces! Listen to her—listen! Why, it was monstrous—it
-could not be allowed—there must be some help for it! Had they tried to
-get a doctor? They might pay him afterward—they could promise—
-
-“We couldn’t promise, Jurgis,” protested Marija. “We had no money—we
-have scarcely been able to keep alive.”
-
-“But I can work,” Jurgis exclaimed. “I can earn money!”
-
-“Yes,” she answered—“but we thought you were in jail. How could we know
-when you would return? They will not work for nothing.”
-
-Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how
-they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in
-cash. “And I had only a quarter,” she said. “I have spent every cent of
-my money—all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been
-coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don’t mean to
-pay him. And we owe Aniele for two weeks’ rent, and she is nearly
-starving, and is afraid of being turned out. We have been borrowing and
-begging to keep alive, and there is nothing more we can do—”
-
-“And the children?” cried Jurgis.
-
-“The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been
-so bad. They could not know what is happening—it came suddenly, two
-months before we expected it.”
-
-Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand;
-his head sank and his arms shook—it looked as if he were going to
-collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him,
-fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner
-of which she had something tied.
-
-“Here, Jurgis!” she said, “I have some money. _Palauk!_ See!”
-
-She unwrapped it and counted it out—thirty-four cents. “You go, now,”
-she said, “and try and get somebody yourself. And maybe the rest can
-help—give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day, and it
-will do him good to have something to think about, even if he doesn’t
-succeed. When he comes back, maybe it will be over.”
-
-And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks;
-most of them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all. Mrs.
-Olszewski, who lived next door, and had a husband who was a skilled
-cattle butcher, but a drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar, enough
-to raise the whole sum to a dollar and a quarter. Then Jurgis thrust it
-into his pocket, still holding it tightly in his fist, and started away
-at a run.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX
-
-
-“Madame Haupt Hebamme”, ran a sign, swinging from a second-story window
-over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign, with a
-hand pointing up a dingy flight of stairs. Jurgis went up them, three
-at a time.
-
-Madame Haupt was frying pork and onions, and had her door half open to
-let out the smoke. When he tried to knock upon it, it swung open the
-rest of the way, and he had a glimpse of her, with a black bottle
-turned up to her lips. Then he knocked louder, and she started and put
-it away. She was a Dutchwoman, enormously fat—when she walked she
-rolled like a small boat on the ocean, and the dishes in the cupboard
-jostled each other. She wore a filthy blue wrapper, and her teeth were
-black.
-
-“Vot is it?” she said, when she saw Jurgis.
-
-He had run like mad all the way and was so out of breath he could
-hardly speak. His hair was flying and his eyes wild—he looked like a
-man that had risen from the tomb. “My wife!” he panted. “Come quickly!”
-Madame Haupt set the frying pan to one side and wiped her hands on her
-wrapper.
-
-“You vant me to come for a case?” she inquired.
-
-“Yes,” gasped Jurgis.
-
-“I haf yust come back from a case,” she said. “I haf had no time to eat
-my dinner. Still—if it is so bad—”
-
-“Yes—it is!” cried he.
-
-“Vell, den, perhaps—vot you pay?”
-
-“I—I—how much do you want?” Jurgis stammered.
-
-“Tventy-five dollars.” His face fell. “I can’t pay that,” he said.
-
-The woman was watching him narrowly. “How much do you pay?” she
-demanded.
-
-“Must I pay now—right away?”
-
-“Yes; all my customers do.”
-
-“I—I haven’t much money,” Jurgis began in an agony of dread. “I’ve been
-in—in trouble—and my money is gone. But I’ll pay you—every cent—just as
-soon as I can; I can work—”
-
-“Vot is your work?”
-
-“I have no place now. I must get one. But I—”
-
-“How much haf you got now?”
-
-He could hardly bring himself to reply. When he said “A dollar and a
-quarter,” the woman laughed in his face.
-
-“I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter,” she said.
-
-“It’s all I’ve got,” he pleaded, his voice breaking. “I must get some
-one—my wife will die. I can’t help it—I—”
-
-Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove. She turned
-to him and answered, out of the steam and noise: “Git me ten dollars
-cash, und so you can pay me the rest next mont’.”
-
-“I can’t do it—I haven’t got it!” Jurgis protested. “I tell you I have
-only a dollar and a quarter.”
-
-The woman turned to her work. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Dot is
-all to try to sheat me. Vot is de reason a big man like you has got
-only a dollar und a quarter?”
-
-“I’ve just been in jail,” Jurgis cried—he was ready to get down upon
-his knees to the woman—“and I had no money before, and my family has
-almost starved.”
-
-“Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?”
-
-“They are all poor,” he answered. “They gave me this. I have done
-everything I can—”
-
-“Haven’t you got notting you can sell?”
-
-“I have nothing, I tell you—I have nothing,” he cried, frantically.
-
-“Can’t you borrow it, den? Don’t your store people trust you?” Then, as
-he shook his head, she went on: “Listen to me—if you git me you vill be
-glad of it. I vill save your wife und baby for you, and it vill not
-seem like mooch to you in de end. If you loose dem now how you tink you
-feel den? Und here is a lady dot knows her business—I could send you to
-people in dis block, und dey vould tell you—”
-
-Madame Haupt was pointing her cooking-fork at Jurgis persuasively; but
-her words were more than he could bear. He flung up his hands with a
-gesture of despair and turned and started away. “It’s no use,” he
-exclaimed—but suddenly he heard the woman’s voice behind him again—
-
-“I vill make it five dollars for you.”
-
-She followed behind him, arguing with him. “You vill be foolish not to
-take such an offer,” she said. “You von’t find nobody go out on a rainy
-day like dis for less. Vy, I haf never took a case in my life so sheap
-as dot. I couldn’t pay mine room rent—”
-
-Jurgis interrupted her with an oath of rage. “If I haven’t got it,” he
-shouted, “how can I pay it? Damn it, I would pay you if I could, but I
-tell you I haven’t got it. I haven’t got it! Do you hear me—_I haven’t
-got it!_”
-
-He turned and started away again. He was halfway down the stairs before
-Madame Haupt could shout to him: “Vait! I vill go mit you! Come back!”
-
-He went back into the room again.
-
-“It is not goot to tink of anybody suffering,” she said, in a
-melancholy voice. “I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot you
-offer me, but I vill try to help you. How far is it?”
-
-“Three or four blocks from here.”
-
-“Tree or four! Und so I shall get soaked! Gott in Himmel, it ought to
-be vorth more! Vun dollar und a quarter, und a day like dis!—But you
-understand now—you vill pay me de rest of twenty-five dollars soon?”
-
-“As soon as I can.”
-
-“Some time dis mont’?”
-
-“Yes, within a month,” said poor Jurgis. “Anything! Hurry up!”
-
-“Vere is de dollar und a quarter?” persisted Madame Haupt,
-relentlessly.
-
-Jurgis put the money on the table and the woman counted it and stowed
-it away. Then she wiped her greasy hands again and proceeded to get
-ready, complaining all the time; she was so fat that it was painful for
-her to move, and she grunted and gasped at every step. She took off her
-wrapper without even taking the trouble to turn her back to Jurgis, and
-put on her corsets and dress. Then there was a black bonnet which had
-to be adjusted carefully, and an umbrella which was mislaid, and a bag
-full of necessaries which had to be collected from here and there—the
-man being nearly crazy with anxiety in the meantime. When they were on
-the street he kept about four paces ahead of her, turning now and then,
-as if he could hurry her on by the force of his desire. But Madame
-Haupt could only go so far at a step, and it took all her attention to
-get the needed breath for that.
-
-They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women in
-the kitchen. It was not over yet, Jurgis learned—he heard Ona crying
-still; and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid it on the
-mantelpiece, and got out of her bag, first an old dress and then a
-saucer of goose grease, which she proceeded to rub upon her hands. The
-more cases this goose grease is used in, the better luck it brings to
-the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her kitchen mantelpiece or stowed
-away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes, for months, and sometimes
-even for years.
-
-Then they escorted her to the ladder, and Jurgis heard her give an
-exclamation of dismay. “Gott in Himmel, vot for haf you brought me to a
-place like dis? I could not climb up dot ladder. I could not git troo a
-trap door! I vill not try it—vy, I might kill myself already. Vot sort
-of a place is dot for a woman to bear a child in—up in a garret, mit
-only a ladder to it? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” Jurgis
-stood in the doorway and listened to her scolding, half drowning out
-the horrible moans and screams of Ona.
-
-At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent;
-then, however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned her
-about the floor of the garret. They had no real floor—they had laid old
-boards in one part to make a place for the family to live; it was all
-right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had only the
-joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and
-if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe. As it was half
-dark up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up first with a
-candle. Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last
-Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through
-the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt started to
-walk. Then suddenly Aniele came to him and took him by the arm.
-
-“Now,” she said, “you go away. Do as I tell you—you have done all you
-can, and you are only in the way. Go away and stay away.”
-
-“But where shall I go?” Jurgis asked, helplessly.
-
-“I don’t know where,” she answered. “Go on the street, if there is no
-other place—only go! And stay all night!”
-
-In the end she and Marija pushed him out of the door and shut it behind
-him. It was just about sundown, and it was turning cold—the rain had
-changed to snow, and the slush was freezing. Jurgis shivered in his
-thin clothing, and put his hands into his pockets and started away. He
-had not eaten since morning, and he felt weak and ill; with a sudden
-throb of hope he recollected he was only a few blocks from the saloon
-where he had been wont to eat his dinner. They might have mercy on him
-there, or he might meet a friend. He set out for the place as fast as
-he could walk.
-
-“Hello, Jack,” said the saloon-keeper, when he entered—they call all
-foreigners and unskilled men “Jack” in Packingtown. “Where’ve you
-been?”
-
-Jurgis went straight to the bar. “I’ve been in jail,” he said, “and
-I’ve just got out. I walked home all the way, and I’ve not a cent, and
-had nothing to eat since this morning. And I’ve lost my home, and my
-wife’s ill, and I’m done up.”
-
-The saloon-keeper gazed at him, with his haggard white face and his
-blue trembling lips. Then he pushed a big bottle toward him. “Fill her
-up!” he said.
-
-Jurgis could hardly hold the bottle, his hands shook so.
-
-“Don’t be afraid,” said the saloon-keeper, “fill her up!”
-
-So Jurgis drank a large glass of whisky, and then turned to the lunch
-counter, in obedience to the other’s suggestion. He ate all he dared,
-stuffing it in as fast as he could; and then, after trying to speak his
-gratitude, he went and sat down by the big red stove in the middle of
-the room.
-
-It was too good to last, however—like all things in this hard world.
-His soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of
-fertilizer to fill the room. In an hour or so the packing houses would
-be closing and the men coming in from their work; and they would not
-come into a place that smelt of Jurgis. Also it was Saturday night, and
-in a couple of hours would come a violin and a cornet, and in the rear
-part of the saloon the families of the neighborhood would dance and
-feast upon wienerwurst and lager, until two or three o’clock in the
-morning. The saloon-keeper coughed once or twice, and then remarked,
-“Say, Jack, I’m afraid you’ll have to quit.”
-
-He was used to the sight of human wrecks, this saloon-keeper; he
-“fired” dozens of them every night, just as haggard and cold and
-forlorn as this one. But they were all men who had given up and been
-counted out, while Jurgis was still in the fight, and had reminders of
-decency about him. As he got up meekly, the other reflected that he had
-always been a steady man, and might soon be a good customer again.
-“You’ve been up against it, I see,” he said. “Come this way.”
-
-In the rear of the saloon were the cellar stairs. There was a door
-above and another below, both safely padlocked, making the stairs an
-admirable place to stow away a customer who might still chance to have
-money, or a political light whom it was not advisable to kick out of
-doors.
-
-So Jurgis spent the night. The whisky had only half warmed him, and he
-could not sleep, exhausted as he was; he would nod forward, and then
-start up, shivering with the cold, and begin to remember again. Hour
-after hour passed, until he could only persuade himself that it was not
-morning by the sounds of music and laughter and singing that were to be
-heard from the room. When at last these ceased, he expected that he
-would be turned out into the street; as this did not happen, he fell to
-wondering whether the man had forgotten him.
-
-In the end, when the silence and suspense were no longer to be borne,
-he got up and hammered on the door; and the proprietor came, yawning
-and rubbing his eyes. He was keeping open all night, and dozing between
-customers.
-
-“I want to go home,” Jurgis said. “I’m worried about my wife—I can’t
-wait any longer.”
-
-“Why the hell didn’t you say so before?” said the man. “I thought you
-didn’t have any home to go to.” Jurgis went outside. It was four
-o’clock in the morning, and as black as night. There were three or four
-inches of fresh snow on the ground, and the flakes were falling thick
-and fast. He turned toward Aniele’s and started at a run.
-
-There was a light burning in the kitchen window and the blinds were
-drawn. The door was unlocked and Jurgis rushed in.
-
-Aniele, Marija, and the rest of the women were huddled about the stove,
-exactly as before; with them were several newcomers, Jurgis
-noticed—also he noticed that the house was silent.
-
-“Well?” he said.
-
-No one answered him, they sat staring at him with their pale faces. He
-cried again: “Well?”
-
-And then, by the light of the smoky lamp, he saw Marija who sat nearest
-him, shaking her head slowly. “Not yet,” she said.
-
-And Jurgis gave a cry of dismay. “Not _yet?_”
-
-Again Marija’s head shook. The poor fellow stood dumfounded. “I don’t
-hear her,” he gasped.
-
-“She’s been quiet a long time,” replied the other.
-
-There was another pause—broken suddenly by a voice from the attic:
-“Hello, there!”
-
-Several of the women ran into the next room, while Marija sprang toward
-Jurgis. “Wait here!” she cried, and the two stood, pale and trembling,
-listening. In a few moments it became clear that Madame Haupt was
-engaged in descending the ladder, scolding and exhorting again, while
-the ladder creaked in protest. In a moment or two she reached the
-ground, angry and breathless, and they heard her coming into the room.
-Jurgis gave one glance at her, and then turned white and reeled. She
-had her jacket off, like one of the workers on the killing beds. Her
-hands and arms were smeared with blood, and blood was splashed upon her
-clothing and her face.
-
-She stood breathing hard, and gazing about her; no one made a sound. “I
-haf done my best,” she began suddenly. “I can do noffing more—dere is
-no use to try.”
-
-Again there was silence.
-
-“It ain’t my fault,” she said. “You had ought to haf had a doctor, und
-not vaited so long—it vas too late already ven I come.” Once more there
-was deathlike stillness. Marija was clutching Jurgis with all the power
-of her one well arm.
-
-Then suddenly Madame Haupt turned to Aniele. “You haf not got something
-to drink, hey?” she queried. “Some brandy?”
-
-Aniele shook her head.
-
-“Herr Gott!” exclaimed Madame Haupt. “Such people! Perhaps you vill
-give me someting to eat den—I haf had noffing since yesterday morning,
-und I haf vorked myself near to death here. If I could haf known it vas
-like dis, I vould never haf come for such money as you gif me.” At this
-moment she chanced to look round, and saw Jurgis: She shook her finger
-at him. “You understand me,” she said, “you pays me dot money yust de
-same! It is not my fault dat you send for me so late I can’t help your
-vife. It is not my fault if der baby comes mit one arm first, so dot I
-can’t save it. I haf tried all night, und in dot place vere it is not
-fit for dogs to be born, und mit notting to eat only vot I brings in
-mine own pockets.”
-
-Here Madame Haupt paused for a moment to get her breath; and Marija,
-seeing the beads of sweat on Jurgis’s forehead, and feeling the
-quivering of his frame, broke out in a low voice: “How is Ona?”
-
-“How is she?” echoed Madame Haupt. “How do you tink she can be ven you
-leave her to kill herself so? I told dem dot ven they send for de
-priest. She is young, und she might haf got over it, und been vell und
-strong, if she had been treated right. She fight hard, dot girl—she is
-not yet quite dead.”
-
-And Jurgis gave a frantic scream. “_Dead!_”
-
-“She vill die, of course,” said the other angrily. “Der baby is dead
-now.”
-
-The garret was lighted by a candle stuck upon a board; it had almost
-burned itself out, and was sputtering and smoking as Jurgis rushed up
-the ladder. He could make out dimly in one corner a pallet of rags and
-old blankets, spread upon the floor; at the foot of it was a crucifix,
-and near it a priest muttering a prayer. In a far corner crouched
-Elzbieta, moaning and wailing. Upon the pallet lay Ona.
-
-She was covered with a blanket, but he could see her shoulders and one
-arm lying bare; she was so shrunken he would scarcely have known
-her—she was all but a skeleton, and as white as a piece of chalk. Her
-eyelids were closed, and she lay still as death. He staggered toward
-her and fell upon his knees with a cry of anguish: “Ona! Ona!”
-
-She did not stir. He caught her hand in his, and began to clasp it
-frantically, calling: “Look at me! Answer me! It is Jurgis come
-back—don’t you hear me?”
-
-There was the faintest quivering of the eyelids, and he called again in
-frenzy: “Ona! Ona!”
-
-Then suddenly her eyes opened one instant. One instant she looked at
-him—there was a flash of recognition between them, he saw her afar off,
-as through a dim vista, standing forlorn. He stretched out his arms to
-her, he called her in wild despair; a fearful yearning surged up in
-him, hunger for her that was agony, desire that was a new being born
-within him, tearing his heartstrings, torturing him. But it was all in
-vain—she faded from him, she slipped back and was gone. And a wail of
-anguish burst from him, great sobs shook all his frame, and hot tears
-ran down his cheeks and fell upon her. He clutched her hands, he shook
-her, he caught her in his arms and pressed her to him but she lay cold
-and still—she was gone—she was gone!
-
-The word rang through him like the sound of a bell, echoing in the far
-depths of him, making forgotten chords to vibrate, old shadowy fears to
-stir—fears of the dark, fears of the void, fears of annihilation. She
-was dead! She was dead! He would never see her again, never hear her
-again! An icy horror of loneliness seized him; he saw himself standing
-apart and watching all the world fade away from him—a world of shadows,
-of fickle dreams. He was like a little child, in his fright and grief;
-he called and called, and got no answer, and his cries of despair
-echoed through the house, making the women downstairs draw nearer to
-each other in fear. He was inconsolable, beside himself—the priest came
-and laid his hand upon his shoulder and whispered to him, but he heard
-not a sound. He was gone away himself, stumbling through the shadows,
-and groping after the soul that had fled.
-
-So he lay. The gray dawn came up and crept into the attic. The priest
-left, the women left, and he was alone with the still, white
-figure—quieter now, but moaning and shuddering, wrestling with the
-grisly fiend. Now and then he would raise himself and stare at the
-white mask before him, then hide his eyes because he could not bear it.
-Dead! _dead!_ And she was only a girl, she was barely eighteen! Her
-life had hardly begun—and here she lay murdered—mangled, tortured to
-death!
-
-It was morning when he rose up and came down into the kitchen—haggard
-and ashen gray, reeling and dazed. More of the neighbors had come in,
-and they stared at him in silence as he sank down upon a chair by the
-table and buried his face in his arms.
-
-A few minutes later the front door opened; a blast of cold and snow
-rushed in, and behind it little Kotrina, breathless from running, and
-blue with the cold. “I’m home again!” she exclaimed. “I could hardly—”
-
-And then, seeing Jurgis, she stopped with an exclamation. Looking from
-one to another she saw that something had happened, and she asked, in a
-lower voice: “What’s the matter?”
-
-Before anyone could reply, Jurgis started up; he went toward her,
-walking unsteadily. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
-
-“Selling papers with the boys,” she said. “The snow—”
-
-“Have you any money?” he demanded.
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“How much?”
-
-“Nearly three dollars, Jurgis.”
-
-“Give it to me.”
-
-Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the others. “Give it to
-me!” he commanded again, and she put her hand into her pocket and
-pulled out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag. Jurgis took it without
-a word, and went out of the door and down the street.
-
-Three doors away was a saloon. “Whisky,” he said, as he entered, and as
-the man pushed him some, he tore at the rag with his teeth and pulled
-out half a dollar. “How much is the bottle?” he said. “I want to get
-drunk.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX
-
-
-But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was
-Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick,
-realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not
-bought a single instant’s forgetfulness with it.
-
-Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the
-morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the
-potter’s field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each
-of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the
-children were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing
-rascal, had been spending their money on drink. So spoke Aniele,
-scornfully, and when he started toward the fire she added the
-information that her kitchen was no longer for him to fill with his
-phosphate stinks. She had crowded all her boarders into one room on
-Ona’s account, but now he could go up in the garret where he
-belonged—and not there much longer, either, if he did not pay her some
-rent.
-
-Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping
-boarders in the next room, ascended the ladder. It was dark up above;
-they could not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as
-outdoors. In a corner, as far away from the corpse as possible, sat
-Marija, holding little Antanas in her one good arm and trying to soothe
-him to sleep. In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing
-because he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija said not a word to
-Jurgis; he crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by the
-body.
-
-Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children, and
-upon his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself up
-again to the luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a
-sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never
-dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
-that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away,
-and that he would never lay eyes upon her again—never all the days of
-his life. His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten to
-death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory were lifted—he saw
-all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the
-first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird.
-He saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her
-heart of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in
-his ears, the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long,
-cruel battle with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him,
-but it had not changed her—she had been the same hungry soul to the
-end, stretching out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for
-love and tenderness. And she had suffered—so cruelly she had suffered,
-such agonies, such infamies—ah, God, the memory of them was not to be
-borne. What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been!
-Every angry word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him
-like a knife; every selfish act that he had done—with what torments he
-paid for them now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his
-soul—now that it could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too
-late! His bosom-was choking with it, bursting with it; he crouched here
-in the darkness beside her, stretching out his arms to her—and she was
-gone forever, she was dead! He could have screamed aloud with the
-horror and despair of it; a sweat of agony beaded his forehead, yet he
-dared not make a sound—he scarcely dared to breathe, because of his
-shame and loathing of himself.
-
-Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass, and
-paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home.
-She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that some one had given her,
-and with that they quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she
-came over to Jurgis and sat down beside him.
-
-She said not a word of reproach—she and Marija had chosen that course
-before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead
-wife. Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded
-out of her soul by fear. She had to bury one of her children—but then
-she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone
-back to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the
-primitive creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though
-cut in half; like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one,
-will mother the last that is left her. She did this because it was her
-nature—she asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the
-worth-whileness of life in which destruction and death ran riot.
-
-And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis,
-pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others
-were left and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children.
-She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his
-own son. Ona had given Antanas to him—the little fellow was the only
-remembrance of her that he had; he must treasure it and protect it, he
-must show himself a man. He knew what Ona would have had him do, what
-she would ask of him at this moment, if she could speak to him. It was
-a terrible thing that she should have died as she had; but the life had
-been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was terrible that they
-were not able to bury her, that he could not even have a day to mourn
-her—but so it was. Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and
-the children would perish—some money must be had. Could he not be a man
-for Ona’s sake, and pull himself together? In a little while they would
-be out of danger—now that they had given up the house they could live
-more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
-if only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
-intensity. It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid that
-Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was
-wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them, might take to
-the road, as Jonas had done.
-
-But with Ona’s dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think
-of treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of
-Antanas. He would give the little fellow his chance—would get to work
-at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They
-might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might.
-
-And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache,
-heartache, and all. He went straight to Graham’s fertilizer mill, to
-see if he could get back his job. But the boss shook his head when he
-saw him—no, his place had been filled long ago, and there was no room
-for him.
-
-“Do you think there will be?” Jurgis asked. “I may have to wait.”
-
-“No,” said the other, “it will not be worth your while to wait—there
-will be nothing for you here.”
-
-Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. “What is the matter?” he
-asked. “Didn’t I do my work?”
-
-The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
-“There will be nothing for you here, I said.”
-
-Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
-and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his
-stand with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in the
-snow before the time station. Here he stayed, breakfastless, for two
-hours, until the throng was driven away by the clubs of the police.
-There was no work for him that day.
-
-Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
-yards—there were saloonkeepers who would trust him for a drink and a
-sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at a
-pinch. It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he
-might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on
-thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta
-Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district, and the
-children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep them all
-alive.
-
-It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in
-the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a
-chance in one of the cellars of Jones’s big packing plant. He saw a
-foreman passing the open doorway, and hailed him for a job.
-
-“Push a truck?” inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, “Yes, sir!”
-before the words were well out of his mouth.
-
-“What’s your name?” demanded the other.
-
-“Jurgis Rudkus.”
-
-“Worked in the yards before?”
-
-“Yes.”
-
-“Whereabouts?”
-
-“Two places—Brown’s killing beds and Durham’s fertilizer mill.”
-
-“Why did you leave there?”
-
-“The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for
-a month.”
-
-“I see. Well, I’ll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for
-Mr. Thomas.”
-
-So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job—that the
-terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a
-celebration that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place half
-an hour before the time of opening. The foreman came in shortly
-afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned.
-
-“Oh,” he said, “I promised you a job, didn’t I?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Well, I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. I can’t use you.”
-
-Jurgis stared, dumfounded. “What’s the matter?” he gasped.
-
-“Nothing,” said the man, “only I can’t use you.”
-
-There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of
-the fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word,
-and he turned and went away.
-
-Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it;
-they gazed at him with pitying eyes—poor devil, he was blacklisted!
-What had he done? they asked—knocked down his boss? Good heavens, then
-he might have known! Why, he stood as much chance of getting a job in
-Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his
-time hunting? They had him on a secret list in every office, big and
-little, in the place. They had his name by this time in St. Louis and
-New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and St. Joseph. He was
-condemned and sentenced, without trial and without appeal; he could
-never work for the packers again—he could not even clean cattle pens or
-drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try it, if
-he chose, as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He
-would never be told anything about it; he would never get any more
-satisfaction than he had gotten just now; but he would always find when
-the time came that he was not needed. It would not do for him to give
-any other name, either—they had company “spotters” for just that
-purpose, and he wouldn’t keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was
-worth a fortune to the packers to keep their blacklist effective, as a
-warning to the men and a means of keeping down union agitation and
-political discontent.
-
-Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council. It
-was a most cruel thing; here in this district was his home, such as it
-was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew—and now every
-possibility of employment in it was closed to him. There was nothing in
-Packingtown but packing houses; and so it was the same thing as
-evicting him from his home.
-
-He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It
-would be convenient, downtown, to the children’s place of work; but
-then Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job
-in the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a
-month, because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up
-her mind to go away and give him up forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had
-heard something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham’s offices and
-was waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis
-should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide
-after he got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow
-there, and he dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged
-that every day he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen
-cents of their earnings, upon which he could keep going. Then all day
-he was to pace the streets with hundreds and thousands of other
-homeless wretches inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a
-chance; and at night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a
-truck, and hide there until midnight, when he might get into one of the
-station houses, and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down in
-the midst of a throng of “bums” and beggars, reeking with alcohol and
-tobacco, and filthy with vermin and disease.
-
-So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he
-got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an
-old woman’s valise and was given a quarter. This let him into a
-lodging-house on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to
-death; and it also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in
-the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting
-for a paper to be thrown away. This, however, was really not the
-advantage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of
-much loss of precious time and of many weary journeys. A full half of
-these were “fakes,” put in by the endless variety of establishments
-which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis
-lost only his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose;
-whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful
-positions he had on hand, he could only shake his head sorrowfully and
-say that he had not the necessary dollar to deposit; when it was
-explained to him what “big money” he and all his family could make by
-coloring photographs, he could only promise to come in again when he
-had two dollars to invest in the outfit.
-
-In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an
-old-time acquaintance of his union days. He met this man on his way to
-work in the giant factories of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told
-him to come along and he would speak a good word for him to his boss,
-whom he knew well. So Jurgis trudged four or five miles, and passed
-through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under the escort of
-his friend. His knees nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman,
-after looking him over and questioning him, told him that he could find
-an opening for him.
-
-How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages; for
-he found that the harvester works were the sort of place to which
-philanthropists and reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought
-for its employees; its workshops were big and roomy, it provided a
-restaurant where the workmen could buy good food at cost, it had even a
-reading room, and decent places where its girl-hands could rest; also
-the work was free from many of the elements of filth and repulsiveness
-that prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis discovered these
-things—things never expected nor dreamed of by him—until this new place
-came to seem a kind of a heaven to him.
-
-It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred and sixty acres of
-ground, employing five thousand people, and turning out over three
-hundred thousand machines every year—a good part of all the harvesting
-and mowing machines used in the country. Jurgis saw very little of it,
-of course—it was all specialized work, the same as at the stockyards;
-each one of the hundreds of parts of a mowing machine was made
-separately, and sometimes handled by hundreds of men. Where Jurgis
-worked there was a machine which cut and stamped a certain piece of
-steel about two square inches in size; the pieces came tumbling out
-upon a tray, and all that human hands had to do was to pile them in
-regular rows, and change the trays at intervals. This was done by a
-single boy, who stood with eyes and thought centered upon it, and
-fingers flying so fast that the sounds of the bits of steel striking
-upon each other was like the music of an express train as one hears it
-in a sleeping car at night. This was “piece-work,” of course; and
-besides it was made certain that the boy did not idle, by setting the
-machine to match the highest possible speed of human hands. Thirty
-thousand of these pieces he handled every day, nine or ten million
-every year—how many in a lifetime it rested with the gods to say. Near
-by him men sat bending over whirling grindstones, putting the finishing
-touches to the steel knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket
-with the right hand, pressing first one side and then the other against
-the stone and finally dropping them with the left hand into another
-basket. One of these men told Jurgis that he had sharpened three
-thousand pieces of steel a day for thirteen years. In the next room
-were wonderful machines that ate up long steel rods by slow stages,
-cutting them off, seizing the pieces, stamping heads upon them,
-grinding them and polishing them, threading them, and finally dropping
-them into a basket, all ready to bolt the harvesters together. From yet
-another machine came tens of thousands of steel burs to fit upon these
-bolts. In other places all these various parts were dipped into troughs
-of paint and hung up to dry, and then slid along on trolleys to a room
-where men streaked them with red and yellow, so that they might look
-cheerful in the harvest fields.
-
-Jurgis’s friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task was
-to make the molds of a certain part. He shoveled black sand into an
-iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden; then
-it would be taken out, and molten iron poured into it. This man, too,
-was paid by the mold—or rather for perfect castings, nearly half his
-work going for naught. You might see him, along with dozens of others,
-toiling like one possessed by a whole community of demons; his arms
-working like the driving rods of an engine, his long, black hair flying
-wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat rolling in rivers down his face.
-When he had shoveled the mold full of sand, and reached for the pounder
-to pound it with, it was after the manner of a canoeist running rapids
-and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All day long this man
-would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making
-twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then
-his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant
-captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling
-how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other
-country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it
-would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our
-wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy; though there are a few other
-things that are great among us including our drink-bill, which is a
-billion and a quarter of dollars a year, and doubling itself every
-decade.
-
-There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then another
-which, with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the sitting-down
-portion of the American farmer. Then they were piled upon a truck, and
-it was Jurgis’s task to wheel them to the room where the machines were
-“assembled.” This was child’s play for him, and he got a dollar and
-seventy-five cents a day for it; on Saturday he paid Aniele the
-seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use of her garret, and
-also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta had put in pawn when he was
-in jail.
-
-This last was a great blessing. A man cannot go about in midwinter in
-Chicago with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Jurgis had to walk or
-ride five or six miles back and forth to his work. It so happened that
-half of this was in one direction and half in another, necessitating a
-change of cars; the law required that transfers be given at all
-intersecting points, but the railway corporation had gotten round this
-by arranging a pretense at separate ownership. So whenever he wished to
-ride, he had to pay ten cents each way, or over ten per cent of his
-income to this power, which had gotten its franchises long ago by
-buying up the city council, in the face of popular clamor amounting
-almost to a rebellion. Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter
-cold as it was in the morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the
-hours other workmen were traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to
-put on so few cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the
-backs of them and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof. Of course
-the doors could never be closed, and so the cars were as cold as
-outdoors; Jurgis, like many others, found it better to spend his fare
-for a drink and a free lunch, to give him strength to walk.
-
-These, however, were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from
-Durham’s fertilizer mill. Jurgis began to pick up heart again and to
-make plans. He had lost his house but then the awful load of the rent
-and interest was off his shoulders, and when Marija was well again they
-could start over and save. In the shop where he worked was a man, a
-Lithuanian like himself, whom the others spoke of in admiring whispers,
-because of the mighty feats he was performing. All day he sat at a
-machine turning bolts; and then in the evening he went to the public
-school to study English and learn to read. In addition, because he had
-a family of eight children to support and his earnings were not enough,
-on Saturdays and Sundays he served as a watchman; he was required to
-press two buttons at opposite ends of a building every five minutes,
-and as the walk only took him two minutes, he had three minutes to
-study between each trip. Jurgis felt jealous of this fellow; for that
-was the sort of thing he himself had dreamed of, two or three years
-ago. He might do it even yet, if he had a fair chance—he might attract
-attention and become a skilled man or a boss, as some had done in this
-place. Suppose that Marija could get a job in the big mill where they
-made binder twine—then they would move into this neighborhood, and he
-would really have a chance. With a hope like that, there was some use
-in living; to find a place where you were treated like a human being—by
-God! he would show them how he could appreciate it. He laughed to
-himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job!
-
-And then one afternoon, the ninth of his work in the place, when he
-went to get his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a placard
-on the door, and when he went over and asked what it was, they told him
-that beginning with the morrow his department of the harvester works
-would be closed until further notice!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI
-
-
-That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour’s warning—the
-works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the men, and
-it would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting
-machines that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore
-out! It was nobody’s fault—that was the way of it; and thousands of men
-and women were turned out in the dead of winter, to live upon their
-savings if they had any, and otherwise to die. So many tens of
-thousands already in the city, homeless and begging for work, and now
-several thousand more added to them!
-
-Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken,
-overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more
-pitfall was revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on
-the part of employers—when they could not keep a job for him, when
-there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to
-buy! What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man should slave to
-make harvesting machines for the country, only to be turned out to
-starve for doing his duty too well!
-
-It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment.
-He did not drink anything, because Elzbieta got his money for
-safekeeping, and knew him too well to be in the least frightened by his
-angry demands. He stayed up in the garret however, and sulked—what was
-the use of a man’s hunting a job when it was taken from him before he
-had time to learn the work? But then their money was going again, and
-little Antanas was hungry, and crying with the bitter cold of the
-garret. Also Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after him for some money.
-So he went out once more.
-
-For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city,
-sick and hungry, begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices,
-in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards,
-in warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that
-went to every corner of the world. There were often one or two
-chances—but there were always a hundred men for every chance, and his
-turn would not come. At night he crept into sheds and cellars and
-doorways—until there came a spell of belated winter weather, with a
-raging gale, and the thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and
-falling all night. Then Jurgis fought like a wild beast to get into the
-big Harrison Street police station, and slept down in a corridor,
-crowded with two other men upon a single step.
-
-He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the
-factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found,
-for instance, that the business of carrying satchels for railroad
-passengers was a pre-empted one—whenever he essayed it, eight or ten
-men and boys would fall upon him and force him to run for his life.
-They always had the policeman “squared,” and so there was no use in
-expecting protection.
-
-That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the
-children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing
-the cold was almost more than the children could bear; and then they,
-too, were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them.
-The law was against them, too—little Vilimas, who was really eleven,
-but did not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe
-old lady in spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be
-working and that if he did not stop selling papers she would send a
-truant officer after him. Also one night a strange man caught little
-Kotrina by the arm and tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an
-experience which filled her with such terror that she was hardly to be
-kept at work.
-
-At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went
-home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting
-for him for three days—there was a chance of a job for him.
-
-It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger
-these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had
-only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child, but
-he had got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a
-crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to
-Mike Scully’s dump, which lay three or four blocks away. To this place
-there came every day many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash
-from the lake front, where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the
-children raked for food—there were hunks of bread and potato peelings
-and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite
-unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a
-newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came
-in. Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out
-of the dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came
-of it and Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that
-he might go again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how
-while he had been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had
-called him. A real fine lady, the little boy explained, a beautiful
-lady; and she wanted to know all about him, and whether he got the
-garbage for chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona
-had died, and how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the
-matter with Marija, and everything. In the end she had asked where he
-lived, and said that she was coming to see him, and bring him a new
-crutch to walk with. She had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas
-added, and a long fur snake around her neck.
-
-She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the
-garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of
-the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a “settlement
-worker,” she explained to Elzbieta—she lived around on Ashland Avenue.
-Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to
-go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have
-something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have
-anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came
-to live there to find out about the poor people; but what good they
-expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So spoke
-Elzbieta, naïvely, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss
-for an answer—she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical
-remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink
-of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.
-
-Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their
-woes—what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their
-home, and Marija’s accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could
-get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady’s eyes filled with
-tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face
-on Elzbieta’s shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had
-on a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor
-Elzbieta was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and
-the other had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of
-it was that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and
-left a letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was
-superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelworks in South
-Chicago. “He will get Jurgis something to do,” the young lady had said,
-and added, smiling through her tears—“If he doesn’t, he will never
-marry me.”
-
-The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so
-contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the
-sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering
-chimneys—for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast works, a
-city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade; and already a full
-hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on.
-Soon after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands
-of men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the
-way, leaping from trolley cars that passed—it seemed as if they rose
-out of the ground, in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in
-through the gate—and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were
-only a few late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and
-the hungry strangers stamping and shivering.
-
-Jurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly, and put
-him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as
-he had taken the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for
-the gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was
-addressed. A messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so
-he came inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were
-others less fortunate watching him with greedy eyes. The great mills
-were getting under way—one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and
-rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain:
-towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds,
-little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and
-oceans of billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a
-railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where
-steamers came to load.
-
-Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours
-before he was summoned. He went into the office building, where a
-company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he
-said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job. He had
-never worked in a steel mill before? But he was ready for anything?
-Well, then, they would go and see.
-
-So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He
-wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like this,
-where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked
-warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature steam engines
-came rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of
-metal sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled
-him and scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with
-soot, and hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity,
-rushing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks.
-Jurgis clung to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while
-the latter hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use
-another unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.
-
-He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of
-steel—a dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood
-where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the
-stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of
-hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding,
-bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through
-it—one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap
-from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below—and men were working
-there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
-Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
-come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one
-of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the
-stage, and another train would back up—and suddenly, without an
-instant’s warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple,
-flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back
-appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of
-white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in
-the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building,
-overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked
-through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a
-cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
-scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue,
-red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was
-white, ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river
-of life; and the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it,
-swift and resistless, back into far-off lands, where beauty and terror
-dwell. Then the great caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw
-to his relief that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide
-out into the sunlight.
-
-They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars
-of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around
-and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels were turning,
-great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked and groaned overhead,
-reaching down iron hands and seizing iron prey—it was like standing in
-the center of the earth, where the machinery of time was revolving.
-
-By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and
-Jurgis heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with
-a white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man’s body. There was a sudden
-crash and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon a
-moving platform, where steel fingers and arms seized hold of it,
-punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip
-of huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other side, and there were
-more crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped, like a pancake
-on a gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through another
-squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing
-thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing;
-it did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate,
-it was tumbled on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By
-and by it was long and thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory;
-and then, as it slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it
-was alive—it writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed out
-through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. There was
-no rest for it until it was cold and black—and then it needed only to
-be cut and straightened to be ready for a railroad.
-
-It was at the end of this rail’s progress that Jurgis got his chance.
-They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use
-another man. So he took off his coat and set to work on the spot.
-
-It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a
-dollar and twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he
-wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with him, and one of his
-fellow workingmen introduced him to a Polish lodging-house, where he
-might have the privilege of sleeping upon the floor for ten cents a
-night. He got his meals at free-lunch counters, and every Saturday
-night he went home—bedding and all—and took the greater part of his
-money to the family. Elzbieta was sorry for this arrangement, for she
-feared that it would get him into the habit of living without them, and
-once a week was not very often for him to see his baby; but there was
-no other way of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the
-steelworks, and Marija was now ready for work again, and lured on from
-day to day by the hope of finding it at the yards.
-
-In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment in
-the rail mill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the
-miracles and terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling
-and crashing. From blind fear he went to the other extreme; he became
-reckless and indifferent, like all the rest of the men, who took but
-little thought of themselves in the ardor of their work. It was
-wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these men should have
-taken an interest in the work they did—they had no share in it—they
-were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested. Also they
-knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten—and
-still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use
-methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact that
-they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man
-stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off,
-and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more
-dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white
-through every crack with the molten steel inside. Some of these were
-bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses
-when they opened and shut the doors. One morning as Jurgis was passing,
-a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire. As
-they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed
-to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the
-inside of one of his hands. The company doctor bandaged it up, but he
-got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working
-days without any pay.
-
-Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited
-chance to go at five o’clock in the morning and help scrub the office
-floors of one of the packers. Jurgis came home and covered himself with
-blankets to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and
-playing with little Antanas. Juozapas was away raking in the dump a
-good part of the time, and Elzbieta and Marija were hunting for more
-work.
-
-Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking
-machine. He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it
-seemed to him as if he had a new child. He would sit down and listen
-and stare at him, and give vent to delighted exclamations—“_Palauk!
-Muma! Tu mano szirdele!_” The little fellow was now really the one
-delight that Jurgis had in the world—his one hope, his one victory.
-Thank God, Antanas was a boy! And he was as tough as a pine knot, and
-with the appetite of a wolf. Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could
-hurt him; he had come through all the suffering and deprivation
-unscathed—only shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon
-life. He was a terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but his father
-did not mind that—he would watch him and smile to himself with
-satisfaction. The more of a fighter he was the better—he would need to
-fight before he got through.
-
-Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the
-money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole
-armful, with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that
-Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the
-long words. There was battle and murder and sudden death—it was
-marvelous how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling
-happenings; the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have
-made such things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as
-real as life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly
-as good as a spree—certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman,
-who was tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education, and
-whose work was one dull, sordid grind, day after day, and year after
-year, with never a sight of a green field nor an hour’s entertainment,
-nor anything but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other
-things, these papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were
-the main joy in life to little Antanas. He treasured them up, and would
-drag them out and make his father tell him about them; there were all
-sorts of animals among them, and Antanas could tell the names of all of
-them, lying upon the floor for hours and pointing them out with his
-chubby little fingers. Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgis
-to make out, Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then he would
-remember it, prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with
-other stories in an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation
-of words was such a delight—and the phrases he would pick up and
-remember, the most outlandish and impossible things! The first time
-that the little rascal burst out with “God damn,” his father nearly
-rolled off the chair with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this,
-for Antanas was soon “God-damning” everything and everybody.
-
-And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his bedding
-again and went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April,
-and the snow had given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in
-front of Aniele’s house was turned into a canal. Jurgis would have to
-wade through it to get home, and if it was late he might easily get
-stuck to his waist in the mire. But he did not mind this much—it was a
-promise that summer was coming. Marija had now gotten a place as
-beef-trimmer in one of the smaller packing plants; and he told himself
-that he had learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more
-accidents—so that at last there was prospect of an end to their long
-agony. They could save money again, and when another winter came they
-would have a comfortable place; and the children would be off the
-streets and in school again, and they might set to work to nurse back
-into life their habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgis
-began to make plans and dream dreams.
-
-And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home,
-with the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had
-been pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a
-rainbow in the sky, and another in his breast—for he had thirty-six
-hours’ rest before him, and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly
-he came in sight of the house, and noticed that there was a crowd
-before the door. He ran up the steps and pushed his way in, and saw
-Aniele’s kitchen crowded with excited women. It reminded him so vividly
-of the time when he had come home from jail and found Ona dying, that
-his heart almost stood still. “What’s the matter?” he cried.
-
-A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was
-staring at him. “What’s the matter?” he exclaimed again.
-
-And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija’s
-voice. He started for the ladder—and Aniele seized him by the arm. “No,
-no!” she exclaimed. “Don’t go up there!”
-
-“What is it?” he shouted.
-
-And the old woman answered him weakly: “It’s Antanas. He’s dead. He was
-drowned out in the street!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII
-
-
-Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he
-caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room,
-clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he pushed
-Aniele aside and strode into the next room and climbed the ladder.
-
-In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it; and
-beside it lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis could not
-tell. Marija was pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He
-clenched his hands tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke.
-
-“How did it happen?” he asked.
-
-Marija scarcely heard him in her agony. He repeated the question,
-louder and yet more harshly. “He fell off the sidewalk!” she wailed.
-The sidewalk in front of the house was a platform made of half-rotten
-boards, about five feet above the level of the sunken street.
-
-“How did he come to be there?” he demanded.
-
-“He went—he went out to play,” Marija sobbed, her voice choking her.
-“We couldn’t make him stay in. He must have got caught in the mud!”
-
-“Are you sure that he is dead?” he demanded.
-
-“Ai! ai!” she wailed. “Yes; we had the doctor.”
-
-Then Jurgis stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He
-took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it,
-and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A
-silence fell once more in the room as he entered. He went straight to
-the door, passed out, and started down the street.
-
-When his wife had died, Jurgis made for the nearest saloon, but he did
-not do that now, though he had his week’s wages in his pocket. He
-walked and walked, seeing nothing, splashing through mud and water.
-Later on he sat down upon a step and hid his face in his hands and for
-half an hour or so he did not move. Now and then he would whisper to
-himself: “Dead! _Dead!_”
-
-Finally, he got up and walked on again. It was about sunset, and he
-went on and on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a railroad
-crossing. The gates were down, and a long train of freight cars was
-thundering by. He stood and watched it; and all at once a wild impulse
-seized him, a thought that had been lurking within him, unspoken,
-unrecognized, leaped into sudden life. He started down the track, and
-when he was past the gate-keeper’s shanty he sprang forward and swung
-himself on to one of the cars.
-
-By and by the train stopped again, and Jurgis sprang down and ran under
-the car, and hid himself upon the truck. Here he sat, and when the
-train started again, he fought a battle with his soul. He gripped his
-hands and set his teeth together—he had not wept, and he would not—not
-a tear! It was past and over, and he was done with it—he would fling it
-off his shoulders, be free of it, the whole business, that night. It
-should go like a black, hateful nightmare, and in the morning he would
-be a new man. And every time that a thought of it assailed him—a tender
-memory, a trace of a tear—he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it
-down.
-
-He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in his
-desperation. He had been a fool, a fool! He had wasted his life, he had
-wrecked himself, with his accursed weakness; and now he was done with
-it—he would tear it out of him, root and branch! There should be no
-more tears and no more tenderness; he had had enough of them—they had
-sold him into slavery! Now he was going to be free, to tear off his
-shackles, to rise up and fight. He was glad that the end had come—it
-had to come some time, and it was just as well now. This was no world
-for women and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better
-for them. Whatever Antanas might suffer where he was, he could suffer
-no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth. And meantime his
-father had thought the last thought about him that he meant to; he was
-going to think of himself, he was going to fight for himself, against
-the world that had baffled him and tortured him!
-
-So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul,
-and setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and a
-storm of dust blew in his face; but though it stopped now and then
-through the night, he clung where he was—he would cling there until he
-was driven off, for every mile that he got from Packingtown meant
-another load from his mind.
-
-Whenever the cars stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze laden
-with the perfume of fresh fields, of honeysuckle and clover. He snuffed
-it, and it made his heart beat wildly—he was out in the country again!
-He was going to _live_ in the country! When the dawn came he was
-peering out with hungry eyes, getting glimpses of meadows and woods and
-rivers. At last he could stand it no longer, and when the train stopped
-again he crawled out. Upon the top of the car was a brakeman, who shook
-his fist and swore; Jurgis waved his hand derisively, and started
-across the country.
-
-Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for three
-long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound!
-Excepting for that one walk when he left jail, when he was too much
-worried to notice anything, and for a few times that he had rested in
-the city parks in the winter time when he was out of work, he had
-literally never seen a tree! And now he felt like a bird lifted up and
-borne away upon a gale; he stopped and stared at each new sight of
-wonder—at a herd of cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at hedgerows
-set thick with June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.
-
-Then he came to a farm-house, and after getting himself a stick for
-protection, he approached it. The farmer was greasing a wagon in front
-of the barn, and Jurgis went to him. “I would like to get some
-breakfast, please,” he said.
-
-“Do you want to work?” said the farmer.
-
-“No,” said Jurgis. “I don’t.”
-
-“Then you can’t get anything here,” snapped the other.
-
-“I meant to pay for it,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Oh,” said the farmer; and then added sarcastically, “We don’t serve
-breakfast after 7 A.M.”
-
-“I am very hungry,” said Jurgis gravely; “I would like to buy some
-food.”
-
-“Ask the woman,” said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder. The
-“woman” was more tractable, and for a dime Jurgis secured two thick
-sandwiches and a piece of pie and two apples. He walked off eating the
-pie, as the least convenient thing to carry. In a few minutes he came
-to a stream, and he climbed a fence and walked down the bank, along a
-woodland path. By and by he found a comfortable spot, and there he
-devoured his meal, slaking his thirst at the stream. Then he lay for
-hours, just gazing and drinking in joy; until at last he felt sleepy,
-and lay down in the shade of a bush.
-
-When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face. He sat up and
-stretched his arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. There was a
-deep pool, sheltered and silent, below him, and a sudden wonderful idea
-rushed upon him. He might have a bath! The water was free, and he might
-get into it—all the way into it! It would be the first time that he had
-been all the way into the water since he left Lithuania!
-
-When Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean as
-any workingman could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold
-and hunger and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the
-vermin in his home, he had given up washing in winter, and in summer
-only as much of him as would go into a basin. He had had a shower bath
-in jail, but nothing since—and now he would have a swim!
-
-The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his glee.
-Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank, and proceeded to
-scrub himself—soberly and methodically, scouring every inch of him with
-sand. While he was doing it he would do it thoroughly, and see how it
-felt to be clean. He even scrubbed his head with sand, and combed what
-the men called “crumbs” out of his long, black hair, holding his head
-under water as long as he could, to see if he could not kill them all.
-Then, seeing that the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the
-bank and proceeded to wash them, piece by piece; as the dirt and grease
-went floating off downstream he grunted with satisfaction and soused
-the clothes again, venturing even to dream that he might get rid of the
-fertilizer.
-
-He hung them all up, and while they were drying he lay down in the sun
-and had another long sleep. They were hot and stiff as boards on top,
-and a little damp on the underside, when he awakened; but being hungry,
-he put them on and set out again. He had no knife, but with some labor
-he broke himself a good stout club, and, armed with this, he marched
-down the road again.
-
-Before long he came to a big farmhouse, and turned up the lane that led
-to it. It was just supper-time, and the farmer was washing his hands at
-the kitchen door. “Please, sir,” said Jurgis, “can I have something to
-eat? I can pay.” To which the farmer responded promptly, “We don’t feed
-tramps here. Get out!”
-
-Jurgis went without a word; but as he passed round the barn he came to
-a freshly ploughed and harrowed field, in which the farmer had set out
-some young peach trees; and as he walked he jerked up a row of them by
-the roots, more than a hundred trees in all, before he reached the end
-of the field. That was his answer, and it showed his mood; from now on
-he was fighting, and the man who hit him would get all that he gave,
-every time.
-
-Beyond the orchard Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and then a
-field of winter grain, and came at last to another road. Before long he
-saw another farmhouse, and, as it was beginning to cloud over a little,
-he asked here for shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eying him
-dubiously, he added, “I’ll be glad to sleep in the barn.”
-
-“Well, I dunno,” said the other. “Do you smoke?”
-
-“Sometimes,” said Jurgis, “but I’ll do it out of doors.” When the man
-had assented, he inquired, “How much will it cost me? I haven’t very
-much money.”
-
-“I reckon about twenty cents for supper,” replied the farmer. “I won’t
-charge ye for the barn.”
-
-So Jurgis went in, and sat down at the table with the farmer’s wife and
-half a dozen children. It was a bountiful meal—there were baked beans
-and mashed potatoes and asparagus chopped and stewed, and a dish of
-strawberries, and great, thick slices of bread, and a pitcher of milk.
-Jurgis had not had such a feast since his wedding day, and he made a
-mighty effort to put in his twenty cents’ worth.
-
-They were all of them too hungry to talk; but afterward they sat upon
-the steps and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. When Jurgis
-had explained that he was a workingman from Chicago, and that he did
-not know just whither he was bound, the other said, “Why don’t you stay
-here and work for me?”
-
-“I’m not looking for work just now,” Jurgis answered.
-
-“I’ll pay ye good,” said the other, eying his big form—“a dollar a day
-and board ye. Help’s terrible scarce round here.”
-
-“Is that winter as well as summer?” Jurgis demanded quickly.
-
-“N—no,” said the farmer; “I couldn’t keep ye after November—I ain’t got
-a big enough place for that.”
-
-“I see,” said the other, “that’s what I thought. When you get through
-working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in the snow?”
-(Jurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays.)
-
-“It ain’t quite the same,” the farmer answered, seeing the point.
-“There ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do, in the
-cities, or some place, in the winter time.”
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s what they all think; and so they crowd into
-the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then people ask
-’em why they don’t go into the country, where help is scarce.” The
-farmer meditated awhile.
-
-“How about when your money’s gone?” he inquired, finally. “You’ll have
-to, then, won’t you?”
-
-“Wait till she’s gone,” said Jurgis; “then I’ll see.”
-
-He had a long sleep in the barn and then a big breakfast of coffee and
-bread and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the man charged him
-only fifteen cents, perhaps having been influenced by his arguments.
-Then Jurgis bade farewell, and went on his way.
-
-Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp. It was seldom he got as
-fair treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time went on he
-learned to shun the houses and to prefer sleeping in the fields. When
-it rained he would find a deserted building, if he could, and if not,
-he would wait until after dark and then, with his stick ready, begin a
-stealthy approach upon a barn. Generally he could get in before the dog
-got scent of him, and then he would hide in the hay and be safe until
-morning; if not, and the dog attacked him, he would rise up and make a
-retreat in battle order. Jurgis was not the mighty man he had once
-been, but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he
-needed to hit more than once.
-
-Before long there came raspberries, and then blackberries, to help him
-save his money; and there were apples in the orchards and potatoes in
-the ground—he learned to note the places and fill his pockets after
-dark. Twice he even managed to capture a chicken, and had a feast, once
-in a deserted barn and the other time in a lonely spot alongside of a
-stream. When all of these things failed him he used his money
-carefully, but without worry—for he saw that he could earn more
-whenever he chose. Half an hour’s chopping wood in his lively fashion
-was enough to bring him a meal, and when the farmer had seen him
-working he would sometimes try to bribe him to stay.
-
-But Jurgis was not staying. He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old
-_Wanderlust_ had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the
-joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. There were mishaps and
-discomforts—but at least there was always something new; and only think
-what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place,
-seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories, to be
-suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes, new
-places, and new people every hour! To a man whose whole life had
-consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted
-that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day—and to be now
-his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a
-new adventure every hour!
-
-Then, too, his health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor,
-his joy and power that he had mourned and forgotten! It came with a
-sudden rush, bewildering him, startling him; it was as if his dead
-childhood had come back to him, laughing and calling! What with plenty
-to eat and fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he
-would waken from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with
-his energy, stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home
-that came back to him. Now and then, of course, he could not help but
-think of little Antanas, whom he should never see again, whose little
-voice he should never hear; and then he would have to battle with
-himself. Sometimes at night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and stretch
-out his arms to her, and wet the ground with his tears. But in the
-morning he would get up and shake himself, and stride away again to
-battle with the world.
-
-He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big
-enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of
-it. And of course he could always have company for the
-asking—everywhere he went there were men living just as he lived, and
-whom he was welcome to join. He was a stranger at the business, but
-they were not clannish, and they taught him all their tricks—what towns
-and villages it was best to keep away from, and how to read the secret
-signs upon the fences, and when to beg and when to steal, and just how
-to do both. They laughed at his ideas of paying for anything with money
-or with work—for they got all they wanted without either. Now and then
-Jurgis camped out with a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and
-foraged with them in the neighborhood at night. And then among them
-some one would “take a shine” to him, and they would go off together
-and travel for a week, exchanging reminiscences.
-
-Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been
-shiftless and vicious all their lives. But the vast majority of them
-had been workingmen, had fought the long fight as Jurgis had, and found
-that it was a losing fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet
-another sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were recruited,
-men who were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work—seeking it
-in the harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus
-labor army of society; called into being under the stern system of
-nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were
-transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not
-know that they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought
-the job, and that the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would
-be in Texas, and as the crops were ready they would follow north with
-the season, ending with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out
-the big lumber camps, where there was winter work; or failing in this,
-would drift to the cities, and live upon what they had managed to save,
-with the help of such transient work as was there the loading and
-unloading of steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the
-shoveling of snow. If there were more of them on hand than chanced to
-be needed, the weaker ones died off of cold and hunger, again according
-to the stern system of nature.
-
-It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri, that he
-came upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for
-three or four months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly
-all unless they could find others to help them for a week or two. So
-all over the land there was a cry for labor—agencies were set up and
-all the cities were drained of men, even college boys were brought by
-the carload, and hordes of frantic farmers would hold up trains and
-carry off wagon-loads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay
-them well—any man could get two dollars a day and his board, and the
-best men could get two dollars and a half or three.
-
-The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in
-him could be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and
-worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without
-a break. Then he had a sum of money that would have been a fortune to
-him in the old days of misery—but what could he do with it now? To be
-sure he might have put it in a bank, and, if he were fortunate, get it
-back again when he wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man,
-wandering over a continent; and what did he know about banking and
-drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about with him,
-he would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him to
-do but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a
-town with his fellows; and because it was raining, and there was no
-other place provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some
-who treated him and whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and
-singing and good cheer; and then out of the rear part of the saloon a
-girl’s face, red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart
-thumped suddenly in his throat. He nodded to her, and she came and sat
-by him, and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a room
-with her, and the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it has
-screamed in the Jungle from the dawn of time. And then because of his
-memories and his shame, he was glad when others joined them, men and
-women; and they had more drink and spent the night in wild rioting and
-debauchery. In the van of the surplus-labor army, there followed
-another, an army of women, they also struggling for life under the
-stern system of nature. Because there were rich men who sought
-pleasure, there had been ease and plenty for them so long as they were
-young and beautiful; and later on, when they were crowded out by others
-younger and more beautiful, they went out to follow upon the trail of
-the workingmen. Sometimes they came of themselves, and the
-saloon-keepers shared with them; or sometimes they were handled by
-agencies, the same as the labor army. They were in the towns in harvest
-time, near the lumber camps in the winter, in the cities when the men
-came there; if a regiment were encamped, or a railroad or canal being
-made, or a great exposition getting ready, the crowd of women were on
-hand, living in shanties or saloons or tenement rooms, sometimes eight
-or ten of them together.
-
-In the morning Jurgis had not a cent, and he went out upon the road
-again. He was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of his life,
-he crushed his feelings down. He had made a fool of himself, but he
-could not help it now—all he could do was to see that it did not happen
-again. So he tramped on until exercise and fresh air banished his
-headache, and his strength and joy returned. This happened to him every
-time, for Jurgis was still a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had
-not yet become business. It would be a long time before he could be
-like the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger
-for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a
-purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree.
-
-On the contrary, try as he would, Jurgis could not help being made
-miserable by his conscience. It was the ghost that would not down. It
-would come upon him in the most unexpected places—sometimes it fairly
-drove him to drink.
-
-One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a
-little house just outside of a town. It was a working-man’s home, and
-the owner was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from White Russia; he
-bade Jurgis welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the
-kitchen-fire and dry himself. He had no bed for him, but there was
-straw in the garret, and he could make out. The man’s wife was cooking
-the supper, and their children were playing about on the floor. Jurgis
-sat and exchanged thoughts with him about the old country, and the
-places where they had been and the work they had done. Then they ate,
-and afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and how
-they found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis stopped,
-seeing that the woman had brought a big basin of water and was
-proceeding to undress her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the
-closet where they slept, but the baby was to have a bath, the
-workingman explained. The nights had begun to be chilly, and his
-mother, ignorant as to the climate in America, had sewed him up for the
-winter; then it had turned warm again, and some kind of a rash had
-broken out on the child. The doctor had said she must bathe him every
-night, and she, foolish woman, believed him.
-
-Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. He was
-about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a
-round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did
-not seem to bother him much, and he was wild with glee over the bath,
-kicking and squirming and chuckling with delight, pulling at his
-mother’s face and then at his own little toes. When she put him into
-the basin he sat in the midst of it and grinned, splashing the water
-over himself and squealing like a little pig. He spoke in Russian, of
-which Jurgis knew some; he spoke it with the quaintest of baby
-accents—and every word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his
-own dead little one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly
-motionless, silent, but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm
-gathered in his bosom and a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And
-in the end he could bear it no more, but buried his face in his hands
-and burst into tears, to the alarm and amazement of his hosts. Between
-the shame of this and his woe Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and
-rushed out into the rain.
-
-He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where
-he hid and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that,
-what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of
-his old life came forth to scourge him! What terror to see what he had
-been and now could never be—to see Ona and his child and his own dead
-self stretching out their arms to him, calling to him across a
-bottomless abyss—and to know that they were gone from him forever, and
-he writhing and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII
-
-
-Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went
-out of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and,
-like many thousands of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by
-coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with
-him, hidden away in one of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from
-the saloon-keepers, not so much by his conscience, as by the fear which
-filled him at the thought of being out of work in the city in the
-winter time.
-
-He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight
-cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time, regardless of
-the speed of the train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for
-he had money and they did not, and he meant to save himself in this
-fight. He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought
-him, and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair nights he would sleep in
-the park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy
-or cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodging-house,
-or pay three cents for the privileges of a “squatter” in a tenement
-hallway. He would eat at free lunches, five cents a meal, and never a
-cent more—so he might keep alive for two months and more, and in that
-time he would surely find a job. He would have to bid farewell to his
-summer cleanliness, of course, for he would come out of the first
-night’s lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no place
-in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to
-the lake front—and there it would soon be all ice.
-
-First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that
-his places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away
-from the stockyards—he was a single man now, he told himself, and he
-meant to stay one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He
-began the long, weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all
-day, from one end of the city to the other, finding everywhere from ten
-to a hundred men ahead of him. He watched the newspapers, too—but no
-longer was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents. He had been told
-of all those tricks while “on the road.”
-
-In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly a
-month of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he
-thought it was a “fake,” he went because the place was near by. He
-found a line of men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out of
-an alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a
-place. Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and
-made a disturbance to attract a policeman, upon which they subsided,
-knowing that if the latter interfered it would be to “fire” them all.
-
-An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman
-behind a desk.
-
-“Ever worked in Chicago before?” the man inquired; and whether it was a
-good angel that put it into Jurgis’s mind, or an intuition of his
-sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, “No, sir.”
-
-“Where do you come from?”
-
-“Kansas City, sir.”
-
-“Any references?”
-
-“No, sir. I’m just an unskilled man. I’ve got good arms.”
-
-“I want men for hard work—it’s all underground, digging tunnels for
-telephones. Maybe it won’t suit you.”
-
-“I’m willing, sir—anything for me. What’s the pay?”
-
-“Fifteen cents an hour.”
-
-“I’m willing, sir.”
-
-“All right; go back there and give your name.”
-
-So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of
-the city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was
-about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had
-innumerable branches—a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis
-walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to
-work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it
-was laid a double-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad!
-
-But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the
-matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally
-learned the meaning of this whole affair. The City Council had passed a
-quiet and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct
-telephone conduits under the city streets; and upon the strength of
-this, a great corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a
-system of railway freight-subways. In the city there was a combination
-of employers, representing hundreds of millions of capital, and formed
-for the purpose of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which
-troubled it was the teamsters’; and when these freight tunnels were
-completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the
-railroad depots, they would have the teamsters’ union by the throat.
-Now and then there were rumors and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen,
-and once there was a committee to investigate—but each time another
-small fortune was paid over, and the rumors died away; until at last
-the city woke up with a start to find the work completed. There was a
-tremendous scandal, of course; it was found that the city records had
-been falsified and other crimes committed, and some of Chicago’s big
-capitalists got into jail—figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared
-that they had had no idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main
-entrance to the work had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them.
-
-It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he
-had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a
-spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a
-place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw
-mattress along with four other workingmen. This was one dollar a week,
-and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work.
-This would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum
-for him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to
-buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and
-a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
-spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.
-There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died
-in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her
-rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was
-to be underground by day and in bed at night.
-
-This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more
-quickly than ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from
-seven o’clock until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which
-meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there
-was no place for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was
-light and warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a
-companion and talk. He had now no home to go to; he had no affection
-left in his life—only the pitiful mockery of it in the _camaraderie_ of
-vice. On Sundays the churches were open—but where was there a church in
-which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck,
-could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of
-course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window
-opening upon a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare
-streets, with the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he
-had only the saloons—and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them.
-If he drank now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble
-with dice or a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for
-money, or to look at a beer-stained pink “sporting paper,” with
-pictures of murderers and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures
-as these that he spent his money; and such was his life during the six
-weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable
-them to break the grip of their teamsters’ union.
-
-In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare
-of the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and
-several manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or
-two men heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new
-boring machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would
-be falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions—and in
-addition all the dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as
-Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car
-dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
-upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking
-him senseless.
-
-When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of an
-ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was
-threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took
-him to the county hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he
-was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of
-maimed and mangled men.
-
-Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
-Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
-investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that
-doctors were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients;
-but Jurgis knew nothing of this—his only complaint was that they used
-to feed him upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in
-Packingtown would feed to his dog. Jurgis had often wondered just who
-ate the canned corned beef and “roast beef” of the stockyards; now he
-began to understand—that it was what you might call “graft meat,” put
-up to be sold to public officials and contractors, and eaten by
-soldiers and sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions,
-“shantymen” and gangs of railroad laborers.
-
-Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This
-did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to
-work, but simply that he could get along without further attention, and
-that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was
-utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the
-meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities,
-nor any one else in the city.
-
-As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his
-last week’s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance
-of his Saturday’s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his
-pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the day’s work he had done
-before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got
-some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not
-the company’s business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his
-tools, which he left in a pawnshop for fifty cents. Then he went to his
-landlady, who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then
-to his boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him. As
-he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had boarded
-there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be
-worth the risk to keep him on trust.
-
-So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was
-bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face. He
-had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five
-cents in his pocket, with the certainty that he could not earn another
-cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now; he must walk
-along and see others shoveling, vigorous and active—and he with his
-left arm bound to his side! He could not hope to tide himself over by
-odd jobs of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry
-satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not
-paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was
-like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his
-enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him
-because of his weakness—it was no one’s business to help him in such
-distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he
-took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he
-was to discover in good time.
-
-In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of
-the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to
-frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and
-waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a
-drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one had
-to buy another drink or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer
-entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two
-weeks, and was evidently “on the bum.” He might plead and tell his
-“hard luck story,” but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper
-who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to
-the doors with “hoboes” on a day like this.
-
-So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He was
-so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an
-indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was
-again told to move on, he made his way to a “tough” place in the
-“Lêvée” district, where now and then he had gone with a certain
-rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It
-was Jurgis’s vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as
-a “sitter.” In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers
-would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
-with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to
-attract custom. A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his
-day’s work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass
-with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: “Hello,
-Bub, what’s the matter? You look as if you’d been up against it!” And
-then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man
-would say, “Come have a glass, and maybe that’ll brace you up.” And so
-they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
-wretched-looking, or good enough at the “gab,” they might have two; and
-if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had
-lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down
-at a table and spend an hour or two in talk—and before they got through
-the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this might seem
-diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He
-was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and
-misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will; and the
-saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
-the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.
-
-The market for “sitters” was glutted that afternoon, however, and there
-was no place for Jurgis. In all he had to spend six nickels in keeping
-a shelter over him that frightful day, and then it was just dark, and
-the station houses would not open until midnight! At the last place,
-however, there was a bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him
-doze at one of the tables until the boss came back; and also, as he was
-going out, the man gave him a tip—on the next block there was a
-religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing, and
-hundreds of hoboes would go there for the shelter and warmth.
-
-Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door
-would open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran, a block, and
-hid awhile in a doorway and then ran again, and so on until the hour.
-At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his way in with the rest
-of the throng (at the risk of having his arm broken again), and got
-close to the big stove.
-
-By eight o’clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to
-have been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at the door
-men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly
-gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the
-piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a
-tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began
-an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it, for the reason that terror
-kept him awake—he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put
-out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him.
-
-The evangelist was preaching “sin and redemption,” the infinite grace
-of God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest,
-and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled
-with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering—with his smooth,
-black coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly
-full, and money in his pocket—and lecturing men who were struggling for
-their lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger
-and cold!—This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men
-were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted
-to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the
-problem—they were part of the order established that was crushing men
-down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent
-possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and
-money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must
-be humble and listen! They were trying to save their souls—and who but
-a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls
-was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their
-bodies?
-
-At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into
-the snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got repentance
-and gone up on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station
-house would open, and Jurgis had no overcoat—and was weak from a long
-illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run
-hard to keep his blood moving at all—and then he came back to the
-station house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door!
-This was in the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the
-verge of “hard times,” and the newspapers were reporting the shutting
-down of factories every day—it was estimated that a million and a half
-men were thrown out of work before the spring. So all the hiding places
-of the city were crowded, and before that station house door men fought
-and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was
-jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and
-Jurgis, with his helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then
-but to go to a lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke
-his heart to do this, at half-past twelve o’clock, after he had wasted
-the night at the meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of
-the lodging-house promptly at seven—they had the shelves which served
-as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was
-slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.
-
-This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At
-the end of six days every cent of Jurgis’ money was gone; and then he
-went out on the streets to beg for his life.
-
-He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would
-sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no
-policeman in sight, would approach every likely-looking person who
-passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a
-dime. Then when he got one, he would dart round the corner and return
-to his base to get warm; and his victim, seeing him do this, would go
-away, vowing that he would never give a cent to a beggar again. The
-victim never paused to ask where else Jurgis could have gone under the
-circumstances—where he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon
-Jurgis could not only get more food and better food than he could buy
-in any restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to
-warm him up. Also he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could
-chat with a companion until he was as warm as toast. At the saloon,
-too, he felt at home. Part of the saloon-keeper’s business was to offer
-a home and refreshments to beggars in exchange for the proceeds of
-their foragings; and was there any one else in the whole city who would
-do this—would the victim have done it himself?
-
-Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He
-was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with a
-helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But,
-alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the
-genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic
-counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in
-competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just
-out of the hospital—but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he
-prove it? He had his arm in a sling—and it was a device a regular
-beggar’s little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering—but
-they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chattering
-their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would
-meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and a
-pair of cotton trousers—so cleverly had they concealed the several
-suits of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional
-mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of
-dollars in the bank; some of them had retired upon their earnings, and
-gone into the business of fitting out and doctoring others, or working
-children at the trade. There were some who had both their arms bound
-tightly to their sides, and padded stumps in their sleeves, and a sick
-child hired to carry a cup for them. There were some who had no legs,
-and pushed themselves upon a wheeled platform—some who had been favored
-with blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs. Some less fortunate
-had mutilated themselves or burned themselves, or had brought horrible
-sores upon themselves with chemicals; you might suddenly encounter upon
-the street a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored
-with gangrene—or one with livid scarlet wounds half escaped from their
-filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the city’s
-cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of old
-ramshackle tenements, in “stale-beer dives” and opium joints, with
-abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot’s progress—women who
-had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. Every day the
-police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the
-detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature
-inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease,
-laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking
-like dogs, gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in
-delirium.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV
-
-
-In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price
-of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of
-freezing to death. Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold,
-his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. He saw the world of
-civilization then more plainly than ever he had seen it before; a world
-in which nothing counted but brutal might, an order devised by those
-who possessed it for the subjugation of those who did not. He was one
-of the latter; and all outdoors, all life, was to him one colossal
-prison, which he paced like a pent-up tiger, trying one bar after
-another, and finding them all beyond his power. He had lost in the
-fierce battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all
-society was busied to see that he did not escape the sentence.
-Everywhere that he turned were prison bars, and hostile eyes following
-him; the well-fed, sleek policemen, from whose glances he shrank, and
-who seemed to grip their clubs more tightly when they saw him; the
-saloon-keepers, who never ceased to watch him while he was in their
-places, who were jealous of every moment he lingered after he had paid
-his money; the hurrying throngs upon the streets, who were deaf to his
-entreaties, oblivious of his very existence—and savage and contemptuous
-when he forced himself upon them. They had their own affairs, and there
-was no place for him among them. There was no place for him
-anywhere—every direction he turned his gaze, this fact was forced upon
-him: Everything was built to express it to him: the residences, with
-their heavy walls and bolted doors, and basement windows barred with
-iron; the great warehouses filled with the products of the whole world,
-and guarded by iron shutters and heavy gates; the banks with their
-unthinkable billions of wealth, all buried in safes and vaults of
-steel.
-
-And then one day there befell Jurgis the one adventure of his life. It
-was late at night, and he had failed to get the price of a lodging.
-Snow was falling, and he had been out so long that he was covered with
-it, and was chilled to the bone. He was working among the theater
-crowds, flitting here and there, taking large chances with the police,
-in his desperation half hoping to be arrested. When he saw a blue-coat
-start toward him, however, his heart failed him, and he dashed down a
-side street and fled a couple of blocks. When he stopped again he saw a
-man coming toward him, and placed himself in his path.
-
-“Please, sir,” he began, in the usual formula, “will you give me the
-price of a lodging? I’ve had a broken arm, and I can’t work, and I’ve
-not a cent in my pocket. I’m an honest working-man, sir, and I never
-begged before! It’s not my fault, sir—”
-
-Jurgis usually went on until he was interrupted, but this man did not
-interrupt, and so at last he came to a breathless stop. The other had
-halted, and Jurgis suddenly noticed that he stood a little unsteadily.
-“Whuzzat you say?” he queried suddenly, in a thick voice.
-
-Jurgis began again, speaking more slowly and distinctly; before he was
-half through the other put out his hand and rested it upon his
-shoulder. “Poor ole chappie!” he said. “Been up—hic—up—against it,
-hey?”
-
-Then he lurched toward Jurgis, and the hand upon his shoulder became an
-arm about his neck. “Up against it myself, ole sport,” he said. “She’s
-a hard ole world.”
-
-They were close to a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the other.
-He was a young fellow—not much over eighteen, with a handsome boyish
-face. He wore a silk hat and a rich soft overcoat with a fur collar;
-and he smiled at Jurgis with benignant sympathy. “I’m hard up, too, my
-goo’ fren’,” he said. “I’ve got cruel parents, or I’d set you up.
-Whuzzamatter whizyer?”
-
-“I’ve been in the hospital.”
-
-“Hospital!” exclaimed the young fellow, still smiling sweetly, “thass
-too bad! Same’s my Aunt Polly—hic—my Aunt Polly’s in the hospital,
-too—ole auntie’s been havin’ twins! Whuzzamatter whiz you?”
-
-“I’ve got a broken arm—” Jurgis began.
-
-“So,” said the other, sympathetically. “That ain’t so bad—you get over
-that. I wish somebody’d break _my_ arm, ole chappie—damfidon’t! Then
-they’d treat me better—hic—hole me up, ole sport! Whuzzit you wamme
-do?”
-
-“I’m hungry, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Hungry! Why don’t you hassome supper?”
-
-“I’ve got no money, sir.”
-
-“No money! Ho, ho—less be chums, ole boy—jess like me! No money,
-either—a’most busted! Why don’t you go home, then, same’s me?”
-
-“I haven’t any home,” said Jurgis.
-
-“No home! Stranger in the city, hey? Goo’ God, thass bad! Better come
-home wiz me—yes, by Harry, thass the trick, you’ll come home an’
-hassome supper—hic—wiz me! Awful lonesome—nobody home! Guv’ner gone
-abroad—Bubby on’s honeymoon—Polly havin’ twins—every damn soul gone
-away! Nuff—hic—nuff to drive a feller to drink, I say! Only ole Ham
-standin’ by, passin’ plates—damfican eat like that, no sir! The club
-for me every time, my boy, I say. But then they won’t lemme sleep
-there—guv’ner’s orders, by Harry—home every night, sir! Ever hear
-anythin’ like that? ‘Every mornin’ do?’ I asked him. ‘No, sir, every
-night, or no allowance at all, sir.’ Thass my guv’ner—‘nice as nails,
-by Harry! Tole ole Ham to watch me, too—servants spyin’ on me—whuzyer
-think that, my fren’? A nice, quiet—hic—goodhearted young feller like
-me, an’ his daddy can’t go to Europe—hup!—an’ leave him in peace! Ain’t
-that a shame, sir? An’ I gotter go home every evenin’ an’ miss all the
-fun, by Harry! Thass whuzzamatter now—thass why I’m here! Hadda come
-away an’ leave Kitty—hic—left her cryin’, too—whujja think of that, ole
-sport? ‘Lemme go, Kittens,’ says I—‘come early an’ often—I go where
-duty—hic—calls me. Farewell, farewell, my own true love—farewell,
-farewehell, my—own true—love!’”
-
-This last was a song, and the young gentleman’s voice rose mournful and
-wailing, while he swung upon Jurgis’s neck. The latter was glancing
-about nervously, lest some one should approach. They were still alone,
-however.
-
-“But I came all right, all right,” continued the youngster,
-aggressively, “I can—hic—I can have my own way when I want it, by
-Harry—Freddie Jones is a hard man to handle when he gets goin’! ‘No,
-sir,’ says I, ‘by thunder, and I don’t need anybody goin’ home with me,
-either—whujja take me for, hey? Think I’m drunk, dontcha, hey?—I know
-you! But I’m no more drunk than you are, Kittens,’ says I to her. And
-then says she, ‘Thass true, Freddie dear’ (she’s a smart one, is
-Kitty), ‘but I’m stayin’ in the flat, an’ you’re goin’ out into the
-cold, cold night!’ ‘Put it in a pome, lovely Kitty,’ says I. ‘No
-jokin’, Freddie, my boy,’ says she. ‘Lemme call a cab now, like a good
-dear’—but I can call my own cabs, dontcha fool yourself—and I know what
-I’m a-doin’, you bet! Say, my fren’, whatcha say—willye come home an’
-see me, an’ hassome supper? Come ’long like a good feller—don’t be
-haughty! You’re up against it, same as me, an’ you can unerstan’ a
-feller; your heart’s in the right place, by Harry—come ’long, ole
-chappie, an’ we’ll light up the house, an’ have some fizz, an’ we’ll
-raise hell, we will—whoop-la! S’long’s I’m inside the house I can do as
-I please—the guv’ner’s own very orders, b’God! Hip! hip!”
-
-They had started down the street, arm in arm, the young man pushing
-Jurgis along, half dazed. Jurgis was trying to think what to do—he knew
-he could not pass any crowded place with his new acquaintance without
-attracting attention and being stopped. It was only because of the
-falling snow that people who passed here did not notice anything wrong.
-
-Suddenly, therefore, Jurgis stopped. “Is it very far?” he inquired.
-
-“Not very,” said the other, “Tired, are you, though? Well, we’ll
-ride—whatcha say? Good! Call a cab!”
-
-And then, gripping Jurgis tight with one hand, the young fellow began
-searching his pockets with the other. “You call, ole sport, an’ I’ll
-pay,” he suggested. “How’s that, hey?”
-
-And he pulled out from somewhere a big roll of bills. It was more money
-than Jurgis had ever seen in his life before, and he stared at it with
-startled eyes.
-
-“Looks like a lot, hey?” said Master Freddie, fumbling with it. “Fool
-you, though, ole chappie—they’re all little ones! I’ll be busted in one
-week more, sure thing—word of honor. An’ not a cent more till the
-first—hic—guv’ner’s orders—hic—not a _cent_, by Harry! Nuff to set a
-feller crazy, it is. I sent him a cable, this af’noon—thass one reason
-more why I’m goin’ home. ‘Hangin’ on the verge of starvation,’ I
-says—‘for the honor of the family—hic—sen’ me some bread. Hunger will
-compel me to join you—Freddie.’ Thass what I wired him, by Harry, an’ I
-mean it—I’ll run away from school, b’God, if he don’t sen’ me some.”
-
-After this fashion the young gentleman continued to prattle on—and
-meantime Jurgis was trembling with excitement. He might grab that wad
-of bills and be out of sight in the darkness before the other could
-collect his wits. Should he do it? What better had he to hope for, if
-he waited longer? But Jurgis had never committed a crime in his life,
-and now he hesitated half a second too long. “Freddie” got one bill
-loose, and then stuffed the rest back into his trousers’ pocket.
-
-“Here, ole man,” he said, “you take it.” He held it out fluttering.
-They were in front of a saloon; and by the light of the window Jurgis
-saw that it was a hundred-dollar bill! “You take it,” the other
-repeated. “Pay the cabbie an’ keep the change—I’ve got—hic—no head for
-business! Guv’ner says so hisself, an’ the guv’ner knows—the guv’ner’s
-got a head for business, you bet! ‘All right, guv’ner,’ I told him,
-‘you run the show, and I’ll take the tickets!’ An’ so he set Aunt Polly
-to watch me—hic—an’ now Polly’s off in the hospital havin’ twins, an’
-me out raisin’ Cain! Hello, there! Hey! Call him!”
-
-A cab was driving by; and Jurgis sprang and called, and it swung round
-to the curb. Master Freddie clambered in with some difficulty, and
-Jurgis had started to follow, when the driver shouted: “Hi, there! Get
-out—you!”
-
-Jurgis hesitated, and was half obeying; but his companion broke out:
-“Whuzzat? Whuzzamatter wiz you, hey?”
-
-And the cabbie subsided, and Jurgis climbed in. Then Freddie gave a
-number on the Lake Shore Drive, and the carriage started away. The
-youngster leaned back and snuggled up to Jurgis, murmuring contentedly;
-in half a minute he was sound asleep, Jurgis sat shivering, speculating
-as to whether he might not still be able to get hold of the roll of
-bills. He was afraid to try to go through his companion’s pockets,
-however; and besides the cabbie might be on the watch. He had the
-hundred safe, and he would have to be content with that.
-
-At the end of half an hour or so the cab stopped. They were out on the
-waterfront, and from the east a freezing gale was blowing off the
-ice-bound lake. “Here we are,” called the cabbie, and Jurgis awakened
-his companion.
-
-Master Freddie sat up with a start.
-
-“Hello!” he said. “Where are we? Whuzzis? Who are you, hey? Oh, yes,
-sure nuff! Mos’ forgot you—hic—ole chappie! Home, are we? Lessee!
-Br-r-r—it’s cold! Yes—come ’long—we’re home—it ever so—hic—humble!”
-
-Before them there loomed an enormous granite pile, set far back from
-the street, and occupying a whole block. By the light of the driveway
-lamps Jurgis could see that it had towers and huge gables, like a
-mediæval castle. He thought that the young fellow must have made a
-mistake—it was inconceivable to him that any person could have a home
-like a hotel or the city hall. But he followed in silence, and they
-went up the long flight of steps, arm in arm.
-
-“There’s a button here, ole sport,” said Master Freddie. “Hole my arm
-while I find her! Steady, now—oh, yes, here she is! Saved!”
-
-A bell rang, and in a few seconds the door was opened. A man in blue
-livery stood holding it, and gazing before him, silent as a statue.
-
-They stood for a moment blinking in the light. Then Jurgis felt his
-companion pulling, and he stepped in, and the blue automaton closed the
-door. Jurgis’s heart was beating wildly; it was a bold thing for him to
-do—into what strange unearthly place he was venturing he had no idea.
-Aladdin entering his cave could not have been more excited.
-
-The place where he stood was dimly lighted; but he could see a vast
-hall, with pillars fading into the darkness above, and a great
-staircase opening at the far end of it. The floor was of tesselated
-marble, smooth as glass, and from the walls strange shapes loomed out,
-woven into huge portieres in rich, harmonious colors, or gleaming from
-paintings, wonderful and mysterious-looking in the half-light, purple
-and red and golden, like sunset glimmers in a shadowy forest.
-
-The man in livery had moved silently toward them; Master Freddie took
-off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis’ arm,
-tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he
-accomplished this, with the lackey’s help, and meantime a second man
-had approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner.
-He bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized
-him by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him.
-Then suddenly came Master Freddie’s voice, “Hamilton! My fren’ will
-remain wiz me.”
-
-The man paused and half released Jurgis. “Come ’long ole chappie,” said
-the other, and Jurgis started toward him.
-
-“Master Frederick!” exclaimed the man.
-
-“See that the cabbie—hic—is paid,” was the other’s response; and he
-linked his arm in Jurgis’. Jurgis was about to say, “I have the money
-for him,” but he restrained himself. The stout man in uniform signaled
-to the other, who went out to the cab, while he followed Jurgis and his
-young master.
-
-They went down the great hall, and then turned. Before them were two
-huge doors.
-
-“Hamilton,” said Master Freddie.
-
-“Well, sir?” said the other.
-
-“Whuzzamatter wizze dinin’-room doors?”
-
-“Nothing is the matter, sir.”
-
-“Then why dontcha openum?”
-
-The man rolled them back; another vista lost itself in the darkness.
-“Lights,” commanded Master Freddie; and the butler pressed a button,
-and a flood of brilliant incandescence streamed from above,
-half-blinding Jurgis. He stared; and little by little he made out the
-great apartment, with a domed ceiling from which the light poured, and
-walls that were one enormous painting—nymphs and dryads dancing in a
-flower-strewn glade—Diana with her hounds and horses, dashing headlong
-through a mountain streamlet—a group of maidens bathing in a forest
-pool—all life-size, and so real that Jurgis thought that it was some
-work of enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eye passed
-to the long table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony,
-and gleaming with wrought silver and gold. In the center of it was a
-huge carven bowl, with the glistening gleam of ferns and the red and
-purple of rare orchids, glowing from a light hidden somewhere in their
-midst.
-
-“This’s the dinin’ room,” observed Master Freddie. “How you like it,
-hey, ole sport?”
-
-He always insisted on having an answer to his remarks, leaning over
-Jurgis and smiling into his face. Jurgis liked it.
-
-“Rummy ole place to feed in all ’lone, though,” was Freddie’s
-comment—“rummy’s hell! Whuzya think, hey?” Then another idea occurred
-to him and he went on, without waiting: “Maybe you never saw
-anythin—hic—like this ’fore? Hey, ole chappie?”
-
-“No,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Come from country, maybe—hey?”
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Aha! I thosso! Lossa folks from country never saw such a place.
-Guv’ner brings ’em—free show—hic—reg’lar circus! Go home tell folks
-about it. Ole man Jones’s place—Jones the packer—beef-trust man. Made
-it all out of hogs, too, damn ole scoundrel. Now we see where our
-pennies go—rebates, an’ private car lines—hic—by Harry! Bully place,
-though—worth seein’! Ever hear of Jones the packer, hey, ole chappie?”
-
-Jurgis had started involuntarily; the other, whose sharp eyes missed
-nothing, demanded: “Whuzzamatter, hey? Heard of him?”
-
-And Jurgis managed to stammer out: “I have worked for him in the
-yards.”
-
-“What!” cried Master Freddie, with a yell. “_You!_ In the yards? Ho,
-ho! Why, say, thass good! Shake hands on it, ole man—by Harry! Guv’ner
-ought to be here—glad to see you. Great fren’s with the men,
-guv’ner—labor an’ capital, commun’ty ’f int’rests, an’ all that—hic!
-Funny things happen in this world, don’t they, ole man? Hamilton, lemme
-interduce you—fren’ the family—ole fren’ the guv’ner’s—works in the
-yards. Come to spend the night wiz me, Hamilton—have a hot time. Me
-fren’, Mr.—whuzya name, ole chappie? Tell us your name.”
-
-“Rudkus—Jurgis Rudkus.”
-
-“My fren’, Mr. Rednose, Hamilton—shake han’s.”
-
-The stately butler bowed his head, but made not a sound; and suddenly
-Master Freddie pointed an eager finger at him. “I know whuzzamatter wiz
-you, Hamilton—lay you a dollar I know! You think—hic—you think I’m
-drunk! Hey, now?”
-
-And the butler again bowed his head. “Yes, sir,” he said, at which
-Master Freddie hung tightly upon Jurgis’s neck and went into a fit of
-laughter. “Hamilton, you damn ole scoundrel,” he roared, “I’ll ’scharge
-you for impudence, you see ’f I don’t! Ho, ho, ho! I’m drunk! Ho, ho!”
-
-The two waited until his fit had spent itself, to see what new whim
-would seize him. “Whatcha wanta do?” he queried suddenly. “Wanta see
-the place, ole chappie? Wamme play the guv’ner—show you roun’? State
-parlors—Looee Cans—Looee Sez—chairs cost three thousand apiece. Tea
-room Maryanntnet—picture of shepherds dancing—Ruysdael—twenty-three
-thousan’! Ballroom—balc’ny pillars—hic—imported—special
-ship—sixty-eight thousan’! Ceilin’ painted in Rome—whuzzat feller’s
-name, Hamilton—Mattatoni? Macaroni? Then this place—silver
-bowl—Benvenuto Cellini—rummy ole Dago! An’ the organ—thirty thousan’
-dollars, sir—starter up, Hamilton, let Mr. Rednose hear it. No—never
-mind—clean forgot—says he’s hungry, Hamilton—less have some supper.
-Only—hic—don’t less have it here—come up to my place, ole sport—nice
-an’ cosy. This way—steady now, don’t slip on the floor. Hamilton, we’ll
-have a cole spread, an’ some fizz—don’t leave out the fizz, by Harry.
-We’ll have some of the eighteen-thirty Madeira. Hear me, sir?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the butler, “but, Master Frederick, your father left
-orders—”
-
-And Master Frederick drew himself up to a stately height. “My father’s
-orders were left to me—hic—an’ not to you,” he said. Then, clasping
-Jurgis tightly by the neck, he staggered out of the room; on the way
-another idea occurred to him, and he asked: “Any—hic—cable message for
-me, Hamilton?”
-
-“No, sir,” said the butler.
-
-“Guv’ner must be travelin’. An’ how’s the twins, Hamilton?”
-
-“They are doing well, sir.”
-
-“Good!” said Master Freddie; and added fervently: “God bless ’em, the
-little lambs!”
-
-They went up the great staircase, one step at a time; at the top of it
-there gleamed at them out of the shadows the figure of a nymph
-crouching by a fountain, a figure ravishingly beautiful, the flesh warm
-and glowing with the hues of life. Above was a huge court, with domed
-roof, the various apartments opening into it. The butler had paused
-below but a few minutes to give orders, and then followed them; now he
-pressed a button, and the hall blazed with light. He opened a door
-before them, and then pressed another button, as they staggered into
-the apartment.
-
-It was fitted up as a study. In the center was a mahogany table,
-covered with books, and smokers’ implements; the walls were decorated
-with college trophies and colors—flags, posters, photographs and
-knickknacks—tennis rackets, canoe paddles, golf clubs, and polo sticks.
-An enormous moose head, with horns six feet across, faced a buffalo
-head on the opposite wall, while bear and tiger skins covered the
-polished floor. There were lounging chairs and sofas, window seats
-covered with soft cushions of fantastic designs; there was one corner
-fitted in Persian fashion, with a huge canopy and a jeweled lamp
-beneath. Beyond, a door opened upon a bedroom, and beyond that was a
-swimming pool of the purest marble, that had cost about forty thousand
-dollars.
-
-Master Freddie stood for a moment or two, gazing about him; then out of
-the next room a dog emerged, a monstrous bulldog, the most hideous
-object that Jurgis had ever laid eyes upon. He yawned, opening a mouth
-like a dragon’s; and he came toward the young man, wagging his tail.
-“Hello, Dewey!” cried his master. “Been havin’ a snooze, ole boy? Well,
-well—hello there, whuzzamatter?” (The dog was snarling at Jurgis.)
-“Why, Dewey—this’ my fren’, Mr. Rednose—ole fren’ the guv’ner’s! Mr.
-Rednose, Admiral Dewey; shake han’s—hic. Ain’t he a daisy, though—blue
-ribbon at the New York show—eighty-five hundred at a clip! How’s that,
-hey?”
-
-The speaker sank into one of the big armchairs, and Admiral Dewey
-crouched beneath it; he did not snarl again, but he never took his eyes
-off Jurgis. He was perfectly sober, was the Admiral.
-
-The butler had closed the door, and he stood by it, watching Jurgis
-every second. Now there came footsteps outside, and, as he opened the
-door a man in livery entered, carrying a folding table, and behind him
-two men with covered trays. They stood like statues while the first
-spread the table and set out the contents of the trays upon it. There
-were cold pates, and thin slices of meat, tiny bread and butter
-sandwiches with the crust cut off, a bowl of sliced peaches and cream
-(in January), little fancy cakes, pink and green and yellow and white,
-and half a dozen ice-cold bottles of wine.
-
-“Thass the stuff for you!” cried Master Freddie, exultantly, as he
-spied them. “Come ’long, ole chappie, move up.”
-
-And he seated himself at the table; the waiter pulled a cork, and he
-took the bottle and poured three glasses of its contents in succession
-down his throat. Then he gave a long-drawn sigh, and cried again to
-Jurgis to seat himself.
-
-The butler held the chair at the opposite side of the table, and Jurgis
-thought it was to keep him out of it; but finally he understand that it
-was the other’s intention to put it under him, and so he sat down,
-cautiously and mistrustingly. Master Freddie perceived that the
-attendants embarrassed him, and he remarked with a nod to them, “You
-may go.”
-
-They went, all save the butler.
-
-“You may go too, Hamilton,” he said.
-
-“Master Frederick—” the man began.
-
-“Go!” cried the youngster, angrily. “Damn you, don’t you hear me?”
-
-The man went out and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he,
-observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might
-peer through the keyhole.
-
-Master Frederick turned to the table again. “Now,” he said, “go for
-it.”
-
-Jurgis gazed at him doubtingly. “Eat!” cried the other. “Pile in, ole
-chappie!”
-
-“Don’t you want anything?” Jurgis asked.
-
-“Ain’t hungry,” was the reply—“only thirsty. Kitty and me had some
-candy—you go on.”
-
-So Jurgis began, without further parley. He ate as with two shovels,
-his fork in one hand and his knife in the other; when he once got
-started his wolf-hunger got the better of him, and he did not stop for
-breath until he had cleared every plate. “Gee whiz!” said the other,
-who had been watching him in wonder.
-
-Then he held Jurgis the bottle. “Lessee you drink now,” he said; and
-Jurgis took the bottle and turned it up to his mouth, and a wonderfully
-unearthly liquid ecstasy poured down his throat, tickling every nerve
-of him, thrilling him with joy. He drank the very last drop of it, and
-then he gave vent to a long-drawn “Ah!”
-
-“Good stuff, hey?” said Freddie, sympathetically; he had leaned back in
-the big chair, putting his arm behind his head and gazing at Jurgis.
-
-And Jurgis gazed back at him. He was clad in spotless evening dress,
-was Freddie, and looked very handsome—he was a beautiful boy, with
-light golden hair and the head of an Antinous. He smiled at Jurgis
-confidingly, and then started talking again, with his blissful
-_insouciance_. This time he talked for ten minutes at a stretch, and in
-the course of the speech he told Jurgis all of his family history. His
-big brother Charlie was in love with the guileless maiden who played
-the part of “Little Bright-Eyes” in “The Kaliph of Kamskatka.” He had
-been on the verge of marrying her once, only “the guv’ner” had sworn to
-disinherit him, and had presented him with a sum that would stagger the
-imagination, and that had staggered the virtue of “Little Bright-Eyes.”
-Now Charlie had got leave from college, and had gone away in his
-automobile on the next best thing to a honeymoon. “The guv’ner” had
-made threats to disinherit another of his children also, sister
-Gwendolen, who had married an Italian marquis with a string of titles
-and a dueling record. They lived in his chateau, or rather had, until
-he had taken to firing the breakfast dishes at her; then she had cabled
-for help, and the old gentleman had gone over to find out what were his
-Grace’s terms. So they had left Freddie all alone, and he with less
-than two thousand dollars in his pocket. Freddie was up in arms and
-meant serious business, as they would find in the end—if there was no
-other way of bringing them to terms he would have his “Kittens” wire
-that she was about to marry him, and see what happened then.
-
-So the cheerful youngster rattled on, until he was tired out. He smiled
-his sweetest smile at Jurgis, and then he closed his eyes, sleepily.
-Then he opened them again, and smiled once more, and finally closed
-them and forgot to open them.
-
-For several minutes Jurgis sat perfectly motionless, watching him, and
-reveling in the strange sensation of the champagne. Once he stirred,
-and the dog growled; after that he sat almost holding his breath—until
-after a while the door of the room opened softly, and the butler came
-in.
-
-He walked toward Jurgis upon tiptoe, scowling at him; and Jurgis rose
-up, and retreated, scowling back. So until he was against the wall, and
-then the butler came close, and pointed toward the door. “Get out of
-here!” he whispered.
-
-Jurgis hesitated, giving a glance at Freddie, who was snoring softly.
-“If you do, you son of a—” hissed the butler, “I’ll mash in your face
-for you before you get out of here!”
-
-And Jurgis wavered but an instant more. He saw “Admiral Dewey” coming
-up behind the man and growling softly, to back up his threats. Then he
-surrendered and started toward the door.
-
-They went out without a sound, and down the great echoing staircase,
-and through the dark hall. At the front door he paused, and the butler
-strode close to him.
-
-“Hold up your hands,” he snarled. Jurgis took a step back, clinching
-his one well fist.
-
-“What for?” he cried; and then understanding that the fellow proposed
-to search him, he answered, “I’ll see you in hell first.”
-
-“Do you want to go to jail?” demanded the butler, menacingly. “I’ll
-have the police—”
-
-“Have ’em!” roared Jurgis, with fierce passion. “But you won’t put your
-hands on me till you do! I haven’t touched anything in your damned
-house, and I’ll not have you touch me!”
-
-So the butler, who was terrified lest his young master should waken,
-stepped suddenly to the door, and opened it. “Get out of here!” he
-said; and then as Jurgis passed through the opening, he gave him a
-ferocious kick that sent him down the great stone steps at a run, and
-landed him sprawling in the snow at the bottom.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV
-
-
-Jurgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the great
-castle was dark and impregnable. Then the icy teeth of the blast bit
-into him, and he turned and went away at a run.
-
-When he stopped again it was because he was coming to frequented
-streets and did not wish to attract attention. In spite of that last
-humiliation, his heart was thumping fast with triumph. He had come out
-ahead on that deal! He put his hand into his trousers’ pocket every now
-and then, to make sure that the precious hundred-dollar bill was still
-there.
-
-Yet he was in a plight—a curious and even dreadful plight, when he came
-to realize it. He had not a single cent but that one bill! And he had
-to find some shelter that night he had to change it!
-
-Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. There was
-no one he could go to for help—he had to manage it all alone. To get it
-changed in a lodging-house would be to take his life in his hands—he
-would almost certainly be robbed, and perhaps murdered, before morning.
-He might go to some hotel or railroad depot and ask to have it changed;
-but what would they think, seeing a “bum” like him with a hundred
-dollars? He would probably be arrested if he tried it; and what story
-could he tell? On the morrow Freddie Jones would discover his loss, and
-there would be a hunt for him, and he would lose his money. The only
-other plan he could think of was to try in a saloon. He might pay them
-to change it, if it could not be done otherwise.
-
-He began peering into places as he walked; he passed several as being
-too crowded—then finally, chancing upon one where the bartender was all
-alone, he gripped his hands in sudden resolution and went in.
-
-“Can you change me a hundred-dollar bill?” he demanded.
-
-The bartender was a big, husky fellow, with the jaw of a prize fighter,
-and a three weeks’ stubble of hair upon it. He stared at Jurgis.
-“What’s that youse say?” he demanded.
-
-“I said, could you change me a hundred-dollar bill?”
-
-“Where’d youse get it?” he inquired incredulously.
-
-“Never mind,” said Jurgis; “I’ve got it, and I want it changed. I’ll
-pay you if you’ll do it.”
-
-The other stared at him hard. “Lemme see it,” he said.
-
-“Will you change it?” Jurgis demanded, gripping it tightly in his
-pocket.
-
-“How the hell can I know if it’s good or not?” retorted the bartender.
-“Whatcher take me for, hey?”
-
-Then Jurgis slowly and warily approached him; he took out the bill, and
-fumbled it for a moment, while the man stared at him with hostile eyes
-across the counter. Then finally he handed it over.
-
-The other took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his
-fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside
-down, and edgeways. It was new and rather stiff, and that made him
-dubious. Jurgis was watching him like a cat all the time.
-
-“Humph,” he said, finally, and gazed at the stranger, sizing him up—a
-ragged, ill-smelling tramp, with no overcoat and one arm in a sling—and
-a hundred-dollar bill! “Want to buy anything?” he demanded.
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis, “I’ll take a glass of beer.”
-
-“All right,” said the other, “I’ll change it.” And he put the bill in
-his pocket, and poured Jurgis out a glass of beer, and set it on the
-counter. Then he turned to the cash register, and punched up five
-cents, and began to pull money out of the drawer. Finally, he faced
-Jurgis, counting it out—two dimes, a quarter, and fifty cents. “There,”
-he said.
-
-For a second Jurgis waited, expecting to see him turn again. “My
-ninety-nine dollars,” he said.
-
-“What ninety-nine dollars?” demanded the bartender.
-
-“My change!” he cried—“the rest of my hundred!”
-
-“Go on,” said the bartender, “you’re nutty!”
-
-And Jurgis stared at him with wild eyes. For an instant horror reigned
-in him—black, paralyzing, awful horror, clutching him at the heart; and
-then came rage, in surging, blinding floods—he screamed aloud, and
-seized the glass and hurled it at the other’s head. The man ducked, and
-it missed him by half an inch; he rose again and faced Jurgis, who was
-vaulting over the bar with his one well arm, and dealt him a smashing
-blow in the face, hurling him backward upon the floor. Then, as Jurgis
-scrambled to his feet again and started round the counter after him, he
-shouted at the top of his voice, “Help! help!”
-
-Jurgis seized a bottle off the counter as he ran; and as the bartender
-made a leap he hurled the missile at him with all his force. It just
-grazed his head, and shivered into a thousand pieces against the post
-of the door. Then Jurgis started back, rushing at the man again in the
-middle of the room. This time, in his blind frenzy, he came without a
-bottle, and that was all the bartender wanted—he met him halfway and
-floored him with a sledgehammer drive between the eyes. An instant
-later the screen doors flew open, and two men rushed in—just as Jurgis
-was getting to his feet again, foaming at the mouth with rage, and
-trying to tear his broken arm out of its bandages.
-
-“Look out!” shouted the bartender. “He’s got a knife!” Then, seeing
-that the two were disposed to join the fray, he made another rush at
-Jurgis, and knocked aside his feeble defense and sent him tumbling
-again; and the three flung themselves upon him, rolling and kicking
-about the place.
-
-A second later a policeman dashed in, and the bartender yelled once
-more—“Look out for his knife!” Jurgis had fought himself half to his
-knees, when the policeman made a leap at him, and cracked him across
-the face with his club. Though the blow staggered him, the wild-beast
-frenzy still blazed in him, and he got to his feet, lunging into the
-air. Then again the club descended, full upon his head, and he dropped
-like a log to the floor.
-
-The policeman crouched over him, clutching his stick, waiting for him
-to try to rise again; and meantime the barkeeper got up, and put his
-hand to his head. “Christ!” he said, “I thought I was done for that
-time. Did he cut me?”
-
-“Don’t see anything, Jake,” said the policeman. “What’s the matter with
-him?”
-
-“Just crazy drunk,” said the other. “A lame duck, too—but he ’most got
-me under the bar. Youse had better call the wagon, Billy.”
-
-“No,” said the officer. “He’s got no more fight in him, I guess—and
-he’s only got a block to go.” He twisted his hand in Jurgis’s collar
-and jerked at him. “Git up here, you!” he commanded.
-
-But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar, and
-after stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding place, came
-and poured a glass of water over Jurgis. Then, as the latter began to
-moan feebly, the policeman got him to his feet and dragged him out of
-the place. The station house was just around the corner, and so in a
-few minutes Jurgis was in a cell.
-
-He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance moaning in
-torment, with a blinding headache and a racking thirst. Now and then he
-cried aloud for a drink of water, but there was no one to hear him.
-There were others in that same station house with split heads and a
-fever; there were hundreds of them in the great city, and tens of
-thousands of them in the great land, and there was no one to hear any
-of them.
-
-In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of bread,
-and then hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the nearest police
-court. He sat in the pen with a score of others until his turn came.
-
-The bartender—who proved to be a well-known bruiser—was called to the
-stand. He took the oath and told his story. The prisoner had come into
-his saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had ordered a glass of
-beer and tendered a dollar bill in payment. He had been given
-ninety-five cents’ change, and had demanded ninety-nine dollars more,
-and before the plaintiff could even answer had hurled the glass at him
-and then attacked him with a bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the
-place.
-
-Then the prisoner was sworn—a forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with
-an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut, and bloody,
-and one eye purplish black and entirely closed. “What have you to say
-for yourself?” queried the magistrate.
-
-“Your Honor,” said Jurgis, “I went into his place and asked the man if
-he could change me a hundred-dollar bill. And he said he would if I
-bought a drink. I gave him the bill and then he wouldn’t give me the
-change.”
-
-The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity. “You gave him a
-hundred-dollar bill!” he exclaimed.
-
-“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Where did you get it?”
-
-“A man gave it to me, your Honor.”
-
-“A man? What man, and what for?”
-
-“A young man I met upon the street, your Honor. I had been begging.”
-
-There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding Jurgis
-put up his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled without
-trying to hide it. “It’s true, your Honor!” cried Jurgis, passionately.
-
-“You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?”
-inquired the magistrate. “No, your Honor—” protested Jurgis. “I—”
-
-“You had not had anything to drink?”
-
-“Why, yes, your Honor, I had—”
-
-“What did you have?”
-
-“I had a bottle of something—I don’t know what it was—something that
-burned—”
-
-There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as the
-magistrate looked up and frowned. “Have you ever been arrested before?”
-he asked abruptly.
-
-The question took Jurgis aback. “I—I—” he stammered.
-
-“Tell me the truth, now!” commanded the other, sternly.
-
-“Yes, your Honor,” said Jurgis.
-
-“How often?”
-
-“Only once, your Honor.”
-
-“What for?”
-
-“For knocking down my boss, your Honor. I was working in the
-stockyards, and he—”
-
-“I see,” said his Honor; “I guess that will do. You ought to stop
-drinking if you can’t control yourself. Ten days and costs. Next case.”
-
-Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the policeman,
-who seized him by the collar. He was jerked out of the way, into a room
-with the convicted prisoners, where he sat and wept like a child in his
-impotent rage. It seemed monstrous to him that policemen and judges
-should esteem his word as nothing in comparison with the
-bartender’s—poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon
-paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday
-privileges and general favors—nor that the pugilist bartender was one
-of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the district,
-and had helped only a few months before to hustle out a record-breaking
-vote as a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the target
-of odious kid-gloved reformers.
-
-Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time. In his
-tumbling around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not work, but
-had to be attended by the physician. Also his head and his eye had to
-be tied up—and so he was a pretty-looking object when, the second day
-after his arrival, he went out into the exercise court and
-encountered—Jack Duane!
-
-The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged him.
-“By God, if it isn’t ‘the Stinker’!” he cried. “And what is it—have you
-been through a sausage machine?”
-
-“No,” said Jurgis, “but I’ve been in a railroad wreck and a fight.” And
-then, while some of the other prisoners gathered round he told his wild
-story; most of them were incredulous, but Duane knew that Jurgis could
-never have made up such a yarn as that.
-
-“Hard luck, old man,” he said, when they were alone; “but maybe it’s
-taught you a lesson.”
-
-“I’ve learned some things since I saw you last,” said Jurgis
-mournfully. Then he explained how he had spent the last summer,
-“hoboing it,” as the phrase was. “And you?” he asked finally. “Have you
-been here ever since?”
-
-“Lord, no!” said the other. “I only came in the day before yesterday.
-It’s the second time they’ve sent me up on a trumped-up charge—I’ve had
-hard luck and can’t pay them what they want. Why don’t you quit Chicago
-with me, Jurgis?”
-
-“I’ve no place to go,” said Jurgis, sadly.
-
-“Neither have I,” replied the other, laughing lightly. “But we’ll wait
-till we get out and see.”
-
-In the Bridewell Jurgis met few who had been there the last time, but
-he met scores of others, old and young, of exactly the same sort. It
-was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave
-looked just the same. He strolled about and talked with them, and the
-biggest of them told tales of their prowess, while those who were
-weaker, or younger and inexperienced, gathered round and listened in
-admiring silence. The last time he was there, Jurgis had thought of
-little but his family; but now he was free to listen to these men, and
-to realize that he was one of them—that their point of view was his
-point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world
-was the way he meant to do it in the future.
-
-And so, when he was turned out of prison again, without a penny in his
-pocket, he went straight to Jack Duane. He went full of humility and
-gratitude; for Duane was a gentleman, and a man with a profession—and
-it was remarkable that he should be willing to throw in his lot with a
-humble workingman, one who had even been a beggar and a tramp. Jurgis
-could not see what help he could be to him; but he did not understand
-that a man like himself—who could be trusted to stand by any one who
-was kind to him—was as rare among criminals as among any other class of
-men.
-
-The address Jurgis had was a garret room in the Ghetto district, the
-home of a pretty little French girl, Duane’s mistress, who sewed all
-day, and eked out her living by prostitution. He had gone elsewhere,
-she told Jurgis—he was afraid to stay there now, on account of the
-police. The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that
-he had never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a
-catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to a “fence” in the
-rear of a pawnbroker’s shop, and thence to a number of assignation
-rooms, in one of which Duane was hiding.
-
-Duane was glad to see him; he was without a cent of money, he said, and
-had been waiting for Jurgis to help him get some. He explained his
-plan—in fact he spent the day in laying bare to his friend the criminal
-world of the city, and in showing him how he might earn himself a
-living in it. That winter he would have a hard time, on account of his
-arm, and because of an unwonted fit of activity of the police; but so
-long as he was unknown to them he would be safe if he were careful.
-Here at “Papa” Hanson’s (so they called the old man who kept the dive)
-he might rest at ease, for “Papa” Hanson was “square”—would stand by
-him so long as he paid, and gave him an hour’s notice if there were to
-be a police raid. Also Rosensteg, the pawnbroker, would buy anything he
-had for a third of its value, and guarantee to keep it hidden for a
-year.
-
-There was an oil stove in the little cupboard of a room, and they had
-some supper; and then about eleven o’clock at night they sallied forth
-together, by a rear entrance to the place, Duane armed with a
-slingshot. They came to a residence district, and he sprang up a
-lamppost and blew out the light, and then the two dodged into the
-shelter of an area step and hid in silence.
-
-Pretty soon a man came by, a workingman—and they let him go. Then after
-a long interval came the heavy tread of a policeman, and they held
-their breath till he was gone. Though half-frozen, they waited a full
-quarter of an hour after that—and then again came footsteps, walking
-briskly. Duane nudged Jurgis, and the instant the man had passed they
-rose up. Duane stole out as silently as a shadow, and a second later
-Jurgis heard a thud and a stifled cry. He was only a couple of feet
-behind, and he leaped to stop the man’s mouth, while Duane held him
-fast by the arms, as they had agreed. But the man was limp and showed a
-tendency to fall, and so Jurgis had only to hold him by the collar,
-while the other, with swift fingers, went through his pockets—ripping
-open, first his overcoat, and then his coat, and then his vest,
-searching inside and outside, and transferring the contents into his
-own pockets. At last, after feeling of the man’s fingers and in his
-necktie, Duane whispered, “That’s all!” and they dragged him to the
-area and dropped him in. Then Jurgis went one way and his friend the
-other, walking briskly.
-
-The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the “swag.”
-There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and locket; there
-was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small change, and
-finally a card-case. This last Duane opened feverishly—there were
-letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back
-part, a wad of bills. He counted them—there was a twenty, five tens,
-four fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long breath. “That lets us
-out!” he said.
-
-After further examination, they burned the card-case and its contents,
-all but the bills, and likewise the picture of a little girl in the
-locket. Then Duane took the watch and trinkets downstairs, and came
-back with sixteen dollars. “The old scoundrel said the case was
-filled,” he said. “It’s a lie, but he knows I want the money.”
-
-They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share fifty-five
-dollars and some change. He protested that it was too much, but the
-other had agreed to divide even. That was a good haul, he said, better
-than average.
-
-When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a paper;
-one of the pleasures of committing a crime was the reading about it
-afterward. “I had a pal that always did it,” Duane remarked,
-laughing—“until one day he read that he had left three thousand dollars
-in a lower inside pocket of his party’s vest!”
-
-There was a half-column account of the robbery—it was evident that a
-gang was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper, for it was the
-third within a week, and the police were apparently powerless. The
-victim was an insurance agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten
-dollars that did not belong to him. He had chanced to have his name
-marked on his shirt, otherwise he would not have been identified yet.
-His assailant had hit him too hard, and he was suffering from
-concussion of the brain; and also he had been half-frozen when found,
-and would lose three fingers on his right hand. The enterprising
-newspaper reporter had taken all this information to his family, and
-told how they had received it.
-
-Since it was Jurgis’s first experience, these details naturally caused
-him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly—it was the way of the
-game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no
-more of it than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock. “It’s
-a case of us or the other fellow, and I say the other fellow, every
-time,” he observed.
-
-“Still,” said Jurgis, reflectively, “he never did us any harm.”
-
-“He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure of
-that,” said his friend.
-
-Duane had already explained to Jurgis that if a man of their trade were
-known he would have to work all the time to satisfy the demands of the
-police. Therefore it would be better for Jurgis to stay in hiding and
-never be seen in public with his pal. But Jurgis soon got very tired of
-staying in hiding. In a couple of weeks he was feeling strong and
-beginning to use his arm, and then he could not stand it any longer.
-Duane, who had done a job of some sort by himself, and made a truce
-with the powers, brought over Marie, his little French girl, to share
-with him; but even that did not avail for long, and in the end he had
-to give up arguing, and take Jurgis out and introduce him to the
-saloons and “sporting houses” where the big crooks and “holdup men”
-hung out.
-
-And so Jurgis got a glimpse of the high-class criminal world of
-Chicago. The city, which was owned by an oligarchy of business men,
-being nominally ruled by the people, a huge army of graft was necessary
-for the purpose of effecting the transfer of power. Twice a year, in
-the spring and fall elections, millions of dollars were furnished by
-the business men and expended by this army; meetings were held and
-clever speakers were hired, bands played and rockets sizzled, tons of
-documents and reservoirs of drinks were distributed, and tens of
-thousands of votes were bought for cash. And this army of graft had, of
-course, to be maintained the year round. The leaders and organizers
-were maintained by the business men directly—aldermen and legislators
-by means of bribes, party officials out of the campaign funds,
-lobbyists and corporation lawyers in the form of salaries, contractors
-by means of jobs, labor union leaders by subsidies, and newspaper
-proprietors and editors by advertisements. The rank and file, however,
-were either foisted upon the city, or else lived off the population
-directly. There was the police department, and the fire and water
-departments, and the whole balance of the civil list, from the meanest
-office boy to the head of a city department; and for the horde who
-could find no room in these, there was the world of vice and crime,
-there was license to seduce, to swindle and plunder and prey. The law
-forbade Sunday drinking; and this had delivered the saloon-keepers into
-the hands of the police, and made an alliance between them necessary.
-The law forbade prostitution; and this had brought the “madames” into
-the combination. It was the same with the gambling-house keeper and the
-poolroom man, and the same with any other man or woman who had a means
-of getting “graft,” and was willing to pay over a share of it: the
-green-goods man and the highwayman, the pickpocket and the sneak thief,
-and the receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated milk, of
-stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary tenements,
-the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the “pushcart man,” the
-prize fighter and the professional slugger, the race-track “tout,” the
-procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young girls.
-All of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued
-in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often
-than not they were one and the same person,—the police captain would
-own the brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his
-headquarters in his saloon. “Hinkydink” or “Bathhouse John,” or others
-of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives in Chicago,
-and also the “gray wolves” of the city council, who gave away the
-streets of the city to the business men; and those who patronized their
-places were the gamblers and prize fighters who set the law at
-defiance, and the burglars and holdup men who kept the whole city in
-terror. On election day all these powers of vice and crime were one
-power; they could tell within one per cent what the vote of their
-district would be, and they could change it at an hour’s notice.
-
-A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the streets;
-and now suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had entered into a
-world where money and all the good things of life came freely. He was
-introduced by his friend to an Irishman named “Buck” Halloran, who was
-a political “worker” and on the inside of things. This man talked with
-Jurgis for a while, and then told him that he had a little plan by
-which a man who looked like a workingman might make some easy money;
-but it was a private affair, and had to be kept quiet. Jurgis expressed
-himself as agreeable, and the other took him that afternoon (it was
-Saturday) to a place where city laborers were being paid off. The
-paymaster sat in a little booth, with a pile of envelopes before him,
-and two policemen standing by. Jurgis went, according to directions,
-and gave the name of “Michael O’Flaherty,” and received an envelope,
-which he took around the corner and delivered to Halloran, who was
-waiting for him in a saloon. Then he went again; and gave the name of
-“Johann Schmidt,” and a third time, and give the name of “Serge
-Reminitsky.” Halloran had quite a list of imaginary workingmen, and
-Jurgis got an envelope for each one. For this work he received five
-dollars, and was told that he might have it every week, so long as he
-kept quiet. As Jurgis was excellent at keeping quiet, he soon won the
-trust of “Buck” Halloran, and was introduced to others as a man who
-could be depended upon.
-
-This acquaintance was useful to him in another way, also before long
-Jurgis made his discovery of the meaning of “pull,” and just why his
-boss, Connor, and also the pugilist bartender, had been able to send
-him to jail. One night there was given a ball, the “benefit” of
-“One-eyed Larry,” a lame man who played the violin in one of the big
-“high-class” houses of prostitution on Clark Street, and was a wag and
-a popular character on the “Lêvée.” This ball was held in a big dance
-hall, and was one of the occasions when the city’s powers of debauchery
-gave themselves up to madness. Jurgis attended and got half insane with
-drink, and began quarreling over a girl; his arm was pretty strong by
-then, and he set to work to clean out the place, and ended in a cell in
-the police station. The police station being crowded to the doors, and
-stinking with “bums,” Jurgis did not relish staying there to sleep off
-his liquor, and sent for Halloran, who called up the district leader
-and had Jurgis bailed out by telephone at four o’clock in the morning.
-When he was arraigned that same morning, the district leader had
-already seen the clerk of the court and explained that Jurgis Rudkus
-was a decent fellow, who had been indiscreet; and so Jurgis was fined
-ten dollars and the fine was “suspended”—which meant that he did not
-have to pay for it, and never would have to pay it, unless somebody
-chose to bring it up against him in the future.
-
-Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an
-entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown;
-yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he
-had as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and
-hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He
-soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new
-opportunities; and being naturally an active man, he not only kept
-sober himself, but helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal
-fonder of both wine and women than he.
-
-One thing led to another. In the saloon where Jurgis met “Buck”
-Halloran he was sitting late one night with Duane, when a “country
-customer” (a buyer for an out-of-town merchant) came in, a little more
-than half “piped.” There was no one else in the place but the
-bartender, and as the man went out again Jurgis and Duane followed him;
-he went round the corner, and in a dark place made by a combination of
-the elevated railroad and an unrented building, Jurgis leaped forward
-and shoved a revolver under his nose, while Duane, with his hat pulled
-over his eyes, went through the man’s pockets with lightning fingers.
-They got his watch and his “wad,” and were round the corner again and
-into the saloon before he could shout more than once. The bartender, to
-whom they had tipped the wink, had the cellar door open for them, and
-they vanished, making their way by a secret entrance to a brothel next
-door. From the roof of this there was access to three similar places
-beyond. By means of these passages the customers of any one place could
-be gotten out of the way, in case a falling out with the police chanced
-to lead to a raid; and also it was necessary to have a way of getting a
-girl out of reach in case of an emergency. Thousands of them came to
-Chicago answering advertisements for “servants” and “factory hands,”
-and found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up
-in a bawdy-house. It was generally enough to take all their clothes
-away from them; but sometimes they would have to be “doped” and kept
-prisoners for weeks; and meantime their parents might be telegraphing
-the police, and even coming on to see why nothing was done.
-Occasionally there was no way of satisfying them but to let them search
-the place to which the girl had been traced.
-
-For his help in this little job, the bartender received twenty out of
-the hundred and thirty odd dollars that the pair secured; and naturally
-this put them on friendly terms with him, and a few days later he
-introduced them to a little “sheeny” named Goldberger, one of the
-“runners” of the “sporting house” where they had been hidden. After a
-few drinks Goldberger began, with some hesitation, to narrate how he
-had had a quarrel over his best girl with a professional “cardsharp,”
-who had hit him in the jaw. The fellow was a stranger in Chicago, and
-if he was found some night with his head cracked there would be no one
-to care very much. Jurgis, who by this time would cheerfully have
-cracked the heads of all the gamblers in Chicago, inquired what would
-be coming to him; at which the Jew became still more confidential, and
-said that he had some tips on the New Orleans races, which he got
-direct from the police captain of the district, whom he had got out of
-a bad scrape, and who “stood in” with a big syndicate of horse owners.
-Duane took all this in at once, but Jurgis had to have the whole
-race-track situation explained to him before he realized the importance
-of such an opportunity.
-
-There was the gigantic Racing Trust. It owned the legislatures in every
-state in which it did business; it even owned some of the big
-newspapers, and made public opinion—there was no power in the land that
-could oppose it unless, perhaps, it were the Poolroom Trust. It built
-magnificent racing parks all over the country, and by means of enormous
-purses it lured the people to come, and then it organized a gigantic
-shell game, whereby it plundered them of hundreds of millions of
-dollars every year. Horse racing had once been a sport, but nowadays it
-was a business; a horse could be “doped” and doctored, undertrained or
-overtrained; it could be made to fall at any moment—or its gait could
-be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all the spectators would
-take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the lead. There were scores
-of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners who played them and
-made fortunes, sometimes it was the jockeys and trainers, sometimes it
-was outsiders, who bribed them—but most of the time it was the chiefs
-of the trust. Now for instance, they were having winter racing in New
-Orleans and a syndicate was laying out each day’s program in advance,
-and its agents in all the Northern cities were “milking” the poolrooms.
-The word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a
-little while before each race; and any man who could get the secret had
-as good as a fortune. If Jurgis did not believe it, he could try it,
-said the little Jew—let them meet at a certain house on the morrow and
-make a test. Jurgis was willing, and so was Duane, and so they went to
-one of the high-class poolrooms where brokers and merchants gambled
-(with society women in a private room), and they put up ten dollars
-each upon a horse called “Black Beldame,” a six to one shot, and won.
-For a secret like that they would have done a good many sluggings—but
-the next day Goldberger informed them that the offending gambler had
-got wind of what was coming to him, and had skipped the town.
-
-There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a
-living, inside of a jail, if not out of it. Early in April the city
-elections were due, and that meant prosperity for all the powers of
-graft. Jurgis, hanging round in dives and gambling houses and brothels,
-met with the heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he
-came to understand all the ins and outs of the game, and to hear of a
-number of ways in which he could make himself useful about election
-time. “Buck” Halloran was a “Democrat,” and so Jurgis became a Democrat
-also; but he was not a bitter one—the Republicans were good fellows,
-too, and were to have a pile of money in this next campaign. At the
-last election the Republicans had paid four dollars a vote to the
-Democrats’ three; and “Buck” Halloran sat one night playing cards with
-Jurgis and another man, who told how Halloran had been charged with the
-job voting a “bunch” of thirty-seven newly landed Italians, and how he,
-the narrator, had met the Republican worker who was after the very same
-gang, and how the three had effected a bargain, whereby the Italians
-were to vote half and half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the
-balance of the fund went to the conspirators!
-
-Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and vicissitudes of
-miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the career for that of a
-politician. Just at this time there was a tremendous uproar being
-raised concerning the alliance between the criminals and the police.
-For the criminal graft was one in which the business men had no direct
-part—it was what is called a “side line,” carried by the police. “Wide
-open” gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to “trade,” but
-burglaries and holdups did not. One night it chanced that while Jack
-Duane was drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed
-by the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to
-know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him make his
-escape. Such a howl from the newspapers followed this that Duane was
-slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town in time. And just at
-that juncture it happened that Jurgis was introduced to a man named
-Harper whom he recognized as the night watchman at Brown’s, who had
-been instrumental in making him an American citizen, the first year of
-his arrival at the yards. The other was interested in the coincidence,
-but did not remember Jurgis—he had handled too many “green ones” in his
-time, he said. He sat in a dance hall with Jurgis and Halloran until
-one or two in the morning, exchanging experiences. He had a long story
-to tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his department, and
-how he was now a plain workingman, and a good union man as well. It was
-not until some months afterward that Jurgis understood that the quarrel
-with the superintendent had been prearranged, and that Harper was in
-reality drawing a salary of twenty dollars a week from the packers for
-an inside report of his union’s secret proceedings. The yards were
-seething with agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a
-unionist. The people of Packingtown had borne about all that they would
-bear, and it looked as if a strike might begin any week.
-
-After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a couple
-of days later he came to him with an interesting proposition. He was
-not absolutely certain, he said, but he thought that he could get him a
-regular salary if he would come to Packingtown and do as he was told,
-and keep his mouth shut. Harper—“Bush” Harper, he was called—was a
-right-hand man of Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards;
-and in the coming election there was a peculiar situation. There had
-come to Scully a proposition to nominate a certain rich brewer who
-lived upon a swell boulevard that skirted the district, and who coveted
-the big badge and the “honorable” of an alderman. The brewer was a Jew,
-and had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare
-campaign fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone to the
-Republicans with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage
-the “sheeny,” and he did not mean to take any chances with his
-district; let the Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable
-friend of Scully’s, who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an
-Ashland Avenue saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the
-“sheeny’s” money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was
-more than they would get otherwise. In return for this the Republicans
-would agree to put up no candidate the following year, when Scully
-himself came up for reelection as the other alderman from the ward. To
-this the Republicans had assented at once; but the hell of it was—so
-Harper explained—that the Republicans were all of them fools—a man had
-to be a fool to be a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was
-king. And they didn’t know how to work, and of course it would not do
-for the Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League,
-to support the Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so
-great except for another fact—there had been a curious development in
-stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped
-into being. They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess,
-said “Bush” Harper. The one image which the word “Socialist” brought to
-Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself
-one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and
-shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had
-tried to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was
-not of an imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present
-he was content with his companion’s explanation that the Socialists
-were the enemies of American institutions—could not be bought, and
-would not combine or make any sort of a “dicker.” Mike Scully was very
-much worried over the opportunity which his last deal gave to them—the
-stockyards Democrats were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist for
-their candidate, and while they were changing they might possibly
-conclude that a Socialist firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.
-And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in
-the world, explained “Bush” Harper; he had been a union man, and he was
-known in the yards as a workingman; he must have hundreds of
-acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he might
-come out as a Republican now without exciting the least suspicion.
-There were barrels of money for the use of those who could deliver the
-goods; and Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully, who had never yet gone
-back on a friend. Just what could he do? Jurgis asked, in some
-perplexity, and the other explained in detail. To begin with, he would
-have to go to the yards and work, and he mightn’t relish that; but he
-would have what he earned, as well as the rest that came to him. He
-would get active in the union again, and perhaps try to get an office,
-as he, Harper, had; he would tell all his friends the good points of
-Doyle, the Republican nominee, and the bad ones of the “sheeny”; and
-then Scully would furnish a meeting place, and he would start the
-“Young Men’s Republican Association,” or something of that sort, and
-have the rich brewer’s best beer by the hogshead, and fireworks and
-speeches, just like the War Whoop League. Surely Jurgis must know
-hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun; and there would be the
-regular Republican leaders and workers to help him out, and they would
-deliver a big enough majority on election day.
-
-When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis demanded:
-“But how can I get a job in Packingtown? I’m blacklisted.”
-
-At which “Bush” Harper laughed. “I’ll attend to that all right,” he
-said.
-
-And the other replied, “It’s a go, then; I’m your man.” So Jurgis went
-out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political lord
-of the district, the boss of Chicago’s mayor. It was Scully who owned
-the brick-yards and the dump and the ice pond—though Jurgis did not
-know it. It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which
-Jurgis’s child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office
-the magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was
-principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
-tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these
-things—any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of
-the packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the “biggest” man he had
-ever met.
-
-He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief
-talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making
-up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one
-of the head managers of Durham’s—
-
-“The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I would
-like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. He was once
-indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to overlook that.”
-
-Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this. “What does he mean
-by ‘indiscreet’?” he asked.
-
-“I was blacklisted, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-At which the other frowned. “Blacklisted?” he said. “How do you mean?”
-And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.
-
-He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist. “I—that is—I had
-difficulty in getting a place,” he stammered.
-
-“What was the matter?”
-
-“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck
-him.”
-
-“I see,” said the other, and meditated for a few moments. “What do you
-wish to do?” he asked.
-
-“Anything, sir,” said Jurgis—“only I had a broken arm this winter, and
-so I have to be careful.”
-
-“How would it suit you to be a night watchman?”
-
-“That wouldn’t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.”
-
-“I see—politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, “Take this man to Pat
-Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow.”
-
-And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the
-days gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily,
-and smiled to himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss’s face as
-the timekeeper said, “Mr. Harmon says to put this man on.” It would
-overcrowd his department and spoil the record he was trying to make—but
-he said not a word except “All right.”
-
-And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he sought
-out his old friends, and joined the union, and began to “root” for
-“Scotty” Doyle. Doyle had done him a good turn once, he explained, and
-was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman himself, and would
-represent the workingmen—why did they want to vote for a millionaire
-“sheeny,” and what the hell had Mike Scully ever done for them that
-they should back his candidates all the time? And meantime Scully had
-given Jurgis a note to the Republican leader of the ward, and he had
-gone there and met the crowd he was to work with. Already they had
-hired a big hall, with some of the brewer’s money, and every night
-Jurgis brought in a dozen new members of the “Doyle Republican
-Association.” Pretty soon they had a grand opening night; and there was
-a brass band, which marched through the streets, and fireworks and
-bombs and red lights in front of the hall; and there was an enormous
-crowd, with two overflow meetings—so that the pale and trembling
-candidate had to recite three times over the little speech which one of
-Scully’s henchmen had written, and which he had been a month learning
-by heart. Best of all, the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks,
-presidential candidate, rode out in an automobile to discuss the sacred
-privileges of American citizenship, and protection and prosperity for
-the American workingman. His inspiriting address was quoted to the
-extent of half a column in all the morning newspapers, which also said
-that it could be stated upon excellent authority that the unexpected
-popularity developed by Doyle, the Republican candidate for alderman,
-was giving great anxiety to Mr. Scully, the chairman of the Democratic
-City Committee.
-
-The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight
-procession came off, with the members of the Doyle Republican
-Association all in red capes and hats, and free beer for every voter in
-the ward—the best beer ever given away in a political campaign, as the
-whole electorate testified. During this parade, and at innumerable
-cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored tirelessly. He did not make
-any speeches—there were lawyers and other experts for that—but he
-helped to manage things; distributing notices and posting placards and
-bringing out the crowds; and when the show was on he attended to the
-fireworks and the beer. Thus in the course of the campaign he handled
-many hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer’s money, administering it
-with naïve and touching fidelity. Toward the end, however, he learned
-that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the “boys,” because he
-compelled them either to make a poorer showing than he or to do without
-their share of the pie. After that Jurgis did his best to please them,
-and to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra
-bungholes of the campaign barrel.
-
-He pleased Mike Scully, also. On election morning he was out at four
-o’clock, “getting out the vote”; he had a two-horse carriage to ride
-in, and he went from house to house for his friends, and escorted them
-in triumph to the polls. He voted half a dozen times himself, and voted
-some of his friends as often; he brought bunch after bunch of the
-newest foreigners—Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks—and when he
-had put them through the mill he turned them over to another man to
-take to the next polling place. When Jurgis first set out, the captain
-of the precinct gave him a hundred dollars, and three times in the
-course of the day he came for another hundred, and not more than
-twenty-five out of each lot got stuck in his own pocket. The balance
-all went for actual votes, and on a day of Democratic landslides they
-elected “Scotty” Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by nearly a thousand
-plurality—and beginning at five o’clock in the afternoon, and ending at
-three the next morning, Jurgis treated himself to a most unholy and
-horrible “jag.” Nearly every one else in Packingtown did the same,
-however, for there was universal exultation over this triumph of
-popular government, this crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by
-the power of the common people.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI
-
-
-After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job.
-The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was
-continuing, and it seemed to him best to “lay low” for the present. He
-had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered
-himself entitled to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of
-habit kept him at it. Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised
-him that something might “turn up” before long.
-
-Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial
-friends. He had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that Elzbieta
-and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought to
-them. He went with a new set, now, young unmarried fellows who were
-“sporty.” Jurgis had long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and
-since going into politics he had donned a linen collar and a greasy red
-necktie. He had some reason for thinking of his dress, for he was
-making about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend
-upon his pleasures without ever touching his savings.
-
-Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the cheap
-theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which they were
-familiar. Many of the saloons in Packingtown had pool tables, and some
-of them bowling alleys, by means of which he could spend his evenings
-in petty gambling. Also, there were cards and dice. One time Jurgis got
-into a game on a Saturday night and won prodigiously, and because he
-was a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and the game continued
-until late Sunday afternoon, and by that time he was “out” over twenty
-dollars. On Saturday nights, also, a number of balls were generally
-given in Packingtown; each man would bring his “girl” with him, paying
-half a dollar for a ticket, and several dollars additional for drinks
-in the course of the festivities, which continued until three or four
-o’clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting. During all this
-time the same man and woman would dance together, half-stupefied with
-sensuality and drink.
-
-Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something
-“turning up.” In May the agreement between the packers and the unions
-expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going
-on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had
-dealt with the wages of the skilled men only; and of the members of the
-Meat Workers’ Union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago
-these latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half
-cents an hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for
-the next year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed—in the
-course of the negotiations the union officers examined time checks to
-the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest
-wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars
-and five cents, and the average of the whole, six dollars and
-sixty-five cents. And six dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too
-much for a man to keep a family on, considering the fact that the price
-of dressed meat had increased nearly fifty per cent in the last five
-years, while the price of “beef on the hoof” had decreased as much, it
-would have seemed that the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the
-packers were unwilling to pay it—they rejected the union demand, and to
-show what their purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired
-they put down the wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half
-cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them
-to fifteen before he got through. There were a million and a half of
-men in the country looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right
-in Chicago; and were the packers to let the union stewards march into
-their places and bind them to a contract that would lose them several
-thousand dollars a day for a year? Not much!
-
-All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a
-referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the
-same in all the packing house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and
-public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All
-sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were
-obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off
-shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots.
-So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union
-headquarters to all the big packing centers—to St. Paul, South Omaha,
-Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York—and
-the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off
-their working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great
-“Beef Strike” was on.
-
-Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike
-Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been
-decently paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone
-into semi-retirement, and looked nervous and worried. “What do you
-want?” he demanded, when he saw Jurgis.
-
-“I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike,”
-the other replied.
-
-And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning’s
-papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully,
-who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the
-city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants.
-Now, therefore, Jurgis was not a little taken aback when the other
-demanded suddenly, “See here, Rudkus, why don’t you stick by your job?”
-
-Jurgis started. “Work as a scab?” he cried.
-
-“Why not?” demanded Scully. “What’s that to you?”
-
-“But—but—” stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it for granted that
-he should go out with his union. “The packers need good men, and need
-them bad,” continued the other, “and they’ll treat a man right that
-stands by them. Why don’t you take your chance and fix yourself?”
-
-“But,” said Jurgis, “how could I ever be of any use to you—in
-politics?”
-
-“You couldn’t be it anyhow,” said Scully, abruptly.
-
-“Why not?” asked Jurgis.
-
-“Hell, man!” cried the other. “Don’t you know you’re a Republican? And
-do you think I’m always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found
-out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay.”
-
-Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it
-before. “I could be a Democrat,” he said.
-
-“Yes,” responded the other, “but not right away; a man can’t change his
-politics every day. And besides, I don’t need you—there’d be nothing
-for you to do. And it’s a long time to election day, anyhow; and what
-are you going to do meantime?”
-
-“I thought I could count on you,” began Jurgis.
-
-“Yes,” responded Scully, “so you could—I never yet went back on a
-friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for
-another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today, and what can I
-do? I’ve put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this
-one week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn’t do
-for me to tell other men what I tell you, but you’ve been on the
-inside, and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What
-have you to gain by a strike?”
-
-“I hadn’t thought,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Exactly,” said Scully, “but you’d better. Take my word for it, the
-strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and
-meantime what you can get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?”
-
-And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The
-men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and
-the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of
-clerks and stenographers and office boys to finish up the job and get
-them into the chilling rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and
-announced, “I have come back to work, Mr. Murphy.”
-
-The boss’s face lighted up. “Good man!” he cried. “Come ahead!”
-
-“Just a moment,” said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. “I think I ought
-to get a little more wages.”
-
-“Yes,” replied the other, “of course. What do you want?”
-
-Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he
-clenched his hands. “I think I ought to have’ three dollars a day,” he
-said.
-
-“All right,” said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our
-friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys
-were getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!
-
-So Jurgis became one of the new “American heroes,” a man whose virtues
-merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley
-Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was
-generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring
-cot and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was
-perfectly at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only
-in the case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside
-of the stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he
-was not left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of
-Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and
-rushed out to serve him. The police, and the strikers also, were
-determined that there should be no violence; but there was another
-party interested which was minded to the contrary—and that was the
-press. On the first day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work
-early, and in a spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his
-acquaintance to go outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went
-through the big Halsted Street gate, where several policemen were
-watching, and also some union pickets, scanning sharply those who
-passed in and out. Jurgis and his companions went south on Halsted
-Street; past the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started
-across the street toward them and proceeded to argue with them
-concerning the error of their ways. As the arguments were not taken in
-the proper spirit, they went on to threats; and suddenly one of them
-jerked off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence. The
-man started after it, and then, as a cry of “Scab!” was raised and a
-dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, a second man’s
-heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and the fourth stayed long
-enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick exchange of
-blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and fled back of the
-hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course, policemen were
-coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got excited and
-sent in a riot call. Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to
-“Packers’ Avenue,” and in front of the “Central Time Station” he saw
-one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating
-to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded
-by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood
-listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by with
-notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later that
-Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers, printed
-in red and black letters six inches high:
-
-VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!
-
-
-If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States
-the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting
-exploit was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had
-served as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn
-business-men’s newspapers in the land.
-
-Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his
-work being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad
-direct from the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots
-had been laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all
-night long gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the
-better class of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens
-of the new American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and
-thugs of the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners—Greeks,
-Roumanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the
-prospect of disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night
-hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the
-time came for them to get up to work.
-
-In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, “Pat” Murphy
-ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
-experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump
-with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come—that
-he was to be a boss!
-
-Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone
-out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had
-been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least
-afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and
-all the by-products might be wasted—but fresh meats must be had, or the
-restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and
-then “public opinion” would take a startling turn.
-
-An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis
-seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach
-it to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would
-expect to keep it—they would not turn him off at the end of the strike?
-To which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham’s
-for that—they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all
-those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five
-dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
-settled.
-
-So our friend got a pair of “slaughter pen” boots and “jeans,” and
-flung himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing
-beds—a throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not
-understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced,
-hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical
-heat and the sickening stench of fresh blood—and all struggling to
-dress a dozen or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours
-ago, the old killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous
-precision, turning out four hundred carcasses every hour!
-
-The Negroes and the “toughs” from the Lêvée did not want to work, and
-every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and
-recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up
-to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on;
-and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a
-“snooze,” and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no
-system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for the
-poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror;
-thirty of them had been “fired” in a bunch that first morning for
-refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who
-had declined to act as waitresses.
-
-It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his
-best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the
-tricks; he had never given an order in his life before, but he had
-taken enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it,
-and roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most
-tractable pupils, however. “See hyar, boss,” a big black “buck” would
-begin, “ef you doan’ like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody
-else to do it.” Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering
-threats. After the first meal nearly all the steel knives had been
-missing, and now every Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in
-his boots.
-
-There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon
-discovered; and he fell in with the spirit of the thing—there was no
-reason why he should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts
-were slashed and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any
-one; and if a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to
-be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime.
-Everything went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long
-Jurgis found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert
-minds the possibility of registering at more than one place and earning
-more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he
-“fired” him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man
-tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course,
-before long this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good
-income from it.
-
-In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves
-lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in
-transit and the hogs that had developed disease. Frequently, in the
-course of a two or three days’ trip, in hot weather and without water,
-some hog would develop cholera, and die; and the rest would attack him
-before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was opened there would
-be nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this carload
-were not killed at once, they would soon be down with the dread
-disease, and there would be nothing to do but make them into lard. It
-was the same with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping
-with broken bones stuck through their flesh—they must be killed, even
-if brokers and buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats
-and help drive and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the
-packers were gathering gangs of Negroes in the country districts of the
-far South, promising them five dollars a day and board, and being
-careful not to mention there was a strike; already carloads of them
-were on the way, with special rates from the railroads, and all traffic
-ordered out of the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage of
-the chance to clear out their jails and workhouses—in Detroit the
-magistrates would release every man who agreed to leave town within
-twenty-four hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to
-ship them right. And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for
-their accommodation, including beer and whisky, so that they might not
-be tempted to go outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati
-to “pack fruit,” and when they arrived put them at work canning corned
-beef, and put cots for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which
-the men passed. As the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of
-squads of police, they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms,
-and in the car sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots
-touched. In some places they would use the same room for eating and
-sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables, to
-keep away from the swarms of rats.
-
-But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized. Ninety
-per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the task of
-completely remaking their labor force—and with the price of meat up
-thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a settlement. They made
-an offer to submit the whole question at issue to arbitration; and at
-the end of ten days the unions accepted it, and the strike was called
-off. It was agreed that all the men were to be re-employed within
-forty-five days, and that there was to be “no discrimination against
-union men.”
-
-This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back
-“without discrimination,” he would lose his present place. He sought
-out the superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him “wait and see.”
-Durham’s strikebreakers were few of them leaving.
-
-Whether or not the “settlement” was simply a trick of the packers to
-gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and
-cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there
-went out from the office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the
-big packing centers, “Employ no union leaders.” And in the morning,
-when the twenty thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner
-pails and working clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the
-hog-trimming room, where he had worked before the strike, and saw a
-throng of eager men, with a score or two of policemen watching them;
-and he saw a superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick
-out man after man that pleased him; and one after another came, and
-there were some men up near the head of the line who were never
-picked—they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis
-had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there
-were louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle
-butchers were waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he
-hurried there. One big butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades
-Council, had been passed over five times, and the men were wild with
-rage; they had appointed a committee of three to go in and see the
-superintendent, and the committee had made three attempts, and each
-time the police had clubbed them back from the door. Then there were
-yells and hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to
-the door. “We all go back or none of us do!” cried a hundred voices.
-And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, “You went out of
-here like cattle, and like cattle you’ll come back!”
-
-Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones
-and yelled: “It’s off, boys. We’ll all of us quit again!” And so the
-cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering their
-members from the other plants, where the same trick had been played,
-they marched down Packers’ Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass
-of workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the
-killing beds dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here
-and there on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour
-the whole of Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with
-fury.
-
-There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this—the place
-was a seething caldron of passion, and the “scab” who ventured into it
-fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the
-newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet
-ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was a
-strike, and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched
-battles fought at night, by the light of blazing freight trains.
-Packingtown was always a center of violence; in “Whisky Point,” where
-there were a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always
-fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Any one who had taken
-the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have found that
-there was less violence that summer than ever before—and this while
-twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day
-but brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle
-the union leaders were fighting—to hold this huge army in rank, to keep
-it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a
-hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long
-weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.
-
-Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of
-making a new labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were
-brought in every night, and distributed among the various plants. Some
-of them were experienced workers,—butchers, salesmen, and managers from
-the packers’ branch stores, and a few union men who had deserted from
-other cities; but the vast majority were “green” Negroes from the
-cotton districts of the far South, and they were herded into the
-packing plants like sheep. There was a law forbidding the use of
-buildings as lodginghouses unless they were licensed for the purpose,
-and provided with proper windows, stairways, and fire escapes; but
-here, in a “paint room,” reached only by an enclosed “chute,” a room
-without a single window and only one door, a hundred men were crowded
-upon mattresses on the floor. Up on the third story of the “hog house”
-of Jones’s was a storeroom, without a window, into which they crowded
-seven hundred men, sleeping upon the bare springs of cots, and with a
-second shift to use them by day. And when the clamor of the public led
-to an investigation into these conditions, and the mayor of the city
-was forced to order the enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge
-to issue an injunction forbidding him to do it!
-
-Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end to
-gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of
-professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to fleece
-the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space in front of
-Brown’s, one might see brawny Negroes stripped to the waist and
-pounding each other for money, while a howling throng of three or four
-thousand surged about, men and women, young white girls from the
-country rubbing elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their
-boots, while rows of woolly heads peered down from every window of the
-surrounding factories. The ancestors of these black people had been
-savages in Africa; and since then they had been chattel slaves, or had
-been held down by a community ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now
-for the first time they were free—free to gratify every passion, free
-to wreck themselves. They were wanted to break a strike, and when it
-was broken they would be shipped away, and their present masters would
-never see them again; and so whisky and women were brought in by the
-carload and sold to them, and hell was let loose in the yards. Every
-night there were stabbings and shootings; it was said that the packers
-had blank permits, which enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city
-without troubling the authorities. They lodged men and women on the
-same floor; and with the night there began a saturnalia of
-debauchery—scenes such as never before had been witnessed in America.
-And as the women were the dregs from the brothels of Chicago, and the
-men were for the most part ignorant country Negroes, the nameless
-diseases of vice were soon rife; and this where food was being handled
-which was sent out to every corner of the civilized world.
-
-The “Union Stockyards” were never a pleasant place; but now they were
-not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place of
-an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the
-blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations:
-upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors
-stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn
-railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose
-labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them;
-and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of moist
-flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
-fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell—there were also
-tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the
-workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black
-with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.
-
-And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
-play—fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
-laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked in
-the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize
-fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the
-corner one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed
-Negress, lean and witchlike, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing,
-yelling and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the
-“Lamb,” while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and
-screamed in convulsions of terror and remorse.
-
-Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched in
-sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its
-food, and the packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new
-workers, and could be more stern with the old ones—could put them on
-piecework, and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis
-was now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the
-change day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had
-gotten used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat
-and the stench, and the fact that he was a “scab” and knew it and
-despised himself. He was drinking, and developing a villainous temper,
-and he stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until
-they were ready to drop with exhaustion.
-
-Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place and
-shouted to Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. They
-followed him outside, to where, in the midst of a dense throng, they
-saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three patrol-wagon loads of
-police. Jurgis and his men sprang upon one of the trucks, and the
-driver yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering away at a gallop.
-Some steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers had got
-hold of them, and there would be the chance of a scrap!
-
-They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of
-the “dump.” There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and
-women rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were
-eight or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no
-disturbance until they came to a place where the street was blocked
-with a dense throng. Those on the flying truck yelled a warning and the
-crowd scattered pell-mell, disclosing one of the steers lying in its
-blood. There were a good many cattle butchers about just then, with
-nothing much to do, and hungry children at home; and so some one had
-knocked out the steer—and as a first-class man can kill and dress one
-in a couple of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts
-already missing. This called for punishment, of course; and the police
-proceeded to administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at
-every head they saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the
-terrified people fled into houses and stores, or scattered
-helter-skelter down the street. Jurgis and his gang joined in the
-sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring him to
-bay and punch him. If he fled into a house his pursuer would smash in
-the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting every one who
-came within reach, and finally dragging his squealing quarry from under
-a bed or a pile of old clothes in a closet.
-
-Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room. One of them
-took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and
-proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders, until he lay down
-and gave a chance at his head. The others leaped a fence in the rear,
-balking the second policeman, who was fat; and as he came back, furious
-and cursing, a big Polish woman, the owner of the saloon, rushed in
-screaming, and received a poke in the stomach that doubled her up on
-the floor. Meantime Jurgis, who was of a practical temper, was helping
-himself at the bar; and the first policeman, who had laid out his man,
-joined him, handing out several more bottles, and filling his pockets
-besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance
-with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor
-brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman
-came up behind her and put his knee into her back and his hands over
-her eyes—and then called to his companion, who went back and broke open
-the cash drawer and filled his pockets with the contents. Then the
-three went outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a
-shove and dashed out himself. The gang having already got the carcass
-on to the truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams and
-curses, and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen enemies. These
-bricks and stones would figure in the accounts of the “riot” which
-would be sent out to a few thousand newspapers within an hour or two;
-but the episode of the cash drawer would never be mentioned again, save
-only in the heartbreaking legends of Packingtown.
-
-It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out
-the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been
-killed, and then knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to
-supper, with three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they
-exchanged reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a
-roulette parlor, and Jurgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped
-about fifteen dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal,
-and he went back to Packingtown about two o’clock in the morning, very
-much the worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, entirely
-deserving the calamity that was in store for him.
-
-As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-cheeked
-woman in a greasy “kimono,” and she put her arm about his waist to
-steady him; they turned into a dark room they were passing—but scarcely
-had they taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open, and a man
-entered, carrying a lantern. “Who’s there?” he called sharply. And
-Jurgis started to mutter some reply; but at the same instant the man
-raised his light, which flashed in his face, so that it was possible to
-recognize him. Jurgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap
-like a mad thing. The man was Connor!
-
-Connor, the boss of the loading gang! The man who had seduced his
-wife—who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life!
-He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him.
-
-Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown,
-but it had been as of something far off, that no longer concerned him.
-Now, however, when he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing
-happened to him that had happened before—a flood of rage boiled up in
-him, a blind frenzy seized him. And he flung himself at the man, and
-smote him between the eyes—and then, as he fell, seized him by the
-throat and began to pound his head upon the stones.
-
-The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had
-been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a
-thing; but they could hear Jurgis panting, and hear the thumping of his
-victim’s skull, and they rushed there and tried to pull him off.
-Precisely as before, Jurgis came away with a piece of his enemy’s flesh
-between his teeth; and, as before, he went on fighting with those who
-had interfered with him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into
-insensibility.
-
-And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards station
-house. This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came
-to his senses he could get something to drink, and also a messenger to
-take word of his plight to “Bush” Harper. Harper did not appear,
-however, until after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been
-hailed into court and remanded at five hundred dollars’ bail to await
-the result of his victim’s injuries. Jurgis was wild about this,
-because a different magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he
-had stated that he had never been arrested before, and also that he had
-been attacked first—and if only someone had been there to speak a good
-word for him, he could have been let off at once.
-
-But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the
-message. “What’s happened to you?” he asked.
-
-“I’ve been doing a fellow up,” said Jurgis, “and I’ve got to get five
-hundred dollars’ bail.”
-
-“I can arrange that all right,” said the other—“though it may cost you
-a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?”
-
-“It was a man that did me a mean trick once,” answered Jurgis.
-
-“Who is he?”
-
-“He’s a foreman in Brown’s or used to be. His name’s Connor.”
-
-And the other gave a start. “Connor!” he cried. “Not Phil Connor!”
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s the fellow. Why?”
-
-“Good God!” exclaimed the other, “then you’re in for it, old man! _I_
-can’t help you!”
-
-“Not help me! Why not?”
-
-“Why, he’s one of Scully’s biggest men—he’s a member of the War-Whoop
-League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature! Phil Connor!
-Great heavens!”
-
-Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.
-
-“Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!” declared the other.
-
-“Can’t I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?” asked
-Jurgis, at length.
-
-“But Scully’s out of town,” the other answered. “I don’t even know
-where he is—he’s run away to dodge the strike.”
-
-That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull
-had run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! “But what am
-I going to do?” he asked, weakly.
-
-“How should I know?” said the other. “I shouldn’t even dare to get bail
-for you—why, I might ruin myself for life!”
-
-Again there was silence. “Can’t you do it for me,” Jurgis asked, “and
-pretend that you didn’t know who I’d hit?”
-
-“But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?” asked
-Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. “There’s
-nothing—unless it’s this,” he said. “I could have your bail reduced;
-and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip.”
-
-“How much will it be?” Jurgis asked, after he had had this explained
-more in detail.
-
-“I don’t know,” said the other. “How much do you own?”
-
-“I’ve got about three hundred dollars,” was the answer.
-
-“Well,” was Harper’s reply, “I’m not sure, but I’ll try and get you off
-for that. I’ll take the risk for friendship’s sake—for I’d hate to see
-you sent to state’s prison for a year or two.”
-
-And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook—which was sewed up in his
-trousers—and signed an order, which “Bush” Harper wrote, for all the
-money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
-the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a decent
-fellow and a friend of Scully’s, who had been attacked by a
-strike-breaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
-Harper went on it himself; he did not tell this to Jurgis, however—nor
-did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy
-matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the
-three hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike
-Scully! All that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the
-best thing he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so
-Jurgis overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and
-fourteen cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put
-it with the two dollars and quarter that was left from his last night’s
-celebration, and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of
-Chicago.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII
-
-
-Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was
-crippled—he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost
-its claws, or been torn out of its shell. He had been shorn, at one
-cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a
-living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions. He could
-no longer command a job when he wanted it; he could no longer steal
-with impunity—he must take his chances with the common herd. Nay worse,
-he dared not mingle with the herd—he must hide himself, for he was one
-marked out for destruction. His old companions would betray him, for
-the sake of the influence they would gain thereby; and he would be made
-to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed, but for others
-which would be laid at his door, just as had been done for some poor
-devil on the occasion of that assault upon the “country customer” by
-him and Duane.
-
-And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new
-standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had
-been out of work before, he had been content if he could sleep in a
-doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if he could get fifteen
-cents a day for saloon lunches. But now he desired all sorts of other
-things, and suffered because he had to do without them. He must have a
-drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food
-that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to master every
-other consideration—he would have it, though it were his last nickel
-and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence.
-
-Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates. But never since he
-had been in Chicago had he stood less chance of getting a job than just
-then. For one thing, there was the economic crisis, the million or two
-of men who had been out of work in the spring and summer, and were not
-yet all back, by any means. And then there was the strike, with seventy
-thousand men and women all over the country idle for a couple of
-months—twenty thousand in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work
-throughout the city. It did not remedy matters that a few days later
-the strike was given up and about half the strikers went back to work;
-for every one taken on, there was a “scab” who gave up and fled. The
-ten or fifteen thousand “green” Negroes, foreigners, and criminals were
-now being turned loose to shift for themselves. Everywhere Jurgis went
-he kept meeting them, and he was in an agony of fear lest some one of
-them should know that he was “wanted.” He would have left Chicago, only
-by the time he had realized his danger he was almost penniless; and it
-would be better to go to jail than to be caught out in the country in
-the winter time.
-
-At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few pennies left; and he
-had not yet found a job—not even a day’s work at anything, not a chance
-to carry a satchel. Once again, as when he had come out of the
-hospital, he was bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom of
-starvation. Raw, naked terror possessed him, a maddening passion that
-would never leave him, and that wore him down more quickly than the
-actual want of food. He was going to die of hunger! The fiend reached
-out its scaly arms for him—it touched him, its breath came into his
-face; and he would cry out for the awfulness of it, he would wake up in
-the night, shuddering, and bathed in perspiration, and start up and
-flee. He would walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted; he could
-not remain still—he would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing about
-him with restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from one end of the vast
-city to the other, there were hundreds of others like him; everywhere
-was the sight of plenty and the merciless hand of authority waving them
-away. There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and
-everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where
-the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
-
-When he was down to his last quarter, Jurgis learned that before the
-bakeshops closed at night they sold out what was left at half price,
-and after that he would go and get two loaves of stale bread for a
-nickel, and break them up and stuff his pockets with them, munching a
-bit from time to time. He would not spend a penny save for this; and,
-after two or three days more, he even became sparing of the bread, and
-would stop and peer into the ash barrels as he walked along the
-streets, and now and then rake out a bit of something, shake it free
-from dust, and count himself just so many minutes further from the end.
-
-So for several days he had been going about, ravenous all the time, and
-growing weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had a hideous
-experience, that almost broke his heart. He was passing down a street
-lined with warehouses, and a boss offered him a job, and then, after he
-had started to work, turned him off because he was not strong enough.
-And he stood by and saw another man put into his place, and then picked
-up his coat, and walked off, doing all that he could to keep from
-breaking down and crying like a baby. He was lost! He was doomed! There
-was no hope for him! But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave place
-to rage. He fell to cursing. He would come back there after dark, and
-he would show that scoundrel whether he was good for anything or not!
-
-He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came upon
-a green-grocery, with a tray full of cabbages in front of it. Jurgis,
-after one swift glance about him, stooped and seized the biggest of
-them, and darted round the corner with it. There was a hue and cry, and
-a score of men and boys started in chase of him; but he came to an
-alley, and then to another branching off from it and leading him into
-another street, where he fell into a walk, and slipped his cabbage
-under his coat and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When he had
-gotten a safe distance away he sat down and devoured half the cabbage
-raw, stowing the balance away in his pockets till the next day.
-
-Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers, which made much of
-the “common people,” opened a “free-soup kitchen” for the benefit of
-the unemployed. Some people said that they did this for the sake of the
-advertising it gave them, and some others said that their motive was a
-fear lest all their readers should be starved off; but whatever the
-reason, the soup was thick and hot, and there was a bowl for every man,
-all night long. When Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow “hobo,” he
-vowed that he would have half a dozen bowls before morning; but, as it
-proved, he was lucky to get one, for there was a line of men two blocks
-long before the stand, and there was just as long a line when the place
-was finally closed up.
-
-This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis—in the “Lêvée”
-district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same, for he
-was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place
-of refuge. So far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every
-night in a vacant lot; but now there fell suddenly a shadow of the
-advancing winter, a chill wind from the north and a driving storm of
-rain. That day Jurgis bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter,
-and at night he spent his last two pennies in a “stale-beer dive.” This
-was a place kept by a Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of
-beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons; and after he had
-doctored it with chemicals to make it “fizz,” he sold it for two cents
-a can, the purchase of a can including the privilege of sleeping the
-night through upon the floor, with a mass of degraded outcasts, men and
-women.
-
-All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he was
-always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost. For
-instance, just now it was election time again—within five or six weeks
-the voters of the country would select a President; and he heard the
-wretches with whom he associated discussing it, and saw the streets of
-the city decorated with placards and banners—and what words could
-describe the pangs of grief and despair that shot through him?
-
-For instance, there was a night during this cold spell. He had begged
-all day, for his very life, and found not a soul to heed him, until
-toward evening he saw an old lady getting off a streetcar and helped
-her down with her umbrellas and bundles and then told her his
-“hard-luck story,” and after answering all her suspicious questions
-satisfactorily, was taken to a restaurant and saw a quarter paid down
-for a meal. And so he had soup and bread, and boiled beef and potatoes
-and beans, and pie and coffee, and came out with his skin stuffed tight
-as a football. And then, through the rain and the darkness, far down
-the street he saw red lights flaring and heard the thumping of a bass
-drum; and his heart gave a leap, and he made for the place on the
-run—knowing without the asking that it meant a political meeting.
-
-The campaign had so far been characterized by what the newspapers
-termed “apathy.” For some reason the people refused to get excited over
-the struggle, and it was almost impossible to get them to come to
-meetings, or to make any noise when they did come. Those which had been
-held in Chicago so far had proven most dismal failures, and tonight,
-the speaker being no less a personage than a candidate for the
-vice-presidency of the nation, the political managers had been
-trembling with anxiety. But a merciful providence had sent this storm
-of cold rain—and now all it was necessary to do was to set off a few
-fireworks, and thump awhile on a drum, and all the homeless wretches
-from a mile around would pour in and fill the hall! And then on the
-morrow the newspapers would have a chance to report the tremendous
-ovation, and to add that it had been no “silk-stocking” audience,
-either, proving clearly that the high tariff sentiments of the
-distinguished candidate were pleasing to the wage-earners of the
-nation.
-
-So Jurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated with
-flags and bunting; and after the chairman had made his little speech,
-and the orator of the evening rose up, amid an uproar from the
-band—only fancy the emotions of Jurgis upon making the discovery that
-the personage was none other than the famous and eloquent Senator
-Spareshanks, who had addressed the “Doyle Republican Association” at
-the stockyards, and helped to elect Mike Scully’s tenpin setter to the
-Chicago Board of Aldermen!
-
-In truth, the sight of the senator almost brought the tears into
-Jurgis’s eyes. What agony it was to him to look back upon those golden
-hours, when he, too, had a place beneath the shadow of the plum tree!
-When he, too, had been of the elect, through whom the country is
-governed—when he had had a bung in the campaign barrel for his own! And
-this was another election in which the Republicans had all the money;
-and but for that one hideous accident he might have had a share of it,
-instead of being where he was!
-
-The eloquent senator was explaining the system of protection; an
-ingenious device whereby the workingman permitted the manufacturer to
-charge him higher prices, in order that he might receive higher wages;
-thus taking his money out of his pocket with one hand, and putting a
-part of it back with the other. To the senator this unique arrangement
-had somehow become identified with the higher verities of the universe.
-It was because of it that Columbia was the gem of the ocean; and all
-her future triumphs, her power and good repute among the nations,
-depended upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the
-hands of those who were toiling to maintain it. The name of this heroic
-company was “the Grand Old Party”—
-
-And here the band began to play, and Jurgis sat up with a violent
-start. Singular as it may seem, Jurgis was making a desperate effort to
-understand what the senator was saying—to comprehend the extent of
-American prosperity, the enormous expansion of American commerce, and
-the Republic’s future in the Pacific and in South America, and wherever
-else the oppressed were groaning. The reason for it was that he wanted
-to keep awake. He knew that if he allowed himself to fall asleep he
-would begin to snore loudly; and so he must listen—he must be
-interested! But he had eaten such a big dinner, and he was so
-exhausted, and the hall was so warm, and his seat was so comfortable!
-The senator’s gaunt form began to grow dim and hazy, to tower before
-him and dance about, with figures of exports and imports. Once his
-neighbor gave him a savage poke in the ribs, and he sat up with a start
-and tried to look innocent; but then he was at it again, and men began
-to stare at him with annoyance, and to call out in vexation. Finally
-one of them called a policeman, who came and grabbed Jurgis by the
-collar, and jerked him to his feet, bewildered and terrified. Some of
-the audience turned to see the commotion, and Senator Spareshanks
-faltered in his speech; but a voice shouted cheerily: “We’re just
-firing a bum! Go ahead, old sport!” And so the crowd roared, and the
-senator smiled genially, and went on; and in a few seconds poor Jurgis
-found himself landed out in the rain, with a kick and a string of
-curses.
-
-He got into the shelter of a doorway and took stock of himself. He was
-not hurt, and he was not arrested—more than he had any right to expect.
-He swore at himself and his luck for a while, and then turned his
-thoughts to practical matters. He had no money, and no place to sleep;
-he must begin begging again.
-
-He went out, hunching his shoulders together and shivering at the touch
-of the icy rain. Coming down the street toward him was a lady, well
-dressed, and protected by an umbrella; and he turned and walked beside
-her. “Please, ma’am,” he began, “could you lend me the price of a
-night’s lodging? I’m a poor working-man—”
-
-Then, suddenly, he stopped short. By the light of a street lamp he had
-caught sight of the lady’s face. He knew her.
-
-It was Alena Jasaityte, who had been the belle of his wedding feast!
-Alena Jasaityte, who had looked so beautiful, and danced with such a
-queenly air, with Juozas Raczius, the teamster! Jurgis had only seen
-her once or twice afterward, for Juozas had thrown her over for another
-girl, and Alena had gone away from Packingtown, no one knew where. And
-now he met her here!
-
-She was as much surprised as he was. “Jurgis Rudkus!” she gasped. “And
-what in the world is the matter with you?”
-
-“I—I’ve had hard luck,” he stammered. “I’m out of work, and I’ve no
-home and no money. And you, Alena—are you married?”
-
-“No,” she answered, “I’m not married, but I’ve got a good place.”
-
-They stood staring at each other for a few moments longer. Finally
-Alena spoke again. “Jurgis,” she said, “I’d help you if I could, upon
-my word I would, but it happens that I’ve come out without my purse,
-and I honestly haven’t a penny with me: I can do something better for
-you, though—I can tell you how to get help. I can tell you where Marija
-is.”
-
-Jurgis gave a start. “Marija!” he exclaimed.
-
-“Yes,” said Alena; “and she’ll help you. She’s got a place, and she’s
-doing well; she’ll be glad to see you.”
-
-It was not much more than a year since Jurgis had left Packingtown,
-feeling like one escaped from jail; and it had been from Marija and
-Elzbieta that he was escaping. But now, at the mere mention of them,
-his whole being cried out with joy. He wanted to see them; he wanted to
-go home! They would help him—they would be kind to him. In a flash he
-had thought over the situation. He had a good excuse for running
-away—his grief at the death of his son; and also he had a good excuse
-for not returning—the fact that they had left Packingtown. “All right,”
-he said, “I’ll go.”
-
-So she gave him a number on Clark Street, adding, “There’s no need to
-give you my address, because Marija knows it.” And Jurgis set out,
-without further ado. He found a large brownstone house of aristocratic
-appearance, and rang the basement bell. A young colored girl came to
-the door, opening it about an inch, and gazing at him suspiciously.
-
-“What do you want?” she demanded.
-
-“Does Marija Berczynskas live here?” he inquired.
-
-“I dunno,” said the girl. “What you want wid her?”
-
-“I want to see her,” said he; “she’s a relative of mine.”
-
-The girl hesitated a moment. Then she opened the door and said, “Come
-in.” Jurgis came and stood in the hall, and she continued: “I’ll go
-see. What’s yo’ name?”
-
-“Tell her it’s Jurgis,” he answered, and the girl went upstairs. She
-came back at the end of a minute or two, and replied, “Dey ain’t no
-sich person here.”
-
-Jurgis’s heart went down into his boots. “I was told this was where she
-lived!” he cried. But the girl only shook her head. “De lady says dey
-ain’t no sich person here,” she said.
-
-And he stood for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. Then he
-turned to go to the door. At the same instant, however, there came a
-knock upon it, and the girl went to open it. Jurgis heard the shuffling
-of feet, and then heard her give a cry; and the next moment she sprang
-back, and past him, her eyes shining white with terror, and bounded up
-the stairway, screaming at the top of her lungs: “_Police! Police!
-We’re pinched!_”
-
-Jurgis stood for a second, bewildered. Then, seeing blue-coated forms
-rushing upon him, he sprang after the Negress. Her cries had been the
-signal for a wild uproar above; the house was full of people, and as he
-entered the hallway he saw them rushing hither and thither, crying and
-screaming with alarm. There were men and women, the latter clad for the
-most part in wrappers, the former in all stages of _déshabille_. At one
-side Jurgis caught a glimpse of a big apartment with plush-covered
-chairs, and tables covered with trays and glasses. There were playing
-cards scattered all over the floor—one of the tables had been upset,
-and bottles of wine were rolling about, their contents running out upon
-the carpet. There was a young girl who had fainted, and two men who
-were supporting her; and there were a dozen others crowding toward the
-front door.
-
-Suddenly, however, there came a series of resounding blows upon it,
-causing the crowd to give back. At the same instant a stout woman, with
-painted cheeks and diamonds in her ears, came running down the stairs,
-panting breathlessly: “To the rear! Quick!”
-
-She led the way to a back staircase, Jurgis following; in the kitchen
-she pressed a spring, and a cupboard gave way and opened, disclosing a
-dark passageway. “Go in!” she cried to the crowd, which now amounted to
-twenty or thirty, and they began to pass through. Scarcely had the last
-one disappeared, however, before there were cries from in front, and
-then the panic-stricken throng poured out again, exclaiming: “They’re
-there too! We’re trapped!”
-
-“Upstairs!” cried the woman, and there was another rush of the mob,
-women and men cursing and screaming and fighting to be first. One
-flight, two, three—and then there was a ladder to the roof, with a
-crowd packed at the foot of it, and one man at the top, straining and
-struggling to lift the trap door. It was not to be stirred, however,
-and when the woman shouted up to unhook it, he answered: “It’s already
-unhooked. There’s somebody sitting on it!”
-
-And a moment later came a voice from downstairs: “You might as well
-quit, you people. We mean business, this time.”
-
-So the crowd subsided; and a few moments later several policemen came
-up, staring here and there, and leering at their victims. Of the latter
-the men were for the most part frightened and sheepish-looking. The
-women took it as a joke, as if they were used to it—though if they had
-been pale, one could not have told, for the paint on their cheeks. One
-black-eyed young girl perched herself upon the top of the balustrade,
-and began to kick with her slippered foot at the helmets of the
-policemen, until one of them caught her by the ankle and pulled her
-down. On the floor below four or five other girls sat upon trunks in
-the hall, making fun of the procession which filed by them. They were
-noisy and hilarious, and had evidently been drinking; one of them, who
-wore a bright red kimono, shouted and screamed in a voice that drowned
-out all the other sounds in the hall—and Jurgis took a glance at her,
-and then gave a start, and a cry, “Marija!”
-
-She heard him, and glanced around; then she shrank back and half sprang
-to her feet in amazement. “Jurgis!” she gasped.
-
-For a second or two they stood staring at each other. “How did you come
-here?” Marija exclaimed.
-
-“I came to see you,” he answered.
-
-“When?”
-
-“Just now.”
-
-“But how did you know—who told you I was here?”
-
-“Alena Jasaityte. I met her on the street.”
-
-Again there was a silence, while they gazed at each other. The rest of
-the crowd was watching them, and so Marija got up and came closer to
-him. “And you?” Jurgis asked. “You live here?”
-
-“Yes,” said Marija, “I live here.” Then suddenly came a hail from
-below: “Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along. You’d best
-begin, or you’ll be sorry—it’s raining outside.”
-
-“Br-r-r!” shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the
-various doors which lined the hallway.
-
-“Come,” said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a tiny
-place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand
-and some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered
-about on the floor, and hopeless confusion everywhere—boxes of rouge
-and bottles of perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the
-dresser, and a pair of slippers and a clock and a whisky bottle on a
-chair.
-
-Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings; yet she
-proceeded to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble
-to close the door. He had by this time divined what sort of a place he
-was in; and he had seen a great deal of the world since he had left
-home, and was not easy to shock—and yet it gave him a painful start
-that Marija should do this. They had always been decent people at home,
-and it seemed to him that the memory of old times ought to have ruled
-her. But then he laughed at himself for a fool. What was he, to be
-pretending to decency!
-
-“How long have you been living here?” he asked.
-
-“Nearly a year,” she answered.
-
-“Why did you come?”
-
-“I had to live,” she said; “and I couldn’t see the children starve.”
-
-He paused for a moment, watching her. “You were out of work?” he asked,
-finally.
-
-“I got sick,” she replied, “and after that I had no money. And then
-Stanislovas died—”
-
-“Stanislovas dead!”
-
-“Yes,” said Marija, “I forgot. You didn’t know about it.”
-
-“How did he die?”
-
-“Rats killed him,” she answered.
-
-Jurgis gave a gasp. “_Rats_ killed him!”
-
-“Yes,” said the other; she was bending over, lacing her shoes as she
-spoke. “He was working in an oil factory—at least he was hired by the
-men to get their beer. He used to carry cans on a long pole; and he’d
-drink a little out of each can, and one day he drank too much, and fell
-asleep in a corner, and got locked up in the place all night. When they
-found him the rats had killed him and eaten him nearly all up.”
-
-Jurgis sat, frozen with horror. Marija went on lacing up her shoes.
-There was a long silence.
-
-Suddenly a big policeman came to the door. “Hurry up, there,” he said.
-
-“As quick as I can,” said Marija, and she stood up and began putting on
-her corsets with feverish haste.
-
-“Are the rest of the people alive?” asked Jurgis, finally.
-
-“Yes,” she said.
-
-“Where are they?”
-
-“They live not far from here. They’re all right now.”
-
-“They are working?” he inquired.
-
-“Elzbieta is,” said Marija, “when she can. I take care of them most of
-the time—I’m making plenty of money now.”
-
-Jurgis was silent for a moment. “Do they know you live here—how you
-live?” he asked.
-
-“Elzbieta knows,” answered Marija. “I couldn’t lie to her. And maybe
-the children have found out by this time. It’s nothing to be ashamed
-of—we can’t help it.”
-
-“And Tamoszius?” he asked. “Does _he_ know?”
-
-Marija shrugged her shoulders. “How do I know?” she said. “I haven’t
-seen him for over a year. He got blood poisoning and lost one finger,
-and couldn’t play the violin any more; and then he went away.”
-
-Marija was standing in front of the glass fastening her dress. Jurgis
-sat staring at her. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman
-he had known in the old days; she was so quiet—so hard! It struck fear
-to his heart to watch her.
-
-Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. “You look as if you had been
-having a rough time of it yourself,” she said.
-
-“I have,” he answered. “I haven’t a cent in my pockets, and nothing to
-do.”
-
-“Where have you been?”
-
-“All over. I’ve been hoboing it. Then I went back to the yards—just
-before the strike.” He paused for a moment, hesitating. “I asked for
-you,” he added. “I found you had gone away, no one knew where. Perhaps
-you think I did you a dirty trick running away as I did, Marija—”
-
-“No,” she answered, “I don’t blame you. We never have—any of us. You
-did your best—the job was too much for us.” She paused a moment, then
-added: “We were too ignorant—that was the trouble. We didn’t stand any
-chance. If I’d known what I know now we’d have won out.”
-
-“You’d have come here?” said Jurgis.
-
-“Yes,” she answered; “but that’s not what I meant. I meant you—how
-differently you would have behaved—about Ona.”
-
-Jurgis was silent; he had never thought of that aspect of it.
-
-“When people are starving,” the other continued, “and they have
-anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say. I guess you
-realize it now when it’s too late. Ona could have taken care of us all,
-in the beginning.” Marija spoke without emotion, as one who had come to
-regard things from the business point of view.
-
-“I—yes, I guess so,” Jurgis answered hesitatingly. He did not add that
-he had paid three hundred dollars, and a foreman’s job, for the
-satisfaction of knocking down “Phil” Connor a second time.
-
-The policeman came to the door again just then. “Come on, now,” he
-said. “Lively!”
-
-“All right,” said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big enough to
-be a drum major’s, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out into the
-hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman remaining to look under the bed
-and behind the door.
-
-“What’s going to come of this?” Jurgis asked, as they started down the
-steps.
-
-“The raid, you mean? Oh, nothing—it happens to us every now and then.
-The madame’s having some sort of time with the police; I don’t know
-what it is, but maybe they’ll come to terms before morning. Anyhow,
-they won’t do anything to you. They always let the men off.”
-
-“Maybe so,” he responded, “but not me—I’m afraid I’m in for it.”
-
-“How do you mean?”
-
-“I’m wanted by the police,” he said, lowering his voice, though of
-course their conversation was in Lithuanian. “They’ll send me up for a
-year or two, I’m afraid.”
-
-“Hell!” said Marija. “That’s too bad. I’ll see if I can’t get you off.”
-
-Downstairs, where the greater part of the prisoners were now massed,
-she sought out the stout personage with the diamond earrings, and had a
-few whispered words with her. The latter then approached the police
-sergeant who was in charge of the raid. “Billy,” she said, pointing to
-Jurgis, “there’s a fellow who came in to see his sister. He’d just got
-in the door when you knocked. You aren’t taking hoboes, are you?”
-
-The sergeant laughed as he looked at Jurgis. “Sorry,” he said, “but the
-orders are every one but the servants.”
-
-So Jurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging behind
-each other like sheep that have smelled a wolf. There were old men and
-young men, college boys and gray-beards old enough to be their
-grandfathers; some of them wore evening dress—there was no one among
-them save Jurgis who showed any signs of poverty.
-
-When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the party
-marched out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the curb, and the
-whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport; there was much
-chaffing, and a universal craning of necks. The women stared about them
-with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked, while the men kept their heads
-bowed, and their hats pulled over their faces. They were crowded into
-the patrol wagons as if into streetcars, and then off they went amid a
-din of cheers. At the station house Jurgis gave a Polish name and was
-put into a cell with half a dozen others; and while these sat and
-talked in whispers, he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his
-thoughts.
-
-Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit, and grown
-used to the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all humanity as
-vile and hideous, he had somehow always excepted his own family that he
-had loved; and now this sudden horrible discovery—Marija a whore, and
-Elzbieta and the children living off her shame! Jurgis might argue with
-himself all he chose, that he had done worse, and was a fool for
-caring—but still he could not get over the shock of that sudden
-unveiling, he could not help being sunk in grief because of it. The
-depths of him were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him
-that had been sleeping so long he had counted them dead. Memories of
-the old life—his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of
-decency and independence! He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle voice
-pleading with him. He saw little Antanas, whom he had meant to make a
-man. He saw his trembling old father, who had blessed them all with his
-wonderful love. He lived again through that day of horror when he had
-discovered Ona’s shame—God, how he had suffered, what a madman he had
-been! How dreadful it had all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat
-and listened, and half agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool!
-Yes—told him that he ought to have sold his wife’s honor and lived by
-it!—And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate—that brief story
-which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull indifference! The
-poor little fellow, with his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the
-snow—his wailing voice rang in Jurgis’s ears, as he lay there in the
-darkness, until the sweat started on his forehead. Now and then he
-would quiver with a sudden spasm of horror, at the picture of little
-Stanislovas shut up in the deserted building and fighting for his life
-with the rats!
-
-All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis; it was
-so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to think they
-might ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped, as he was, what good
-did they do him—why should he ever have allowed them to torment him? It
-had been the task of his recent life to fight them down, to crush them
-out of him; never in his life would he have suffered from them again,
-save that they had caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he
-could protect himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its
-old ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But they
-were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and
-bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the past once more.
-Their voices would die, and never again would he hear them—and so the
-last faint spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII
-
-
-After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with
-the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of
-recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men
-were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed;
-but, Jurgis, to his terror, was called separately, as being a
-suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same court that he had
-been tried, that time when his sentence had been “suspended”; it was
-the same judge, and the same clerk. The latter now stared at Jurgis, as
-if he half thought that he knew him; but the judge had no
-suspicions—just then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was
-expecting from a friend of the police captain of the district, telling
-what disposition he should make of the case of “Polly” Simpson, as the
-“madame” of the house was known. Meantime, he listened to the story of
-how Jurgis had been looking for his sister, and advised him dryly to
-keep his sister in a better place; then he let him go, and proceeded to
-fine each of the girls five dollars, which fines were paid in a bunch
-from a wad of bills which Madame Polly extracted from her stocking.
-
-Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija. The police had left
-the house, and already there were a few visitors; by evening the place
-would be running again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime,
-Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room, and they sat and talked. By
-daylight, Jurgis was able to observe that the color on her cheeks was
-not the old natural one of abounding health; her complexion was in
-reality a parchment yellow, and there were black rings under her eyes.
-
-“Have you been sick?” he asked.
-
-“Sick?” she said. “Hell!” (Marija had learned to scatter her
-conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule driver.)
-“How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life?”
-
-She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her gloomily. “It’s
-morphine,” she said, at last. “I seem to take more of it every day.”
-
-“What’s that for?” he asked.
-
-“It’s the way of it; I don’t know why. If it isn’t that, it’s drink. If
-the girls didn’t booze they couldn’t stand it any time at all. And the
-madame always gives them dope when they first come, and they learn to
-like it; or else they take it for headaches and such things, and get
-the habit that way. I’ve got it, I know; I’ve tried to quit, but I
-never will while I’m here.”
-
-“How long are you going to stay?” he asked.
-
-“I don’t know,” she said. “Always, I guess. What else could I do?”
-
-“Don’t you save any money?”
-
-“Save!” said Marija. “Good Lord, no! I get enough, I suppose, but it
-all goes. I get a half share, two dollars and a half for each customer,
-and sometimes I make twenty-five or thirty dollars a night, and you’d
-think I ought to save something out of that! But then I am charged for
-my room and my meals—and such prices as you never heard of; and then
-for extras, and drinks—for everything I get, and some I don’t. My
-laundry bill is nearly twenty dollars each week alone—think of that!
-Yet what can I do? I either have to stand it or quit, and it would be
-the same anywhere else. It’s all I can do to save the fifteen dollars I
-give Elzbieta each week, so the children can go to school.”
-
-Marija sat brooding in silence for a while; then, seeing that Jurgis
-was interested, she went on: “That’s the way they keep the girls—they
-let them run up debts, so they can’t get away. A young girl comes from
-abroad, and she doesn’t know a word of English, and she gets into a
-place like this, and when she wants to go the madame shows her that she
-is a couple of hundred dollars in debt, and takes all her clothes away,
-and threatens to have her arrested if she doesn’t stay and do as she’s
-told. So she stays, and the longer she stays, the more in debt she
-gets. Often, too, they are girls that didn’t know what they were coming
-to, that had hired out for housework. Did you notice that little French
-girl with the yellow hair, that stood next to me in the court?”
-
-Jurgis answered in the affirmative.
-
-“Well, she came to America about a year ago. She was a store clerk, and
-she hired herself to a man to be sent here to work in a factory. There
-were six of them, all together, and they were brought to a house just
-down the street from here, and this girl was put into a room alone, and
-they gave her some dope in her food, and when she came to she found
-that she had been ruined. She cried, and screamed, and tore her hair,
-but she had nothing but a wrapper, and couldn’t get away, and they kept
-her half insensible with drugs all the time, until she gave up. She
-never got outside of that place for ten months, and then they sent her
-away, because she didn’t suit. I guess they’ll put her out of here,
-too—she’s getting to have crazy fits, from drinking absinthe. Only one
-of the girls that came out with her got away, and she jumped out of a
-second-story window one night. There was a great fuss about that—maybe
-you heard of it.”
-
-“I did,” said Jurgis, “I heard of it afterward.” (It had happened in
-the place where he and Duane had taken refuge from their “country
-customer.” The girl had become insane, fortunately for the police.)
-
-“There’s lots of money in it,” said Marija—“they get as much as forty
-dollars a head for girls, and they bring them from all over. There are
-seventeen in this place, and nine different countries among them. In
-some places you might find even more. We have half a dozen French
-girls—I suppose it’s because the madame speaks the language. French
-girls are bad, too, the worst of all, except for the Japanese. There’s
-a place next door that’s full of Japanese women, but I wouldn’t live in
-the same house with one of them.”
-
-Marija paused for a moment or two, and then she added: “Most of the
-women here are pretty decent—you’d be surprised. I used to think they
-did it because they liked to; but fancy a woman selling herself to
-every kind of man that comes, old or young, black or white—and doing it
-because she likes to!”
-
-“Some of them say they do,” said Jurgis.
-
-“I know,” said she; “they say anything. They’re in, and they know they
-can’t get out. But they didn’t like it when they began—you’d find
-out—it’s always misery! There’s a little Jewish girl here who used to
-run errands for a milliner, and got sick and lost her place; and she
-was four days on the streets without a mouthful of food, and then she
-went to a place just around the corner and offered herself, and they
-made her give up her clothes before they would give her a bite to eat!”
-
-Marija sat for a minute or two, brooding somberly. “Tell me about
-yourself, Jurgis,” she said, suddenly. “Where have you been?”
-
-So he told her the long story of his adventures since his flight from
-home; his life as a tramp, and his work in the freight tunnels, and the
-accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the
-stockyards, and his downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened
-with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation,
-for his face showed it all. “You found me just in the nick of time,”
-she said. “I’ll stand by you—I’ll help you till you can get some work.”
-
-“I don’t like to let you—” he began.
-
-“Why not? Because I’m here?”
-
-“No, not that,” he said. “But I went off and left you—”
-
-“Nonsense!” said Marija. “Don’t think about it. I don’t blame you.”
-
-“You must be hungry,” she said, after a minute or two. “You stay here
-to lunch—I’ll have something up in the room.”
-
-She pressed a button, and a colored woman came to the door and took her
-order. “It’s nice to have somebody to wait on you,” she observed, with
-a laugh, as she lay back on the bed.
-
-As the prison breakfast had not been liberal, Jurgis had a good
-appetite, and they had a little feast together, talking meanwhile of
-Elzbieta and the children and old times. Shortly before they were
-through, there came another colored girl, with the message that the
-“madame” wanted Marija—“Lithuanian Mary,” as they called her here.
-
-“That means you have to go,” she said to Jurgis.
-
-So he got up, and she gave him the new address of the family, a
-tenement over in the Ghetto district. “You go there,” she said.
-“They’ll be glad to see you.”
-
-But Jurgis stood hesitating.
-
-“I—I don’t like to,” he said. “Honest, Marija, why don’t you just give
-me a little money and let me look for work first?”
-
-“How do you need money?” was her reply. “All you want is something to
-eat and a place to sleep, isn’t it?”
-
-“Yes,” he said; “but then I don’t like to go there after I left
-them—and while I have nothing to do, and while you—you—”
-
-“Go on!” said Marija, giving him a push. “What are you talking?—I won’t
-give you money,” she added, as she followed him to the door, “because
-you’ll drink it up, and do yourself harm. Here’s a quarter for you now,
-and go along, and they’ll be so glad to have you back, you won’t have
-time to feel ashamed. Good-by!”
-
-So Jurgis went out, and walked down the street to think it over. He
-decided that he would first try to get work, and so he put in the rest
-of the day wandering here and there among factories and warehouses
-without success. Then, when it was nearly dark, he concluded to go
-home, and set out; but he came to a restaurant, and went in and spent
-his quarter for a meal; and when he came out he changed his mind—the
-night was pleasant, and he would sleep somewhere outside, and put in
-the morrow hunting, and so have one more chance of a job. So he started
-away again, when suddenly he chanced to look about him, and found that
-he was walking down the same street and past the same hall where he had
-listened to the political speech the night before. There was no red
-fire and no band now, but there was a sign out, announcing a meeting,
-and a stream of people pouring in through the entrance. In a flash
-Jurgis had decided that he would chance it once more, and sit down and
-rest while making up his mind what to do. There was no one taking
-tickets, so it must be a free show again.
-
-He entered. There were no decorations in the hall this time; but there
-was quite a crowd upon the platform, and almost every seat in the place
-was filled. He took one of the last, far in the rear, and straightway
-forgot all about his surroundings. Would Elzbieta think that he had
-come to sponge off her, or would she understand that he meant to get to
-work again and do his share? Would she be decent to him, or would she
-scold him? If only he could get some sort of a job before he went—if
-that last boss had only been willing to try him!
-
-—Then suddenly Jurgis looked up. A tremendous roar had burst from the
-throats of the crowd, which by this time had packed the hall to the
-very doors. Men and women were standing up, waving handkerchiefs,
-shouting, yelling. Evidently the speaker had arrived, thought Jurgis;
-what fools they were making of themselves! What were they expecting to
-get out of it anyhow—what had they to do with elections, with governing
-the country? Jurgis had been behind the scenes in politics.
-
-He went back to his thoughts, but with one further fact to reckon
-with—that he was caught here. The hall was now filled to the doors; and
-after the meeting it would be too late for him to go home, so he would
-have to make the best of it outside. Perhaps it would be better to go
-home in the morning, anyway, for the children would be at school, and
-he and Elzbieta could have a quiet explanation. She always had been a
-reasonable person; and he really did mean to do right. He would manage
-to persuade her of it—and besides, Marija was willing, and Marija was
-furnishing the money. If Elzbieta were ugly, he would tell her that in
-so many words.
-
-So Jurgis went on meditating; until finally, when he had been an hour
-or two in the hall, there began to prepare itself a repetition of the
-dismal catastrophe of the night before. Speaking had been going on all
-the time, and the audience was clapping its hands and shouting,
-thrilling with excitement; and little by little the sounds were
-beginning to blur in Jurgis’s ears, and his thoughts were beginning to
-run together, and his head to wobble and nod. He caught himself many
-times, as usual, and made desperate resolutions; but the hall was hot
-and close, and his long walk and his dinner were too much for him—in
-the end his head sank forward and he went off again.
-
-And then again someone nudged him, and he sat up with his old terrified
-start! He had been snoring again, of course! And now what? He fixed his
-eyes ahead of him, with painful intensity, staring at the platform as
-if nothing else ever had interested him, or ever could interest him,
-all his life. He imagined the angry exclamations, the hostile glances;
-he imagined the policeman striding toward him—reaching for his neck. Or
-was he to have one more chance? Were they going to let him alone this
-time? He sat trembling; waiting—
-
-And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman’s voice, gentle and
-sweet, “If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be
-interested.”
-
-Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the touch
-of a policeman. He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and did not stir;
-but his heart gave a great leap. Comrade! Who was it that called him
-“comrade”?
-
-He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was no
-longer watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes at the
-woman who sat beside him. She was young and beautiful; she wore fine
-clothes, and was what is called a “lady.” And she called him “comrade”!
-
-He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better; then he
-began to watch her, fascinated. She had apparently forgotten all about
-him, and was looking toward the platform. A man was speaking
-there—Jurgis heard his voice vaguely; but all his thoughts were for
-this woman’s face. A feeling of alarm stole over him as he stared at
-her. It made his flesh creep. What was the matter with her, what could
-be going on, to affect any one like that? She sat as one turned to
-stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could
-see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of
-excitement upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling
-mightily, or witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her
-nostrils; and now and then she would moisten her lips with feverish
-haste. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed, and her excitement
-seemed to mount higher and higher, and then to sink away again, like a
-boat tossing upon ocean surges. What was it? What was the matter? It
-must be something that the man was saying, up there on the platform.
-What sort of a man was he? And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?—So
-all at once it occurred to Jurgis to look at the speaker.
-
-It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature—a mountain
-forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.
-Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder,
-of wild and meaningless uproar. The man was tall and gaunt, as haggard
-as his auditor himself; a thin black beard covered half of his face,
-and one could see only two black hollows where the eyes were. He was
-speaking rapidly, in great excitement; he used many gestures—as he
-spoke he moved here and there upon the stage, reaching with his long
-arms as if to seize each person in his audience. His voice was deep,
-like an organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis thought of the
-voice—he was too much occupied with his eyes to think of what the man
-was saying. But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had begun pointing
-straight at him, as if he had singled him out particularly for his
-remarks; and so Jurgis became suddenly aware of his voice, trembling,
-vibrant with emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things
-unutterable, not to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be
-suddenly arrested, to be gripped, transfixed.
-
-“You listen to these things,” the man was saying, “and you say, ‘Yes,
-they are true, but they have been that way always.’ Or you say, ‘Maybe
-it will come, but not in my time—it will not help me.’ And so you
-return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for
-profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours
-for another’s advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in
-dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of
-hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and
-death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel;
-each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of
-circumstance close upon you a little tighter. Months pass, years
-maybe—and then you come again; and again I am here to plead with you,
-to know if want and misery have yet done their work with you, if
-injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be
-waiting—there is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness
-where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can
-escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same
-accursed system—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of
-humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled
-and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed! And
-therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside
-comfort and happiness, health and good repute—and go out into the world
-and cry out the pain of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by
-poverty and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and
-ridicule—not by prison and persecution, if they should come—not by any
-power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was, or is, or
-ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can only try tomorrow;
-knowing that the fault must be mine—that if once the vision of my soul
-were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of its defeat were uttered
-in human speech, it would break the stoutest barriers of prejudice, it
-would shake the most sluggish soul to action! It would abash the most
-cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and the voice of mockery
-would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood would slink back into their
-dens, and the truth would stand forth alone! For I speak with the voice
-of the millions who are voiceless! Of them that are oppressed and have
-no comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for whom there is no respite
-and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison, a dungeon of
-torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils tonight
-in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb with agony,
-and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by
-candlelight in her tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the
-mortal hunger of her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags,
-wrestling in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of
-the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the streets of
-this horrible city, beaten and starving, and making her choice between
-the brothel and the lake! With the voice of those, whoever and wherever
-they may be, who are caught beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of
-Greed! With the voice of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the
-everlasting soul of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of
-its prison—rending the bands of oppression and ignorance—groping its
-way to the light!”
-
-The speaker paused. There was an instant of silence, while men caught
-their breaths, and then like a single sound there came a cry from a
-thousand people. Through it all Jurgis sat still, motionless and rigid,
-his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was trembling, smitten with wonder.
-
-Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began
-again.
-
-“I plead with you,” he said, “whoever you may be, provided that you
-care about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-man, with
-those to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to
-be dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten—to
-whom they are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the
-chains upon their limbs, the lash upon their backs, the iron in their
-souls. To you, working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this
-land, and have no voice in its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow
-that others may reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages
-of a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive from day
-to day. It is to you that I come with my message of salvation, it is to
-you that I appeal. I know how much it is to ask of you—I know, for I
-have been in your place, I have lived your life, and there is no man
-before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to
-be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and
-sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what
-it is to dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them
-perish—to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire
-by the wild-beast powers of my life. I know what is the price that a
-working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for it with food and sleep,
-with agony of body and mind, with health, almost with life itself; and
-so, when I come to you with a story of hope and freedom, with the
-vision of a new earth to be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am
-not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish and
-incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces
-that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty,
-the sting of contempt and mastership, ‘the insolence of office and the
-spurns.’ Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me
-tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how
-many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there
-will be some one man whom pain and suffering have made desperate, whom
-some chance vision of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into
-attention. And to him my words will come like a sudden flash of
-lightning to one who travels in darkness—revealing the way before him,
-the perils and the obstacles—solving all problems, making all
-difficulties clear! The scales will fall from his eyes, the shackles
-will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness,
-he will stride forth a free man at last! A man delivered from his
-self-created slavery! A man who will never more be trapped—whom no
-blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten; who from
-tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will study and
-understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the army
-of his comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good tidings to
-others, as I have carried them to him—priceless gift of liberty and
-light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of
-man! Working-men, working-men—comrades! open your eyes and look about
-you! You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are
-dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this
-world in which you dwell—tear off the rags of its customs and
-conventions—behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize
-it, _realize it!_ Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight
-two hostile armies are facing each other—that now, while we are seated
-here, a million human beings may be hurled at each other’s throats,
-striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces! And
-this in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince
-of Peace was born on earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have
-been preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and
-tearing each other like the wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers
-have reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded—and
-still this hideous Monster roams at large! We have schools and
-colleges, newspapers and books; we have searched the heavens and the
-earth, we have weighed and probed and reasoned—and all to equip men to
-destroy each other! We call it War, and pass it by—but do not put me
-off with platitudes and conventions—come with me, come with me—_realize
-it!_ See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by
-bursting shells! Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human
-flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men
-crazed by pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate! Put your hand upon
-that piece of flesh—it is hot and quivering—just now it was a part of a
-man! This blood is still steaming—it was driven by a human heart!
-Almighty God! and this goes on—it is systematic, organized,
-premeditated! And we know it, and read of it, and take it for granted;
-our papers tell of it, and the presses are not stopped—our churches
-know of it, and do not close their doors—the people behold it, and do
-not rise up in horror and revolution!
-
-“Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you—come home with me then,
-come here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are
-shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to
-live. And we know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in
-the image of your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters;
-the child whom you left at home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet
-you in the morning—that fate may be waiting for her! To-night in
-Chicago there are ten thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to
-work and begging for a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the
-awful winter cold! Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand
-children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives in the
-effort to earn their bread! There are a hundred thousand mothers who
-are living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed
-their little ones! There are a hundred thousand old people, cast off
-and helpless, waiting for death to take them from their torments! There
-are a million people, men and women and children, who share the curse
-of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand and see, for just
-enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till the end of their days
-to monotony and weariness, to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to
-dirt and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then turn
-over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of the picture.
-There are a thousand—ten thousand, maybe—who are the masters of these
-slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they receive,
-they do not even have to ask for it—it comes to them of itself, their
-only care is to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in
-luxury and extravagance—such as no words can describe, as makes the
-imagination reel and stagger, makes the soul grow sick and faint. They
-spend hundreds of dollars for a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a
-garter; they spend millions for horses and automobiles and yachts, for
-palaces and banquets, for little shiny stones with which to deck their
-bodies. Their life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in
-ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and necessary
-things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of their fellow
-creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, the sweat and tears and
-blood of the human race! It is all theirs—it comes to them; just as all
-the springs pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and
-the rivers into the oceans—so, automatically and inevitably, all the
-wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills the soil, the miner
-digs in the earth, the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the
-stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man
-studies, the inspired man sings—and all the result, the products of the
-labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream and
-poured into their laps! The whole of society is in their grip, the
-whole labor of the world lies at their mercy—and like fierce wolves
-they rend and destroy, like ravening vultures they devour and tear! The
-whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond recall—do
-what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and dies for
-them! They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought the
-governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen power to
-intrench themselves in their privileges, to dig wider and deeper the
-channels through which the river of profits flows to them!—And you,
-workingmen, workingmen! You have been brought up to it, you plod on
-like beasts of burden, thinking only of the day and its pain—yet is
-there a man among you who can believe that such a system will continue
-forever—is there a man here in this audience tonight so hardened and
-debased that he dare rise up before me and say that he believes it can
-continue forever; that the product of the labor of society, the means
-of existence of the human race, will always belong to idlers and
-parasites, to be spent for the gratification of vanity and lust—to be
-spent for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any individual
-will whatever—that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity will not
-belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of humanity, to be
-controlled by the will of humanity? And if this is ever to be, how is
-it to be—what power is there that will bring it about? Will it be the
-task of your masters, do you think—will they write the charter of your
-liberties? Will they forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they
-marshal you the army and lead it to the fray? Will their wealth be
-spent for the purpose—will they build colleges and churches to teach
-you, will they print papers to herald your progress, and organize
-political parties to guide and carry on the struggle? Can you not see
-that the task is your task—yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to
-execute? That if ever it is carried out, it will be in the face of
-every obstacle that wealth and mastership can oppose—in the face of
-ridicule and slander, of hatred and persecution, of the bludgeon and
-the jail? That it will be by the power of your naked bosoms, opposed to
-the rage of oppression! By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and
-merciless affliction! By the painful gropings of the untutored mind, by
-the feeble stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad and lonely
-hunger of the spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by
-heartache and despairing, by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by
-money paid for with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts
-communicated under the shadow of the gallows! It will be a movement
-beginning in the far-off past, a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing
-easy to ridicule, easy to despise; a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect
-of vengeance and hate—but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave,
-calling with a voice insistent, imperious—with a voice that you cannot
-escape, wherever upon the earth you may be! With the voice of all your
-wrongs, with the voice of all your desires; with the voice of your duty
-and your hope—of everything in the world that is worth while to you!
-The voice of the poor, demanding that poverty shall cease! The voice of
-the oppressed, pronouncing the doom of oppression! The voice of power,
-wrought out of suffering—of resolution, crushed out of weakness—of joy
-and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! The
-voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying
-prostrate—mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant of
-his strength. And now a dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling
-with fear; until suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps—and a thrill
-shoots through him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and in a
-flash the dream becomes an act! He starts, he lifts himself; and the
-bands are shattered, the burdens roll off him—he rises—towering,
-gigantic; he springs to his feet, he shouts in his newborn exultation—”
-
-And the speaker’s voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his
-feelings; he stood with his arms stretched out above him, and the power
-of his vision seemed to lift him from the floor. The audience came to
-its feet with a yell; men waved their arms, laughing aloud in their
-excitement. And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his
-throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the stress of
-his feeling was more than he could bear. It was not merely the man’s
-words, the torrent of his eloquence. It was his presence, it was his
-voice: a voice with strange intonations that rang through the chambers
-of the soul like the clanging of a bell—that gripped the listener like
-a mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled him with
-sudden fright, with a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries never
-spoken before, of presences of awe and terror! There was an unfolding
-of vistas before him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an
-upheaving, a stirring, a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man
-no longer—there were powers within him undreamed of, there were demon
-forces contending, age-long wonders struggling to be born; and he sat
-oppressed with pain and joy, while a tingling stole down into his
-finger tips, and his breath came hard and fast. The sentences of this
-man were to Jurgis like the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of
-emotions surged up in him—all his old hopes and longings, his old
-griefs and rages and despairs. All that he had ever felt in his whole
-life seemed to come back to him at once, and with one new emotion,
-hardly to be described. That he should have suffered such oppressions
-and such horrors was bad enough; but that he should have been crushed
-and beaten by them, that he should have submitted, and forgotten, and
-lived in peace—ah, truly that was a thing not to be put into words, a
-thing not to be borne by a human creature, a thing of terror and
-madness! “What,” asks the prophet, “is the murder of them that kill the
-body, to the murder of them that kill the soul?” And Jurgis was a man
-whose soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to
-struggle—who had made terms with degradation and despair; and now,
-suddenly, in one awful convulsion, the black and hideous fact was made
-plain to him! There was a falling in of all the pillars of his soul,
-the sky seemed to split above him—he stood there, with his clenched
-hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot, and the veins standing out purple
-in his face, roaring in the voice of a wild beast, frantic, incoherent,
-maniacal. And when he could shout no more he still stood there,
-gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: “By God! By God! By God!”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX
-
-
-The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis realized
-that his speech was over. The applause continued for several minutes;
-and then some one started a song, and the crowd took it up, and the
-place shook with it. Jurgis had never heard it, and he could not make
-out the words, but the wild and wonderful spirit of it seized upon
-him—it was the “Marseillaise!” As stanza after stanza of it thundered
-forth, he sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve. He had
-never been so stirred in his life—it was a miracle that had been
-wrought in him. He could not think at all, he was stunned; yet he knew
-that in the mighty upheaval that had taken place in his soul, a new man
-had been born. He had been torn out of the jaws of destruction, he had
-been delivered from the thraldom of despair; the whole world had been
-changed for him—he was free, he was free! Even if he were to suffer as
-he had before, even if he were to beg and starve, nothing would be the
-same to him; he would understand it, and bear it. He would no longer be
-the sport of circumstances, he would be a man, with a will and a
-purpose; he would have something to fight for, something to die for, if
-need be! Here were men who would show him and help him; and he would
-have friends and allies, he would dwell in the sight of justice, and
-walk arm in arm with power.
-
-The audience subsided again, and Jurgis sat back. The chairman of the
-meeting came forward and began to speak. His voice sounded thin and
-futile after the other’s, and to Jurgis it seemed a profanation. Why
-should any one else speak, after that miraculous man—why should they
-not all sit in silence? The chairman was explaining that a collection
-would now be taken up to defray the expenses of the meeting, and for
-the benefit of the campaign fund of the party. Jurgis heard; but he had
-not a penny to give, and so his thoughts went elsewhere again.
-
-He kept his eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his head
-leaning on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion. But
-suddenly he stood up again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of the
-meeting saying that the speaker would now answer any questions which
-the audience might care to put to him. The man came forward, and some
-one—a woman—arose and asked about some opinion the speaker had
-expressed concerning Tolstoy. Jurgis had never heard of Tolstoy, and
-did not care anything about him. Why should any one want to ask such
-questions, after an address like that? The thing was not to talk, but
-to do; the thing was to get bold of others and rouse them, to organize
-them and prepare for the fight! But still the discussion went on, in
-ordinary conversational tones, and it brought Jurgis back to the
-everyday world. A few minutes ago he had felt like seizing the hand of
-the beautiful lady by his side, and kissing it; he had felt like
-flinging his arms about the neck of the man on the other side of him.
-And now he began to realize again that he was a “hobo,” that he was
-ragged and dirty, and smelled bad, and had no place to sleep that
-night!
-
-And so, at last, when the meeting broke up, and the audience started to
-leave, poor Jurgis was in an agony of uncertainty. He had not thought
-of leaving—he had thought that the vision must last forever, that he
-had found comrades and brothers. But now he would go out, and the thing
-would fade away, and he would never be able to find it again! He sat in
-his seat, frightened and wondering; but others in the same row wanted
-to get out, and so he had to stand up and move along. As he was swept
-down the aisle he looked from one person to another, wistfully; they
-were all excitedly discussing the address—but there was nobody who
-offered to discuss it with him. He was near enough to the door to feel
-the night air, when desperation seized him. He knew nothing at all
-about that speech he had heard, not even the name of the orator; and he
-was to go away—no, no, it was preposterous, he must speak to some one;
-he must find that man himself and tell him. He would not despise him,
-tramp as he was!
-
-So he stepped into an empty row of seats and watched, and when the
-crowd had thinned out, he started toward the platform. The speaker was
-gone; but there was a stage door that stood open, with people passing
-in and out, and no one on guard. Jurgis summoned up his courage and
-went in, and down a hallway, and to the door of a room where many
-people were crowded. No one paid any attention to him, and he pushed
-in, and in a corner he saw the man he sought. The orator sat in a
-chair, with his shoulders sunk together and his eyes half closed; his
-face was ghastly pale, almost greenish in hue, and one arm lay limp at
-his side. A big man with spectacles on stood near him, and kept pushing
-back the crowd, saying, “Stand away a little, please; can’t you see the
-comrade is worn out?”
-
-So Jurgis stood watching, while five or ten minutes passed. Now and
-then the man would look up, and address a word or two to those who were
-near him; and, at last, on one of these occasions, his glance rested on
-Jurgis. There seemed to be a slight hint of inquiry about it, and a
-sudden impulse seized the other. He stepped forward.
-
-“I wanted to thank you, sir!” he began, in breathless haste. “I could
-not go away without telling you how much—how glad I am I heard you. I—I
-didn’t know anything about it all—”
-
-The big man with the spectacles, who had moved away, came back at this
-moment. “The comrade is too tired to talk to any one—” he began; but
-the other held up his hand.
-
-“Wait,” he said. “He has something to say to me.” And then he looked
-into Jurgis’s face. “You want to know more about Socialism?” he asked.
-
-Jurgis started. “I—I—” he stammered. “Is it Socialism? I didn’t know. I
-want to know about what you spoke of—I want to help. I have been
-through all that.”
-
-“Where do you live?” asked the other.
-
-“I have no home,” said Jurgis, “I am out of work.”
-
-“You are a foreigner, are you not?”
-
-“Lithuanian, sir.”
-
-The man thought for a moment, and then turned to his friend. “Who is
-there, Walters?” he asked. “There is Ostrinski—but he is a Pole—”
-
-“Ostrinski speaks Lithuanian,” said the other. “All right, then; would
-you mind seeing if he has gone yet?”
-
-The other started away, and the speaker looked at Jurgis again. He had
-deep, black eyes, and a face full of gentleness and pain. “You must
-excuse me, comrade,” he said. “I am just tired out—I have spoken every
-day for the last month. I will introduce you to some one who will be
-able to help you as well as I could—”
-
-The messenger had had to go no further than the door, he came back,
-followed by a man whom he introduced to Jurgis as “Comrade Ostrinski.”
-Comrade Ostrinski was a little man, scarcely up to Jurgis’s shoulder,
-wizened and wrinkled, very ugly, and slightly lame. He had on a
-long-tailed black coat, worn green at the seams and the buttonholes;
-his eyes must have been weak, for he wore green spectacles that gave
-him a grotesque appearance. But his handclasp was hearty, and he spoke
-in Lithuanian, which warmed Jurgis to him.
-
-“You want to know about Socialism?” he said. “Surely. Let us go out and
-take a stroll, where we can be quiet and talk some.”
-
-And so Jurgis bade farewell to the master wizard, and went out.
-Ostrinski asked where he lived, offering to walk in that direction; and
-so he had to explain once more that he was without a home. At the
-other’s request he told his story; how he had come to America, and what
-had happened to him in the stockyards, and how his family had been
-broken up, and how he had become a wanderer. So much the little man
-heard, and then he pressed Jurgis’s arm tightly. “You have been through
-the mill, comrade!” he said. “We will make a fighter out of you!”
-
-Then Ostrinski in turn explained his circumstances. He would have asked
-Jurgis to his home—but he had only two rooms, and had no bed to offer.
-He would have given up his own bed, but his wife was ill. Later on,
-when he understood that otherwise Jurgis would have to sleep in a
-hallway, he offered him his kitchen floor, a chance which the other was
-only too glad to accept. “Perhaps tomorrow we can do better,” said
-Ostrinski. “We try not to let a comrade starve.”
-
-Ostrinski’s home was in the Ghetto district, where he had two rooms in
-the basement of a tenement. There was a baby crying as they entered,
-and he closed the door leading into the bedroom. He had three young
-children, he explained, and a baby had just come. He drew up two chairs
-near the kitchen stove, adding that Jurgis must excuse the disorder of
-the place, since at such a time one’s domestic arrangements were upset.
-Half of the kitchen was given up to a workbench, which was piled with
-clothing, and Ostrinski explained that he was a “pants finisher.” He
-brought great bundles of clothing here to his home, where he and his
-wife worked on them. He made a living at it, but it was getting harder
-all the time, because his eyes were failing. What would come when they
-gave out he could not tell; there had been no saving anything—a man
-could barely keep alive by twelve or fourteen hours’ work a day. The
-finishing of pants did not take much skill, and anybody could learn it,
-and so the pay was forever getting less. That was the competitive wage
-system; and if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was, it was
-there he had best begin. The workers were dependent upon a job to exist
-from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no man could
-get more than the lowest man would consent to work for. And thus the
-mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with
-poverty. That was “competition,” so far as it concerned the
-wage-earner, the man who had only his labor to sell; to those on top,
-the exploiters, it appeared very differently, of course—there were few
-of them, and they could combine and dominate, and their power would be
-unbreakable. And so all over the world two classes were forming, with
-an unbridged chasm between them—the capitalist class, with its enormous
-fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains. The
-latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were ignorant and
-helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of their exploiters until
-they were organized—until they had become “class-conscious.” It was a
-slow and weary process, but it would go on—it was like the movement of
-a glacier, once it was started it could never be stopped. Every
-Socialist did his share, and lived upon the vision of the “good time
-coming,”—when the working class should go to the polls and seize the
-powers of government, and put an end to private property in the means
-of production. No matter how poor a man was, or how much he suffered,
-he could never be really unhappy while he knew of that future; even if
-he did not live to see it himself, his children would, and, to a
-Socialist, the victory of his class was his victory. Also he had always
-the progress to encourage him; here in Chicago, for instance, the
-movement was growing by leaps and bounds. Chicago was the industrial
-center of the country, and nowhere else were the unions so strong; but
-their organizations did the workers little good, for the employers were
-organized, also; and so the strikes generally failed, and as fast as
-the unions were broken up the men were coming over to the Socialists.
-
-Ostrinski explained the organization of the party, the machinery by
-which the proletariat was educating itself. There were “locals” in
-every big city and town, and they were being organized rapidly in the
-smaller places; a local had anywhere from six to a thousand members,
-and there were fourteen hundred of them in all, with a total of about
-twenty-five thousand members, who paid dues to support the
-organization. “Local Cook County,” as the city organization was called,
-had eighty branch locals, and it alone was spending several thousand
-dollars in the campaign. It published a weekly in English, and one each
-in Bohemian and German; also there was a monthly published in Chicago,
-and a cooperative publishing house, that issued a million and a half of
-Socialist books and pamphlets every year. All this was the growth of
-the last few years—there had been almost nothing of it when Ostrinski
-first came to Chicago.
-
-Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age. He had lived in
-Silesia, a member of a despised and persecuted race, and had taken part
-in the proletarian movement in the early seventies, when Bismarck,
-having conquered France, had turned his policy of blood and iron upon
-the “International.” Ostrinski himself had twice been in jail, but he
-had been young then, and had not cared. He had had more of his share of
-the fight, though, for just when Socialism had broken all its barriers
-and become the great political force of the empire, he had come to
-America, and begun all over again. In America every one had laughed at
-the mere idea of Socialism then—in America all men were free. As if
-political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! said
-Ostrinski.
-
-The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair, with his
-feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in low whispers,
-so as not to waken those in the next room. To Jurgis he seemed a
-scarcely less wonderful person than the speaker at the meeting; he was
-poor, the lowest of the low, hunger-driven and miserable—and yet how
-much he knew, how much he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had
-been! There were others like him, too—thousands like him, and all of
-them workingmen! That all this wonderful machinery of progress had been
-created by his fellows—Jurgis could not believe it, it seemed too good
-to be true.
-
-That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first converted
-to Socialism he was like a crazy person—he could not understand how
-others could fail to see it, and he expected to convert all the world
-the first week. After a while he would realize how hard a task it was;
-and then it would be fortunate that other new hands kept coming, to
-save him from settling down into a rut. Just now Jurgis would have
-plenty of chance to vent his excitement, for a presidential campaign
-was on, and everybody was talking politics. Ostrinski would take him to
-the next meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and he might
-join the party. The dues were five cents a week, but any one who could
-not afford this might be excused from paying. The Socialist party was a
-really democratic political organization—it was controlled absolutely
-by its own membership, and had no bosses. All of these things Ostrinski
-explained, as also the principles of the party. You might say that
-there was really but one Socialist principle—that of “no compromise,”
-which was the essence of the proletarian movement all over the world.
-When a Socialist was elected to office he voted with old party
-legislators for any measure that was likely to be of help to the
-working class, but he never forgot that these concessions, whatever
-they might be, were trifles compared with the great purpose—the
-organizing of the working class for the revolution. So far, the rule in
-America had been that one Socialist made another Socialist once every
-two years; and if they should maintain the same rate they would carry
-the country in 1912—though not all of them expected to succeed as
-quickly as that.
-
-The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was an
-international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest the world
-had ever known. It numbered thirty million of adherents, and it cast
-eight million votes. It had started its first newspaper in Japan, and
-elected its first deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of
-cabinets, and in Italy and Australia it held the balance of power and
-turned out ministries. In Germany, where its vote was more than a third
-of the total vote of the empire, all other parties and powers had
-united to fight it. It would not do, Ostrinski explained, for the
-proletariat of one nation to achieve the victory, for that nation would
-be crushed by the military power of the others; and so the Socialist
-movement was a world movement, an organization of all mankind to
-establish liberty and fraternity. It was the new religion of
-humanity—or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion,
-since it implied but the literal application of all the teachings of
-Christ.
-
-Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his
-new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to him—an almost
-supernatural experience. It was like encountering an inhabitant of the
-fourth dimension of space, a being who was free from all one’s own
-limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and
-blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand
-reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set him upon
-a mountain-top, from which he could survey it all—could see the paths
-from which he had wandered, the morasses into which he had stumbled,
-the hiding places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him. There
-were his Packingtown experiences, for instance—what was there about
-Packingtown that Ostrinski could not explain! To Jurgis the packers had
-been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef
-Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed
-all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying
-upon the people. Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to
-Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how
-cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he
-was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just
-what he had been—one of the packers’ hogs. What they wanted from a hog
-was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what
-they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted
-from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were
-not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the
-purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was
-especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the
-work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity—it was
-literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human
-lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made himself
-familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very quickly, he
-would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all sorts of aspects, and he
-would find it everywhere the same; it was the incarnation of blind and
-insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths,
-trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher—it was the
-spirit of Capitalism made flesh. Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed
-as a pirate ship; it had hoisted the black flag and declared war upon
-civilization. Bribery and corruption were its everyday methods. In
-Chicago the city government was simply one of its branch offices; it
-stole billions of gallons of city water openly, it dictated to the
-courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it forbade the mayor to
-enforce the building laws against it. In the national capital it had
-power to prevent inspection of its product, and to falsify government
-reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was
-threatened it burned its books and sent its criminal agents out of the
-country. In the commercial world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out
-thousands of businesses every year, it drove men to madness and
-suicide. It had forced the price of cattle so low as to destroy the
-stock-raising industry, an occupation upon which whole states existed;
-it had ruined thousands of butchers who had refused to handle its
-products. It divided the country into districts, and fixed the price of
-meat in all of them; and it owned all the refrigerator cars, and levied
-an enormous tribute upon all poultry and eggs and fruit and vegetables.
-With the millions of dollars a week that poured in upon it, it was
-reaching out for the control of other interests, railroads and trolley
-lines, gas and electric light franchises—it already owned the leather
-and the grain business of the country. The people were tremendously
-stirred up over its encroachments, but nobody had any remedy to
-suggest; it was the task of Socialists to teach and organize them, and
-prepare them for the time when they were to seize the huge machine
-called the Beef Trust, and use it to produce food for human beings and
-not to heap up fortunes for a band of pirates. It was long after
-midnight when Jurgis lay down upon the floor of Ostrinski’s kitchen;
-and yet it was an hour before he could get to sleep, for the glory of
-that joyful vision of the people of Packingtown marching in and taking
-possession of the Union Stockyards!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX
-
-
-Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then he went
-home to Elzbieta. He was no longer shy about it—when he went in,
-instead of saying all the things he had been planning to say, he
-started to tell Elzbieta about the revolution! At first she thought he
-was out of his mind, and it was hours before she could really feel
-certain that he was himself. When, however, she had satisfied herself
-that he was sane upon all subjects except politics, she troubled
-herself no further about it. Jurgis was destined to find that
-Elzbieta’s armor was absolutely impervious to Socialism. Her soul had
-been baked hard in the fire of adversity, and there was no altering it
-now; life to her was the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for
-her only as they bore upon that. All that interested her in regard to
-this new frenzy which had seized hold of her son-in-law was whether or
-not it had a tendency to make him sober and industrious; and when she
-found he intended to look for work and to contribute his share to the
-family fund, she gave him full rein to convince her of anything. A
-wonderfully wise little woman was Elzbieta; she could think as quickly
-as a hunted rabbit, and in half an hour she had chosen her
-life-attitude to the Socialist movement. She agreed in everything with
-Jurgis, except the need of his paying his dues; and she would even go
-to a meeting with him now and then, and sit and plan her next day’s
-dinner amid the storm.
-
-For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wander about
-all day, looking for work; until at last he met with a strange fortune.
-He was passing one of Chicago’s innumerable small hotels, and after
-some hesitation he concluded to go in. A man he took for the proprietor
-was standing in the lobby, and he went up to him and tackled him for a
-job.
-
-“What can you do?” the man asked.
-
-“Anything, sir,” said Jurgis, and added quickly: “I’ve been out of work
-for a long time, sir. I’m an honest man, and I’m strong and willing—”
-
-The other was eying him narrowly. “Do you drink?” he asked.
-
-“No, sir,” said Jurgis.
-
-“Well, I’ve been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks. I’ve
-discharged him seven times now, and I’ve about made up my mind that’s
-enough. Would you be a porter?”
-
-“Yes, sir.”
-
-“It’s hard work. You’ll have to clean floors and wash spittoons and
-fill lamps and handle trunks—”
-
-“I’m willing, sir.”
-
-“All right. I’ll pay you thirty a month and board, and you can begin
-now, if you feel like it. You can put on the other fellow’s rig.”
-
-And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night. Then
-he went and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paid a visit to
-Ostrinski to let him know of his good fortune. Here he received a great
-surprise, for when he was describing the location of the hotel
-Ostrinski interrupted suddenly, “Not Hinds’s!”
-
-“Yes,” said Jurgis, “that’s the name.”
-
-To which the other replied, “Then you’ve got the best boss in
-Chicago—he’s a state organizer of our party, and one of our best-known
-speakers!”
-
-So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him; and the
-man seized him by the hand and shook it. “By Jove!” he cried, “that
-lets me out. I didn’t sleep all last night because I had discharged a
-good Socialist!”
-
-So, after that, Jurgis was known to his “boss” as “Comrade Jurgis,” and
-in return he was expected to call him “Comrade Hinds.” “Tommy” Hinds,
-as he was known to his intimates, was a squat little man, with broad
-shoulders and a florid face, decorated with gray side whiskers. He was
-the kindest-hearted man that ever lived, and the
-liveliest—inexhaustible in his enthusiasm, and talking Socialism all
-day and all night. He was a great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and
-would keep a meeting in an uproar; when once he got really waked up,
-the torrent of his eloquence could be compared with nothing save
-Niagara.
-
-Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith’s helper, and had run away
-to join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with
-“graft,” in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a
-musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his
-only brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of
-his own old age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his
-joints, and then he would screw up his face and mutter: “Capitalism, my
-boy, capitalism! ‘_Écrasez l’Infâme!_’” He had one unfailing remedy for
-all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one; no matter
-whether the person’s trouble was failure in business, or dyspepsia, or
-a quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle would come into his eyes and he
-would say, “You know what to do about it—vote the Socialist ticket!”
-
-Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon as the
-war was over. He had gone into business, and found himself in
-competition with the fortunes of those who had been stealing while he
-had been fighting. The city government was in their hands and the
-railroads were in league with them, and honest business was driven to
-the wall; and so Hinds had put all his savings into Chicago real
-estate, and set out singlehanded to dam the river of graft. He had been
-a reform member of the city council, he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor
-Unionist, a Populist, a Bryanite—and after thirty years of fighting,
-the year 1896 had served to convince him that the power of concentrated
-wealth could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He had
-published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his
-own, when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that others had
-been ahead of him. Now for eight years he had been fighting for the
-party, anywhere, everywhere—whether it was a G.A.R. reunion, or a
-hotel-keepers’ convention, or an Afro-American business-men’s banquet,
-or a Bible society picnic, Tommy Hinds would manage to get himself
-invited to explain the relations of Socialism to the subject in hand.
-After that he would start off upon a tour of his own, ending at some
-place between New York and Oregon; and when he came back from there, he
-would go out to organize new locals for the state committee; and
-finally he would come home to rest—and talk Socialism in Chicago.
-Hinds’s hotel was a very hot-bed of the propaganda; all the employees
-were party men, and if they were not when they came, they were quite
-certain to be before they went away. The proprietor would get into a
-discussion with some one in the lobby, and as the conversation grew
-animated, others would gather about to listen, until finally every one
-in the place would be crowded into a group, and a regular debate would
-be under way. This went on every night—when Tommy Hinds was not there
-to do it, his clerk did it; and when his clerk was away campaigning,
-the assistant attended to it, while Mrs. Hinds sat behind the desk and
-did the work. The clerk was an old crony of the proprietor’s, an
-awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with a lean, sallow face, a broad
-mouth, and whiskers under his chin, the very type and body of a prairie
-farmer. He had been that all his life—he had fought the railroads in
-Kansas for fifty years, a Granger, a Farmers’ Alliance man, a
-“middle-of-the-road” Populist. Finally, Tommy Hinds had revealed to him
-the wonderful idea of using the trusts instead of destroying them, and
-he had sold his farm and come to Chicago.
-
-That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, the assistant
-clerk, a pale, scholarly-looking man, who came from Massachusetts, of
-Pilgrim stock. Adams had been a cotton operative in Fall River, and the
-continued depression in the industry had worn him and his family out,
-and he had emigrated to South Carolina. In Massachusetts the percentage
-of white illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in South
-Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent; also in South Carolina
-there is a property qualification for voters—and for these and other
-reasons child labor is the rule, and so the cotton mills were driving
-those of Massachusetts out of the business. Adams did not know this, he
-only knew that the Southern mills were running; but when he got there
-he found that if he was to live, all his family would have to work, and
-from six o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning. So he had set
-to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion in Massachusetts,
-and had been discharged; but he had gotten other work, and stuck at it,
-and at last there had been a strike for shorter hours, and Harry Adams
-had attempted to address a street meeting, which was the end of him. In
-the states of the far South the labor of convicts is leased to
-contractors, and when there are not convicts enough they have to be
-supplied. Harry Adams was sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the
-mill owner with whose business he had interfered; and though the life
-had nearly killed him, he had been wise enough not to murmur, and at
-the end of his term he and his family had left the state of South
-Carolina—hell’s back yard, as he called it. He had no money for
-carfare, but it was harvest-time, and they walked one day and worked
-the next; and so Adams got at last to Chicago, and joined the Socialist
-party. He was a studious man, reserved, and nothing of an orator; but
-he always had a pile of books under his desk in the hotel, and articles
-from his pen were beginning to attract attention in the party press.
-
-Contrary to what one would have expected, all this radicalism did not
-hurt the hotel business; the radicals flocked to it, and the commercial
-travelers all found it diverting. Of late, also, the hotel had become a
-favorite stopping place for Western cattlemen. Now that the Beef Trust
-had adopted the trick of raising prices to induce enormous shipments of
-cattle, and then dropping them again and scooping in all they needed, a
-stock raiser was very apt to find himself in Chicago without money
-enough to pay his freight bill; and so he had to go to a cheap hotel,
-and it was no drawback to him if there was an agitator talking in the
-lobby. These Western fellows were just “meat” for Tommy Hinds—he would
-get a dozen of them around him and paint little pictures of “the
-System.” Of course, it was not a week before he had heard Jurgis’s
-story, and after that he would not have let his new porter go for the
-world. “See here,” he would say, in the middle of an argument, “I’ve
-got a fellow right here in my place who’s worked there and seen every
-bit of it!” And then Jurgis would drop his work, whatever it was, and
-come, and the other would say, “Comrade Jurgis, just tell these
-gentlemen what you saw on the killing-beds.” At first this request
-caused poor Jurgis the most acute agony, and it was like pulling teeth
-to get him to talk; but gradually he found out what was wanted, and in
-the end he learned to stand up and speak his piece with enthusiasm. His
-employer would sit by and encourage him with exclamations and shakes of
-the head; when Jurgis would give the formula for “potted ham,” or tell
-about the condemned hogs that were dropped into the “destructors” at
-the top and immediately taken out again at the bottom, to be shipped
-into another state and made into lard, Tommy Hinds would bang his knee
-and cry, “Do you think a man could make up a thing like that out of his
-head?”
-
-And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialists had
-the only real remedy for such evils, how they alone “meant business”
-with the Beef Trust. And when, in answer to this, the victim would say
-that the whole country was getting stirred up, that the newspapers were
-full of denunciations of it, and the government taking action against
-it, Tommy Hinds had a knock-out blow all ready. “Yes,” he would say,
-“all that is true—but what do you suppose is the reason for it? Are you
-foolish enough to believe that it’s done for the public? There are
-other trusts in the country just as illegal and extortionate as the
-Beef Trust: there is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in
-winter—there is the Steel Trust, that doubles the price of every nail
-in your shoes—there is the Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading at
-night—and why do you suppose it is that all the fury of the press and
-the government is directed against the Beef Trust?” And when to this
-the victim would reply that there was clamor enough over the Oil Trust,
-the other would continue: “Ten years ago Henry D. Lloyd told all the
-truth about the Standard Oil Company in his Wealth versus Commonwealth;
-and the book was allowed to die, and you hardly ever hear of it. And
-now, at last, two magazines have the courage to tackle ‘Standard Oil’
-again, and what happens? The newspapers ridicule the authors, the
-churches defend the criminals, and the government—does nothing. And
-now, why is it all so different with the Beef Trust?”
-
-Here the other would generally admit that he was “stuck”; and Tommy
-Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyes open. “If
-you were a Socialist,” the hotel-keeper would say, “you would
-understand that the power which really governs the United States today
-is the Railroad Trust. It is the Railroad Trust that runs your state
-government, wherever you live, and that runs the United States Senate.
-And all of the trusts that I have named are railroad trusts—save only
-the Beef Trust! The Beef Trust has defied the railroads—it is
-plundering them day by day through the Private Car; and so the public
-is roused to fury, and the papers clamor for action, and the government
-goes on the war-path! And you poor common people watch and applaud the
-job, and think it’s all done for you, and never dream that it is really
-the grand climax of the century-long battle of commercial
-competition—the final death grapple between the chiefs of the Beef
-Trust and ‘Standard Oil,’ for the prize of the mastery and ownership of
-the United States of America!”
-
-Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and in which
-his education was completed. Perhaps you would imagine that he did not
-do much work there, but that would be a great mistake. He would have
-cut off one hand for Tommy Hinds; and to keep Hinds’s hotel a thing of
-beauty was his joy in life. That he had a score of Socialist arguments
-chasing through his brain in the meantime did not interfere with this;
-on the contrary, Jurgis scrubbed the spittoons and polished the
-banisters all the more vehemently because at the same time he was
-wrestling inwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant. It would be pleasant
-to record that he swore off drinking immediately, and all the rest of
-his bad habits with it; but that would hardly be exact. These
-revolutionists were not angels; they were men, and men who had come up
-from the social pit, and with the mire of it smeared over them. Some of
-them drank, and some of them swore, and some of them ate pie with their
-knives; there was only one difference between them and all the rest of
-the populace—that they were men with a hope, with a cause to fight for
-and suffer for. There came times to Jurgis when the vision seemed
-far-off and pale, and a glass of beer loomed large in comparison; but
-if the glass led to another glass, and to too many glasses, he had
-something to spur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow. It was
-so evidently a wicked thing to spend one’s pennies for drink, when the
-working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to be delivered;
-the price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies of a leaflet, and
-one could hand these out to the unregenerate, and then get drunk upon
-the thought of the good that was being accomplished. That was the way
-the movement had been made, and it was the only way it would progress;
-it availed nothing to know of it, without fighting for it—it was a
-thing for all, not for a few! A corollary of this proposition of course
-was, that any one who refused to receive the new gospel was personally
-responsible for keeping Jurgis from his heart’s desire; and this, alas,
-made him uncomfortable as an acquaintance. He met some neighbors with
-whom Elzbieta had made friends in her neighborhood, and he set out to
-make Socialists of them by wholesale, and several times he all but got
-into a fight.
-
-It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis! It was so incomprehensible
-how a man could fail to see it! Here were all the opportunities of the
-country, the land, and the buildings upon the land, the railroads, the
-mines, the factories, and the stores, all in the hands of a few private
-individuals, called capitalists, for whom the people were obliged to
-work for wages. The whole balance of what the people produced went to
-heap up the fortunes of these capitalists, to heap, and heap again, and
-yet again—and that in spite of the fact that they, and every one about
-them, lived in unthinkable luxury! And was it not plain that if the
-people cut off the share of those who merely “owned,” the share of
-those who worked would be much greater? That was as plain as two and
-two makes four; and it was the whole of it, absolutely the whole of it;
-and yet there were people who could not see it, who would argue about
-everything else in the world. They would tell you that governments
-could not manage things as economically as private individuals; they
-would repeat and repeat that, and think they were saying something!
-They could not see that “economical” management by masters meant simply
-that they, the people, were worked harder and ground closer and paid
-less! They were wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of exploiters
-whose one thought was to get as much out of them as possible; and they
-were taking an interest in the process, were anxious lest it should not
-be done thoroughly enough! Was it not honestly a trial to listen to an
-argument such as that?
-
-And yet there were things even worse. You would begin talking to some
-poor devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirty years, and
-had never been able to save a penny; who left home every morning at six
-o’clock, to go and tend a machine, and come back at night too tired to
-take his clothes off; who had never had a week’s vacation in his life,
-had never traveled, never had an adventure, never learned anything,
-never hoped anything—and when you started to tell him about Socialism
-he would sniff and say, “I’m not interested in that—I’m an
-individualist!” And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was
-“paternalism,” and that if it ever had its way the world would stop
-progressing. It was enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like
-that; and yet it was no laughing matter, as you found out—for how many
-millions of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose lives had been
-so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew what freedom was! And
-they really thought that it was “individualism” for tens of thousands
-of them to herd together and obey the orders of a steel magnate, and
-produce hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth for him, and then let
-him give them libraries; while for them to take the industry, and run
-it to suit themselves, and build their own libraries—that would have
-been “Paternalism”!
-
-Sometimes the agony of such things as this was almost more than Jurgis
-could bear; yet there was no way of escape from it, there was nothing
-to do but to dig away at the base of this mountain of ignorance and
-prejudice. You must keep at the poor fellow; you must hold your temper,
-and argue with him, and watch for your chance to stick an idea or two
-into his head. And the rest of the time you must sharpen up your
-weapons—you must think out new replies to his objections, and provide
-yourself with new facts to prove to him the folly of his ways.
-
-So Jurgis acquired the reading habit. He would carry in his pocket a
-tract or a pamphlet which some one had loaned him, and whenever he had
-an idle moment during the day he would plod through a paragraph, and
-then think about it while he worked. Also he read the newspapers, and
-asked questions about them. One of the other porters at Hinds’s was a
-sharp little Irishman, who knew everything that Jurgis wanted to know;
-and while they were busy he would explain to him the geography of
-America, and its history, its constitution and its laws; also he gave
-him an idea of the business system of the country, the great railroads
-and corporations, and who owned them, and the labor unions, and the big
-strikes, and the men who had led them. Then at night, when he could get
-off, Jurgis would attend the Socialist meetings. During the campaign
-one was not dependent upon the street corner affairs, where the weather
-and the quality of the orator were equally uncertain; there were hall
-meetings every night, and one could hear speakers of national
-prominence. These discussed the political situation from every point of
-view, and all that troubled Jurgis was the impossibility of carrying
-off but a small part of the treasures they offered him.
-
-There was a man who was known in the party as the “Little Giant.” The
-Lord had used up so much material in the making of his head that there
-had not been enough to complete his legs; but he got about on the
-platform, and when he shook his raven whiskers the pillars of
-capitalism rocked. He had written a veritable encyclopedia upon the
-subject, a book that was nearly as big as himself—And then there was a
-young author, who came from California, and had been a salmon fisher,
-an oyster-pirate, a longshoreman, a sailor; who had tramped the country
-and been sent to jail, had lived in the Whitechapel slums, and been to
-the Klondike in search of gold. All these things he pictured in his
-books, and because he was a man of genius he forced the world to hear
-him. Now he was famous, but wherever he went he still preached the
-gospel of the poor. And then there was one who was known at the
-“millionaire Socialist.” He had made a fortune in business, and spent
-nearly all of it in building up a magazine, which the post office
-department had tried to suppress, and had driven to Canada. He was a
-quiet-mannered man, whom you would have taken for anything in the world
-but a Socialist agitator. His speech was simple and informal—he could
-not understand why any one should get excited about these things. It
-was a process of economic evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws
-and methods. Life was a struggle for existence, and the strong overcame
-the weak, and in turn were overcome by the strongest. Those who lost in
-the struggle were generally exterminated; but now and then they had
-been known to save themselves by combination—which was a new and higher
-kind of strength. It was so that the gregarious animals had overcome
-the predaceous; it was so, in human history, that the people had
-mastered the kings. The workers were simply the citizens of industry,
-and the Socialist movement was the expression of their will to survive.
-The inevitability of the revolution depended upon this fact, that they
-had no choice but to unite or be exterminated; this fact, grim and
-inexorable, depended upon no human will, it was the law of the economic
-process, of which the editor showed the details with the most marvelous
-precision.
-
-And later on came the evening of the great meeting of the campaign,
-when Jurgis heard the two standard-bearers of his party. Ten years
-before there had been in Chicago a strike of a hundred and fifty
-thousand railroad employees, and thugs had been hired by the railroads
-to commit violence, and the President of the United States had sent in
-troops to break the strike, by flinging the officers of the union into
-jail without trial. The president of the union came out of his cell a
-ruined man; but also he came out a Socialist; and now for just ten
-years he had been traveling up and down the country, standing face to
-face with the people, and pleading with them for justice. He was a man
-of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thin by struggle
-and suffering. The fury of outraged manhood gleamed in it—and the tears
-of suffering little children pleaded in his voice. When he spoke he
-paced the stage, lithe and eager, like a panther. He leaned over,
-reaching out for his audience; he pointed into their souls with an
-insistent finger. His voice was husky from much speaking, but the great
-auditorium was as still as death, and every one heard him.
-
-And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some one handed him a
-paper which he carried home with him and read; and so he became
-acquainted with the “Appeal to Reason.” About twelve years previously a
-Colorado real-estate speculator had made up his mind that it was wrong
-to gamble in the necessities of life of human beings: and so he had
-retired and begun the publication of a Socialist weekly. There had come
-a time when he had to set his own type, but he had held on and won out,
-and now his publication was an institution. It used a carload of paper
-every week, and the mail trains would be hours loading up at the depot
-of the little Kansas town. It was a four-page weekly, which sold for
-less than half a cent a copy; its regular subscription list was a
-quarter of a million, and it went to every crossroads post office in
-America.
-
-The “Appeal” was a “propaganda” paper. It had a manner all its own—it
-was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang and hustle: It collected
-news of the doings of the “plutes,” and served it up for the benefit of
-the “American working-mule.” It would have columns of the deadly
-parallel—the million dollars’ worth of diamonds, or the fancy
-pet-poodle establishment of a society dame, beside the fate of Mrs.
-Murphy of San Francisco, who had starved to death on the streets, or of
-John Robinson, just out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New
-York because he could not find work. It collected the stories of graft
-and misery from the daily press, and made a little pungent paragraphs
-out of them. “Three banks of Bungtown, South Dakota, failed, and more
-savings of the workers swallowed up!” “The mayor of Sandy Creek,
-Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousand dollars. That’s the kind
-of rulers the old partyites give you!” “The president of the Florida
-Flying Machine Company is in jail for bigamy. He was a prominent
-opponent of Socialism, which he said would break up the home!” The
-“Appeal” had what it called its “Army,” about thirty thousand of the
-faithful, who did things for it; and it was always exhorting the “Army”
-to keep its dander up, and occasionally encouraging it with a prize
-competition, for anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or an
-eighty-acre farm. Its office helpers were all known to the “Army” by
-quaint titles—“Inky Ike,” “the Bald-headed Man,” “the Redheaded Girl,”
-“the Bulldog,” “the Office Goat,” and “the One Hoss.”
-
-But sometimes, again, the “Appeal” would be desperately serious. It
-sent a correspondent to Colorado, and printed pages describing the
-overthrow of American institutions in that state. In a certain city of
-the country it had over forty of its “Army” in the headquarters of the
-Telegraph Trust, and no message of importance to Socialists ever went
-through that a copy of it did not go to the “Appeal.” It would print
-great broadsides during the campaign; one copy that came to Jurgis was
-a manifesto addressed to striking workingmen, of which nearly a million
-copies had been distributed in the industrial centers, wherever the
-employers’ associations had been carrying out their “open shop”
-program. “You have lost the strike!” it was headed. “And now what are
-you going to do about it?” It was what is called an “incendiary”
-appeal—it was written by a man into whose soul the iron had entered.
-When this edition appeared, twenty thousand copies were sent to the
-stockyards district; and they were taken out and stowed away in the
-rear of a little cigar store, and every evening, and on Sundays, the
-members of the Packingtown locals would get armfuls and distribute them
-on the streets and in the houses. The people of Packingtown had lost
-their strike, if ever a people had, and so they read these papers
-gladly, and twenty thousand were hardly enough to go round. Jurgis had
-resolved not to go near his old home again, but when he heard of this
-it was too much for him, and every night for a week he would get on the
-car and ride out to the stockyards, and help to undo his work of the
-previous year, when he had sent Mike Scully’s ten-pin setter to the
-city Board of Aldermen.
-
-It was quite marvelous to see what a difference twelve months had made
-in Packingtown—the eyes of the people were getting opened! The
-Socialists were literally sweeping everything before them that
-election, and Scully and the Cook County machine were at their wits’
-end for an “issue.” At the very close of the campaign they bethought
-themselves of the fact that the strike had been broken by Negroes, and
-so they sent for a South Carolina fire-eater, the “pitchfork senator,”
-as he was called, a man who took off his coat when he talked to
-workingmen, and damned and swore like a Hessian. This meeting they
-advertised extensively, and the Socialists advertised it too—with the
-result that about a thousand of them were on hand that evening. The
-“pitchfork senator” stood their fusillade of questions for about an
-hour, and then went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting was
-a strictly party affair. Jurgis, who had insisted upon coming, had the
-time of his life that night; he danced about and waved his arms in his
-excitement—and at the very climax he broke loose from his friends, and
-got out into the aisle, and proceeded to make a speech himself! The
-senator had been denying that the Democratic party was corrupt; it was
-always the Republicans who bought the votes, he said—and here was
-Jurgis shouting furiously, “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” After which he
-went on to tell them how he knew it—that he knew it because he had
-bought them himself! And he would have told the “pitchfork senator” all
-his experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed him about the
-neck and shoved him into a seat.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI
-
-
-One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to
-go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet
-him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, “I’ve
-got work now, and so you can leave here.”
-
-But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to do,
-she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a
-secret—girls had tried it, and they were always found out. There were
-thousands of men who came to this place, and sooner or later she would
-meet one of them. “And besides,” Marija added, “I can’t do anything.
-I’m no good—I take dope. What could you do with me?”
-
-“Can’t you stop?” Jurgis cried.
-
-“No,” she answered, “I’ll never stop. What’s the use of talking about
-it—I’ll stay here till I die, I guess. It’s all I’m fit for.” And that
-was all that he could get her to say—there was no use trying. When he
-told her he would not let Elzbieta take her money, she answered
-indifferently: “Then it’ll be wasted here—that’s all.” Her eyelids
-looked heavy and her face was red and swollen; he saw that he was
-annoying her, that she only wanted him to go away. So he went,
-disappointed and sad.
-
-Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta was sick a
-good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very much the
-worse for their life upon the streets. But he stuck by the family
-nevertheless, for they reminded him of his old happiness; and when
-things went wrong he could solace himself with a plunge into the
-Socialist movement. Since his life had been caught up into the current
-of this great stream, things which had before been the whole of life to
-him came to seem of relatively slight importance; his interests were
-elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and
-uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one
-while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a
-perpetual adventure. There was so much to know—so many wonders to be
-discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgis forget the day before
-election, when there came a telephone message from a friend of Harry
-Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis to see him that night; and Jurgis
-went, and met one of the minds of the movement.
-
-The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire who
-had given up his life to settlement work, and had a little home in the
-heart of the city’s slums. He did not belong to the party, but he was
-in sympathy with it; and he said that he was to have as his guest that
-night the editor of a big Eastern magazine, who wrote against
-Socialism, but really did not know what it was. The millionaire
-suggested that Adams bring Jurgis along, and then start up the subject
-of “pure food,” in which the editor was interested.
-
-Young Fisher’s home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and
-weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw
-was half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly
-visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a log
-fire was crackling in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were
-gathered about it when Adams and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to
-his dismay that three of them were ladies. He had never talked to
-people of this sort before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment.
-He stood in the doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and
-made a deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, when
-he was asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner, and sat
-down upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off his forehead
-with his sleeve. He was terrified lest they should expect him to talk.
-
-There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in evening
-dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking gentleman named
-Maynard. There was the former’s frail young wife, and also an elderly
-lady, who taught kindergarten in the settlement, and a young college
-student, a beautiful girl with an intense and earnest face. She only
-spoke once or twice while Jurgis was there—the rest of the time she sat
-by the table in the center of the room, resting her chin in her hands
-and drinking in the conversation. There were two other men, whom young
-Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr. Schliemann; he
-heard them address Adams as “Comrade,” and so he knew that they were
-Socialists.
-
-The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman of
-clerical aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, it transpired,
-and had seen the light and become a prophet of the new dispensation. He
-traveled all over the country, living like the apostles of old, upon
-hospitality, and preaching upon street-corners when there was no hall.
-The other man had been in the midst of a discussion with the editor
-when Adams and Jurgis came in; and at the suggestion of the host they
-resumed it after the interruption. Jurgis was soon sitting spellbound,
-thinking that here was surely the strangest man that had ever lived in
-the world.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairy hands
-and bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, and had been a
-professor of philosophy—until, as he said, he had found that he was
-selling his character as well as his time. Instead he had come to
-America, where he lived in a garret room in this slum district, and
-made volcanic energy take the place of fire. He studied the composition
-of food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates
-his body needed; and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the
-value of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the
-first of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and
-when he struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars
-and a half a day, and come home when he had another year’s supply—a
-hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to
-independence a man could make “under capitalism,” he explained; he
-would never marry, for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love
-until after the revolution.
-
-He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head so far
-in the shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflected from the
-fire on the hearth. He spoke simply, and utterly without emotion; with
-the manner of a teacher setting forth to a group of scholars an axiom
-in geometry, he would enunciate such propositions as made the hair of
-an ordinary person rise on end. And when the auditor had asserted his
-non-comprehension, he would proceed to elucidate by some new
-proposition, yet more appalling. To Jurgis the Herr Dr. Schliemann
-assumed the proportions of a thunderstorm or an earthquake. And yet,
-strange as it might seem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he
-could follow the argument nearly all the time. He was carried over the
-difficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away in mad
-career—a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse Speculation.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and with man as
-a small part of it. He understood human institutions, and blew them
-about like soap bubbles. It was surprising that so much destructiveness
-could be contained in one human mind. Was it government? The purpose of
-government was the guarding of property-rights, the perpetuation of
-ancient force and modern fraud. Or was it marriage? Marriage and
-prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man’s
-exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a
-difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own
-terms: equality, a life contract, and the legitimacy—that is, the
-property-rights—of her children. If she had no money, she was a
-proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. And then the subject
-became Religion, which was the Archfiend’s deadliest weapon. Government
-oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind,
-and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The working-man was
-to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in
-this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience—in short
-to all the pseudo-virtues of capitalism. The destiny of civilization
-would be decided in one final death struggle between the Red
-International and the Black, between Socialism and the Roman Catholic
-Church; while here at home, “the stygian midnight of American
-evangelicalism—”
-
-And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was a lively
-tussle. “Comrade” Lucas was not what is called an educated man; he knew
-only the Bible, but it was the Bible interpreted by real experience.
-And what was the use, he asked, of confusing Religion with men’s
-perversions of it? That the church was in the hands of the merchants at
-the moment was obvious enough; but already there were signs of
-rebellion, and if Comrade Schliemann could come back a few years from
-now—
-
-“Ah, yes,” said the other, “of course, I have no doubt that in a
-hundred years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed
-Socialism, just as at present it denies that it ever tortured Galileo.”
-
-“I am not defending the Vatican,” exclaimed Lucas, vehemently. “I am
-defending the word of God—which is one long cry of the human spirit for
-deliverance from the sway of oppression. Take the twenty-fourth chapter
-of the Book of Job, which I am accustomed to quote in my addresses as
-‘the Bible upon the Beef Trust’; or take the words of Isaiah—or of the
-Master himself! Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious
-art, not the jeweled idol of our society churches—but the Jesus of the
-awful reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of the
-world, who had nowhere to lay his head—”
-
-“I will grant you Jesus,” interrupted the other.
-
-“Well, then,” cried Lucas, “and why should Jesus have nothing to do
-with his church—why should his words and his life be of no authority
-among those who profess to adore him? Here is a man who was the world’s
-first revolutionist, the true founder of the Socialist movement; a man
-whose whole being was one flame of hatred for wealth, and all that
-wealth stands for,—for the pride of wealth, and the luxury of wealth,
-and the tyranny of wealth; who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man
-of the people, an associate of saloon-keepers and women of the town;
-who again and again, in the most explicit language, denounced wealth
-and the holding of wealth: ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
-earth!’—‘Sell that ye have and give alms!’—‘Blessed are ye poor, for
-yours is the kingdom of Heaven!’—‘Woe unto you that are rich, for ye
-have received your consolation!’—‘Verily, I say unto you, that a rich
-man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven!’ Who denounced in
-unmeasured terms the exploiters of his own time: ‘Woe unto you, scribes
-and pharisees, hypocrites!’—‘Woe unto you also, you lawyers!’—‘Ye
-serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
-hell?’ Who drove out the business men and brokers from the temple with
-a whip! Who was crucified—think of it—for an incendiary and a disturber
-of the social order! And this man they have made into the high priest
-of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the
-horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jeweled
-images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense to him, and modern
-pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of
-helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit in
-cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of
-dusty divinity—”
-
-“Bravo!” cried Schliemann, laughing. But the other was in full
-career—he had talked this subject every day for five years, and had
-never yet let himself be stopped. “This Jesus of Nazareth!” he cried.
-“This class-conscious working-man! This union carpenter! This agitator,
-law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist! He, the sovereign lord and master of
-a world which grinds the bodies and souls of human beings into
-dollars—if he could come into the world this day and see the things
-that men have made in his name, would it not blast his soul with
-horror? Would he not go mad at the sight of it, he the Prince of Mercy
-and Love! That dreadful night when he lay in the Garden of Gethsemane
-and writhed in agony until he sweat blood—do you think that he saw
-anything worse than he might see tonight upon the plains of Manchuria,
-where men march out with a jeweled image of him before them, to do
-wholesale murder for the benefit of foul monsters of sensuality and
-cruelty? Do you not know that if he were in St. Petersburg now, he
-would take the whip with which he drove out the bankers from his
-temple—”
-
-Here the speaker paused an instant for breath. “No, comrade,” said the
-other, dryly, “for he was a practical man. He would take pretty little
-imitation lemons, such as are now being shipped into Russia, handy for
-carrying in the pockets, and strong enough to blow a whole temple out
-of sight.”
-
-Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this; then he
-began again: “But look at it from the point of view of practical
-politics, comrade. Here is an historical figure whom all men reverence
-and love, whom some regard as divine; and who was one of us—who lived
-our life, and taught our doctrine. And now shall we leave him in the
-hands of his enemies—shall we allow them to stifle and stultify his
-example? We have his words, which no one can deny; and shall we not
-quote them to the people, and prove to them what he was, and what he
-taught, and what he did? No, no, a thousand times no!—we shall use his
-authority to turn out the knaves and sluggards from his ministry, and
-we shall yet rouse the people to action!—”
-
-Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to a paper on
-the table. “Here, comrade,” he said, with a laugh, “here is a place for
-you to begin. A bishop whose wife has just been robbed of fifty
-thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds! And a most unctuous and oily of
-bishops! An eminent and scholarly bishop! A philanthropist and friend
-of labor bishop—a Civic Federation decoy duck for the chloroforming of
-the wage-working-man!”
-
-To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat as
-spectators. But now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion to remark,
-somewhat naïvely, that he had always understood that Socialists had a
-cut-and-dried program for the future of civilization; whereas here were
-two active members of the party, who, from what he could make out, were
-agreed about nothing at all. Would the two, for his enlightenment, try
-to ascertain just what they had in common, and why they belonged to the
-same party? This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of
-two carefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist believes in
-the common ownership and democratic management of the means of
-producing the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialist
-believes that the means by which this is to be brought about is the
-class conscious political organization of the wage-earners. Thus far
-they were at one; but no farther. To Lucas, the religious zealot, the
-co-operative commonwealth was the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven,
-which is “within you.” To the other, Socialism was simply a necessary
-step toward a far-distant goal, a step to be tolerated with impatience.
-Schliemann called himself a “philosophic anarchist”; and he explained
-that an anarchist was one who believed that the end of human existence
-was the free development of every personality, unrestricted by laws
-save those of its own being. Since the same kind of match would light
-every one’s fire and the same-shaped loaf of bread would fill every
-one’s stomach, it would be perfectly feasible to submit industry to the
-control of a majority vote. There was only one earth, and the quantity
-of material things was limited. Of intellectual and moral things, on
-the other hand, there was no limit, and one could have more without
-another’s having less; hence “Communism in material production,
-anarchism in intellectual,” was the formula of modern proletarian
-thought. As soon as the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society
-had been healed, there would be established a simple system whereby
-each man was credited with his labor and debited with his purchases;
-and after that the processes of production, exchange, and consumption
-would go on automatically, and without our being conscious of them, any
-more than a man is conscious of the beating of his heart. And then,
-explained Schliemann, society would break up into independent,
-self-governing communities of mutually congenial persons; examples of
-which at present were clubs, churches, and political parties. After the
-revolution, all the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of
-men would be cared for by such “free associations”; romantic novelists
-would be supported by those who liked to read romantic novels, and
-impressionist painters would be supported by those who liked to look at
-impressionist pictures—and the same with preachers and scientists,
-editors and actors and musicians. If any one wanted to work or paint or
-pray, and could find no one to maintain him, he could support himself
-by working part of the time. That was the case at present, the only
-difference being that the competitive wage system compelled a man to
-work all the time to live, while, after the abolition of privilege and
-exploitation, any one would be able to support himself by an hour’s
-work a day. Also the artist’s audience of the present was a small
-minority of people, all debased and vulgarized by the effort it had
-cost them to win in the commercial battle, of the intellectual and
-artistic activities which would result when the whole of mankind was
-set free from the nightmare of competition, we could at present form no
-conception whatever.
-
-And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr. Schliemann
-asserted that it might be possible for a society to exist upon an
-hour’s toil by each of its members. “Just what,” answered the other,
-“would be the productive capacity of society if the present resources
-of science were utilized, we have no means of ascertaining; but we may
-be sure it would exceed anything that would sound reasonable to minds
-inured to the ferocious barbarities of capitalism. After the triumph of
-the international proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable;
-and who can figure the cost of war to humanity—not merely the value of
-the lives and the material that it destroys, not merely the cost of
-keeping millions of men in idleness, of arming and equipping them for
-battle and parade, but the drain upon the vital energies of society by
-the war attitude and the war terror, the brutality and ignorance, the
-drunkenness, prostitution, and crime it entails, the industrial
-impotence and the moral deadness? Do you think that it would be too
-much to say that two hours of the working time of every efficient
-member of a community goes to feed the red fiend of war?”
-
-And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of
-competition: the losses of industrial warfare; the ceaseless worry and
-friction; the vices—such as drink, for instance, the use of which had
-nearly doubled in twenty years, as a consequence of the intensification
-of the economic struggle; the idle and unproductive members of the
-community, the frivolous rich and the pauperized poor; the law and the
-whole machinery of repression; the wastes of social ostentation, the
-milliners and tailors, the hairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and
-lackeys. “You understand,” he said, “that in a society dominated by the
-fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of
-prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So we have, at
-the present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the
-population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per cent
-occupied in destroying them. And this is not all; for the servants and
-panders of the parasites are also parasites, the milliners and the
-jewelers and the lackeys have also to be supported by the useful
-members of the community. And bear in mind also that this monstrous
-disease affects not merely the idlers and their menials, its poison
-penetrates the whole social body. Beneath the hundred thousand women of
-the elite are a million middle-class women, miserable because they are
-not of the elite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath
-them, in turn, are five million farmers’ wives reading ‘fashion papers’
-and trimming bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids selling
-themselves into brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-skin
-robes. And then consider that, added to this competition in display,
-you have, like oil on the flames, a whole system of competition in
-selling! You have manufacturers contriving tens of thousands of
-catchpenny devices, storekeepers displaying them, and newspapers and
-magazines filled up with advertisements of them!”
-
-“And don’t forget the wastes of fraud,” put in young Fisher.
-
-“When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,”
-responded Schliemann—“the science of persuading people to buy what they
-do not want—he is in the very center of the ghastly charnel house of
-capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely knows which of a dozen
-horrors to point out first. But consider the waste in time and energy
-incidental to making ten thousand varieties of a thing for purposes of
-ostentation and snobbishness, where one variety would do for use!
-Consider all the waste incidental to the manufacture of cheap qualities
-of goods, of goods made to sell and deceive the ignorant; consider the
-wastes of adulteration,—the shoddy clothing, the cotton blankets, the
-unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the adulterated
-milk, the aniline soda water, the potato-flour sausages—”
-
-“And consider the moral aspects of the thing,” put in the ex-preacher.
-
-“Precisely,” said Schliemann; “the low knavery and the ferocious
-cruelty incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and the bribing,
-the blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, the hurrying and
-worrying. Of course, imitation and adulteration are the essence of
-competition—they are but another form of the phrase ‘to buy in the
-cheapest market and sell in the dearest.’ A government official has
-stated that the nation suffers a loss of a billion and a quarter
-dollars a year through adulterated foods; which means, of course, not
-only materials wasted that might have been useful outside of the human
-stomach, but doctors and nurses for people who would otherwise have
-been well, and undertakers for the whole human race ten or twenty years
-before the proper time. Then again, consider the waste of time and
-energy required to sell these things in a dozen stores, where one would
-do. There are a million or two of business firms in the country, and
-five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and
-rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and worrying,
-the balancing of petty profit and loss. Consider the whole machinery of
-the civil law made necessary by these processes; the libraries of
-ponderous tomes, the courts and juries to interpret them, the lawyers
-studying to circumvent them, the pettifogging and chicanery, the
-hatreds and lies! Consider the wastes incidental to the blind and
-haphazard production of commodities—the factories closed, the workers
-idle, the goods spoiling in storage; consider the activities of the
-stock manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, the
-overstimulation of others, for speculative purposes; the assignments
-and bank failures, the crises and panics, the deserted towns and the
-starving populations! Consider the energies wasted in the seeking of
-markets, the sterile trades, such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster,
-advertising agent. Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into
-cities, made necessary by competition and by monopoly railroad rates;
-consider the slums, the bad air, the disease and the waste of vital
-energies; consider the office buildings, the waste of time and material
-in the piling of story upon story, and the burrowing underground! Then
-take the whole business of insurance, the enormous mass of
-administrative and clerical labor it involves, and all utter waste—”
-
-“I do not follow that,” said the editor. “The Cooperative Commonwealth
-is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its
-members. Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared by
-all and made up by all. The bank is the universal government
-credit-account, the ledger in which every individual’s earnings and
-spendings are balanced. There is also a universal government bulletin,
-in which are listed and precisely described everything which the
-commonwealth has for sale. As no one makes any profit by the sale,
-there is no longer any stimulus to extravagance, and no
-misrepresentation; no cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no
-bribery or ‘grafting.’”
-
-“How is the price of an article determined?”
-
-“The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is
-determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers
-in the nation’s wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the
-total product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a
-bushel of wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an
-arbitrary symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then
-the cost of a bushel of wheat is fifty cents.”
-
-“You say ‘for farm work,’” said Mr. Maynard. “Then labor is not to be
-paid alike?”
-
-“Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should
-have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. Of course the
-wages may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will
-have to be varied continually, according as a greater or less number of
-workers is needed in any particular industry. That is precisely what is
-done at present, except that the transfer of the workers is
-accomplished blindly and imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements,
-instead of instantly and completely, by a universal government
-bulletin.”
-
-“How about those occupations in which time is difficult to calculate?
-What is the labor cost of a book?”
-
-“Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and binding of
-it—about a fifth of its present cost.”
-
-“And the author?”
-
-“I have already said that the state could not control intellectual
-production. The state might say that it had taken a year to write the
-book, and the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that
-every _bon mot_ of his had cost a purse of gold. What I outline here is
-a national, or rather international, system for the providing of the
-material needs of men. Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will
-work longer, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and in
-his own way. I live on the same earth as the majority, I wear the same
-kind of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but I do not think the
-same kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such thinkers as
-the majority selects. I wish such things to be left to free effort, as
-at present. If people want to listen to a certain preacher, they get
-together and contribute what they please, and pay for a church and
-support the preacher, and then listen to him; I, who do not want to
-listen to him, stay away, and it costs me nothing. In the same way
-there are magazines about Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and
-flying machines, and athletic records, and I know nothing about any of
-them. On the other hand, if wage slavery were abolished, and I could
-earn some spare money without paying tribute to an exploiting
-capitalist, then there would be a magazine for the purpose of
-interpreting and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche, the
-prophet of Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, the inventor of the
-noble science of clean eating; and incidentally, perhaps, for the
-discouraging of long skirts, and the scientific breeding of men and
-women, and the establishing of divorce by mutual consent.”
-
-Dr. Schliemann paused for a moment. “That was a lecture,” he said with
-a laugh, “and yet I am only begun!”
-
-“What else is there?” asked Maynard.
-
-“I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,”
-answered the other. “I have hardly mentioned the positive economies of
-co-operation. Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million
-families in this country; and at least ten million of these live
-separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave.
-Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the
-economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the
-washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing
-for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a
-day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied
-persons—mostly women to do the dish-washing of the country. And note
-that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is
-a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of
-prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate
-children—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay.
-And now consider that in each of my little free communities there would
-be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely
-to the eye and the touch, but scientifically—sterilizing them—and do it
-at a saving of all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of
-these things you may find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take
-Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories, and Workshops, and read about the new
-science of agriculture, which has been built up in the last ten years;
-by which, with made soils and intensive culture, a gardener can raise
-ten or twelve crops in a season, and two hundred tons of vegetables
-upon a single acre; by which the population of the whole globe could be
-supported on the soil now cultivated in the United States alone! It is
-impossible to apply such methods now, owing to the ignorance and
-poverty of our scattered farming population; but imagine the problem of
-providing the food supply of our nation once taken in hand
-systematically and rationally, by scientists! All the poor and rocky
-land set apart for a national timber reserve, in which our children
-play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell! The most favorable
-climate and soil for each product selected; the exact requirements of
-the community known, and the acreage figured accordingly; the most
-improved machinery employed, under the direction of expert agricultural
-chemists! I was brought up on a farm, and I know the awful deadliness
-of farm work; and I like to picture it all as it will be after the
-revolution. To picture the great potato-planting machine, drawn by four
-horses, or an electric motor, ploughing the furrow, cutting and
-dropping and covering the potatoes, and planting a score of acres a
-day! To picture the great potato-digging machine, run by electricity,
-perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field, scooping up earth and
-potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks! To every other kind of
-vegetable and fruit handled in the same way—apples and oranges picked
-by machinery, cows milked by electricity—things which are already done,
-as you may know. To picture the harvest fields of the future, to which
-millions of happy men and women come for a summer holiday, brought by
-special trains, the exactly needful number to each place! And to
-contrast all this with our present agonizing system of independent
-small farming,—a stunted, haggard, ignorant man, mated with a yellow,
-lean, and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling from four o’clock in the morning
-until nine at night, working the children as soon as they are able to
-walk, scratching the soil with its primitive tools, and shut out from
-all knowledge and hope, from all their benefits of science and
-invention, and all the joys of the spirit—held to a bare existence by
-competition in labor, and boasting of his freedom because he is too
-blind to see his chains!”
-
-Dr. Schliemann paused a moment. “And then,” he continued, “place beside
-this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newest discovery of
-physiologists, that most of the ills of the human system are due to
-overfeeding! And then again, it has been proven that meat is
-unnecessary as a food; and meat is obviously more difficult to produce
-than vegetable food, less pleasant to prepare and handle, and more
-likely to be unclean. But what of that, so long as it tickles the
-palate more strongly?”
-
-“How would Socialism change that?” asked the girl-student, quickly. It
-was the first time she had spoken.
-
-“So long as we have wage slavery,” answered Schliemann, “it matters not
-in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may be, it is easy to
-find people to perform it. But just as soon as labor is set free, then
-the price of such work will begin to rise. So one by one the old,
-dingy, and unsanitary factories will come down—it will be cheaper to
-build new; and so the steamships will be provided with stoking
-machinery, and so the dangerous trades will be made safe, or
-substitutes will be found for their products. In exactly the same way,
-as the citizens of our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year
-the cost of slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually
-those who want to eat meat will have to do their own killing—and how
-long do you think the custom would survive then?—To go on to another
-item—one of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy
-is political corruption; and one of the consequences of civic
-administration by ignorant and vicious politicians, is that preventable
-diseases kill off half our population. And even if science were allowed
-to try, it could do little, because the majority of human beings are
-not yet human beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of
-wealth for others. They are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot
-and stew in misery, and the conditions of their life make them ill
-faster than all the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of
-course, they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all
-of us, and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish. For
-this reason I would seriously maintain that all the medical and
-surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of
-less importance than the application of the knowledge we already
-possess, when the disinherited of the earth have established their
-right to a human existence.”
-
-And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis had
-noticed that the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-table was
-listening with something of the same look that he himself had worn, the
-time when he had first discovered Socialism. Jurgis would have liked to
-talk to her, he felt sure that she would have understood him. Later on
-in the evening, when the group broke up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to
-her, in a low voice, “I wonder if Mr. Maynard will still write the same
-things about Socialism”; to which she answered, “I don’t know—but if he
-does we shall know that he is a knave!”
-
-
-And only a few hours after this came election day—when the long
-campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold
-its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of
-Hinds’s Hotel could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they
-hurried off to the big hall which the party had hired for that evening.
-
-But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph
-instrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns. When the
-final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to be over four
-hundred thousand—an increase of something like three hundred and fifty
-per cent in four years. And that was doing well; but the party was
-dependent for its early returns upon messages from the locals, and
-naturally those locals which had been most successful were the ones
-which felt most like reporting; and so that night every one in the hall
-believed that the vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight
-hundred thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually been
-made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been 6,700
-in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been 9,600, and
-now it was 69,000! So, as the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in,
-the meeting was a sight to be seen. Bulletins would be read, and the
-people would shout themselves hoarse—and then some one would make a
-speech, and there would be more shouting; and then a brief silence, and
-more bulletins. There would come messages from the secretaries of
-neighboring states, reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana
-had gone from 2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of
-Ohio from 4,800 to 36,000! There were telegrams to the national office
-from enthusiastic individuals in little towns which had made amazing
-and unprecedented increases in a single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26
-to 260; Henderson, Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from 14
-to 208; Cleo, Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to
-296—and many more of the same kind. There were literally hundreds of
-such towns; there would be reports from half a dozen of them in a
-single batch of telegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to
-the audience were old campaigners, who had been to the places and
-helped to make the vote, and could make appropriate comments: Quincy,
-Illinois, from 189 to 831—that was where the mayor had arrested a
-Socialist speaker! Crawford County, Kansas, from 285 to 1,975; that was
-the home of the “Appeal to Reason”! Battle Creek, Michigan, from 4,261
-to 10,184; that was the answer of labor to the Citizens’ Alliance
-Movement!
-
-And then there were official returns from the various precincts and
-wards of the city itself! Whether it was a factory district or one of
-the “silk-stocking” wards seemed to make no particular difference in
-the increase; but one of the things which surprised the party leaders
-most was the tremendous vote that came rolling in from the stockyards.
-Packingtown comprised three wards of the city, and the vote in the
-spring of 1903 had been 500, and in the fall of the same year, 1,600.
-Now, only one year later, it was over 6,300—and the Democratic vote
-only 8,800! There were other wards in which the Democratic vote had
-been actually surpassed, and in two districts, members of the state
-legislature had been elected. Thus Chicago now led the country; it had
-set a new standard for the party, it had shown the workingmen the way!
-
-—So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs of eyes
-were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheering his every
-sentence. The orator had been the head of the city’s relief bureau in
-the stockyards, until the sight of misery and corruption had made him
-sick. He was young, hungry-looking, full of fire; and as he swung his
-long arms and beat up the crowd, to Jurgis he seemed the very spirit of
-the revolution. “Organize! Organize! Organize!”—that was his cry. He
-was afraid of this tremendous vote, which his party had not expected,
-and which it had not earned. “These men are not Socialists!” he cried.
-“This election will pass, and the excitement will die, and people will
-forget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink back and
-rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that we have polled
-to-day, and our enemies will laugh us to scorn! It rests with you to
-take your resolution—now, in the flush of victory, to find these men
-who have voted for us, and bring them to our meetings, and organize
-them and bind them to us! We shall not find all our campaigns as easy
-as this one. Everywhere in the country tonight the old party
-politicians are studying this vote, and setting their sails by it; and
-nowhere will they be quicker or more cunning than here in our own city.
-Fifty thousand Socialist votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownership
-Democracy in the spring! And then they will fool the voters once more,
-and all the powers of plunder and corruption will be swept into office
-again! But whatever they may do when they get in, there is one thing
-they will not do, and that will be the thing for which they were
-elected! They will not give the people of our city municipal
-ownership—they will not mean to do it, they will not try to do it; all
-that they will do is give our party in Chicago the greatest opportunity
-that has ever come to Socialism in America! We shall have the sham
-reformers self-stultified and self-convicted; we shall have the radical
-Democracy left without a lie with which to cover its nakedness! And
-then will begin the rush that will never be checked, the tide that will
-never turn till it has reached its flood—that will be irresistible,
-overwhelming—the rallying of the outraged workingmen of Chicago to our
-standard! And we shall organize them, we shall drill them, we shall
-marshal them for the victory! We shall bear down the opposition, we
-shall sweep if before us—and _Chicago will be ours!_ Chicago will be
-ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”
-
-
-
-
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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Jungle</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Upton Sinclair</div>
-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June, 1994 [eBook #140]<br />
-[Most recently updated: January 17, 2021]</div>
-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
-<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
-<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Meltzer, Christy Phillips, Scott Coulter, Leroy Smith and David Widger</div>
-<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUNGLE ***</div>
-
-<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
-</div>
-
-<h1>The Jungle</h1>
-
-<h2 class="no-break">by Upton Sinclair</h2>
-
-<h3>(1906)</h3>
-
-<p class="center">
-<br /><br /><br />
-TO THE WORKINGMEN OF AMERICA
-</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<h2>Contents</h2>
-
-<table summary="" style="">
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-<tr>
-<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI</a></td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
-
-<p>
-It was four o&rsquo;clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to
-arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the exuberance
-of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon Marija&rsquo;s broad
-shoulders&mdash;it was her task to see that all things went in due form, and
-after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither and thither, bowling
-every one out of the way, and scolding and exhorting all day with her
-tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to see that others conformed to the
-proprieties to consider them herself. She had left the church last of all, and,
-desiring to arrive first at the hall, had issued orders to the coachman to
-drive faster. When that personage had developed a will of his own in the
-matter, Marija had flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out,
-proceeded to tell him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not
-understand, and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of her in
-altitude, the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to attempt to
-speak; and the result had been a furious altercation, which, continuing all the
-way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of urchins to the cortege at
-each side street for half a mile.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door. The music
-had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull &ldquo;broom,
-broom&rdquo; of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each
-other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija
-abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman,
-and, springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and proceeded to clear a
-way to the hall. Once within, she turned and began to push the other way,
-roaring, meantime, &ldquo;<i>Eik! Eik! Uzdaryk-duris!</i>&rdquo; in tones which
-made the orchestral uproar sound like fairy music.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Z. Graiczunas, Pasilinksminimams darzas. Vynas. Sznapsas. Wines and
-Liquors. Union Headquarters&rdquo;&mdash;that was the way the signs ran. The
-reader, who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of far-off
-Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was the rear room of
-a saloon in that part of Chicago known as &ldquo;back of the yards.&rdquo; This
-information is definite and suited to the matter of fact; but how pitifully
-inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood that it was also the
-supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of God&rsquo;s gentlest creatures,
-the scene of the wedding feast and the joy-transfiguration of little Ona
-Lukoszaite!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She stood in the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from pushing
-through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon. There was a light
-of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her otherwise wan little face
-was flushed. She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white, and a stiff little
-veil coming to her shoulders. There were five pink paper roses twisted in the
-veil, and eleven bright green rose leaves. There were new white cotton gloves
-upon her hands, and as she stood staring about her she twisted them together
-feverishly. It was almost too much for her&mdash;you could see the pain of too
-great emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so
-young&mdash;not quite sixteen&mdash;and small for her age, a mere child; and
-she had just been married&mdash;and married to Jurgis,<a href="#fn-1" name="fnref-1" id="fnref-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a>
-of all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his
-new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands.
-</p>
-
-<p class="footnote">
-<a name="fn-1" id="fn-1"></a> <a href="#fnref-1">[1]</a>
-Pronounced <i>Yoorghis</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Jurgis had great black eyes with beetling
-brows, and thick black hair that curled in waves about his ears&mdash;in short,
-they were one of those incongruous and impossible married couples with which
-Mother Nature so often wills to confound all prophets, before and after. Jurgis
-could take up a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and carry it into a
-car without a stagger, or even a thought; and now he stood in a far corner,
-frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his lips with his tongue
-each time before he could answer the congratulations of his friends.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Gradually there was effected a separation between the spectators and the
-guests&mdash;a separation at least sufficiently complete for working purposes.
-There was no time during the festivities which ensued when there were not
-groups of onlookers in the doorways and the corners; and if any one of these
-onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked sufficiently hungry, a chair was
-offered him, and he was invited to the feast. It was one of the laws of the
-<i>veselija</i> that no one goes hungry; and, while a rule made in the forests
-of Lithuania is hard to apply in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its
-quarter of a million inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children
-who ran in from the street, and even the dogs, went out again happier. A
-charming informality was one of the characteristics of this celebration. The
-men wore their hats, or, if they wished, they took them off, and their coats
-with them; they ate when and where they pleased, and moved as often as they
-pleased. There were to be speeches and singing, but no one had to listen who
-did not care to; if he wished, meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was
-perfectly free. The resulting medley of sound distracted no one, save possibly
-alone the babies, of which there were present a number equal to the total
-possessed by all the guests invited. There was no other place for the babies to
-be, and so part of the preparations for the evening consisted of a collection
-of cribs and carriages in one corner. In these the babies slept, three or four
-together, or wakened together, as the case might be. Those who were still
-older, and could reach the tables, marched about munching contentedly at meat
-bones and bologna sausages.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The room is about thirty feet square, with whitewashed walls, bare save for a
-calendar, a picture of a race horse, and a family tree in a gilded frame. To
-the right there is a door from the saloon, with a few loafers in the doorway,
-and in the corner beyond it a bar, with a presiding genius clad in soiled
-white, with waxed black mustaches and a carefully oiled curl plastered against
-one side of his forehead. In the opposite corner are two tables, filling a
-third of the room and laden with dishes and cold viands, which a few of the
-hungrier guests are already munching. At the head, where sits the bride, is a
-snow-white cake, with an Eiffel tower of constructed decoration, with sugar
-roses and two angels upon it, and a generous sprinkling of pink and green and
-yellow candies. Beyond opens a door into the kitchen, where there is a glimpse
-to be had of a range with much steam ascending from it, and many women, old and
-young, rushing hither and thither. In the corner to the left are the three
-musicians, upon a little platform, toiling heroically to make some impression
-upon the hubbub; also the babies, similarly occupied, and an open window whence
-the populace imbibes the sights and sounds and odors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suddenly some of the steam begins to advance, and, peering through it, you
-discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona&rsquo;s stepmother&mdash;Teta Elzbieta, as they
-call her&mdash;bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is
-Kotrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden; and
-half a minute later there appears old Grandmother Majauszkiene, with a big
-yellow bowl of smoking potatoes, nearly as big as herself. So, bit by bit, the
-feast takes form&mdash;there is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice,
-macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of penny buns, bowls of milk, and
-foaming pitchers of beer. There is also, not six feet from your back, the bar,
-where you may order all you please and do not have to pay for it.
-&ldquo;<i>Eiksz! Graicziau!</i>&rdquo; screams Marija Berczynskas, and falls to
-work herself&mdash;for there is more upon the stove inside that will be spoiled
-if it be not eaten.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So, with laughter and shouts and endless badinage and merriment, the guests
-take their places. The young men, who for the most part have been huddled near
-the door, summon their resolution and advance; and the shrinking Jurgis is
-poked and scolded by the old folks until he consents to seat himself at the
-right hand of the bride. The two bridesmaids, whose insignia of office are
-paper wreaths, come next, and after them the rest of the guests, old and young,
-boys and girls. The spirit of the occasion takes hold of the stately bartender,
-who condescends to a plate of stewed duck; even the fat policeman&mdash;whose
-duty it will be, later in the evening, to break up the fights&mdash;draws up a
-chair to the foot of the table. And the children shout and the babies yell, and
-every one laughs and sings and chatters&mdash;while above all the deafening
-clamor Cousin Marija shouts orders to the musicians.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The musicians&mdash;how shall one begin to describe them? All this time they
-have been there, playing in a mad frenzy&mdash;all of this scene must be read,
-or said, or sung, to music. It is the music which makes it what it is; it is
-the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon in back of the
-yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little corner of the high mansions of
-the sky.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is out of
-tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired
-man&mdash;the hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays like one
-possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can feel them in the air
-round about him, capering frenetically; with their invisible feet they set the
-pace, and the hair of the leader of the orchestra rises on end, and his
-eyeballs start from their sockets, as he toils to keep up with them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Tamoszius Kuszleika is his name, and he has taught himself to play the violin
-by practicing all night, after working all day on the &ldquo;killing
-beds.&rdquo; He is in his shirt sleeves, with a vest figured with faded gold
-horseshoes, and a pink-striped shirt, suggestive of peppermint candy. A pair of
-military trousers, light blue with a yellow stripe, serve to give that
-suggestion of authority proper to the leader of a band. He is only about five
-feet high, but even so these trousers are about eight inches short of the
-ground. You wonder where he can have gotten them or rather you would wonder, if
-the excitement of being in his presence left you time to think of such things.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For he is an inspired man. Every inch of him is inspired&mdash;you might almost
-say inspired separately. He stamps with his feet, he tosses his head, he sways
-and swings to and fro; he has a wizened-up little face, irresistibly comical;
-and, when he executes a turn or a flourish, his brows knit and his lips work
-and his eyelids wink&mdash;the very ends of his necktie bristle out. And every
-now and then he turns upon his companions, nodding, signaling, beckoning
-frantically&mdash;with every inch of him appealing, imploring, in behalf of the
-muses and their call.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For they are hardly worthy of Tamoszius, the other two members of the
-orchestra. The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with black-rimmed
-spectacles and the mute and patient look of an overdriven mule; he responds to
-the whip but feebly, and then always falls back into his old rut. The third man
-is very fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes
-turned up to the sky and a look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part
-upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens
-in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note
-after another, from four o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon until nearly the same
-hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one dollar per hour.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before the feast has been five minutes under way, Tamoszius Kuszleika has risen
-in his excitement; a minute or two more and you see that he is beginning to
-edge over toward the tables. His nostrils are dilated and his breath comes
-fast&mdash;his demons are driving him. He nods and shakes his head at his
-companions, jerking at them with his violin, until at last the long form of the
-second violinist also rises up. In the end all three of them begin advancing,
-step by step, upon the banqueters, Valentinavyczia, the cellist, bumping along
-with his instrument between notes. Finally all three are gathered at the foot
-of the tables, and there Tamoszius mounts upon a stool.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene. Some of the people are eating,
-some are laughing and talking&mdash;but you will make a great mistake if you
-think there is one of them who does not hear him. His notes are never true, and
-his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and scratches on the high; but
-these things they heed no more than they heed the dirt and noise and squalor
-about them&mdash;it is out of this material that they have to build their
-lives, with it that they have to utter their souls. And this is their
-utterance; merry and boisterous, or mournful and wailing, or passionate and
-rebellious, this music is their music, music of home. It stretches out its arms
-to them, they have only to give themselves up. Chicago and its saloons and its
-slums fade away&mdash;there are green meadows and sunlit rivers, mighty forests
-and snow-clad hills. They behold home landscapes and childhood scenes
-returning; old loves and friendships begin to waken, old joys and griefs to
-laugh and weep. Some fall back and close their eyes, some beat upon the table.
-Now and then one leaps up with a cry and calls for this song or that; and then
-the fire leaps brighter in Tamoszius&rsquo; eyes, and he flings up his fiddle
-and shouts to his companions, and away they go in mad career. The company takes
-up the choruses, and men and women cry out like all possessed; some leap to
-their feet and stamp upon the floor, lifting their glasses and pledging each
-other. Before long it occurs to some one to demand an old wedding song, which
-celebrates the beauty of the bride and the joys of love. In the excitement of
-this masterpiece Tamoszius Kuszleika begins to edge in between the tables,
-making his way toward the head, where sits the bride. There is not a foot of
-space between the chairs of the guests, and Tamoszius is so short that he pokes
-them with his bow whenever he reaches over for the low notes; but still he
-presses in, and insists relentlessly that his companions must follow. During
-their progress, needless to say, the sounds of the cello are pretty well
-extinguished; but at last the three are at the head, and Tamoszius takes his
-station at the right hand of the bride and begins to pour out his soul in
-melting strains.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Little Ona is too excited to eat. Once in a while she tastes a little
-something, when Cousin Marija pinches her elbow and reminds her; but, for the
-most part, she sits gazing with the same fearful eyes of wonder. Teta Elzbieta
-is all in a flutter, like a hummingbird; her sisters, too, keep running up
-behind her, whispering, breathless. But Ona seems scarcely to hear
-them&mdash;the music keeps calling, and the far-off look comes back, and she
-sits with her hands pressed together over her heart. Then the tears begin to
-come into her eyes; and as she is ashamed to wipe them away, and ashamed to let
-them run down her cheeks, she turns and shakes her head a little, and then
-flushes red when she sees that Jurgis is watching her. When in the end
-Tamoszius Kuszleika has reached her side, and is waving his magic wand above
-her, Ona&rsquo;s cheeks are scarlet, and she looks as if she would have to get
-up and run away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In this crisis, however, she is saved by Marija Berczynskas, whom the muses
-suddenly visit. Marija is fond of a song, a song of lovers&rsquo; parting; she
-wishes to hear it, and, as the musicians do not know it, she has risen, and is
-proceeding to teach them. Marija is short, but powerful in build. She works in
-a canning factory, and all day long she handles cans of beef that weigh
-fourteen pounds. She has a broad Slavic face, with prominent red cheeks. When
-she opens her mouth, it is tragical, but you cannot help thinking of a horse.
-She wears a blue flannel shirt-waist, which is now rolled up at the sleeves,
-disclosing her brawny arms; she has a carving fork in her hand, with which she
-pounds on the table to mark the time. As she roars her song, in a voice of
-which it is enough to say that it leaves no portion of the room vacant, the
-three musicians follow her, laboriously and note by note, but averaging one
-note behind; thus they toil through stanza after stanza of a lovesick
-swain&rsquo;s lamentation:&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-&ldquo;Sudiev&rsquo; kvietkeli, tu brangiausis;<br />
-Sudiev&rsquo; ir laime, man biednam,<br />
-Matau&mdash;paskyre teip Aukszcziausis,<br />
-Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When the song is over, it is time for the speech, and old Dede Antanas rises to
-his feet. Grandfather Anthony, Jurgis&rsquo; father, is not more than sixty
-years of age, but you would think that he was eighty. He has been only six
-months in America, and the change has not done him good. In his manhood he
-worked in a cotton mill, but then a coughing fell upon him, and he had to
-leave; out in the country the trouble disappeared, but he has been working in
-the pickle rooms at Durham&rsquo;s, and the breathing of the cold, damp air all
-day has brought it back. Now as he rises he is seized with a coughing fit, and
-holds himself by his chair and turns away his wan and battered face until it
-passes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Generally it is the custom for the speech at a <i>veselija</i> to be taken out
-of one of the books and learned by heart; but in his youthful days Dede Antanas
-used to be a scholar, and really make up all the love letters of his friends.
-Now it is understood that he has composed an original speech of congratulation
-and benediction, and this is one of the events of the day. Even the boys, who
-are romping about the room, draw near and listen, and some of the women sob and
-wipe their aprons in their eyes. It is very solemn, for Antanas Rudkus has
-become possessed of the idea that he has not much longer to stay with his
-children. His speech leaves them all so tearful that one of the guests, Jokubas
-Szedvilas, who keeps a delicatessen store on Halsted Street, and is fat and
-hearty, is moved to rise and say that things may not be as bad as that, and
-then to go on and make a little speech of his own, in which he showers
-congratulations and prophecies of happiness upon the bride and groom,
-proceeding to particulars which greatly delight the young men, but which cause
-Ona to blush more furiously than ever. Jokubas possesses what his wife
-complacently describes as &ldquo;poetiszka vaidintuve&rdquo;&mdash;a poetical
-imagination.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now a good many of the guests have finished, and, since there is no pretense of
-ceremony, the banquet begins to break up. Some of the men gather about the bar;
-some wander about, laughing and singing; here and there will be a little group,
-chanting merrily, and in sublime indifference to the others and to the
-orchestra as well. Everybody is more or less restless&mdash;one would guess
-that something is on their minds. And so it proves. The last tardy diners are
-scarcely given time to finish, before the tables and the debris are shoved into
-the corner, and the chairs and the babies piled out of the way, and the real
-celebration of the evening begins. Then Tamoszius Kuszleika, after replenishing
-himself with a pot of beer, returns to his platform, and, standing up, reviews
-the scene; he taps authoritatively upon the side of his violin, then tucks it
-carefully under his chin, then waves his bow in an elaborate flourish, and
-finally smites the sounding strings and closes his eyes, and floats away in
-spirit upon the wings of a dreamy waltz. His companion follows, but with his
-eyes open, watching where he treads, so to speak; and finally Valentinavyczia,
-after waiting for a little and beating with his foot to get the time, casts up
-his eyes to the ceiling and begins to saw&mdash;&ldquo;Broom! broom!
-broom!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The company pairs off quickly, and the whole room is soon in motion. Apparently
-nobody knows how to waltz, but that is nothing of any consequence&mdash;there
-is music, and they dance, each as he pleases, just as before they sang. Most of
-them prefer the &ldquo;two-step,&rdquo; especially the young, with whom it is
-the fashion. The older people have dances from home, strange and complicated
-steps which they execute with grave solemnity. Some do not dance anything at
-all, but simply hold each other&rsquo;s hands and allow the undisciplined joy
-of motion to express itself with their feet. Among these are Jokubas Szedvilas
-and his wife, Lucija, who together keep the delicatessen store, and consume
-nearly as much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the
-middle of the floor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking slowly from
-side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of toothless and perspiring
-ecstasy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail of
-home&mdash;an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily colored
-handkerchief, or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons. All these things
-are carefully avoided by the young, most of whom have learned to speak English
-and to affect the latest style of clothing. The girls wear ready-made dresses
-or shirt waists, and some of them look quite pretty. Some of the young men you
-would take to be Americans, of the type of clerks, but for the fact that they
-wear their hats in the room. Each of these younger couples affects a style of
-its own in dancing. Some hold each other tightly, some at a cautious distance.
-Some hold their hands out stiffly, some drop them loosely at their sides. Some
-dance springily, some glide softly, some move with grave dignity. There are
-boisterous couples, who tear wildly about the room, knocking every one out of
-their way. There are nervous couples, whom these frighten, and who cry,
-&ldquo;Nusfok! Kas yra?&rdquo; at them as they pass. Each couple is paired for
-the evening&mdash;you will never see them change about. There is Alena
-Jasaityte, for instance, who has danced unending hours with Juozas Raczius, to
-whom she is engaged. Alena is the beauty of the evening, and she would be
-really beautiful if she were not so proud. She wears a white shirtwaist, which
-represents, perhaps, half a week&rsquo;s labor painting cans. She holds her
-skirt with her hand as she dances, with stately precision, after the manner of
-the <i>grandes dames</i>. Juozas is driving one of Durham&rsquo;s wagons, and
-is making big wages. He affects a &ldquo;tough&rdquo; aspect, wearing his hat
-on one side and keeping a cigarette in his mouth all the evening. Then there is
-Jadvyga Marcinkus, who is also beautiful, but humble. Jadvyga likewise paints
-cans, but then she has an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by
-it, and so she does not spend her wages for shirtwaists. Jadvyga is small and
-delicate, with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter twisted into a little knot
-and tied on the top of her head. She wears an old white dress which she has
-made herself and worn to parties for the past five years; it is
-high-waisted&mdash;almost under her arms, and not very becoming,&mdash;but that
-does not trouble Jadvyga, who is dancing with her Mikolas. She is small, while
-he is big and powerful; she nestles in his arms as if she would hide herself
-from view, and leans her head upon his shoulder. He in turn has clasped his
-arms tightly around her, as if he would carry her away; and so she dances, and
-will dance the entire evening, and would dance forever, in ecstasy of bliss.
-You would smile, perhaps, to see them&mdash;but you would not smile if you knew
-all the story. This is the fifth year, now, that Jadvyga has been engaged to
-Mikolas, and her heart is sick. They would have been married in the beginning,
-only Mikolas has a father who is drunk all day, and he is the only other man in
-a large family. Even so they might have managed it (for Mikolas is a skilled
-man) but for cruel accidents which have almost taken the heart out of them. He
-is a beef-boner, and that is a dangerous trade, especially when you are on
-piecework and trying to earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife
-is slippery, and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to
-you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a
-fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion. The
-cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within the last three years,
-Mikolas has been lying at home with blood poisoning&mdash;once for three months
-and once for nearly seven. The last time, too, he lost his job, and that meant
-six weeks more of standing at the doors of the packing houses, at six
-o&rsquo;clock on bitter winter mornings, with a foot of snow on the ground and
-more in the air. There are learned people who can tell you out of the
-statistics that beef-boners make forty cents an hour, but, perhaps, these
-people have never looked into a beef-boner&rsquo;s hands.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When Tamoszius and his companions stop for a rest, as perforce they must, now
-and then, the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently. They never seem
-to tire; and there is no place for them to sit down if they did. It is only for
-a minute, anyway, for the leader starts up again, in spite of all the protests
-of the other two. This time it is another sort of a dance, a Lithuanian dance.
-Those who prefer to, go on with the two-step, but the majority go through an
-intricate series of motions, resembling more fancy skating than a dance. The
-climax of it is a furious <i>prestissimo</i>, at which the couples seize hands
-and begin a mad whirling. This is quite irresistible, and every one in the room
-joins in, until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies quite
-dazzling to look upon. But the sight of sights at this moment is Tamoszius
-Kuszleika. The old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest, but Tamoszius has no
-mercy. The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he bends over like a cyclist
-on the last lap of a race. His body shakes and throbs like a runaway steam
-engine, and the ear cannot follow the flying showers of notes&mdash;there is a
-pale blue mist where you look to see his bowing arm. With a most wonderful rush
-he comes to the end of the tune, and flings up his hands and staggers back
-exhausted; and with a final shout of delight the dancers fly apart, reeling
-here and there, bringing up against the walls of the room.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After this there is beer for every one, the musicians included, and the
-revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the evening,
-which is the <i>acziavimas</i>. The <i>acziavimas</i> is a ceremony which, once
-begun, will continue for three or four hours, and it involves one uninterrupted
-dance. The guests form a great ring, locking hands, and, when the music starts
-up, begin to move around in a circle. In the center stands the bride, and, one
-by one, the men step into the enclosure and dance with her. Each dances for
-several minutes&mdash;as long as he pleases; it is a very merry proceeding,
-with laughter and singing, and when the guest has finished, he finds himself
-face to face with Teta Elzbieta, who holds the hat. Into it he drops a sum of
-money&mdash;a dollar, or perhaps five dollars, according to his power, and his
-estimate of the value of the privilege. The guests are expected to pay for this
-entertainment; if they be proper guests, they will see that there is a neat sum
-left over for the bride and bridegroom to start life upon.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of this entertainment. They
-will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe three hundred; and three
-hundred dollars is more than the year&rsquo;s income of many a person in this
-room. There are able-bodied men here who work from early morning until late at
-night, in ice-cold cellars with a quarter of an inch of water on the
-floor&mdash;men who for six or seven months in the year never see the sunlight
-from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning&mdash;and who cannot earn
-three hundred dollars in a year. There are little children here, scarce in
-their teens, who can hardly see the top of the work benches&mdash;whose parents
-have lied to get them their places&mdash;and who do not make the half of three
-hundred dollars a year, and perhaps not even the third of it. And then to spend
-such a sum, all in a single day of your life, at a wedding feast! (For
-obviously it is the same thing, whether you spend it at once for your own
-wedding, or in a long time, at the weddings of all your friends.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It is very imprudent, it is tragic&mdash;but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by
-bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they cling
-with all the power of their souls&mdash;they cannot give up the
-<i>veselija!</i> To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
-acknowledge defeat&mdash;and the difference between these two things is what
-keeps the world going. The <i>veselija</i> has come down to them from a far-off
-time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze
-upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his
-chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his
-lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its
-terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface
-of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses
-his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine.
-Thus having known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his
-toil and live upon the memory all his days.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Endlessly the dancers swung round and round&mdash;when they were dizzy they
-swung the other way. Hour after hour this had continued&mdash;the darkness had
-fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps. The
-musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only one tune,
-wearily, ploddingly. There were twenty bars or so of it, and when they came to
-the end they began again. Once every ten minutes or so they would fail to begin
-again, but instead would sink back exhausted; a circumstance which invariably
-brought on a painful and terrifying scene, that made the fat policeman stir
-uneasily in his sleeping place behind the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who cling
-with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day long she had
-been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving&mdash;and she
-would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of Faust, &ldquo;Stay,
-thou art fair!&rdquo; Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or by music, or
-by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she would go back to the chase
-of it&mdash;and no sooner be fairly started than her chariot would be thrown
-off the track, so to speak, by the stupidity of those thrice accursed
-musicians. Each time, Marija would emit a howl and fly at them, shaking her
-fists in their faces, stamping upon the floor, purple and incoherent with rage.
-In vain the frightened Tamoszius would attempt to speak, to plead the
-limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas
-Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. &ldquo;Szalin!&rdquo;
-Marija would scream. &ldquo;Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children
-of hell?&rdquo; And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again,
-and Marija would return to her place and take up her task.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She bore all the burden of the festivities now. Ona was kept up by her
-excitement, but all of the women and most of the men were tired&mdash;the soul
-of Marija was alone unconquered. She drove on the dancers&mdash;what had once
-been the ring had now the shape of a pear, with Marija at the stem, pulling one
-way and pushing the other, shouting, stamping, singing, a very volcano of
-energy. Now and then some one coming in or out would leave the door open, and
-the night air was chill; Marija as she passed would stretch out her foot and
-kick the doorknob, and slam would go the door! Once this procedure was the
-cause of a calamity of which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim.
-Little Sebastijonas, aged three, had been wandering about oblivious to all
-things, holding turned up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as
-&ldquo;pop,&rdquo; pink-colored, ice-cold, and delicious. Passing through the
-doorway the door smote him full, and the shriek which followed brought the
-dancing to a halt. Marija, who threatened horrid murder a hundred times a day,
-and would weep over the injury of a fly, seized little Sebastijonas in her arms
-and bid fair to smother him with kisses. There was a long rest for the
-orchestra, and plenty of refreshments, while Marija was making her peace with
-her victim, seating him upon the bar, and standing beside him and holding to
-his lips a foaming schooner of beer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an anxious
-conference between Teta Elzbieta and Dede Antanas, and a few of the more
-intimate friends of the family. A trouble was come upon them. The
-<i>veselija</i> is a compact, a compact not expressed, but therefore only the
-more binding upon all. Every one&rsquo;s share was different&mdash;and yet
-every one knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a little
-more. Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all this was
-changing; it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in the air that one
-breathed here&mdash;it was affecting all the young men at once. They would come
-in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner, and then sneak off. One would
-throw another&rsquo;s hat out of the window, and both would go out to get it,
-and neither could be seen again. Or now and then half a dozen of them would get
-together and march out openly, staring at you, and making fun of you to your
-face. Still others, worse yet, would crowd about the bar, and at the expense of
-the host drink themselves sodden, paying not the least attention to any one,
-and leaving it to be thought that either they had danced with the bride
-already, or meant to later on.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All these things were going on now, and the family was helpless with dismay. So
-long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made! Ona stood by, her eyes
-wide with terror. Those frightful bills&mdash;how they had haunted her, each
-item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her rest at night. How often she
-had named them over one by one and figured on them as she went to
-work&mdash;fifteen dollars for the hall, twenty-two dollars and a quarter for
-the ducks, twelve dollars for the musicians, five dollars at the church, and a
-blessing of the Virgin besides&mdash;and so on without an end! Worst of all was
-the frightful bill that was still to come from Graiczunas for the beer and
-liquor that might be consumed. One could never get in advance more than a guess
-as to this from a saloon-keeper&mdash;and then, when the time came he always
-came to you scratching his head and saying that he had guessed too low, but
-that he had done his best&mdash;your guests had gotten so very drunk. By him
-you were sure to be cheated unmercifully, and that even though you thought
-yourself the dearest of the hundreds of friends he had. He would begin to serve
-your guests out of a keg that was half full, and finish with one that was half
-empty, and then you would be charged for two kegs of beer. He would agree to
-serve a certain quality at a certain price, and when the time came you and your
-friends would be drinking some horrible poison that could not be described. You
-might complain, but you would get nothing for your pains but a ruined evening;
-while, as for going to law about it, you might as well go to heaven at once.
-The saloon-keeper stood in with all the big politics men in the district; and
-when you had once found out what it meant to get into trouble with such people,
-you would know enough to pay what you were told to pay and shut up.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few that had
-really done their best. There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for instance&mdash;he
-had already given five dollars, and did not every one know that Jokubas
-Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for two hundred dollars to
-meet several months&rsquo; overdue rent? And then there was withered old poni
-Aniele&mdash;who was a widow, and had three children, and the rheumatism
-besides, and did washing for the tradespeople on Halsted Street at prices it
-would break your heart to hear named. Aniele had given the entire profit of her
-chickens for several months. Eight of them she owned, and she kept them in a
-little place fenced around on her backstairs. All day long the children of
-Aniele were raking in the dump for food for these chickens; and sometimes, when
-the competition there was too fierce, you might see them on Halsted Street
-walking close to the gutters, and with their mother following to see that no
-one robbed them of their finds. Money could not tell the value of these
-chickens to old Mrs. Jukniene&mdash;she valued them differently, for she had a
-feeling that she was getting something for nothing by means of them&mdash;that
-with them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better of
-her in so many other ways. So she watched them every hour of the day, and had
-learned to see like an owl at night to watch them then. One of them had been
-stolen long ago, and not a month passed that some one did not try to steal
-another. As the frustrating of this one attempt involved a score of false
-alarms, it will be understood what a tribute old Mrs. Jukniene brought, just
-because Teta Elzbieta had once loaned her some money for a few days and saved
-her from being turned out of her house.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-More and more friends gathered round while the lamentation about these things
-was going on. Some drew nearer, hoping to overhear the conversation, who were
-themselves among the guilty&mdash;and surely that was a thing to try the
-patience of a saint. Finally there came Jurgis, urged by some one, and the
-story was retold to him. Jurgis listened in silence, with his great black
-eyebrows knitted. Now and then there would come a gleam underneath them and he
-would glance about the room. Perhaps he would have liked to go at some of those
-fellows with his big clenched fists; but then, doubtless, he realized how
-little good it would do him. No bill would be any less for turning out any one
-at this time; and then there would be the scandal&mdash;and Jurgis wanted
-nothing except to get away with Ona and to let the world go its own way. So his
-hands relaxed and he merely said quietly: &ldquo;It is done, and there is no
-use in weeping, Teta Elzbieta.&rdquo; Then his look turned toward Ona, who
-stood close to his side, and he saw the wide look of terror in her eyes.
-&ldquo;Little one,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice, &ldquo;do not worry&mdash;it
-will not matter to us. We will pay them all somehow. I will work harder.&rdquo;
-That was always what Jurgis said. Ona had grown used to it as the solution of
-all difficulties&mdash;&ldquo;I will work harder!&rdquo; He had said that in
-Lithuania when one official had taken his passport from him, and another had
-arrested him for being without it, and the two had divided a third of his
-belongings. He had said it again in New York, when the smooth-spoken agent had
-taken them in hand and made them pay such high prices, and almost prevented
-their leaving his place, in spite of their paying. Now he said it a third time,
-and Ona drew a deep breath; it was so wonderful to have a husband, just like a
-grown woman&mdash;and a husband who could solve all problems, and who was so
-big and strong!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The last sob of little Sebastijonas has been stifled, and the orchestra has
-once more been reminded of its duty. The ceremony begins again&mdash;but there
-are few now left to dance with, and so very soon the collection is over and
-promiscuous dances once more begin. It is now after midnight, however, and
-things are not as they were before. The dancers are dull and heavy&mdash;most
-of them have been drinking hard, and have long ago passed the stage of
-exhilaration. They dance in monotonous measure, round after round, hour after
-hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if they were only half conscious, in a
-constantly growing stupor. The men grasp the women very tightly, but there will
-be half an hour together when neither will see the other&rsquo;s face. Some
-couples do not care to dance, and have retired to the corners, where they sit
-with their arms enlaced. Others, who have been drinking still more, wander
-about the room, bumping into everything; some are in groups of two or three,
-singing, each group its own song. As time goes on there is a variety of
-drunkenness, among the younger men especially. Some stagger about in each
-other&rsquo;s arms, whispering maudlin words&mdash;others start quarrels upon
-the slightest pretext, and come to blows and have to be pulled apart. Now the
-fat policeman wakens definitely, and feels of his club to see that it is ready
-for business. He has to be prompt&mdash;for these
-two-o&rsquo;clock-in-the-morning fights, if they once get out of hand, are like
-a forest fire, and may mean the whole reserves at the station. The thing to do
-is to crack every fighting head that you see, before there are so many fighting
-heads that you cannot crack any of them. There is but scant account kept of
-cracked heads in back of the yards, for men who have to crack the heads of
-animals all day seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends,
-and even on their families, between times. This makes it a cause for
-congratulation that by modern methods a very few men can do the painfully
-necessary work of head-cracking for the whole of the cultured world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is no fight that night&mdash;perhaps because Jurgis, too, is
-watchful&mdash;even more so than the policeman. Jurgis has drunk a great deal,
-as any one naturally would on an occasion when it all has to be paid for,
-whether it is drunk or not; but he is a very steady man, and does not easily
-lose his temper. Only once there is a tight shave&mdash;and that is the fault
-of Marija Berczynskas. Marija has apparently concluded about two hours ago that
-if the altar in the corner, with the deity in soiled white, be not the true
-home of the muses, it is, at any rate, the nearest substitute on earth
-attainable. And Marija is just fighting drunk when there come to her ears the
-facts about the villains who have not paid that night. Marija goes on the
-warpath straight off, without even the preliminary of a good cursing, and when
-she is pulled off it is with the coat collars of two villains in her hands.
-Fortunately, the policeman is disposed to be reasonable, and so it is not
-Marija who is flung out of the place.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this interrupts the music for not more than a minute or two. Then again the
-merciless tune begins&mdash;the tune that has been played for the last
-half-hour without one single change. It is an American tune this time, one
-which they have picked up on the streets; all seem to know the words of
-it&mdash;or, at any rate, the first line of it, which they hum to themselves,
-over and over again without rest: &ldquo;In the good old summertime&mdash;in
-the good old summertime! In the good old summertime&mdash;in the good old
-summertime!&rdquo; There seems to be something hypnotic about this, with its
-endlessly recurring dominant. It has put a stupor upon every one who hears it,
-as well as upon the men who are playing it. No one can get away from it, or
-even think of getting away from it; it is three o&rsquo;clock in the morning,
-and they have danced out all their joy, and danced out all their strength, and
-all the strength that unlimited drink can lend them&mdash;and still there is no
-one among them who has the power to think of stopping. Promptly at seven
-o&rsquo;clock this same Monday morning they will every one of them have to be
-in their places at Durham&rsquo;s or Brown&rsquo;s or Jones&rsquo;s, each in
-his working clothes. If one of them be a minute late, he will be docked an
-hour&rsquo;s pay, and if he be many minutes late, he will be apt to find his
-brass check turned to the wall, which will send him out to join the hungry mob
-that waits every morning at the gates of the packing houses, from six
-o&rsquo;clock until nearly half-past eight. There is no exception to this rule,
-not even little Ona&mdash;who has asked for a holiday the day after her wedding
-day, a holiday without pay, and been refused. While there are so many who are
-anxious to work as you wish, there is no occasion for incommoding yourself with
-those who must work otherwise.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Little Ona is nearly ready to faint&mdash;and half in a stupor herself, because
-of the heavy scent in the room. She has not taken a drop, but every one else
-there is literally burning alcohol, as the lamps are burning oil; some of the
-men who are sound asleep in their chairs or on the floor are reeking of it so
-that you cannot go near them. Now and then Jurgis gazes at her
-hungrily&mdash;he has long since forgotten his shyness; but then the crowd is
-there, and he still waits and watches the door, where a carriage is supposed to
-come. It does not, and finally he will wait no longer, but comes up to Ona, who
-turns white and trembles. He puts her shawl about her and then his own coat.
-They live only two blocks away, and Jurgis does not care about the carriage.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is almost no farewell&mdash;the dancers do not notice them, and all of
-the children and many of the old folks have fallen asleep of sheer exhaustion.
-Dede Antanas is asleep, and so are the Szedvilases, husband and wife, the
-former snoring in octaves. There is Teta Elzbieta, and Marija, sobbing loudly;
-and then there is only the silent night, with the stars beginning to pale a
-little in the east. Jurgis, without a word, lifts Ona in his arms, and strides
-out with her, and she sinks her head upon his shoulder with a moan. When he
-reaches home he is not sure whether she has fainted or is asleep, but when he
-has to hold her with one hand while he unlocks the door, he sees that she has
-opened her eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You shall not go to Brown&rsquo;s today, little one,&rdquo; he whispers,
-as he climbs the stairs; and she catches his arm in terror, gasping: &ldquo;No!
-No! I dare not! It will ruin us!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But he answers her again: &ldquo;Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn
-more money&mdash;I will work harder.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young. They told him stories
-about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of Chicago, and of what
-had happened to them afterward&mdash;stories to make your flesh creep, but
-Jurgis would only laugh. He had only been there four months, and he was young,
-and a giant besides. There was too much health in him. He could not even
-imagine how it would feel to be beaten. &ldquo;That is well enough for men like
-you,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;<i>silpnas</i>, puny fellows&mdash;but my back
-is broad.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was the sort of man the
-bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they cannot get
-hold of. When he was told to go to a certain place, he would go there on the
-run. When he had nothing to do for the moment, he would stand round fidgeting,
-dancing, with the overflow of energy that was in him. If he were working in a
-line of men, the line always moved too slowly for him, and you could pick him
-out by his impatience and restlessness. That was why he had been picked out on
-one important occasion; for Jurgis had stood outside of Brown and
-Company&rsquo;s &ldquo;Central Time Station&rdquo; not more than half an hour,
-the second day of his arrival in Chicago, before he had been beckoned by one of
-the bosses. Of this he was very proud, and it made him more disposed than ever
-to laugh at the pessimists. In vain would they all tell him that there were men
-in that crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a
-month&mdash;yes, many months&mdash;and not been chosen yet. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;
-he would say, &ldquo;but what sort of men? Broken-down tramps and
-good-for-nothings, fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to
-get more for it. Do you want me to believe that with these
-arms&rdquo;&mdash;and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so
-that you might see the rolling muscles&mdash;&ldquo;that with these arms people
-will ever let me starve?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It is plain,&rdquo; they would answer to this, &ldquo;that you have come
-from the country, and from very far in the country.&rdquo; And this was the
-fact, for Jurgis had never seen a city, and scarcely even a fair-sized town,
-until he had set out to make his fortune in the world and earn his right to
-Ona. His father, and his father&rsquo;s father before him, and as many
-ancestors back as legend could go, had lived in that part of Lithuania known as
-<i>Brelovicz</i>, the Imperial Forest. This is a great tract of a hundred
-thousand acres, which from time immemorial has been a hunting preserve of the
-nobility. There are a very few peasants settled in it, holding title from
-ancient times; and one of these was Antanas Rudkus, who had been reared
-himself, and had reared his children in turn, upon half a dozen acres of
-cleared land in the midst of a wilderness. There had been one son besides
-Jurgis, and one sister. The former had been drafted into the army; that had
-been over ten years ago, but since that day nothing had ever been heard of him.
-The sister was married, and her husband had bought the place when old Antanas
-had decided to go with his son.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse fair a
-hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get married&mdash;he had
-laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into; but here, without ever
-having spoken a word to her, with no more than the exchange of half a dozen
-smiles, he found himself, purple in the face with embarrassment and terror,
-asking her parents to sell her to him for his wife&mdash;and offering his
-father&rsquo;s two horses he had been sent to the fair to sell. But Ona&rsquo;s
-father proved as a rock&mdash;the girl was yet a child, and he was a rich man,
-and his daughter was not to be had in that way. So Jurgis went home with a
-heavy heart, and that spring and summer toiled and tried hard to forget. In the
-fall, after the harvest was over, he saw that it would not do, and tramped the
-full fortnight&rsquo;s journey that lay between him and Ona.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He found an unexpected state of affairs&mdash;for the girl&rsquo;s father had
-died, and his estate was tied up with creditors; Jurgis&rsquo; heart leaped as
-he realized that now the prize was within his reach. There was Elzbieta
-Lukoszaite, Teta, or Aunt, as they called her, Ona&rsquo;s stepmother, and
-there were her six children, of all ages. There was also her brother Jonas, a
-dried-up little man who had worked upon the farm. They were people of great
-consequence, as it seemed to Jurgis, fresh out of the woods; Ona knew how to
-read, and knew many other things that he did not know, and now the farm had
-been sold, and the whole family was adrift&mdash;all they owned in the world
-being about seven hundred rubles which is half as many dollars. They would have
-had three times that, but it had gone to court, and the judge had decided
-against them, and it had cost the balance to get him to change his decision.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ona might have married and left them, but she would not, for she loved Teta
-Elzbieta. It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America, where a
-friend of his had gotten rich. He would work, for his part, and the women would
-work, and some of the children, doubtless&mdash;they would live somehow.
-Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man
-might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three rubles a day would
-mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he
-would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that
-country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into
-the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials&mdash;he
-might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. So America
-was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed. If one could only manage
-to get the price of a passage, he could count his troubles at an end.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was arranged that they should leave the following spring, and meantime
-Jurgis sold himself to a contractor for a certain time, and tramped nearly four
-hundred miles from home with a gang of men to work upon a railroad in Smolensk.
-This was a fearful experience, with filth and bad food and cruelty and
-overwork; but Jurgis stood it and came out in fine trim, and with eighty rubles
-sewed up in his coat. He did not drink or fight, because he was thinking all
-the time of Ona; and for the rest, he was a quiet, steady man, who did what he
-was told to, did not lose his temper often, and when he did lose it made the
-offender anxious that he should not lose it again. When they paid him off he
-dodged the company gamblers and dramshops, and so they tried to kill him; but
-he escaped, and tramped it home, working at odd jobs, and sleeping always with
-one eye open.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last moment
-there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona&rsquo;s. Marija
-was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer of Vilna, who
-beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that it had occurred to
-Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and nearly murdered the man,
-and then come away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children&mdash;and
-Ona, who was a little of both. They had a hard time on the passage; there was
-an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got them into a trap
-with some officials, and cost them a good deal of their precious money, which
-they clung to with such horrible fear. This happened to them again in New
-York&mdash;for, of course, they knew nothing about the country, and had no one
-to tell them, and it was easy for a man in a blue uniform to lead them away,
-and to take them to a hotel and keep them there, and make them pay enormous
-charges to get away. The law says that the rate card shall be on the door of a
-hotel, but it does not say that it shall be in Lithuanian.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was in the stockyards that Jonas&rsquo; friend had gotten rich, and so to
-Chicago the party was bound. They knew that one word, Chicago and that was all
-they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city. Then, tumbled out
-of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off than before; they stood
-staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with its big black buildings
-towering in the distance, unable to realize that they had arrived, and why,
-when they said &ldquo;Chicago,&rdquo; people no longer pointed in some
-direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed, or went on without paying
-any attention. They were pitiable in their helplessness; above all things they
-stood in deadly terror of any sort of person in official uniform, and so
-whenever they saw a policeman they would cross the street and hurry by. For the
-whole of the first day they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion,
-utterly lost; and it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a
-house, they were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station. In
-the morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon a car,
-and taught a new word&mdash;&ldquo;stockyards.&rdquo; Their delight at
-discovering that they were to get out of this adventure without losing another
-share of their possessions it would not be possible to describe.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which seemed to
-run on forever, mile after mile&mdash;thirty-four of them, if they had known
-it&mdash;and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story
-frame buildings. Down every side street they could see, it was the
-same&mdash;never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same endless vista
-of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there would be a bridge
-crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores and dingy sheds and docks
-along it; here and there would be a railroad crossing, with a tangle of
-switches, and locomotives puffing, and rattling freight cars filing by; here
-and there would be a great factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows
-in it, and immense volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys, darkening the
-air above and making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these
-interruptions, the desolate procession would begin again&mdash;the procession
-of dreary little buildings.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the
-perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time, and upon the
-earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as the train sped on,
-the colors of things became dingier; the fields were grown parched and yellow,
-the landscape hideous and bare. And along with the thickening smoke they began
-to notice another circumstance, a strange, pungent odor. They were not sure
-that it was unpleasant, this odor; some might have called it sickening, but
-their taste in odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it was
-curious. Now, sitting in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their
-way to the home of it&mdash;that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania
-to it. It was now no longer something far off and faint, that you caught in
-whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell it&mdash;you could take
-hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure. They were divided in their
-opinions about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and crude; it was rich, almost
-rancid, sensual, and strong. There were some who drank it in as if it were an
-intoxicant; there were others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces. The
-new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came
-to a halt, and the door was flung open, and a voice
-shouted&mdash;&ldquo;Stockyards!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street there were
-two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half a dozen chimneys, tall
-as the tallest of buildings, touching the very sky&mdash;and leaping from them
-half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily, and black as night. It might have
-come from the center of the world, this smoke, where the fires of the ages
-still smolder. It came as if self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual
-explosion. It was inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still
-the great streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing,
-curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the sky,
-stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like the
-color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of ten thousand
-little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first&mdash;it sunk into your
-consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like the murmuring of the
-bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it suggested endless
-activity, the rumblings of a world in motion. It was only by an effort that one
-could realize that it was made by animals, that it was the distant lowing of
-ten thousand cattle, the distant grunting of ten thousand swine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They would have liked to follow it up, but, alas, they had no time for
-adventures just then. The policeman on the corner was beginning to watch them;
-and so, as usual, they started up the street. Scarcely had they gone a block,
-however, before Jonas was heard to give a cry, and began pointing excitedly
-across the street. Before they could gather the meaning of his breathless
-ejaculations he had bounded away, and they saw him enter a shop, over which was
-a sign: &ldquo;J. Szedvilas, Delicatessen.&rdquo; When he came out again it was
-in company with a very stout gentleman in shirt sleeves and an apron, clasping
-Jonas by both hands and laughing hilariously. Then Teta Elzbieta recollected
-suddenly that Szedvilas had been the name of the mythical friend who had made
-his fortune in America. To find that he had been making it in the delicatessen
-business was an extraordinary piece of good fortune at this juncture; though it
-was well on in the morning, they had not breakfasted, and the children were
-beginning to whimper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Thus was the happy ending to a woeful voyage. The two families literally fell
-upon each other&rsquo;s necks&mdash;for it had been years since Jokubas
-Szedvilas had met a man from his part of Lithuania. Before half the day they
-were lifelong friends. Jokubas understood all the pitfalls of this new world,
-and could explain all of its mysteries; he could tell them the things they
-ought to have done in the different emergencies&mdash;and what was still more
-to the point, he could tell them what to do now. He would take them to poni
-Aniele, who kept a boardinghouse the other side of the yards; old Mrs.
-Jukniene, he explained, had not what one would call choice accommodations, but
-they might do for the moment. To this Teta Elzbieta hastened to respond that
-nothing could be too cheap to suit them just then; for they were quite
-terrified over the sums they had had to expend. A very few days of practical
-experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them
-the cruel fact that it was also a land of high prices, and that in it the poor
-man was almost as poor as in any other corner of the earth; and so there
-vanished in a night all the wonderful dreams of wealth that had been haunting
-Jurgis. What had made the discovery all the more painful was that they were
-spending, at American prices, money which they had earned at home rates of
-wages&mdash;and so were really being cheated by the world! The last two days
-they had all but starved themselves&mdash;it made them quite sick to pay the
-prices that the railroad people asked them for food.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but recoil,
-even so, in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as this. Poni Aniele
-had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of two-story frame tenements
-that lie &ldquo;back of the yards.&rdquo; There were four such flats in each
-building, and each of the four was a &ldquo;boardinghouse&rdquo; for the
-occupancy of foreigners&mdash;Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or Bohemians. Some
-of these places were kept by private persons, some were cooperative. There
-would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each room&mdash;sometimes there
-were thirteen or fourteen to one room, fifty or sixty to a flat. Each one of
-the occupants furnished his own accommodations&mdash;that is, a mattress and
-some bedding. The mattresses would be spread upon the floor in rows&mdash;and
-there would be nothing else in the place except a stove. It was by no means
-unusual for two men to own the same mattress in common, one working by day and
-using it by night, and the other working at night and using it in the daytime.
-Very frequently a lodging house keeper would rent the same beds to double
-shifts of men.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mrs. Jukniene was a wizened-up little woman, with a wrinkled face. Her home was
-unthinkably filthy; you could not enter by the front door at all, owing to the
-mattresses, and when you tried to go up the backstairs you found that she had
-walled up most of the porch with old boards to make a place to keep her
-chickens. It was a standing jest of the boarders that Aniele cleaned house by
-letting the chickens loose in the rooms. Undoubtedly this did keep down the
-vermin, but it seemed probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old
-lady regarded it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms. The
-truth was that she had definitely given up the idea of cleaning anything, under
-pressure of an attack of rheumatism, which had kept her doubled up in one
-corner of her room for over a week; during which time eleven of her boarders,
-heavily in her debt, had concluded to try their chances of employment in Kansas
-City. This was July, and the fields were green. One never saw the fields, nor
-any green thing whatever, in Packingtown; but one could go out on the road and
-&ldquo;hobo it,&rdquo; as the men phrased it, and see the country, and have a
-long rest, and an easy time riding on the freight cars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such was the home to which the new arrivals were welcomed. There was nothing
-better to be had&mdash;they might not do so well by looking further, for Mrs.
-Jukniene had at least kept one room for herself and her three little children,
-and now offered to share this with the women and the girls of the party. They
-could get bedding at a secondhand store, she explained; and they would not need
-any, while the weather was so hot&mdash;doubtless they would all sleep on the
-sidewalk such nights as this, as did nearly all of her guests.
-&ldquo;Tomorrow,&rdquo; Jurgis said, when they were left alone, &ldquo;tomorrow
-I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get one also; and then we can get a
-place of our own.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Later that afternoon he and Ona went out to take a walk and look about them, to
-see more of this district which was to be their home. In back of the yards the
-dreary two-story frame houses were scattered farther apart, and there were
-great spaces bare&mdash;that seemingly had been overlooked by the great sore of
-a city as it spread itself over the surface of the prairie. These bare places
-were grown up with dingy, yellow weeds, hiding innumerable tomato cans;
-innumerable children played upon them, chasing one another here and there,
-screaming and fighting. The most uncanny thing about this neighborhood was the
-number of the children; you thought there must be a school just out, and it was
-only after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that there was no
-school, but that these were the children of the neighborhood&mdash;that there
-were so many children to the block in Packingtown that nowhere on its streets
-could a horse and buggy move faster than a walk!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It could not move faster anyhow, on account of the state of the streets. Those
-through which Jurgis and Ona were walking resembled streets less than they did
-a miniature topographical map. The roadway was commonly several feet lower than
-the level of the houses, which were sometimes joined by high board walks; there
-were no pavements&mdash;there were mountains and valleys and rivers, gullies
-and ditches, and great hollows full of stinking green water. In these pools the
-children played, and rolled about in the mud of the streets; here and there one
-noticed them digging in it, after trophies which they had stumbled on. One
-wondered about this, as also about the swarms of flies which hung about the
-scene, literally blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor which assailed
-one&rsquo;s nostrils, a ghastly odor, of all the dead things of the universe.
-It impelled the visitor to questions and then the residents would explain,
-quietly, that all this was &ldquo;made&rdquo; land, and that it had been
-&ldquo;made&rdquo; by using it as a dumping ground for the city garbage. After
-a few years the unpleasant effect of this would pass away, it was said; but
-meantime, in hot weather&mdash;and especially when it rained&mdash;the flies
-were apt to be annoying. Was it not unhealthful? the stranger would ask, and
-the residents would answer, &ldquo;Perhaps; but there is no telling.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A little way farther on, and Jurgis and Ona, staring open-eyed and wondering,
-came to the place where this &ldquo;made&rdquo; ground was in process of
-making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square, and with long
-files of garbage wagons creeping into it. The place had an odor for which there
-are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over with children, who raked in it
-from dawn till dark. Sometimes visitors from the packing houses would wander
-out to see this &ldquo;dump,&rdquo; and they would stand by and debate as to
-whether the children were eating the food they got, or merely collecting it for
-the chickens at home. Apparently none of them ever went down to find out.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys. First
-they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it up again with
-garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous arrangement,
-characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A little way beyond was
-another great hole, which they had emptied and not yet filled up. This held
-water, and all summer it stood there, with the near-by soil draining into it,
-festering and stewing in the sun; and then, when winter came, somebody cut the
-ice on it, and sold it to the people of the city. This, too, seemed to the
-newcomers an economical arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and
-their heads were not full of troublesome thoughts about &ldquo;germs.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They stood there while the sun went down upon this scene, and the sky in the
-west turned blood-red, and the tops of the houses shone like fire. Jurgis and
-Ona were not thinking of the sunset, however&mdash;their backs were turned to
-it, and all their thoughts were of Packingtown, which they could see so plainly
-in the distance. 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. It was a study in colors now,
-this smoke; in the sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple. All
-the sordid suggestions of the place were gone&mdash;in the twilight it was a
-vision of power. To the two who stood watching while the darkness swallowed it
-up, it seemed a dream of wonder, with its talc of human energy, of things being
-done, of employment for thousands upon thousands of men, of opportunity and
-freedom, of life and love and joy. When they came away, arm in arm, Jurgis was
-saying, &ldquo;Tomorrow I shall go there and get a job!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
-
-<p>
-In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many
-acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham,
-whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment. Jokubas had never
-tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could get some of his friends a
-job through this man. It was agreed, after consultation, that he should make
-the effort with old Antanas and with Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability
-to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was
-not mistaken in this. He had gone to Brown&rsquo;s and stood there not more
-than half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the
-rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the
-point:
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Speak English?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No; Lit-uanian.&rdquo; (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Job?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Je.&rdquo; (A nod.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Worked here before?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No &rsquo;stand.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-(Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorous shakes of the
-head by Jurgis.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Shovel guts?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No &rsquo;stand.&rdquo; (More shakes of the head.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!&rdquo; (Imitative motions.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Je.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;See door. Durys?&rdquo; (Pointing.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Je.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;To-morrow, seven o&rsquo;clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys!
-Septyni!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Dekui, tamistai!&rdquo; (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis
-turned away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph
-swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a run. He had
-a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if upon wings, and burst
-into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the numerous lodgers who had just
-turned in for their daily sleep.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received
-encouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be done that
-day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband sallied forth
-to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas did this with the air of
-a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors over his estate; he was an
-old-time resident, and all these wonders had grown up under his eyes, and he
-had a personal pride in them. The packers might own the land, but he claimed
-the landscape, and there was no one to say nay to this.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was still early
-morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity. A steady stream of
-employees was pouring through the gate&mdash;employees of the higher sort, at
-this hour, clerks and stenographers and such. For the women there were waiting
-big two-horse wagons, which set off at a gallop as fast as they were filled. In
-the distance there was heard again the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a
-far-off ocean calling. They followed it, this time, as eager as children in
-sight of a circus menagerie&mdash;which, indeed, the scene a good deal
-resembled. They crossed the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the
-street were the pens full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but
-Jokubas hurried them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery,
-from which everything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with
-wonder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half of it is
-occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can reach there
-stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled&mdash;so many cattle no one
-had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black, white, and yellow
-cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing bulls and little calves
-not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce, long-horned Texas steers.
-The sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the universe; and as for
-counting them&mdash;it would have taken all day simply to count the pens. Here
-and there ran long alleys, blocked at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them
-that the number of these gates was twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently
-been reading a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that, and
-he was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder.
-Jurgis too had a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just gotten a job,
-and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine? Here
-and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted, and carrying
-long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other, and to those who were
-driving the cattle. They were drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far
-states, and brokers and commission merchants, and buyers for all the big
-packing houses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there would be
-a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drop his whip, and
-that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his little book, along with
-hundreds of others he had made that morning. Then Jokubas pointed out the place
-where the cattle were driven to be weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh
-a hundred thousand pounds at once and record it automatically. It was near to
-the east entrance that they stood, and all along this east side of the yards
-ran the railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All
-night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they
-would all be empty, and the same thing would be done again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And what will become of all these creatures?&rdquo; cried Teta Elzbieta.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;By tonight,&rdquo; Jokubas answered, &ldquo;they will all be killed and
-cut up; and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more
-railroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their guide
-went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day,
-and as many hogs, and half as many sheep&mdash;which meant some eight or ten
-million live creatures turned into food every year. One stood and watched, and
-little by little caught the drift of the tide, as it set in the direction of
-the packing houses. There were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes,
-which were roadways about fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In
-these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to
-watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death.
-Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of
-human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all. The
-chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up&mdash;to the very top of the
-distant buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went up by the power of
-their own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all the
-processes necessary to make them into pork.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t waste anything here,&rdquo; said the guide, and then he
-laughed and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated
-friends should take to be his own: &ldquo;They use everything about the hog
-except the squeal.&rdquo; In front of Brown&rsquo;s General Office building
-there grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of
-green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his squeal,
-the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor that you will
-find there.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street, to the
-mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These buildings, made
-of brick and stained with innumerable layers of Packingtown smoke, were painted
-all over with advertising signs, from which the visitor realized suddenly that
-he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life. It was here that
-they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him
-so&mdash;by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by
-staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines&mdash;by silly little
-jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked
-for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown&rsquo;s
-Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown&rsquo;s Dressed Beef, Brown&rsquo;s Excelsior
-Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham&rsquo;s Pure Leaf Lard, of
-Durham&rsquo;s Breakfast Bacon, Durham&rsquo;s Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled
-Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitors
-waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through the place.
-They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing plants, for
-it is a good advertisement. But Ponas Jokubas whispered maliciously that the
-visitors did not see any more than the packers wanted them to. They climbed a
-long series of stairways outside of the building, to the top of its five or six
-stories. Here was the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling
-upward; there was a place for them to rest to cool off, and then through
-another passageway they went into a room from which there is no returning for
-hogs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At the head
-there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings
-here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow
-space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; in the midst of
-them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and bare-chested. He was resting for
-the moment, for the wheel had stopped while men were cleaning up. In a minute
-or two, however, it began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of
-it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the
-nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings
-upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet
-and borne aloft.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the
-visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek
-was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing&mdash;for once started
-upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was
-shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime
-another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double
-line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy&mdash;and
-squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there
-was too much sound for the room to hold&mdash;that the walls must give way or
-the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails
-of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder
-than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the
-visitors&mdash;the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the
-women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces,
-and the tears starting in their eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about
-their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference
-to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke
-they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and
-lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished
-with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was
-porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the
-most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so
-innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their
-protests&mdash;and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to
-deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here,
-swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of
-apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure;
-but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some
-horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of
-sight and of memory.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without
-beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the
-universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or
-above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this
-suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white
-hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some
-young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an
-individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart&rsquo;s desire;
-each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity.
-And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a
-black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now
-suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless,
-remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it&mdash;it
-did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no
-existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now
-was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog
-personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning?
-Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work
-well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of
-all this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on
-with the rest of the party, and muttered: &ldquo;Dieve&mdash;but I&rsquo;m glad
-I&rsquo;m not a hog!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it fell to
-the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine with numerous
-scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape of the animal, and
-sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its bristles removed. It was
-then again strung up by machinery, and sent upon another trolley ride; this
-time passing between two lines of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each
-doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the
-outside of a leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift
-stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which
-fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit down the
-body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the breastbone; a
-fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out&mdash;and they also slid
-through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrape each side and men to
-scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcass inside, to trim it and
-wash it. Looking down this room, one saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling
-hogs a hundred yards in length; and for every yard there was a man, working as
-if a demon were after him. At the end of this hog&rsquo;s progress every inch
-of the carcass had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into
-the chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a stranger
-might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government
-inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for
-tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the manner of a man who
-was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might
-get by him before he had finished his testing. If you were a sociable person,
-he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you
-the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and
-while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice
-that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue
-uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to the
-scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the things
-which were done in Durham&rsquo;s.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring open-mouthed,
-lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest of Lithuania; but he
-had never expected to live to see one hog dressed by several hundred men. It
-was like a wonderful poem to him, and he took it all in guilelessly&mdash;even
-to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculate cleanliness of the employees.
-Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic
-comments, offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats
-went to be doctored.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials were
-treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for sausage
-casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening stench, which
-caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another room came all the scraps
-to be &ldquo;tanked,&rdquo; which meant boiling and pumping off the grease to
-make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region
-in which the visitors did not linger. In still other places men were engaged in
-cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms. First there
-were the &ldquo;splitters,&rdquo; the most expert workmen in the plant, who
-earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did not a thing all day except chop
-hogs down the middle. Then there were &ldquo;cleaver men,&rdquo; great giants
-with muscles of iron; each had two men to attend him&mdash;to slide the half
-carcass in front of him on the table, and hold it while he chopped it, and then
-turn each piece so that he might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade
-about two feet long, and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too,
-that his implement did not smite through and dull itself&mdash;there was just
-enough force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes
-there slipped to the floor below&mdash;to one room hams, to another
-forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go down to this floor and see
-the pickling rooms, where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke
-rooms, with their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt
-pork&mdash;there were whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the
-ceiling. In yet other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels,
-and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing
-them. From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the
-platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there
-and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of this
-enormous building.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of
-beef&mdash;where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat.
-Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor; and
-instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen, there
-were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one to another of these.
-This made a scene of intense activity, a picture of human power wonderful to
-watch. It was all in one great room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery
-for visitors running over the center.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the floor;
-into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads which gave them
-electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were prisoned, each in a
-separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no room to turn around; and
-while they stood bellowing and plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned
-one of the &ldquo;knockers,&rdquo; armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for
-a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession,
-and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen,
-the &ldquo;knocker&rdquo; passed on to another; while a second man raised a
-lever, and the side of the pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and
-struggling, slid out to the &ldquo;killing bed.&rdquo; Here a man put shackles
-about one leg, and pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the
-air. There were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a
-couple of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then
-once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of each
-pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon the killing
-beds had to get out of the way.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never forgotten.
-They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run&mdash;at a pace with
-which there is nothing to be compared except a football game. It was all highly
-specialized labor, each man having his task to do; generally this would consist
-of only two or three specific cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen
-or twenty carcasses, making these cuts upon each. First there came the
-&ldquo;butcher,&rdquo; to bleed them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift
-that you could not see it&mdash;only the flash of the knife; and before you
-could realize it, the man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of
-bright red was pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep
-with blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through
-holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this
-by watching the men at work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost, however,
-for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always ready. It was
-let down to the ground, and there came the &ldquo;headsman,&rdquo; whose task
-it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes. Then came the
-&ldquo;floorsman,&rdquo; to make the first cut in the skin; and then another to
-finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozen more in swift
-succession, to finish the skinning. After they were through, the carcass was
-again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure
-that it had not been cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one
-of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There
-were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape it clean
-inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling water upon it,
-and others who removed the feet and added the final touches. In the end, as
-with the hogs, the finished beef was run into the chilling room, to hang its
-appointed time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows, labeled
-conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors&mdash;and some, which
-had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign of the kosher rabbi,
-certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox. And then the visitors were
-taken to the other parts of the building, to see what became of each particle
-of the waste material that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling
-rooms, and the salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where
-choice meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be
-eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went outside,
-wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work
-auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing needed in the
-business that Durham and Company did not make for themselves. There was a great
-steam power plant and an electricity plant. There was a barrel factory, and a
-boiler-repair shop. There was a building to which the grease was piped, and
-made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and
-another for making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were
-cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things; there was a
-building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was another where heads
-and feet were made into glue, and another where bones were made into
-fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in Durham&rsquo;s.
-Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and
-imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and
-toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut
-hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as
-feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely
-products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and
-bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a &ldquo;wool
-pullery&rdquo; for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the
-pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling
-entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they first put
-it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease, and then they made
-it into fertilizer. All these industries were gathered into buildings near by,
-connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment; and it was
-estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since
-the founding of the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you
-counted with it the other big plants&mdash;and they were now really all
-one&mdash;it was, so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor
-and capital ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it
-supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its neighborhood,
-and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its products to every
-country in the civilized world, and it furnished the food for no less than
-thirty million people!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed&mdash;it seemed to
-them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised
-by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity to speak about
-the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as tremendous as the
-universe&mdash;the laws and ways of its working no more than the universe to be
-questioned or understood. All that a mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis,
-was to take a thing like this as he found it, and do as he was told; to be
-given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to
-be grateful for, as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was
-even glad that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for
-he felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had been
-admitted&mdash;he was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this whole huge
-establishment had taken him under its protection, and had become responsible
-for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant of the nature of business,
-that he did not even realize that he had become an employee of Brown&rsquo;s,
-and that Brown and Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly
-rivals&mdash;were even required to be deadly rivals by the law of the land, and
-ordered to try to ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
-
-<p>
-Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came to the
-door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for nearly two
-hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said this, and so it
-was only when on his way out to hire another man that he came upon Jurgis. He
-gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not understand a word of it he did
-not object. He followed the boss, who showed him where to put his street
-clothes, and waited while he donned the working clothes he had bought in a
-secondhand shop and brought with him in a bundle; then he led him to the
-&ldquo;killing beds.&rdquo; The work which Jurgis was to do here was very
-simple, and it took him but a few minutes to learn it. He was provided with a
-stiff besom, such as is used by street sweepers, and it was his place to follow
-down the line the man who drew out the smoking entrails from the carcass of the
-steer; this mass was to be swept into a trap, which was then closed, so that no
-one might slip into it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of the morning were
-just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look about him, and
-none to speak to any one, he fell to work. It was a sweltering day in July, and
-the place ran with steaming hot blood&mdash;one waded in it on the floor. The
-stench was almost overpowering, but to Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul
-was dancing with joy&mdash;he was at work at last! He was at work and earning
-money! All day long he was figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of
-seventeen and a half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked
-until nearly seven o&rsquo;clock in the evening, he went home to the family
-with the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a single
-day!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that there was
-quite a celebration in Aniele&rsquo;s hall bedroom. Jonas had been to have an
-interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had introduced him, and
-had been taken to see several of the bosses, with the result that one had
-promised him a job the beginning of the next week. And then there was Marija
-Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy by the success of Jurgis, had set out
-upon her own responsibility to get a place. Marija had nothing to take with her
-save her two brawny arms and the word &ldquo;job,&rdquo; laboriously learned;
-but with these she had marched about Packingtown all day, entering every door
-where there were signs of activity. Out of some she had been ordered with
-curses; but Marija was not afraid of man or devil, and asked every one she
-saw&mdash;visitors and strangers, or work-people like herself, and once or
-twice even high and lofty office personages, who stared at her as if they
-thought she was crazy. In the end, however, she had reaped her reward. In one
-of the smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where scores of women and
-girls were sitting at long tables preparing smoked beef in cans; and wandering
-through room after room, Marija came at last to the place where the sealed cans
-were being painted and labeled, and here she had the good fortune to encounter
-the &ldquo;forelady.&rdquo; Marija did not understand then, as she was destined
-to understand later, what there was attractive to a &ldquo;forelady&rdquo;
-about the combination of a face full of boundless good nature and the muscles
-of a dray horse; but the woman had told her to come the next day and she would
-perhaps give her a chance to learn the trade of painting cans. The painting of
-cans being skilled piecework, and paying as much as two dollars a day, Marija
-burst in upon the family with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell to
-capering about the room so as to frighten the baby almost into convulsions.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was only one
-of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta Elzbieta should
-stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help her. He would not have Ona
-working&mdash;he was not that sort of a man, he said, and she was not that sort
-of a woman. It would be a strange thing if a man like him could not support the
-family, with the help of the board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear
-of letting the children go to work&mdash;there were schools here in America for
-children, Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. That the priest
-would object to these schools was something of which he had as yet no idea, and
-for the present his mind was made up that the children of Teta Elzbieta should
-have as fair a chance as any other children. The oldest of them, little
-Stanislovas, was but thirteen, and small for his age at that; and while the
-oldest son of Szedvilas was only twelve, and had worked for over a year at
-Jones&rsquo;s, Jurgis would have it that Stanislovas should learn to speak
-English, and grow up to be a skilled man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest too, but he
-was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and, besides, the old man
-would not hear it spoken of&mdash;it was his whim to insist that he was as
-lively as any boy. He had come to America as full of hope as the best of them;
-and now he was the chief problem that worried his son. For every one that
-Jurgis spoke to assured him that it was a waste of time to seek employment for
-the old man in Packingtown. Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even
-keep the men who had grown old in their own service&mdash;to say nothing of
-taking on new ones. And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule
-everywhere in America, so far as he knew. To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the
-policeman, and brought back the message that the thing was not to be thought
-of. They had not told this to old Anthony, who had consequently spent the two
-days wandering about from one part of the yards to another, and had now come
-home to hear about the triumph of the others, smiling bravely and saying that
-it would be his turn another day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a home; and
-sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held consultation about
-it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty subject. Passing down the
-avenue to work that morning he had seen two boys leaving an advertisement from
-house to house; and seeing that there were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked
-for one, and had rolled it up and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man
-with whom he had been talking had read it to him and told him a little about
-it, with the result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was nearly two
-feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors so bright
-that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of the placard was occupied
-by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling. The roof of it was of a
-purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house itself was silvery, and the doors
-and windows red. It was a two-story building, with a porch in front, and a very
-fancy scrollwork around the edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail,
-even the doorknob, and there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains
-in the windows. Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and
-wife in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a cradle, with fluffy
-curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub hovering upon silver-colored
-wings. For fear that the significance of all this should be lost, there was a
-label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and German&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Dom. Namai.
-Heim.</i>&rdquo; &ldquo;Why pay rent?&rdquo; the linguistic circular went on to
-demand. &ldquo;Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for
-less than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied by
-happy families.&rdquo;&mdash;So it became eloquent, picturing the blissfulness
-of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It even quoted &ldquo;Home,
-Sweet Home,&rdquo; and made bold to translate it into Polish&mdash;though for
-some reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this. Perhaps the translator found it
-a difficult matter to be sentimental in a language in which a sob is known as a
-gukcziojimas and a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its contents.
-It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a basement, and that
-it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the lot and all. Of this, only
-three hundred dollars had to be paid down, the balance being paid at the rate
-of twelve dollars a month. These were frightful sums, but then they were in
-America, where people talked about such without fear. They had learned that
-they would have to pay a rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was
-no way of doing better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two
-rooms, as at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever, and
-be no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra expense in the
-beginning, there would at last come a time when they would not have any rent to
-pay for the rest of their lives.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They figured it up. There was a little left of the money belonging to Teta
-Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis. Marija had about fifty dollars
-pinned up somewhere in her stockings, and Grandfather Anthony had part of the
-money he had gotten for his farm. If they all combined, they would have enough
-to make the first payment; and if they had employment, so that they could be
-sure of the future, it might really prove the best plan. It was, of course, not
-a thing even to be talked of lightly; it was a thing they would have to sift to
-the bottom. And yet, on the other hand, if they were going to make the venture,
-the sooner they did it the better, for were they not paying rent all the time,
-and living in a most horrible way besides? Jurgis was used to dirt&mdash;there
-was nothing could scare a man who had been with a railroad gang, where one
-could gather up the fleas off the floor of the sleeping room by the handful.
-But that sort of thing would not do for Ona. They must have a better place of
-some sort soon&mdash;Jurgis said it with all the assurance of a man who had
-just made a dollar and fifty-seven cents in a single day. Jurgis was at a loss
-to understand why, with wages as they were, so many of the people of this
-district should live the way they did.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The next day Marija went to see her &ldquo;forelady,&rdquo; and was told to
-report the first of the week, and learn the business of can-painter. Marija
-went home, singing out loud all the way, and was just in time to join Ona and
-her stepmother as they were setting out to go and make inquiry concerning the
-house. That evening the three made their report to the men&mdash;the thing was
-altogether as represented in the circular, or at any rate so the agent had
-said. The houses lay to the south, about a mile and a half from the yards; they
-were wonderful bargains, the gentleman had assured them&mdash;personally, and
-for their own good. He could do this, so he explained to them, for the reason
-that he had himself no interest in their sale&mdash;he was merely the agent for
-a company that had built them. These were the last, and the company was going
-out of business, so if any one wished to take advantage of this wonderful
-no-rent plan, he would have to be very quick. As a matter of fact there was
-just a little uncertainty as to whether there was a single house left; for the
-agent had taken so many people to see them, and for all he knew the company
-might have parted with the last. Seeing Teta Elzbieta&rsquo;s evident grief at
-this news, he added, after some hesitation, that if they really intended to
-make a purchase, he would send a telephone message at his own expense, and have
-one of the houses kept. So it had finally been arranged&mdash;and they were to
-go and make an inspection the following Sunday morning.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was Thursday; and all the rest of the week the killing gang at
-Brown&rsquo;s worked at full pressure, and Jurgis cleared a dollar seventy-five
-every day. That was at the rate of ten and one-half dollars a week, or
-forty-five a month. Jurgis was not able to figure, except it was a very simple
-sum, but Ona was like lightning at such things, and she worked out the problem
-for the family. Marija and Jonas were each to pay sixteen dollars a month
-board, and the old man insisted that he could do the same as soon as he got a
-place&mdash;which might be any day now. That would make ninety-three dollars.
-Then Marija and Jonas were between them to take a third share in the house,
-which would leave only eight dollars a month for Jurgis to contribute to the
-payment. So they would have eighty-five dollars a month&mdash;or, supposing
-that Dede Antanas did not get work at once, seventy dollars a month&mdash;which
-ought surely to be sufficient for the support of a family of twelve.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An hour before the time on Sunday morning the entire party set out. They had
-the address written on a piece of paper, which they showed to some one now and
-then. It proved to be a long mile and a half, but they walked it, and half an
-hour or so later the agent put in an appearance. He was a smooth and florid
-personage, elegantly dressed, and he spoke their language freely, which gave
-him a great advantage in dealing with them. He escorted them to the house,
-which was one of a long row of the typical frame dwellings of the neighborhood,
-where architecture is a luxury that is dispensed with. Ona&rsquo;s heart sank,
-for the house was not as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was
-different, for one thing, and then it did not seem quite so big. Still, it was
-freshly painted, and made a considerable show. It was all brand-new, so the
-agent told them, but he talked so incessantly that they were quite confused,
-and did not have time to ask many questions. There were all sorts of things
-they had made up their minds to inquire about, but when the time came, they
-either forgot them or lacked the courage. The other houses in the row did not
-seem to be new, and few of them seemed to be occupied. When they ventured to
-hint at this, the agent&rsquo;s reply was that the purchasers would be moving
-in shortly. To press the matter would have seemed to be doubting his word, and
-never in their lives had any one of them ever spoken to a person of the class
-called &ldquo;gentleman&rdquo; except with deference and humility.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The house had a basement, about two feet below the street line, and a single
-story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps. In addition there
-was an attic, made by the peak of the roof, and having one small window in each
-end. The street in front of the house was unpaved and unlighted, and the view
-from it consisted of a few exactly similar houses, scattered here and there
-upon lots grown up with dingy brown weeds. The house inside contained four
-rooms, plastered white; the basement was but a frame, the walls being
-unplastered and the floor not laid. The agent explained that the houses were
-built that way, as the purchasers generally preferred to finish the basements
-to suit their own taste. The attic was also unfinished&mdash;the family had
-been figuring that in case of an emergency they could rent this attic, but they
-found that there was not even a floor, nothing but joists, and beneath them the
-lath and plaster of the ceiling below. All of this, however, did not chill
-their ardor as much as might have been expected, because of the volubility of
-the agent. There was no end to the advantages of the house, as he set them
-forth, and he was not silent for an instant; he showed them everything, down to
-the locks on the doors and the catches on the windows, and how to work them. He
-showed them the sink in the kitchen, with running water and a faucet, something
-which Teta Elzbieta had never in her wildest dreams hoped to possess. After a
-discovery such as that it would have seemed ungrateful to find any fault, and
-so they tried to shut their eyes to other defects.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Still, they were peasant people, and they hung on to their money by instinct;
-it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness&mdash;they would see,
-they would see, they told him, they could not decide until they had had more
-time. And so they went home again, and all day and evening there was figuring
-and debating. It was an agony to them to have to make up their minds in a
-matter such as this. They never could agree all together; there were so many
-arguments upon each side, and one would be obstinate, and no sooner would the
-rest have convinced him than it would transpire that his arguments had caused
-another to waver. Once, in the evening, when they were all in harmony, and the
-house was as good as bought, Szedvilas came in and upset them again. Szedvilas
-had no use for property owning. He told them cruel stories of people who had
-been done to death in this &ldquo;buying a home&rdquo; swindle. They would be
-almost sure to get into a tight place and lose all their money; and there was
-no end of expense that one could never foresee; and the house might be
-good-for-nothing from top to bottom&mdash;how was a poor man to know? Then,
-too, they would swindle you with the contract&mdash;and how was a poor man to
-understand anything about a contract? It was all nothing but robbery, and there
-was no safety but in keeping out of it. And pay rent? asked Jurgis. Ah, yes, to
-be sure, the other answered, that too was robbery. It was all robbery, for a
-poor man. After half an hour of such depressing conversation, they had their
-minds quite made up that they had been saved at the brink of a precipice; but
-then Szedvilas went away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little man, reminded them
-that the delicatessen business was a failure, according to its proprietor, and
-that this might account for his pessimistic views. Which, of course, reopened
-the subject!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The controlling factor was that they could not stay where they were&mdash;they
-had to go somewhere. And when they gave up the house plan and decided to rent,
-the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month forever they found just as hard
-to face. All day and all night for nearly a whole week they wrestled with the
-problem, and then in the end Jurgis took the responsibility. Brother Jonas had
-gotten his job, and was pushing a truck in Durham&rsquo;s; and the killing gang
-at Brown&rsquo;s continued to work early and late, so that Jurgis grew more
-confident every hour, more certain of his mastership. It was the kind of thing
-the man of the family had to decide and carry through, he told himself. Others
-might have failed at it, but he was not the failing kind&mdash;he would show
-them how to do it. He would work all day, and all night, too, if need be; he
-would never rest until the house was paid for and his people had a home. So he
-told them, and so in the end the decision was made.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They had talked about looking at more houses before they made the purchase; but
-then they did not know where any more were, and they did not know any way of
-finding out. The one they had seen held the sway in their thoughts; whenever
-they thought of themselves in a house, it was this house that they thought of.
-And so they went and told the agent that they were ready to make the agreement.
-They knew, as an abstract proposition, that in matters of business all men are
-to be accounted liars; but they could not but have been influenced by all they
-had heard from the eloquent agent, and were quite persuaded that the house was
-something they had run a risk of losing by their delay. They drew a deep breath
-when he told them that they were still in time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were to come on the morrow, and he would have the papers all drawn up.
-This matter of papers was one in which Jurgis understood to the full the need
-of caution; yet he could not go himself&mdash;every one told him that he could
-not get a holiday, and that he might lose his job by asking. So there was
-nothing to be done but to trust it to the women, with Szedvilas, who promised
-to go with them. Jurgis spent a whole evening impressing upon them the
-seriousness of the occasion&mdash;and then finally, out of innumerable hiding
-places about their persons and in their baggage, came forth the precious wads
-of money, to be done up tightly in a little bag and sewed fast in the lining of
-Teta Elzbieta&rsquo;s dress.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Early in the morning they sallied forth. Jurgis had given them so many
-instructions and warned them against so many perils, that the women were quite
-pale with fright, and even the imperturbable delicatessen vender, who prided
-himself upon being a businessman, was ill at ease. The agent had the deed all
-ready, and invited them to sit down and read it; this Szedvilas proceeded to
-do&mdash;a painful and laborious process, during which the agent drummed upon
-the desk. Teta Elzbieta was so embarrassed that the perspiration came out upon
-her forehead in beads; for was not this reading as much as to say plainly to
-the gentleman&rsquo;s face that they doubted his honesty? Yet Jokubas Szedvilas
-read on and on; and presently there developed that he had good reason for doing
-so. For a horrible suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his
-brows more and more as he read. This was not a deed of sale at all, so far as
-he could see&mdash;it provided only for the renting of the property! It was
-hard to tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had never heard
-before; but was not this plain&mdash;&ldquo;the party of the first part hereby
-covenants and agrees to rent to the said party of the second part!&rdquo; And
-then again&mdash;&ldquo;a monthly <i>rental</i> of twelve dollars, for a period
-of eight years and four months!&rdquo; Then Szedvilas took off his spectacles,
-and looked at the agent, and stammered a question.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The agent was most polite, and explained that that was the usual formula; that
-it was always arranged that the property should be merely rented. He kept
-trying to show them something in the next paragraph; but Szedvilas could not
-get by the word &ldquo;rental&rdquo;&mdash;and when he translated it to Teta
-Elzbieta, she too was thrown into a fright. They would not own the home at all,
-then, for nearly nine years! The agent, with infinite patience, began to
-explain again; but no explanation would do now. Elzbieta had firmly fixed in
-her mind the last solemn warning of Jurgis: &ldquo;If there is anything wrong,
-do not give him the money, but go out and get a lawyer.&rdquo; It was an
-agonizing moment, but she sat in the chair, her hands clenched like death, and
-made a fearful effort, summoning all her powers, and gasped out her purpose.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jokubas translated her words. She expected the agent to fly into a passion, but
-he was, to her bewilderment, as ever imperturbable; he even offered to go and
-get a lawyer for her, but she declined this. They went a long way, on purpose
-to find a man who would not be a confederate. Then let any one imagine their
-dismay, when, after half an hour, they came in with a lawyer, and heard him
-greet the agent by his first name! They felt that all was lost; they sat like
-prisoners summoned to hear the reading of their death warrant. There was
-nothing more that they could do&mdash;they were trapped! The lawyer read over
-the deed, and when he had read it he informed Szedvilas that it was all
-perfectly regular, that the deed was a blank deed such as was often used in
-these sales. And was the price as agreed? the old man asked&mdash;three hundred
-dollars down, and the balance at twelve dollars a month, till the total of
-fifteen hundred dollars had been paid? Yes, that was correct. And it was for
-the sale of such and such a house&mdash;the house and lot and everything?
-Yes,&mdash;and the lawyer showed him where that was all written. And it was all
-perfectly regular&mdash;there were no tricks about it of any sort? They were
-poor people, and this was all they had in the world, and if there was anything
-wrong they would be ruined. And so Szedvilas went on, asking one trembling
-question after another, while the eyes of the women folks were fixed upon him
-in mute agony. They could not understand what he was saying, but they knew that
-upon it their fate depended. And when at last he had questioned until there was
-no more questioning to be done, and the time came for them to make up their
-minds, and either close the bargain or reject it, it was all that poor Teta
-Elzbieta could do to keep from bursting into tears. Jokubas had asked her if
-she wished to sign; he had asked her twice&mdash;and what could she say? How
-did she know if this lawyer were telling the truth&mdash;that he was not in the
-conspiracy? And yet, how could she say so&mdash;what excuse could she give? The
-eyes of every one in the room were upon her, awaiting her decision; and at
-last, half blind with her tears, she began fumbling in her jacket, where she
-had pinned the precious money. And she brought it out and unwrapped it before
-the men. All of this Ona sat watching, from a corner of the room, twisting her
-hands together, meantime, in a fever of fright. Ona longed to cry out and tell
-her stepmother to stop, that it was all a trap; but there seemed to be
-something clutching her by the throat, and she could not make a sound. And so
-Teta Elzbieta laid the money on the table, and the agent picked it up and
-counted it, and then wrote them a receipt for it and passed them the deed. Then
-he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and rose and shook hands with them all, still
-as smooth and polite as at the beginning. Ona had a dim recollection of the
-lawyer telling Szedvilas that his charge was a dollar, which occasioned some
-debate, and more agony; and then, after they had paid that, too, they went out
-into the street, her stepmother clutching the deed in her hand. They were so
-weak from fright that they could not walk, but had to sit down on the way.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So they went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that
-evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end. Jurgis
-was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he tore his hair and
-cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill the agent that very night. In
-the end he seized the paper and rushed out of the house, and all the way across
-the yards to Halsted Street. He dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and
-together they rushed to consult another lawyer. When they entered his office
-the lawyer sprang up, for Jurgis looked like a crazy person, with flying hair
-and bloodshot eyes. His companion explained the situation, and the lawyer took
-the paper and began to read it, while Jurgis stood clutching the desk with
-knotted hands, trembling in every nerve.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Once or twice the lawyer looked up and asked a question of Szedvilas; the other
-did not know a word that he was saying, but his eyes were fixed upon the
-lawyer&rsquo;s face, striving in an agony of dread to read his mind. He saw the
-lawyer look up and laugh, and he gave a gasp; the man said something to
-Szedvilas, and Jurgis turned upon his friend, his heart almost stopping.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he panted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;He says it is all right,&rdquo; said Szedvilas.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, he says it is just as it should be.&rdquo; And Jurgis, in his
-relief, sank down into a chair.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Are you sure of it?&rdquo; he gasped, and made Szedvilas translate
-question after question. He could not hear it often enough; he could not ask
-with enough variations. Yes, they had bought the house, they had really bought
-it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it would be all
-right. Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for there were tears in his
-eyes, and he felt like a fool. But he had had such a horrible fright; strong
-man as he was, it left him almost too weak to stand up.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The lawyer explained that the rental was a form&mdash;the property was said to
-be merely rented until the last payment had been made, the purpose being to
-make it easier to turn the party out if he did not make the payments. So long
-as they paid, however, they had nothing to fear, the house was all theirs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked without
-winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to the family. He
-found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the whole house in an
-uproar&mdash;for it had been believed by all that he had gone to murder the
-agent. It was hours before the excitement could be calmed; and all through that
-cruel night Jurgis would wake up now and then and hear Ona and her stepmother
-in the next room, sobbing softly to themselves.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
-
-<p>
-They had bought their home. It was hard for them to realize that the wonderful
-house was theirs to move into whenever they chose. They spent all their time
-thinking about it, and what they were going to put into it. As their week with
-Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time in getting ready. They had to
-make some shift to furnish it, and every instant of their leisure was given to
-discussing this.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A person who had such a task before him would not need to look very far in
-Packingtown&mdash;he had only to walk up the avenue and read the signs, or get
-into a streetcar, to obtain full information as to pretty much everything a
-human creature could need. It was quite touching, the zeal of people to see
-that his health and happiness were provided for. Did the person wish to smoke?
-There was a little discourse about cigars, showing him exactly why the Thomas
-Jefferson Five-cent Perfecto was the only cigar worthy of the name. Had he, on
-the other hand, smoked too much? Here was a remedy for the smoking habit,
-twenty-five doses for a quarter, and a cure absolutely guaranteed in ten doses.
-In innumerable ways such as this, the traveler found that somebody had been
-busied to make smooth his paths through the world, and to let him know what had
-been done for him. In Packingtown the advertisements had a style all of their
-own, adapted to the peculiar population. One would be tenderly solicitous.
-&ldquo;Is your wife pale?&rdquo; it would inquire. &ldquo;Is she discouraged,
-does she drag herself about the house and find fault with everything? Why do
-you not tell her to try Dr. Lanahan&rsquo;s Life Preservers?&rdquo; Another
-would be jocular in tone, slapping you on the back, so to speak.
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be a chump!&rdquo; it would exclaim. &ldquo;Go and get the
-Goliath Bunion Cure.&rdquo; &ldquo;Get a move on you!&rdquo; would chime in
-another. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy, if you wear the Eureka Two-fifty Shoe.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Among these importunate signs was one that had caught the attention of the
-family by its pictures. It showed two very pretty little birds building
-themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to read it to her, and
-told them that it related to the furnishing of a house. &ldquo;Feather your
-nest,&rdquo; it ran&mdash;and went on to say that it could furnish all the
-necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the ludicrously small sum of
-seventy-five dollars. The particularly important thing about this offer was
-that only a small part of the money need be had at once&mdash;the rest one
-might pay a few dollars every month. Our friends had to have some furniture,
-there was no getting away from that; but their little fund of money had sunk so
-low that they could hardly get to sleep at night, and so they fled to this as
-their deliverance. There was more agony and another paper for Elzbieta to sign,
-and then one night when Jurgis came home, he was told the breathless tidings
-that the furniture had arrived and was safely stowed in the house: a parlor set
-of four pieces, a bedroom set of three pieces, a dining room table and four
-chairs, a toilet set with beautiful pink roses painted all over it, an
-assortment of crockery, also with pink roses&mdash;and so on. One of the plates
-in the set had been found broken when they unpacked it, and Ona was going to
-the store the first thing in the morning to make them change it; also they had
-promised three saucepans, and there had only two come, and did Jurgis think
-that they were trying to cheat them?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The next day they went to the house; and when the men came from work they ate a
-few hurried mouthfuls at Aniele&rsquo;s, and then set to work at the task of
-carrying their belongings to their new home. The distance was in reality over
-two miles, but Jurgis made two trips that night, each time with a huge pile of
-mattresses and bedding on his head, with bundles of clothing and bags and
-things tied up inside. Anywhere else in Chicago he would have stood a good
-chance of being arrested; but the policemen in Packingtown were apparently used
-to these informal movings, and contented themselves with a cursory examination
-now and then. It was quite wonderful to see how fine the house looked, with all
-the things in it, even by the dim light of a lamp: it was really home, and
-almost as exciting as the placard had described it. Ona was fairly dancing, and
-she and Cousin Marija took Jurgis by the arm and escorted him from room to
-room, sitting in each chair by turns, and then insisting that he should do the
-same. One chair squeaked with his great weight, and they screamed with fright,
-and woke the baby and brought everybody running. Altogether it was a great day;
-and tired as they were, Jurgis and Ona sat up late, contented simply to hold
-each other and gaze in rapture about the room. They were going to be married as
-soon as they could get everything settled, and a little spare money put by; and
-this was to be their home&mdash;that little room yonder would be theirs!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was in truth a never-ending delight, the fixing up of this house. They had
-no money to spend for the pleasure of spending, but there were a few absolutely
-necessary things, and the buying of these was a perpetual adventure for Ona. It
-must always be done at night, so that Jurgis could go along; and even if it
-were only a pepper cruet, or half a dozen glasses for ten cents, that was
-enough for an expedition. On Saturday night they came home with a great
-basketful of things, and spread them out on the table, while every one stood
-round, and the children climbed up on the chairs, or howled to be lifted up to
-see. There were sugar and salt and tea and crackers, and a can of lard and a
-milk pail, and a scrubbing brush, and a pair of shoes for the second oldest
-boy, and a can of oil, and a tack hammer, and a pound of nails. These last were
-to be driven into the walls of the kitchen and the bedrooms, to hang things on;
-and there was a family discussion as to the place where each one was to be
-driven. Then Jurgis would try to hammer, and hit his fingers because the hammer
-was too small, and get mad because Ona had refused to let him pay fifteen cents
-more and get a bigger hammer; and Ona would be invited to try it herself, and
-hurt her thumb, and cry out, which necessitated the thumb&rsquo;s being kissed
-by Jurgis. Finally, after every one had had a try, the nails would be driven,
-and something hung up. Jurgis had come home with a big packing box on his head,
-and he sent Jonas to get another that he had bought. He meant to take one side
-out of these tomorrow, and put shelves in them, and make them into bureaus and
-places to keep things for the bedrooms. The nest which had been advertised had
-not included feathers for quite so many birds as there were in this family.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They had, of course, put their dining table in the kitchen, and the dining room
-was used as the bedroom of Teta Elzbieta and five of her children. She and the
-two youngest slept in the only bed, and the other three had a mattress on the
-floor. Ona and her cousin dragged a mattress into the parlor and slept at
-night, and the three men and the oldest boy slept in the other room, having
-nothing but the very level floor to rest on for the present. Even so, however,
-they slept soundly&mdash;it was necessary for Teta Elzbieta to pound more than
-once on the door at a quarter past five every morning. She would have ready a
-great pot full of steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and smoked
-sausages; and then she would fix them their dinner pails with more thick slices
-of bread with lard between them&mdash;they could not afford butter&mdash;and
-some onions and a piece of cheese, and so they would tramp away to work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was the first time in his life that he had ever really worked, it seemed
-to Jurgis; it was the first time that he had ever had anything to do which took
-all he had in him. Jurgis had stood with the rest up in the gallery and watched
-the men on the killing beds, marveling at their speed and power as if they had
-been wonderful machines; it somehow never occurred to one to think of the
-flesh-and-blood side of it&mdash;that is, not until he actually got down into
-the pit and took off his coat. Then he saw things in a different light, he got
-at the inside of them. The pace they set here, it was one that called for every
-faculty of a man&mdash;from the instant the first steer fell till the sounding
-of the noon whistle, and again from half-past twelve till heaven only knew what
-hour in the late afternoon or evening, there was never one instant&rsquo;s rest
-for a man, for his hand or his eye or his brain. Jurgis saw how they managed
-it; there were portions of the work which determined the pace of the rest, and
-for these they had picked men whom they paid high wages, and whom they changed
-frequently. You might easily pick out these pacemakers, for they worked under
-the eye of the bosses, and they worked like men possessed. This was called
-&ldquo;speeding up the gang,&rdquo; and if any man could not keep up with the
-pace, there were hundreds outside begging to try.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet Jurgis did not mind it; he rather enjoyed it. It saved him the necessity of
-flinging his arms about and fidgeting as he did in most work. He would laugh to
-himself as he ran down the line, darting a glance now and then at the man ahead
-of him. It was not the pleasantest work one could think of, but it was
-necessary work; and what more had a man the right to ask than a chance to do
-something useful, and to get good pay for doing it?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis thought, and so he spoke, in his bold, free way; very much to his
-surprise, he found that it had a tendency to get him into trouble. For most of
-the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing. He was quite
-dismayed when he first began to find it out&mdash;that most of the men
-<i>hated</i> their work. It seemed strange, it was even terrible, when you came
-to find out the universality of the sentiment; but it was certainly the
-fact&mdash;they hated their work. They hated the bosses and they hated the
-owners; they hated the whole place, the whole neighborhood&mdash;even the whole
-city, with an all-inclusive hatred, bitter and fierce. Women and little
-children would fall to cursing about it; it was rotten, rotten as
-hell&mdash;everything was rotten. When Jurgis would ask them what they meant,
-they would begin to get suspicious, and content themselves with saying,
-&ldquo;Never mind, you stay here and see for yourself.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions. He had
-had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained to him that the
-men were banded together for the purpose of fighting for their rights. Jurgis
-asked them what they meant by their rights, a question in which he was quite
-sincere, for he had not any idea of any rights that he had, except the right to
-hunt for a job, and do as he was told when he got it. Generally, however, this
-harmless question would only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and
-call him a fool. There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers&rsquo; union who
-came to see Jurgis to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he
-would have to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and the
-delegate, who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of Lithuanian, lost his
-temper and began to threaten him. In the end Jurgis got into a fine rage, and
-made it sufficiently plain that it would take more than one Irishman to scare
-him into a union. Little by little he gathered that the main thing the men
-wanted was to put a stop to the habit of &ldquo;speeding-up&rdquo;; they were
-trying their best to force a lessening of the pace, for there were some, they
-said, who could not keep up with it, whom it was killing. But Jurgis had no
-sympathy with such ideas as this&mdash;he could do the work himself, and so
-could the rest of them, he declared, if they were good for anything. If they
-couldn&rsquo;t do it, let them go somewhere else. Jurgis had not studied the
-books, and he would not have known how to pronounce &ldquo;laissez
-faire&rdquo;; 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.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore by Malthus
-in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief fund in time of a
-famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the unfit to destruction,
-while going about all day sick at heart because of his poor old father, who was
-wandering somewhere in the yards begging for a chance to earn his bread. Old
-Antanas had been a worker ever since he was a child; he had run away from home
-when he was twelve, because his father beat him for trying to learn to read.
-And he was a faithful man, too; he was a man you might leave alone for a month,
-if only you had made him understand what you wanted him to do in the meantime.
-And now here he was, worn out in soul and body, and with no more place in the
-world than a sick dog. He had his home, as it happened, and some one who would
-care for him if he never got a job; but his son could not help thinking,
-suppose this had not been the case. Antanas Rudkus had been into every building
-in Packingtown by this time, and into nearly every room; he had stood mornings
-among the crowd of applicants till the very policemen had come to know his face
-and to tell him to go home and give it up. He had been likewise to all the
-stores and saloons for a mile about, begging for some little thing to do; and
-everywhere they had ordered him out, sometimes with curses, and not once even
-stopping to ask him a question.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis&rsquo; faith
-in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting a
-job&mdash;and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one evening the old
-man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he had been
-approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms of
-Durham&rsquo;s, and asked what he would pay to get a job. He had not known what
-to make of this at first; but the man had gone on with matter-of-fact frankness
-to say that he could get him a job, provided that he were willing to pay
-one-third of his wages for it. Was he a boss? Antanas had asked; to which the
-man had replied that that was nobody&rsquo;s business, but that he could do
-what he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had made some friends by this time, and he sought one of them and asked
-what this meant. The friend, who was named Tamoszius Kuszleika, was a sharp
-little man who folded hides on the killing beds, and he listened to what Jurgis
-had to say without seeming at all surprised. They were common enough, he said,
-such cases of petty graft. It was simply some boss who proposed to add a little
-to his income. After Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants
-were simply honeycombed with rottenness of that sort&mdash;the bosses grafted
-off the men, and they grafted off each other; and some day the superintendent
-would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss. Warming to
-the subject, Tamoszius went on to explain the situation. Here was
-Durham&rsquo;s, for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as much
-money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it; and
-underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army, were managers and
-superintendents and foremen, each one driving the man next below him and trying
-to squeeze out of him as much work as possible. And all the men of the same
-rank were pitted against each other; the accounts of each were kept separately,
-and every man lived in terror of losing his job, if another made a better
-record than he. So from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron
-of jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it,
-there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar. And
-worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty. The reason
-for that? Who could say? It must have been old Durham in the beginning; it was
-a heritage which the self-made merchant had left to his son, along with his
-millions.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long enough;
-it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there was no deceiving
-them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did like all the rest.
-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&mdash;for
-nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a
-rule&mdash;if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave.
-That man who had been sent to Jurgis&rsquo; father by the boss, <i>he</i> would
-rise; the man who told tales and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man
-who minded his own business and did his work&mdash;why, they would &ldquo;speed
-him up&rdquo; till they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into
-the gutter.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went home with his head buzzing. Yet he could not bring himself to
-believe such things&mdash;no, it could not be so. Tamoszius was simply another
-of the grumblers. He was a man who spent all his time fiddling; and he would go
-to parties at night and not get home till sunrise, and so of course he did not
-feel like work. Then, too, he was a puny little chap; and so he had been left
-behind in the race, and that was why he was sore. And yet so many strange
-things kept coming to Jurgis&rsquo; notice every day!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer. But old
-Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage was gone; he
-wanted a job, any sort of a job. So the next day he went and found the man who
-had spoken to him, and promised to bring him a third of all he earned; and that
-same day he was put to work in Durham&rsquo;s cellars. It was a &ldquo;pickle
-room,&rdquo; where there was never a dry spot to stand upon, and so he had to
-take nearly the whole of his first week&rsquo;s earnings to buy him a pair of
-heavy-soled boots. He was a &ldquo;squeedgie&rdquo; man; his job was to go
-about all day with a long-handled mop, swabbing up the floor. Except that it
-was damp and dark, it was not an unpleasant job, in summer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and so
-Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said, that his
-father had been at work only two days before he came home as bitter as any of
-them, and cursing Durham&rsquo;s with all the power of his soul. For they had
-set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family sat round and listened in
-wonder while he told them what that meant. It seemed that he was working in the
-room where the men prepared the beef for canning, and the beef had lain in vats
-full of chemicals, and men with great forks speared it out and dumped it into
-trucks, to be taken to the cooking room. When they had speared out all they
-could reach, they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped
-up the balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet they
-set Antanas with his mop slopping the &ldquo;pickle&rdquo; into a hole that
-connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever; and if
-that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of
-meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old
-man&rsquo;s task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the
-trucks with the rest of the meat!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and Marija
-with tales to tell. Marija was working for one of the independent packers, and
-was quite beside herself and outrageous with triumph over the sums of money she
-was making as a painter of cans. But one day she walked home with a pale-faced
-little woman who worked opposite to her, Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga
-told her how she, Marija, had chanced to get her job. She had taken the place
-of an Irishwoman who had been working in that factory ever since any one could
-remember. For over fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis was her name,
-and a long time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was a
-cripple, and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the world to
-love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back of Halsted
-Street, where the Irish were. Mary had had consumption, and all day long you
-might hear her coughing as she worked; of late she had been going all to
-pieces, and when Marija came, the &ldquo;forelady&rdquo; had suddenly decided
-to turn her off. The forelady had to come up to a certain standard herself, and
-could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga explained. The fact that Mary had been
-there so long had not made any difference to her&mdash;it was doubtful if she
-even knew that, for both the forelady and the superintendent were new people,
-having only been there two or three years themselves. Jadvyga did not know what
-had become of the poor creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been
-sick herself. She had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained, and
-feared that she had womb trouble. It was not fit work for a woman, handling
-fourteen-pound cans all day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by the
-misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with hams from the
-smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing rooms. The trucks were
-all of iron, and heavy, and they put about threescore hams on each of them, a
-load of more than a quarter of a ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a
-man to start one of these trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once
-started he naturally tried his best to keep it going. There was always the boss
-prowling about, and if there was a second&rsquo;s delay he would fall to
-cursing; Lithuanians and Slovaks and such, who could not understand what was
-said to them, the bosses were wont to kick about the place like so many dogs.
-Therefore these trucks went for the most part on the run; and the predecessor
-of Jonas had been jammed against the wall by one and crushed in a horrible and
-nameless manner.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to what
-Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he had noticed, the
-very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts; which was the sharp
-trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to come a &ldquo;slunk&rdquo;
-calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows that the flesh of a cow
-that is about to calve, or has just calved, is not fit for food. A good many of
-these came every day to the packing houses&mdash;and, of course, if they had
-chosen, it would have been an easy matter for the packers to keep them till
-they were fit for food. But for the saving of time and fodder, it was the law
-that cows of that sort came along with the others, and whoever noticed it would
-tell the boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government
-inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice the carcass of the cow
-would be cleaned out, and entrails would have vanished; it was Jurgis&rsquo;
-task to slide them into the trap, calves and all, and on the floor below they
-took out these &ldquo;slunk&rdquo; calves, and butchered them for meat, and
-used even the skins of them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the last of
-the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving, Jurgis was ordered
-to remain and do some special work which this injured man had usually done. It
-was late, almost dark, and the government inspectors had all gone, and there
-were only a dozen or two of men on the floor. That day they had killed about
-four thousand cattle, and these cattle had come in freight trains from far
-states, and some of them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and
-some with gored sides; there were some that had died, from what cause no one
-could say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence.
-&ldquo;Downers,&rdquo; the men called them; and the packing house had a special
-elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang
-proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which said
-plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday routine. It took a
-couple of hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis saw them go
-into the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being carefully scattered
-here and there so that they could not be identified. When he came home that
-night he was in a very somber mood, having begun to see at last how those might
-be right who had laughed at him for his faith in America.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time&mdash;it was
-now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the criterion of
-its helping or hindering their union. All his thoughts were there; he accepted
-the family because it was a part of Ona. And he was interested in the house
-because it was to be Ona&rsquo;s home. Even the tricks and cruelties he saw at
-Durham&rsquo;s had little meaning for him just then, save as they might happen
-to affect his future with Ona.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but this would
-mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast, and when they
-suggested this they came into conflict with the old people. To Teta Elzbieta
-especially the very suggestion was an affliction. What! she would cry. To be
-married on the roadside like a parcel of beggars! No! No!&mdash;Elzbieta had
-some traditions behind her; she had been a person of importance in her
-girlhood&mdash;had lived on a big estate and had servants, and might have
-married well and been a lady, but for the fact that there had been nine
-daughters and no sons in the family. Even so, however, she knew what was
-decent, and clung to her traditions with desperation. They were not going to
-lose all caste, even if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown;
-and that Ona had even talked of omitting a <i>veselija</i> was enough to keep
-her stepmother lying awake all night. It was in vain for them to say that they
-had so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and then the
-friends would talk about it. They must not give up what was right for a little
-money&mdash;if they did, the money would never do them any good, they could
-depend upon that. And Elzbieta would call upon Dede Antanas to support her;
-there was a fear in the souls of these two, lest this journey to a new country
-might somehow undermine the old home virtues of their children. The very first
-Sunday they had all been taken to mass; and poor as they were, Elzbieta had
-felt it advisable to invest a little of her resources in a representation of
-the babe of Bethlehem, made in plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though
-it was only a foot high, there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and
-the Virgin standing with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and
-wise men bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta had a
-feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too closely, it
-would come back in hidden ways. The piece was beautiful on the parlor mantel,
-and one could not have a home without some sort of ornament.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The cost of the wedding feast would, of course, be returned to them; but the
-problem was to raise it even temporarily. They had been in the neighborhood so
-short a time that they could not get much credit, and there was no one except
-Szedvilas from whom they could borrow even a little. Evening after evening
-Jurgis and Ona would sit and figure the expenses, calculating the term of their
-separation. They could not possibly manage it decently for less than two
-hundred dollars, and even though they were welcome to count in the whole of the
-earnings of Marija and Jonas, as a loan, they could not hope to raise this sum
-in less than four or five months. So Ona began thinking of seeking employment
-herself, saying that if she had even ordinarily good luck, she might be able to
-take two months off the time. They were just beginning to adjust themselves to
-this necessity, when out of the clear sky there fell a thunderbolt upon
-them&mdash;a calamity that scattered all their hopes to the four winds.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family, consisting
-of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was Majauszkis, and our
-friends struck up an acquaintance with them before long. One evening they came
-over for a visit, and naturally the first subject upon which the conversation
-turned was the neighborhood and its history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene,
-as the old lady was called, proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors
-that fairly froze their blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened
-personage&mdash;she must have been eighty&mdash;and as she mumbled the grim
-story through her toothless gums, she seemed a very old witch to them.
-Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it
-had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and
-death as other people might about weddings and holidays.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The thing came gradually. In the first place as to the house they had bought,
-it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about fifteen years old,
-and there was nothing new upon it but the paint, which was so bad that it
-needed to be put on new every year or two. The house was one of a whole row
-that was built by a company which existed to make money by swindling poor
-people. The family had paid fifteen hundred dollars for it, and it had not cost
-the builders five hundred, when it was new. Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that
-because her son belonged to a political organization with a contractor who put
-up exactly such houses. They used the very flimsiest and cheapest material;
-they built the houses a dozen at a time, and they cared about nothing at all
-except the outside shine. The family could take her word as to the trouble they
-would have, for she had been through it all&mdash;she and her son had bought
-their house in exactly the same way. They had fooled the company, however, for
-her son was a skilled man, who made as high as a hundred dollars a month, and
-as he had had sense enough not to marry, they had been able to pay for the
-house.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this remark; they
-did not quite see how paying for the house was &ldquo;fooling the
-company.&rdquo; Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the houses
-were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would not be
-able to pay for them. When they failed&mdash;if it were only by a single
-month&mdash;they would lose the house and all that they had paid on it, and
-then the company would sell it over again. And did they often get a chance to
-do that? <i>Dieve!</i> (Grandmother Majauszkiene raised her hands.) They did
-it&mdash;how often no one could say, but certainly more than half of the time.
-They might ask any one who knew anything at all about Packingtown as to that;
-she had been living here ever since this house was built, and she could tell
-them all about it. And had it ever been sold before? <i>Susimilkie!</i> Why,
-since it had been built, no less than four families that their informant could
-name had tried to buy it and failed. She would tell them a little about it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The first family had been Germans. The families had all been of different
-nationalities&mdash;there had been a representative of several races that had
-displaced each other in the stockyards. Grandmother Majauszkiene had come to
-America with her son at a time when so far as she knew there was only one other
-Lithuanian family in the district; the workers had all been Germans
-then&mdash;skilled cattle butchers that the packers had brought from abroad to
-start the business. Afterward, as cheaper labor had come, these Germans had
-moved away. The next were the Irish&mdash;there had been six or eight years
-when Packingtown had been a regular Irish city. There were a few colonies of
-them still here, enough to run all the unions and the police force and get all
-the graft; but most of those who were working in the packing houses had gone
-away at the next drop in wages&mdash;after the big strike. The Bohemians had
-come then, and after them the Poles. People said that old man Durham himself
-was responsible for these immigrations; he had sworn that he would fix the
-people of Packingtown so that they would never again call a strike on him, and
-so he had sent his agents into every city and village in Europe to spread the
-tale of the chances of work and high wages at the stockyards. The people had
-come in hordes; and old Durham had squeezed them tighter and tighter, speeding
-them up and grinding them to pieces and sending for new ones. The Poles, who
-had come by tens of thousands, had been driven to the wall by the Lithuanians,
-and now the Lithuanians were giving way to the Slovaks. Who there was poorer
-and more miserable than the Slovaks, Grandmother Majauszkiene had no idea, but
-the packers would find them, never fear. It was easy to bring them, for wages
-were really much higher, and it was only when it was too late that the poor
-people found out that everything else was higher too. They were like rats in a
-trap, that was the truth; and more of them were piling in every day. By and by
-they would have their revenge, though, for the thing was getting beyond human
-endurance, and the people would rise and murder the packers. Grandmother
-Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some such strange thing; another son of hers
-was working in the mines of Siberia, and the old lady herself had made speeches
-in her time&mdash;which made her seem all the more terrible to her present
-auditors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They called her back to the story of the house. The German family had been a
-good sort. To be sure there had been a great many of them, which was a common
-failing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard, and the father had been a
-steady man, and they had a good deal more than half paid for the house. But he
-had been killed in an elevator accident in Durham&rsquo;s.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then there had come the Irish, and there had been lots of them, too; the
-husband drank and beat the children&mdash;the neighbors could hear them
-shrieking any night. They were behind with their rent all the time, but the
-company was good to them; there was some politics back of that, Grandmother
-Majauszkiene could not say just what, but the Laffertys had belonged to the
-&ldquo;War Whoop League,&rdquo; which was a sort of political club of all the
-thugs and rowdies in the district; and if you belonged to that, you could never
-be arrested for anything. Once upon a time old Lafferty had been caught with a
-gang that had stolen cows from several of the poor people of the neighborhood
-and butchered them in an old shanty back of the yards and sold them. He had
-been in jail only three days for it, and had come out laughing, and had not
-even lost his place in the packing house. He had gone all to ruin with the
-drink, however, and lost his power; one of his sons, who was a good man, had
-kept him and the family up for a year or two, but then he had got sick with
-consumption.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted herself&mdash;this
-house was unlucky. Every family that lived in it, some one was sure to get
-consumption. Nobody could tell why that was; there must be something about the
-house, or the way it was built&mdash;some folks said it was because the
-building had been begun in the dark of the moon. There were dozens of houses
-that way in Packingtown. Sometimes there would be a particular room that you
-could point out&mdash;if anybody slept in that room he was just as good as
-dead. With this house it had been the Irish first; and then a Bohemian family
-had lost a child of it&mdash;though, to be sure, that was uncertain, since it
-was hard to tell what was the matter with children who worked in the yards. In
-those days there had been no law about the age of children&mdash;the packers
-had worked all but the babies. At this remark the family looked puzzled, and
-Grandmother Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation&mdash;that it was
-against the law for children to work before they were sixteen. What was the
-sense of that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little Stanislovas
-go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother Majauszkiene
-said&mdash;the law made no difference except that it forced people to lie about
-the ages of their children. One would like to know what the lawmakers expected
-them to do; there were families that had no possible means of support except
-the children, and the law provided them no other way of getting a living. Very
-often a man could get no work in Packingtown for months, while a child could go
-and get a place easily; there was always some new machine, by which the packers
-could get as much work out of a child as they had been able to get out of a
-man, and for a third of the pay.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To come back to the house again, it was the woman of the next family that had
-died. That was after they had been there nearly four years, and this woman had
-had twins regularly every year&mdash;and there had been more than you could
-count when they moved in. After she died the man would go to work all day and
-leave them to shift for themselves&mdash;the neighbors would help them now and
-then, for they would almost freeze to death. At the end there were three days
-that they were alone, before it was found out that the father was dead. He was
-a &ldquo;floorsman&rdquo; at Jones&rsquo;s, and a wounded steer had broken
-loose and mashed him against a pillar. Then the children had been taken away,
-and the company had sold the house that very same week to a party of emigrants.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So this grim old woman went on with her tale of horrors. How much of it was
-exaggeration&mdash;who could tell? It was only too plausible. There was that
-about consumption, for instance. They knew nothing about consumption whatever,
-except that it made people cough; and for two weeks they had been worrying
-about a coughing-spell of Antanas. It seemed to shake him all over, and it
-never stopped; you could see a red stain wherever he had spit upon the floor.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And yet all these things were as nothing to what came a little later. They had
-begun to question the old lady as to why one family had been unable to pay,
-trying to show her by figures that it ought to have been possible; and
-Grandmother Majauszkiene had disputed their figures&mdash;&ldquo;You say twelve
-dollars a month; but that does not include the interest.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then they stared at her. &ldquo;Interest!&rdquo; they cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Interest on the money you still owe,&rdquo; she answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But we don&rsquo;t have to pay any interest!&rdquo; they exclaimed,
-three or four at once. &ldquo;We only have to pay twelve dollars each
-month.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And for this she laughed at them. &ldquo;You are like all the rest,&rdquo; she
-said; &ldquo;they trick you and eat you alive. They never sell the houses
-without interest. Get your deed, and see.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then, with a horrible sinking of the heart, Teta Elzbieta unlocked her bureau
-and brought out the paper that had already caused them so many agonies. Now
-they sat round, scarcely breathing, while the old lady, who could read English,
-ran over it. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, finally, &ldquo;here it is, of
-course: &lsquo;With interest thereon monthly, at the rate of seven per cent per
-annum.&rsquo;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And there followed a dead silence. &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; asked
-Jurgis finally, almost in a whisper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;That means,&rdquo; replied the other, &ldquo;that you have to pay them
-seven dollars next month, as well as the twelve dollars.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then again there was not a sound. It was sickening, like a nightmare, in which
-suddenly something gives way beneath you, and you feel yourself sinking,
-sinking, down into bottomless abysses. As if in a flash of lightning they saw
-themselves&mdash;victims of a relentless fate, cornered, trapped, in the grip
-of destruction. All the fair structure of their hopes came crashing about their
-ears.&mdash;And all the time the old woman was going on talking. They wished
-that she would be still; her voice sounded like the croaking of some dismal
-raven. Jurgis sat with his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his
-forehead, and there was a great lump in Ona&rsquo;s throat, choking her. Then
-suddenly Teta Elzbieta broke the silence with a wail, and Marija began to wring
-her hands and sob, &ldquo;<i>Ai! Ai! Beda man!</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All their outcry did them no good, of course. There sat Grandmother
-Majauszkiene, unrelenting, typifying fate. No, of course it was not fair, but
-then fairness had nothing to do with it. And of course they had not known it.
-They had not been intended to know it. But it was in the deed, and that was all
-that was necessary, as they would find when the time came.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Somehow or other they got rid of their guest, and then they passed a night of
-lamentation. The children woke up and found out that something was wrong, and
-they wailed and would not be comforted. In the morning, of course, most of them
-had to go to work, the packing houses would not stop for their sorrows; but by
-seven o&rsquo;clock Ona and her stepmother were standing at the door of the
-office of the agent. Yes, he told them, when he came, it was quite true that
-they would have to pay interest. And then Teta Elzbieta broke forth into
-protestations and reproaches, so that the people outside stopped and peered in
-at the window. The agent was as bland as ever. He was deeply pained, he said.
-He had not told them, simply because he had supposed they would understand that
-they had to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter of course.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So they came away, and Ona went down to the yards, and at noontime saw Jurgis
-and told him. Jurgis took it stolidly&mdash;he had made up his mind to it by
-this time. It was part of fate; they would manage it somehow&mdash;he made his
-usual answer, &ldquo;I will work harder.&rdquo; It would upset their plans for
-a time; and it would perhaps be necessary for Ona to get work after all. Then
-Ona added that Teta Elzbieta had decided that little Stanislovas would have to
-work too. It was not fair to let Jurgis and her support the family&mdash;the
-family would have to help as it could. Previously Jurgis had scouted this idea,
-but now knit his brows and nodded his head slowly&mdash;yes, perhaps it would
-be best; they would all have to make some sacrifices now.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Ona set out that day to hunt for work; and at night Marija came home saying
-that she had met a girl named Jasaityte who had a friend that worked in one of
-the wrapping rooms in Brown&rsquo;s, and might get a place for Ona there; only
-the forelady was the kind that takes presents&mdash;it was no use for any one
-to ask her for a place unless at the same time they slipped a ten-dollar bill
-into her hand. Jurgis was not in the least surprised at this now&mdash;he
-merely asked what the wages of the place would be. So negotiations were opened,
-and after an interview Ona came home and reported that the forelady seemed to
-like her, and had said that, while she was not sure, she thought she might be
-able to put her at work sewing covers on hams, a job at which she would earn as
-much as eight or ten dollars a week. That was a bid, so Marija reported, after
-consulting her friend; and then there was an anxious conference at home. The
-work was done in one of the cellars, and Jurgis did not want Ona to work in
-such a place; but then it was easy work, and one could not have everything. So
-in the end Ona, with a ten-dollar bill burning a hole in her palm, had another
-interview with the forelady.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meantime Teta Elzbieta had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten a
-certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was; and with it
-the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in the world. It chanced
-that Durham had just put in a wonderful new lard machine, and when the special
-policeman in front of the time station saw Stanislovas and his document, he
-smiled to himself and told him to go&mdash;&ldquo;Czia! Czia!&rdquo; pointing.
-And so Stanislovas went down a long stone corridor, and up a flight of stairs,
-which took him into a room lighted by electricity, with the new machines for
-filling lard cans at work in it. The lard was finished on the floor above, and
-it came in little jets, like beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of
-unpleasant odor. There were several kinds and sizes of jets, and after a
-certain precise quantity had come out, each stopped automatically, and the
-wonderful machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet, and so on,
-until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly, and smoothed off.
-To attend to all this and fill several hundred cans of lard per hour, there
-were necessary two human creatures, one of whom knew how to place an empty lard
-can on a certain spot every few seconds, and the other of whom knew how to take
-a full lard can off a certain spot every few seconds and set it upon a tray.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so, after little Stanislovas had stood gazing timidly about him for a few
-minutes, a man approached him, and asked what he wanted, to which Stanislovas
-said, &ldquo;Job.&rdquo; Then the man said &ldquo;How old?&rdquo; and
-Stanislovas answered, &ldquo;Sixtin.&rdquo; Once or twice every year a state
-inspector would come wandering through the packing plants, asking a child here
-and there how old he was; and so the packers were very careful to comply with
-the law, which cost them as much trouble as was now involved in the
-boss&rsquo;s taking the document from the little boy, and glancing at it, and
-then sending it to the office to be filed away. Then he set some one else at a
-different job, and showed the lad how to place a lard can every time the empty
-arm of the remorseless machine came to him; and so was decided the place in the
-universe of little Stanislovas, and his destiny till the end of his days. Hour
-after hour, day after day, year after year, it was fated that he should stand
-upon a certain square foot of floor from seven in the morning until noon, and
-again from half-past twelve till half-past five, making never a motion and
-thinking never a thought, save for the setting of lard cans. In summer the
-stench of the warm lard would be nauseating, and in winter the cans would all
-but freeze to his naked little fingers in the unheated cellar. Half the year it
-would be dark as night when he went in to work, and dark as night again when he
-came out, and so he would never know what the sun looked like on weekdays. And
-for this, at the end of the week, he would carry home three dollars to his
-family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour&mdash;just about his
-proper share of the total earnings of the million and three-quarters of
-children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And meantime, because they were young, and hope is not to be stifled before its
-time, Jurgis and Ona were again calculating; for they had discovered that the
-wages of Stanislovas would a little more than pay the interest, which left them
-just about as they had been before! It would be but fair to them to say that
-the little boy was delighted with his work, and at the idea of earning a lot of
-money; and also that the two were very much in love with each other.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
-
-<p>
-All summer long the family toiled, and in the fall they had money enough for
-Jurgis and Ona to be married according to home traditions of decency. In the
-latter part of November they hired a hall, and invited all their new
-acquaintances, who came and left them over a hundred dollars in debt.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a bitter and cruel experience, and it plunged them into an agony of
-despair. Such a time, of all times, for them to have it, when their hearts were
-made tender! Such a pitiful beginning it was for their married life; they loved
-each other so, and they could not have the briefest respite! It was a time when
-everything cried out to them that they ought to be happy; when wonder burned in
-their hearts, and leaped into flame at the slightest breath. They were shaken
-to the depths of them, with the awe of love realized&mdash;and was it so very
-weak of them that they cried out for a little peace? They had opened their
-hearts, like flowers to the springtime, and the merciless winter had fallen
-upon them. They wondered if ever any love that had blossomed in the world had
-been so crushed and trampled!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Over them, relentless and savage, there cracked the lash of want; the morning
-after the wedding it sought them as they slept, and drove them out before
-daybreak to work. Ona was scarcely able to stand with exhaustion; but if she
-were to lose her place they would be ruined, and she would surely lose it if
-she were not on time that day. They all had to go, even little Stanislovas, who
-was ill from overindulgence in sausages and sarsaparilla. All that day he stood
-at his lard machine, rocking unsteadily, his eyes closing in spite of him; and
-he all but lost his place even so, for the foreman booted him twice to waken
-him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was fully a week before they were all normal again, and meantime, with
-whining children and cross adults, the house was not a pleasant place to live
-in. Jurgis lost his temper very little, however, all things considered. It was
-because of Ona; the least glance at her was always enough to make him control
-himself. She was so sensitive&mdash;she was not fitted for such a life as this;
-and a hundred times a day, when he thought of her, he would clench his hands
-and fling himself again at the task before him. She was too good for him, he
-told himself, and he was afraid, because she was his. So long he had hungered
-to possess her, but now that the time had come he knew that he had not earned
-the right; that she trusted him so was all her own simple goodness, and no
-virtue of his. But he was resolved that she should never find this out, and so
-was always on the watch to see that he did not betray any of his ugly self; he
-would take care even in little matters, such as his manners, and his habit of
-swearing when things went wrong. The tears came so easily into Ona&rsquo;s
-eyes, and she would look at him so appealingly&mdash;it kept Jurgis quite busy
-making resolutions, in addition to all the other things he had on his mind. It
-was true that more things were going on at this time in the mind of Jurgis than
-ever had in all his life before.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had to protect her, to do battle for her against the horror he saw about
-them. He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she would be lost;
-he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her from the world. He had
-learned the ways of things about him now. It was a war of each against all, and
-the devil take the hindmost. You did not give feasts to other people, you
-waited for them to give feasts to you. You went about with your soul full of
-suspicion and hatred; you understood that you were environed by hostile powers
-that were trying to get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their
-traps with. The store-keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies
-to entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph
-poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed you
-lied to you, and lied to the whole country&mdash;from top to bottom it was
-nothing but one gigantic lie.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis said that he understood it; and yet it was really pitiful, for the
-struggle was so unfair&mdash;some had so much the advantage! Here he was, for
-instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save Ona from harm, and only a
-week later she was suffering atrociously, and from the blow of an enemy that he
-could not possibly have thwarted. There came a day when the rain fell in
-torrents; and it being December, to be wet with it and have to sit all day long
-in one of the cold cellars of Brown&rsquo;s was no laughing matter. Ona was a
-working girl, and did not own waterproofs and such things, and so Jurgis took
-her and put her on the streetcar. Now it chanced that this car line was owned
-by gentlemen who were trying to make money. And the city having passed an
-ordinance requiring them to give transfers, they had fallen into a rage; and
-first they had made a rule that transfers could be had only when the fare was
-paid; and later, growing still uglier, they had made another&mdash;that the
-passenger must ask for the transfer, the conductor was not allowed to offer it.
-Now Ona had been told that she was to get a transfer; but it was not her way to
-speak up, and so she merely waited, following the conductor about with her
-eyes, wondering when he would think of her. When at last the time came for her
-to get out, she asked for the transfer, and was refused. Not knowing what to
-make of this, she began to argue with the conductor, in a language of which he
-did not understand a word. After warning her several times, he pulled the bell
-and the car went on&mdash;at which Ona burst into tears. At the next corner she
-got out, of course; and as she had no more money, she had to walk the rest of
-the way to the yards in the pouring rain. And so all day long she sat
-shivering, and came home at night with her teeth chattering and pains in her
-head and back. For two weeks afterward she suffered cruelly&mdash;and yet every
-day she had to drag herself to her work. The forewoman was especially severe
-with Ona, because she believed that she was obstinate on account of having been
-refused a holiday the day after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her
-&ldquo;forelady&rdquo; did not like to have her girls marry&mdash;perhaps
-because she was old and ugly and unmarried herself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them. Their
-children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could they know
-that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage of fifteen years
-was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that the pale-blue milk that
-they bought around the corner was watered, and doctored with formaldehyde
-besides? When the children were not well at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather
-herbs and cure them; now she was obliged to go to the drugstore and buy
-extracts&mdash;and how was she to know that they were all adulterated? How
-could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been
-doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their
-fruit jams with aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it
-have done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other
-sort was to be had? The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save money to
-get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in the least how much
-they saved, they could not get anything to keep them warm. All the clothing
-that was to be had in the stores was made of cotton and shoddy, which is made
-by tearing old clothes to pieces and weaving the fiber again. If they paid
-higher prices, they might get frills and fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine
-quality they could not obtain for love nor money. A young friend of
-Szedvilas&rsquo;, recently come from abroad, had become a clerk in a store on
-Ashland Avenue, and he narrated with glee a trick that had been played upon an
-unsuspecting countryman by his boss. The customer had desired to purchase an
-alarm clock, and the boss had shown him two exactly similar, telling him that
-the price of one was a dollar and of the other a dollar seventy-five. Upon
-being asked what the difference was, the man had wound up the first halfway and
-the second all the way, and showed the customer how the latter made twice as
-much noise; upon which the customer remarked that he was a sound sleeper, and
-had better take the more expensive clock!
-</p>
-
-<p class="letter">
-There is a poet who sings that
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-&ldquo;Deeper their heart grows and nobler their bearing,<br />
-Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-But it was not likely that he had reference to the kind of anguish that comes
-with destitution, that is so endlessly bitter and cruel, and yet so sordid and
-petty, so ugly, so humiliating&mdash;unredeemed by the slightest touch of
-dignity or even of pathos. It is a kind of anguish that poets have not commonly
-dealt with; its very words are not admitted into the vocabulary of
-poets&mdash;the details of it cannot be told in polite society at all. How, for
-instance, could any one expect to excite sympathy among lovers of good
-literature by telling how a family found their home alive with vermin, and of
-all the suffering and inconvenience and humiliation they were put to, and the
-hard-earned money they spent, in efforts to get rid of them? After long
-hesitation and uncertainty they paid twenty-five cents for a big package of
-insect powder&mdash;a patent preparation which chanced to be ninety-five per
-cent gypsum, a harmless earth which had cost about two cents to prepare. Of
-course it had not the least effect, except upon a few roaches which had the
-misfortune to drink water after eating it, and so got their inwards set in a
-coating of plaster of Paris. The family, having no idea of this, and no more
-money to throw away, had nothing to do but give up and submit to one more
-misery for the rest of their days.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then there was old Antanas. The winter came, and the place where he worked was
-a dark, unheated cellar, where you could see your breath all day, and where
-your fingers sometimes tried to freeze. So the old man&rsquo;s cough grew every
-day worse, until there came a time when it hardly ever stopped, and he had
-become a nuisance about the place. Then, too, a still more dreadful thing
-happened to him; he worked in a place where his feet were soaked in chemicals,
-and it was not long before they had eaten through his new boots. Then sores
-began to break out on his feet, and grow worse and worse. Whether it was that
-his blood was bad, or there had been a cut, he could not say; but he asked the
-men about it, and learned that it was a regular thing&mdash;it was the
-saltpeter. Every one felt it, sooner or later, and then it was all up with him,
-at least for that sort of work. The sores would never heal&mdash;in the end his
-toes would drop off, if he did not quit. Yet old Antanas would not quit; he saw
-the suffering of his family, and he remembered what it had cost him to get a
-job. So he tied up his feet, and went on limping about and coughing, until at
-last he fell to pieces, all at once and in a heap, like the One-Horse Shay.
-They carried him to a dry place and laid him on the floor, and that night two
-of the men helped him home. The poor old man was put to bed, and though he
-tried it every morning until the end, he never could get up again. He would lie
-there and cough and cough, day and night, wasting away to a mere skeleton.
-There came a time when there was so little flesh on him that the bones began to
-poke through&mdash;which was a horrible thing to see or even to think of. And
-one night he had a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his
-mouth. The family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a dollar
-to be told that there was nothing to be done. Mercifully the doctor did not say
-this so that the old man could hear, for he was still clinging to the faith
-that tomorrow or next day he would be better, and could go back to his job. The
-company had sent word to him that they would keep it for him&mdash;or rather
-Jurgis had bribed one of the men to come one Sunday afternoon and say they had.
-Dede Antanas continued to believe it, while three more hemorrhages came; and
-then at last one morning they found him stiff and cold. Things were not going
-well with them then, and though it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta&rsquo;s heart,
-they were forced to dispense with nearly all the decencies of a funeral; they
-had only a hearse, and one hack for the women and children; and Jurgis, who was
-learning things fast, spent all Sunday making a bargain for these, and he made
-it in the presence of witnesses, so that when the man tried to charge him for
-all sorts of incidentals, he did not have to pay. For twenty-five years old
-Antanas Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest together, and it was hard to
-part in this way; perhaps it was just as well that Jurgis had to give all his
-attention to the task of having a funeral without being bankrupted, and so had
-no time to indulge in memories and grief.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer long,
-the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them lose and die;
-and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the
-ground with these weaker branches. Just so it was in Packingtown; the whole
-district braced itself for the struggle that was an agony, and those whose time
-was come died off in hordes. All the year round they had been serving as cogs
-in the great packing machine; and now was the time for the renovating of it,
-and the replacing of damaged parts. There came pneumonia and grippe, stalking
-among them, seeking for weakened constitutions; there was the annual harvest of
-those whom tuberculosis had been dragging down. There came cruel, cold, and
-biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing relentlessly for failing
-muscles and impoverished blood. Sooner or later came the day when the unfit one
-did not report for work; and then, with no time lost in waiting, and no
-inquiries or regrets, there was a chance for a new hand.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the packing
-houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came, literally, by
-the thousands every single morning, fighting with each other for a chance for
-life. Blizzards and cold made no difference to them, they were always on hand;
-they were on hand two hours before the sun rose, an hour before the work began.
-Sometimes their faces froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes
-they froze all together&mdash;but still they came, for they had no other place
-to go. One day Durham advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice;
-and all that day the homeless and starving of the city came trudging through
-the snow from all over its two hundred square miles. That night forty score of
-them crowded into the station house of the stockyards district&mdash;they
-filled the rooms, sleeping in each other&rsquo;s laps, toboggan fashion, and
-they piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the police shut the
-doors and left some to freeze outside. On the morrow, before daybreak, there
-were three thousand at Durham&rsquo;s, and the police reserves had to be sent
-for to quell the riot. Then Durham&rsquo;s bosses picked out twenty of the
-biggest; the &ldquo;two hundred&rdquo; proved to have been a printer&rsquo;s
-error.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Four or five miles to the eastward lay the lake, and over this the bitter winds
-came raging. Sometimes the thermometer would fall to ten or twenty degrees
-below zero at night, and in the morning the streets would be piled with
-snowdrifts up to the first-floor windows. The streets through which our friends
-had to go to their work were all unpaved and full of deep holes and gullies; in
-summer, when it rained hard, a man might have to wade to his waist to get to
-his house; and now in winter it was no joke getting through these places,
-before light in the morning and after dark at night. They would wrap up in all
-they owned, but they could not wrap up against exhaustion; and many a man gave
-out in these battles with the snowdrifts, and lay down and fell asleep.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And if it was bad for the men, one may imagine how the women and children
-fared. Some would ride in the cars, if the cars were running; but when you are
-making only five cents an hour, as was little Stanislovas, you do not like to
-spend that much to ride two miles. The children would come to the yards with
-great shawls about their ears, and so tied up that you could hardly find
-them&mdash;and still there would be accidents. One bitter morning in February
-the little boy who worked at the lard machine with Stanislovas came about an
-hour late, and screaming with pain. They unwrapped him, and a man began
-vigorously rubbing his ears; and as they were frozen stiff, it took only two or
-three rubs to break them short off. As a result of this, little Stanislovas
-conceived a terror of the cold that was almost a mania. Every morning, when it
-came time to start for the yards, he would begin to cry and protest. Nobody
-knew quite how to manage him, for threats did no good&mdash;it seemed to be
-something that he could not control, and they feared sometimes that he would go
-into convulsions. In the end it had to be arranged that he always went with
-Jurgis, and came home with him again; and often, when the snow was deep, the
-man would carry him the whole way on his shoulders. Sometimes Jurgis would be
-working until late at night, and then it was pitiful, for there was no place
-for the little fellow to wait, save in the doorways or in a corner of the
-killing beds, and he would all but fall asleep there, and freeze to death.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was no heat upon the killing beds; the men might exactly as well have
-worked out of doors all winter. For that matter, there was very little heat
-anywhere in the building, except in the cooking rooms and such places&mdash;and
-it was the men who worked in these who ran the most risk of all, because
-whenever they had to pass to another room they had to go through ice-cold
-corridors, and sometimes with nothing on above the waist except a sleeveless
-undershirt. On the killing beds you were apt to be covered with blood, and it
-would freeze solid; if you leaned against a pillar, you would freeze to that,
-and if you put your hand upon the blade of your knife, you would run a chance
-of leaving your skin on it. The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and
-old sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked
-again, and so on, until by nighttime a man would be walking on great lumps the
-size of the feet of an elephant. Now and then, when the bosses were not
-looking, you would see them plunging their feet and ankles into the steaming
-hot carcass of the steer, or darting across the room to the hot-water jets. The
-cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them&mdash;all of those who used
-knives&mdash;were unable to wear gloves, and their arms would be white with
-frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of course there would be
-accidents. Also the air would be full of steam, from the hot water and the hot
-blood, so that you could not see five feet before you; and then, with men
-rushing about at the speed they kept up on the killing beds, and all with
-butcher knives, like razors, in their hands&mdash;well, it was to be counted as
-a wonder that there were not more men slaughtered than cattle.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And yet all this inconvenience they might have put up with, if only it had not
-been for one thing&mdash;if only there had been some place where they might
-eat. Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which he had
-worked, or else to rush, as did all his companions, to any one of the hundreds
-of liquor stores which stretched out their arms to him. To the west of the
-yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken line of
-saloons&mdash;&ldquo;Whiskey Row,&rdquo; they called it; to the north was
-Forty-seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and at the
-angle of the two was &ldquo;Whiskey Point,&rdquo; a space of fifteen or twenty
-acres, and containing one glue factory and about two hundred saloons.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One might walk among these and take his choice: &ldquo;Hot pea-soup and boiled
-cabbage today.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Walk in.&rdquo;
-&ldquo;Bean soup and stewed lamb. Welcome.&rdquo; All of these things were
-printed in many languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were
-infinite in their variety and appeal. There was the &ldquo;Home Circle&rdquo;
-and the &ldquo;Cosey Corner&rdquo;; there were &ldquo;Firesides&rdquo; and
-&ldquo;Hearthstones&rdquo; and &ldquo;Pleasure Palaces&rdquo; and
-&ldquo;Wonderlands&rdquo; and &ldquo;Dream Castles&rdquo; and
-&ldquo;Love&rsquo;s Delights.&rdquo; Whatever else they were called, they were
-sure to be called &ldquo;Union Headquarters,&rdquo; and to hold out a welcome
-to workingmen; and there was always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some
-friends to laugh and talk with. There was only one condition
-attached,&mdash;you must drink. If you went in not intending to drink, you
-would be put out in no time, and if you were slow about going, like as not you
-would get your head split open with a beer bottle in the bargain. But all of
-the men understood the convention and drank; they believed that by it they were
-getting something for nothing&mdash;for they did not need to take more than one
-drink, and upon the strength of it they might fill themselves up with a good
-hot dinner. This did not always work out in practice, however, for there was
-pretty sure to be a friend who would treat you, and then you would have to
-treat him. Then some one else would come in&mdash;and, anyhow, a few drinks
-were good for a man who worked hard. As he went back he did not shiver so, he
-had more courage for his task; the deadly brutalizing monotony of it did not
-afflict him so,&mdash;he had ideas while he worked, and took a more cheerful
-view of his circumstances. On the way home, however, the shivering was apt to
-come on him again; and so he would have to stop once or twice to warm up
-against the cruel cold. As there were hot things to eat in this saloon too, he
-might get home late to his supper, or he might not get home at all. And then
-his wife might set out to look for him, and she too would feel the cold; and
-perhaps she would have some of the children with her&mdash;and so a whole
-family would drift into drinking, as the current of a river drifts downstream.
-As if to complete the chain, the packers all paid their men in checks, refusing
-all requests to pay in coin; and where in Packingtown could a man go to have
-his check cashed but to a saloon, where he could pay for the favor by spending
-a part of the money?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-From all of these things Jurgis was saved because of Ona. He never would take
-but the one drink at noontime; and so he got the reputation of being a surly
-fellow, and was not quite welcome at the saloons, and had to drift about from
-one to another. Then at night he would go straight home, helping Ona and
-Stanislovas, or often putting the former on a car. And when he got home perhaps
-he would have to trudge several blocks, and come staggering back through the
-snowdrifts with a bag of coal upon his shoulder. Home was not a very attractive
-place&mdash;at least not this winter. They had only been able to buy one stove,
-and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in
-the bitterest weather. This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta all day, and for the
-children when they could not get to school. At night they would sit huddled
-round this stove, while they ate their supper off their laps; and then Jurgis
-and Jonas would smoke a pipe, after which they would all crawl into their beds
-to get warm, after putting out the fire to save the coal. Then they would have
-some frightful experiences with the cold. They would sleep with all their
-clothes on, including their overcoats, and put over them all the bedding and
-spare clothing they owned; the children would sleep all crowded into one bed,
-and yet even so they could not keep warm. The outside ones would be shivering
-and sobbing, crawling over the others and trying to get down into the center,
-and causing a fight. This old house with the leaky weatherboards was a very
-different thing from their cabins at home, with great thick walls plastered
-inside and outside with mud; and the cold which came upon them was a living
-thing, a demon-presence in the room. They would waken in the midnight hours,
-when everything was black; perhaps they would hear it yelling outside, or
-perhaps there would be deathlike stillness&mdash;and that would be worse yet.
-They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for
-them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and
-try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly
-thing, a specter born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic,
-shadowing the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It
-was cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp, alone,
-alone. There would be no one to hear them if they cried out; there would be no
-help, no mercy. And so on until morning&mdash;when they would go out to another
-day of toil, a little weaker, a little nearer to the time when it would be
-their turn to be shaken from the tree.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
-
-<p>
-Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from
-sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the great adventure
-befell Marija.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, who played the violin. Everybody laughed at
-them, for Tamoszius was petite and frail, and Marija could have picked him up
-and carried him off under one arm. But perhaps that was why she fascinated him;
-the sheer volume of Marija&rsquo;s energy was overwhelming. That first night at
-the wedding Tamoszius had hardly taken his eyes off her; and later on, when he
-came to find that she had really the heart of a baby, her voice and her
-violence ceased to terrify him, and he got the habit of coming to pay her
-visits on Sunday afternoons. 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 a 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, crying, &ldquo;Come now,
-brother, give us a tune.&rdquo; And then Tamoszius&rsquo; face would light up
-and he would get out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin, and play. And
-forthwith the soul of him would flame up and become eloquent&mdash;it was
-almost an impropriety, for all the while his gaze would be fixed upon
-Marija&rsquo;s face, until she would begin to turn red and lower her eyes.
-There was no resisting the music of Tamoszius, however; even the children would
-sit awed and wondering, and the tears would run down Teta Elzbieta&rsquo;s
-cheeks. A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man
-of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost
-life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then there were other benefits accruing to Marija from this
-friendship&mdash;benefits of a more substantial nature. People paid Tamoszius
-big money to come and make music on state occasions; and also they would invite
-him to parties and festivals, knowing well that he was too good-natured to come
-without his fiddle, and that having brought it, he could be made to play while
-others danced. Once he made bold to ask Marija to accompany him to such a
-party, and Marija accepted, to his great delight&mdash;after which he never
-went anywhere without her, while if the celebration were given by friends of
-his, he would invite the rest of the family also. In any case Marija would
-bring back a huge pocketful of cakes and sandwiches for the children, and
-stories of all the good things she herself had managed to consume. She was
-compelled, at these parties, to spend most of her time at the refreshment
-table, for she could not dance with anybody except other women and very old
-men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament, and afflicted with a frantic
-jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured to put his arm about the ample
-waist of Marija would be certain to throw the orchestra out of tune.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be able to look
-forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights. The family was too
-poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances; in Packingtown, as a rule,
-people know only their near neighbors and shopmates, and so the place is like a
-myriad of little country villages. But now there was a member of the family who
-was permitted to travel and widen her horizon; and so each week there would be
-new personalities to talk about,&mdash;how so-and-so was dressed, and where she
-worked, and what she got, and whom she was in love with; and how this man had
-jilted his girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had
-passed between them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her
-earnings upon drink, and pawned her very clothes. Some people would have
-scorned this talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about what one knows.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding, that
-Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the street and spoke
-his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms. She told them all about it
-the next day, and fairly cried with happiness, for she said that Tamoszius was
-a lovely man. After that he no longer made love to her with his fiddle, but
-they would sit for hours in the kitchen, blissfully happy in each other&rsquo;s
-arms; it was the tacit convention of the family to know nothing of what was
-going on in that corner.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garret of the
-house fixed up, and live there. Tamoszius made good wages; and little by little
-the family were paying back their debt to Marija, so she ought soon to have
-enough to start life upon&mdash;only, with her preposterous softheartedness,
-she would insist upon spending a good part of her money every week for things
-which she saw they needed. Marija was really the capitalist of the party, for
-she had become an expert can painter by this time&mdash;she was getting
-fourteen cents for every hundred and ten cans, and she could paint more than
-two cans every minute. Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the
-throttle, and the neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one could not
-count upon such good fortune forever&mdash;there were accidents that always
-happened. But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went on planning and
-dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for her home; and so, when
-the crash did come, her grief was painful to see.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For her canning factory shut down! Marija would about as soon have expected to
-see the sun shut down&mdash;the huge establishment had been to her a thing akin
-to the planets and the seasons. But now it was shut! And they had not given her
-any explanation, they had not even given her a day&rsquo;s warning; they had
-simply posted a notice one Saturday that all hands would be paid off that
-afternoon, and would not resume work for at least a month! And that was all
-that there was to it&mdash;her job was gone!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was the holiday rush that was over, the girls said in answer to
-Marija&rsquo;s inquiries; after that there was always a slack. Sometimes the
-factory would start up on half time after a while, but there was no
-telling&mdash;it had been known to stay closed until way into the summer. The
-prospects were bad at present, for truckmen who worked in the storerooms said
-that these were piled up to the ceilings, so that the firm could not have found
-room for another week&rsquo;s output of cans. And they had turned off
-three-quarters of these men, which was a still worse sign, since it meant that
-there were no orders to be filled. It was all a swindle, can-painting, said the
-girls&mdash;you were crazy with delight because you were making twelve or
-fourteen dollars a week, and saving half of it; but you had to spend it all
-keeping alive while you were out, and so your pay was really only half what you
-thought.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija came home, and because she was a person who could not rest without
-danger of explosion, they first had a great house cleaning, and then she set
-out to search Packingtown for a job to fill up the gap. As nearly all the
-canning establishments were shut down, and all the girls hunting work, it will
-be readily understood that Marija did not find any. Then she took to trying the
-stores and saloons, and when this failed she even traveled over into the
-far-distant regions near the lake front, where lived the rich people in great
-palaces, and begged there for some sort of work that could be done by a person
-who did not know English.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which had
-turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way which made
-Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big packers did not turn
-their hands off and close down, like the canning factories; but they began to
-run for shorter and shorter hours. They had always required the men to be on
-the killing beds and ready for work at seven o&rsquo;clock, although there was
-almost never any work to be done till the buyers out in the yards had gotten to
-work, and some cattle had come over the chutes. That would often be ten or
-eleven o&rsquo;clock, which was bad enough, in all conscience; but now, in the
-slack season, they would perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late
-in the afternoon. And so they would have to loaf around, in a place where the
-thermometer might be twenty degrees below zero! At first one would see them
-running about, or skylarking with each other, trying to keep warm; but before
-the day was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted, and,
-when the cattle finally came, so near frozen that to move was an agony. And
-then suddenly the place would spring into activity, and the merciless
-&ldquo;speeding-up&rdquo; would begin!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day as this with
-not more than two hours&rsquo; work to his credit&mdash;which meant about
-thirty-five cents. There were many days when the total was less than half an
-hour, and others when there was none at all. The general average was six hours
-a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a week; and this six hours of
-work would be done after standing on the killing bed till one o&rsquo;clock, or
-perhaps even three or four o&rsquo;clock, in the afternoon. Like as not there
-would come a rush of cattle at the very end of the day, which the men would
-have to dispose of before they went home, often working by electric light till
-nine or ten, or even twelve or one o&rsquo;clock, and without a single instant
-for a bite of supper. The men were at the mercy of the cattle. Perhaps the
-buyers would be holding off for better prices&mdash;if they could scare the
-shippers into thinking that they meant to buy nothing that day, they could get
-their own terms. For some reason the cost of fodder for cattle in the yards was
-much above the market price&mdash;and you were not allowed to bring your own
-fodder! Then, too, a number of cars were apt to arrive late in the day, now
-that the roads were blocked with snow, and the packers would buy their cattle
-that night, to get them cheaper, and then would come into play their ironclad
-rule, that all cattle must be killed the same day they were bought. There was
-no use kicking about this&mdash;there had been one delegation after another to
-see the packers about it, only to be told that it was the rule, and that there
-was not the slightest chance of its ever being altered. And so on Christmas Eve
-Jurgis worked till nearly one o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and on Christmas
-Day he was on the killing bed at seven o&rsquo;clock.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hard work a
-man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once been among those who
-scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating; and so now he could
-appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was precisely their size which
-enabled them to do it with impunity. One of the rules on the killing beds was
-that a man who was one minute late was docked an hour; and this was economical,
-for he was made to work the balance of the hour&mdash;he was not allowed to
-stand round and wait. And on the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no
-pay for that&mdash;though often the bosses would start up the gang ten or
-fifteen minutes before the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to
-the end of the day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour&mdash;for
-&ldquo;broken time.&rdquo; A man might work full fifty minutes, but if there
-was no work to fill out the hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of
-every day was a sort of lottery&mdash;a struggle, all but breaking into open
-war between the bosses and the men, the former trying to rush a job through and
-the latter trying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the bosses for this, though
-the truth to be told it was not always their fault; for the packers kept them
-frightened for their lives&mdash;and when one was in danger of falling behind
-the standard, what was easier than to catch up by making the gang work awhile
-&ldquo;for the church&rdquo;? This was a savage witticism the men had, which
-Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old man Jones was great on missions and
-such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable
-job, the men would wink at each other and say, &ldquo;Now we&rsquo;re working
-for the church!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no longer
-perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights. He felt like
-fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the butcher-helpers&rsquo;
-union came to him a second time, he received him in a far different spirit. A
-wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this of the men&mdash;that by combining
-they might be able to make a stand and conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who
-had first thought of it; and when he was told that it was a common thing for
-men to do in America, he got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase
-&ldquo;a free country.&rdquo; The delegate explained to him how it depended
-upon their being able to get every man to join and stand by the organization,
-and so Jurgis signified that he was willing to do his share. Before another
-month was by, all the working members of his family had union cards, and wore
-their union buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week they were
-quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end to all
-their troubles.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But only ten days after she had joined, Marija&rsquo;s canning factory closed
-down, and that blow quite staggered them. They could not understand why the
-union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended a meeting
-Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a business meeting, and was
-transacted in English, but that made no difference to Marija; she said what was
-in her, and all the pounding of the chairman&rsquo;s gavel and all the uproar
-and confusion in the room could not prevail. Quite apart from her own troubles
-she was boiling over with a general sense of the injustice of it, and she told
-what she thought of the packers, and what she thought of a world where such
-things were allowed to happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with
-the shock of her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and the
-meeting gathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the election of a
-recording secretary.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting, but it
-was not of his own seeking. Jurgis had gone with the desire to get into an
-inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this attitude of silent and
-open-eyed attention had marked him out for a victim. Tommy Finnegan was a
-little Irishman, with big staring eyes and a wild aspect, a
-&ldquo;hoister&rdquo; by trade, and badly cracked. Somewhere back in the
-far-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange experience, and the burden of
-it rested upon him. All the balance of his life he had done nothing but try to
-make it understood. When he talked he caught his victim by the buttonhole, and
-his face kept coming closer and closer&mdash;which was trying, because his
-teeth were so bad. Jurgis did not mind that, only he was frightened. The method
-of operation of the higher intelligences was Tom Finnegan&rsquo;s theme, and he
-desired to find out if Jurgis had ever considered that the representation of
-things in their present similarity might be altogether unintelligible upon a
-more elevated plane. There were assuredly wonderful mysteries about the
-developing of these things; and then, becoming confidential, Mr. Finnegan
-proceeded to tell of some discoveries of his own. &ldquo;If ye have iver had
-onything to do wid shperrits,&rdquo; said he, and looked inquiringly at Jurgis,
-who kept shaking his head. &ldquo;Niver mind, niver mind,&rdquo; continued the
-other, &ldquo;but their influences may be operatin&rsquo; upon ye; it&rsquo;s
-shure as I&rsquo;m tellin&rsquo; ye, it&rsquo;s them that has the reference to
-the immejit surroundin&rsquo;s that has the most of power. It was vouchsafed to
-me in me youthful days to be acquainted with shperrits&rdquo; and so Tommy
-Finnegan went on, expounding a system of philosophy, while the perspiration
-came out on Jurgis&rsquo; forehead, so great was his agitation and
-embarrassment. In the end one of the men, seeing his plight, came over and
-rescued him; but it was some time before he was able to find any one to explain
-things to him, and meanwhile his fear lest the strange little Irishman should
-get him cornered again was enough to keep him dodging about the room the whole
-evening.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He never missed a meeting, however. He had picked up a few words of English by
-this time, and friends would help him to understand. They were often very
-turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming at once, in as many
-dialects of English; but the speakers were all desperately in earnest, and
-Jurgis was in earnest too, for he understood that a fight was on, and that it
-was his fight. Since the time of his disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust
-no man, except in his own family; but here he discovered that he had brothers
-in affliction, and allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so the
-struggle became a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member of the
-church, because it was the right thing to be, but the church had never touched
-him, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a new
-religion&mdash;one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of him;
-and with all the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a missionary. There
-were many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and with these he would labor and
-wrestle in prayer, trying to show them the right. Sometimes they would be
-obstinate and refuse to see it, and Jurgis, alas, was not always patient! He
-forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago&mdash;after the fashion
-of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of
-Brotherhood by force of arms.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
-
-<p>
-One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that Jurgis
-became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know what was going on at the
-meetings, and to be able to take part in them, and so he began to look about
-him, and to try to pick up words. The children, who were at school, and
-learning fast, would teach him a few; and a friend loaned him a little book
-that had some in it, and Ona would read them to him. Then Jurgis became sorry
-that he could not read himself; and later on in the winter, when some one told
-him that there was a night school that was free, he went and enrolled. After
-that, every evening that he got home from the yards in time, he would go to the
-school; he would go even if he were in time for only half an hour. They were
-teaching him both to read and to speak English&mdash;and they would have taught
-him other things, if only he had had a little time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Also the union made another great difference with him&mdash;it made him begin
-to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracy with him. It
-was a little state, the union, a miniature republic; its affairs were every
-man&rsquo;s affairs, and every man had a real say about them. In other words,
-in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics. In the place where he had come
-from there had not been any politics&mdash;in Russia one thought of the
-government as an affliction like the lightning and the hail. &ldquo;Duck,
-little brother, duck,&rdquo; the wise old peasants would whisper;
-&ldquo;everything passes away.&rdquo; And when Jurgis had first come to America
-he had supposed that it was the same. He had heard people say that it was a
-free country&mdash;but what did that mean? He found that here, precisely as in
-Russia, there were rich men who owned everything; and if one could not find any
-work, was not the hunger he began to feel the same sort of hunger?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown&rsquo;s, there had come
-to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who asked
-him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and become a
-citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man explained the
-advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him anything, and it would
-get him half a day off, with his pay just the same; and then when election time
-came he would be able to vote&mdash;and there was something in that. Jurgis was
-naturally glad to accept, and so the night watchman said a few words to the
-boss, and he was excused for the rest of the day. When, later on, he wanted a
-holiday to get married he could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just
-the same&mdash;what power had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However,
-he went with the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants,
-Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood a great
-four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in it. It was a
-fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had a merry time, with
-plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they drove downtown and stopped before
-an imposing granite building, in which they interviewed an official, who had
-the papers all ready, with only the names to be filled in. So each man in turn
-took an oath of which he did not understand a word, and then was presented with
-a handsome ornamented document with a big red seal and the shield of the United
-States upon it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and
-the equal of the President himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man, who told
-him where to go to &ldquo;register.&rdquo; And then finally, when election day
-came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to vote might
-remain away until nine that morning, and the same night watchman took Jurgis
-and the rest of his flock into the back room of a saloon, and showed each of
-them where and how to mark a ballot, and then gave each two dollars, and took
-them to the polling place, where there was a policeman on duty especially to
-see that they got through all right. Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck
-till he got home and met Jonas, who had taken the leader aside and whispered to
-him, offering to vote three times for four dollars, which offer had been
-accepted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to him; and
-he learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed
-under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the
-graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters,
-known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most
-votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the
-poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state
-elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried
-everything. The ruler of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a
-little Irishman named Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in the
-state, and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boast
-that he carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an enormously rich
-man&mdash;he had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood. It was
-Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seen the
-first day of their arrival. Not only did he own the dump, but he owned the
-brick factory as well, and first he took out the clay and made it into bricks,
-and then he had the city bring garbage to fill up the hole, so that he could
-build houses to sell to the people. Then, too, he sold the bricks to the city,
-at his own price, and the city came and got them in its own wagons. And also he
-owned the other hole near by, where the stagnant water was; and it was he who
-cut the ice and sold it; and what was more, if the men told truth, he had not
-had to pay any taxes for the water, and he had built the ice-house out of city
-lumber, and had not had to pay anything for that. The newspapers had got hold
-of that story, and there had been a scandal; but Scully had hired somebody to
-confess and take all the blame, and then skip the country. It was said, too,
-that he had built his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmen were on
-the city payroll while they did it; however, one had to press closely to get
-these things out of the men, for it was not their business, and Mike Scully was
-a good man to stand in with. A note signed by him was equal to a job any time
-at the packing houses; and also he employed a good many men himself, and worked
-them only eight hours a day, and paid them the highest wages. This gave him
-many friends&mdash;all of whom he had gotten together into the &ldquo;War Whoop
-League,&rdquo; whose clubhouse you might see just outside of the yards. It was
-the biggest clubhouse, and the biggest club, in all Chicago; and they had
-prizefights every now and then, and cockfights and even dogfights. The
-policemen in the district all belonged to the league, and instead of
-suppressing the fights, they sold tickets for them. The man that had taken
-Jurgis to be naturalized was one of these &ldquo;Indians,&rdquo; as they were
-called; and on election day there would be hundreds of them out, and all with
-big wads of money in their pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the
-district. That was another thing, the men said&mdash;all the saloon-keepers had
-to be &ldquo;Indians,&rdquo; and to put up on demand, otherwise they could not
-do business on Sundays, nor have any gambling at all. In the same way Scully
-had all the jobs in the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of
-the city graft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of flats
-somewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it for him was
-drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers. The city inspector of water pipes
-had been dead and buried for over a year, but somebody was still drawing his
-pay. The city inspector of sidewalks was a barkeeper at the War Whoop
-Cafe&mdash;and maybe he could make it uncomfortable for any tradesman who did
-not stand in with Scully!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave them pleasure to
-believe this, for Scully stood as the people&rsquo;s man, and boasted of it
-boldly when election day came. The packers had wanted a bridge at Ashland
-Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till they had seen Scully; and it
-was the same with &ldquo;Bubbly Creek,&rdquo; which the city had threatened to
-make the packers cover over, till Scully had come to their aid. &ldquo;Bubbly
-Creek&rdquo; is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of
-the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of packing houses empties into
-it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One
-long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The
-grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange
-transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion,
-as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves
-in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst,
-and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have
-caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it,
-feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and
-vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every
-now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire
-department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious
-stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of;
-then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and
-afterward gathered it themselves. The banks of &ldquo;Bubbly Creek&rdquo; are
-plastered thick with hairs, and this also the packers gather and clean.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip of the
-men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole billions of gallons
-of the city&rsquo;s water. The newspapers had been full of this
-scandal&mdash;once there had even been an investigation, and an actual
-uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thing went right
-on. And then there was the condemned meat industry, with its endless horrors.
-The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors in Packingtown, and they
-all took that to mean that they were protected from diseased meat; they did not
-understand that these hundred and sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at
-the request of the packers, and that they were paid by the United States
-government to certify that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They
-had no authority beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city
-and state the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the
-local political machine!<a href="#fn-2" name="fnref-2" id="fnref-2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>
-And shortly afterward one of these, a physician, made the discovery that the
-carcasses of steers which had been condemned as tubercular by the government
-inspectors, and which therefore contained ptomaines, which are deadly poisons,
-were left upon an open platform and carted away to be sold in the city; and so
-he insisted that these carcasses be treated with an injection of
-kerosene&mdash;and was ordered to resign the same week! So indignant were the
-packers that they went farther, and compelled the mayor to abolish the whole
-bureau of inspection; so that since then there has not been even a pretense of
-any interference with the graft. There was said to be two thousand dollars a
-week hush money from the tubercular steers alone; and as much again from the
-hogs which had died of cholera on the trains, and which you might see any day
-being loaded into boxcars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana,
-where they made a fancy grade of lard.
-</p>
-
-<p class="footnote">
-<a name="fn-2" id="fn-2"></a> <a href="#fnref-2">[2]</a>
-Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and Their Products.
-United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industries, Order No.
-125:&mdash;<br />
-    Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting, packing, or
-rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of cattle, sheep, or
-swine, or the packing of any of their products, <i>the carcasses or products of
-which are to become subjects of interstate or foreign commerce</i>, shall make
-application to the Secretary of Agriculture for inspection of said animals and
-their products....<br />
-    Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be removed by
-the owners from the pens containing animals which have been inspected and found
-to be free from disease and fit for human food, and <i>shall be disposed of in
-accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations of the state and
-municipality in which said rejected or condemned animals are located</i>....
-<br />
-    Section 25. A microscopic examination for trichinae shall be made of all
-swine products exported to countries requiring such examination. <i>No
-microscopic examination will be made of hogs slaughtered for interstate trade,
-but this examination shall be confined to those intended for the export
-trade.</i>
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of those who were
-obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed as if every time you met a person from a
-new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes. There was, for
-instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the plant where Marija had
-worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to hear this man describe the
-animals which came to his place would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a
-Zola. It seemed that they must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out
-old and crippled and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had
-been fed on &ldquo;whisky-malt,&rdquo; the refuse of the breweries, and had
-become what the men called &ldquo;steerly&rdquo;&mdash;which means covered with
-boils. It was a nasty job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into
-them they would burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a
-man&rsquo;s sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it, how
-was he ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It was
-stuff such as this that made the &ldquo;embalmed beef&rdquo; that had killed
-several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the
-Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was old stuff
-that had been lying for years in the cellars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen stove, and
-talking with an old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and who worked in the
-canning rooms at Durham&rsquo;s; and so Jurgis learned a few things about the
-great and only Durham canned goods, which had become a national institution.
-They were regular alchemists at Durham&rsquo;s; they advertised a
-mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a mushroom looked
-like. They advertised &ldquo;potted chicken,&rdquo;&mdash;and it was like the
-boardinghouse soup of the comic papers, through which a chicken had walked with
-rubbers on. Perhaps they had a secret process for making chickens
-chemically&mdash;who knows? said Jurgis&rsquo; friend; the things that went
-into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts of
-beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any. They put these up
-in several grades, and sold them at several prices; but the contents of the
-cans all came out of the same hopper. And then there was &ldquo;potted
-game&rdquo; and &ldquo;potted grouse,&rdquo; &ldquo;potted ham,&rdquo; and
-&ldquo;deviled ham&rdquo;&mdash;de-vyled, as the men called it.
-&ldquo;De-vyled&rdquo; ham was made out of the waste ends of smoked beef that
-were too small to be sliced by the machines; and also tripe, dyed with
-chemicals so that it would not show white; and trimmings of hams and corned
-beef; and potatoes, skins and all; and finally the hard cartilaginous gullets
-of beef, after the tongues had been cut out. All this ingenious mixture was
-ground up and flavored with spices to make it taste like something. Anybody who
-could invent a new imitation had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said
-Jurgis&rsquo; informant; but it was hard to think of anything new in a place
-where so many sharp wits had been at work for so long; where men welcomed
-tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding, because it made them fatten more
-quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid butter left over in the
-grocery stores of a continent, and &ldquo;oxidized&rdquo; it by a forced-air
-process, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim milk, and sold it in
-bricks in the cities! Up to a year or two ago it had been the custom to kill
-horses in the yards&mdash;ostensibly for fertilizer; but after long agitation
-the newspapers had been able to make the public realize that the horses were
-being canned. Now it was against the law to kill horses in Packingtown, and the
-law was really complied with&mdash;for the present, at any rate. Any day,
-however, one might see sharp-horned and shaggy-haired creatures running with
-the sheep and yet what a job you would have to get the public to believe that a
-good part of what it buys for lamb and mutton is really goat&rsquo;s flesh!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might have
-gathered in Packingtown&mdash;those of the various afflictions of the workers.
-When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with Szedvilas, he had
-marveled while he listened to the tale of all the things that were made out of
-the carcasses of animals, and of all the lesser industries that were maintained
-there; now 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. The workers in each of them had their own peculiar
-diseases. And the wandering visitor might be skeptical about all the swindles,
-but he could not be skeptical about these, for the worker bore the evidence of
-them about on his own person&mdash;generally he had only to hold out his hand.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had
-gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his
-person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a truck in the pickle
-rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out of the world; all the
-joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers
-and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you
-could scarcely find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again
-the base of it had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which
-the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be
-criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to
-trace them. They would have no nails,&mdash;they had worn them off pulling
-hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan.
-There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and
-sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs of tuberculosis
-might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There were the
-beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the
-refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began at four o&rsquo;clock in
-the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men in a few years. There were
-those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose special disease was
-rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said
-to be five years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even
-sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be
-painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out
-this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off.
-There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too,
-were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning.
-Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could
-work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself
-and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the &ldquo;hoisters,&rdquo;
-as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead
-cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the
-damp and the steam; and as old Durham&rsquo;s architects had not built the
-killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would
-have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got
-them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking
-like chimpanzees. 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the
-bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham&rsquo;s Pure Leaf Lard!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
-
-<p>
-During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to live and
-a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings of Jurgis fell
-from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there was no longer anything to
-spare. The winter went, and the spring came, and found them still living thus
-from hand to mouth, hanging on day by day, with literally not a month&rsquo;s
-wages between them and starvation. Marija was in despair, for there was still
-no word about the reopening of the canning factory, and her savings were almost
-entirely gone. She had had to give up all idea of marrying then; the family
-could not get along without her&mdash;though for that matter she was likely
-soon to become a burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they
-would have to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and Teta
-Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night, trying to figure
-how they could manage this too without starving.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they might
-never have nor expect a single instant&rsquo;s respite from worry, a single
-instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money. They would no
-sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty, than a new one would come
-into view. In addition to all their physical hardships, there was thus a
-constant strain upon their minds; they were harried all day and nearly all
-night by worry and fear. This was in truth not living; it was scarcely even
-existing, and they felt that it was too little for the price they paid. They
-were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best, ought they
-not to be able to keep alive?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to the
-unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst; and when, in
-their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a terrifying flood in their
-house. It happened while the men were away, and poor Elzbieta rushed out into
-the street screaming for help, for she did not even know whether the flood
-could be stopped, or whether they were ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as
-the latter, they found in the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five
-cents an hour, and seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched
-him, and included all the time the two had been going and coming, and also a
-charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again, when they went to
-pay their January&rsquo;s installment on the house, the agent terrified them by
-asking them if they had had the insurance attended to yet. In answer to their
-inquiry he showed them a clause in the deed which provided that they were to
-keep the house insured for one thousand dollars, as soon as the present policy
-ran out, which would happen in a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell
-the blow, demanded how much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man said;
-and that night came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that the agent
-would be good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all the expenses they
-were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said, with sarcasm proper to the
-new way of life he had learned&mdash;the deed was signed, and so the agent had
-no longer anything to gain by keeping quiet. And Jurgis looked the fellow
-squarely in the eye, and so the fellow wasted no time in conventional protests,
-but read him the deed. They would have to renew the insurance every year; they
-would have to pay the taxes, about ten dollars a year; they would have to pay
-the water tax, about six dollars a year&mdash;(Jurgis silently resolved to shut
-off the hydrant). This, besides the interest and the monthly installments,
-would be all&mdash;unless by chance the city should happen to decide to put in
-a sewer or to lay a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent, they would have to have
-these, whether they wanted them or not, if the city said so. The sewer would
-cost them about twenty-two dollars, and the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood,
-twenty-five if it were cement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any rate, so
-that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw now how they had
-been plundered; but they were in for it, there was no turning back. They could
-only go on and make the fight and win&mdash;for defeat was a thing that could
-not even be thought of.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold, and that
-was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the money they would not
-have to pay for coal&mdash;and it was just at this time that Marija&rsquo;s
-board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought trials of its own;
-each season had its trials, as they found. In the spring there were cold rains,
-that turned the streets into canals and bogs; the mud would be so deep that
-wagons would sink up to the hubs, so that half a dozen horses could not move
-them. Then, of course, it was impossible for any one to get to work with dry
-feet; and this was bad for men that were poorly clad and shod, and still worse
-for women and children. Later came midsummer, with the stifling heat, when the
-dingy killing beds of Durham&rsquo;s became a very purgatory; one time, in a
-single day, three men fell dead from sunstroke. All day long the rivers of hot
-blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless,
-the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old smells of a generation
-would be drawn out by this heat&mdash;for there was never any washing of the
-walls and rafters and pillars, and they were caked with the filth of a
-lifetime. The men who worked on the killing beds would come to reek with
-foulness, so that you could smell one of them fifty feet away; there was simply
-no such thing as keeping decent, the most careful man gave it up in the end,
-and wallowed in uncleanness. There was not even a place where a man could wash
-his hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When they
-were at work they could not even wipe off their faces&mdash;they were as
-helpless as newly born babes in that respect; and it may seem like a small
-matter, but when the sweat began to run down their necks and tickle them, or a
-fly to bother them, it was a torture like being burned alive. Whether it was
-the slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but
-with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian
-plague of flies; there could be no describing this&mdash;the houses would be
-black with them. There was no escaping; you might provide all your doors and
-windows with screens, but their buzzing outside would be like the swarming of
-bees, and whenever you opened the door they would rush in as if a storm of wind
-were driving them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions of
-green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such suggestion for
-the people in the yards. The great packing machine ground on remorselessly,
-without thinking of green fields; and the men and women and children who were
-part of it never saw any green thing, not even a flower. Four or five miles to
-the east of them lay the blue waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it
-did them it might have been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only
-Sundays, and then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great
-packing machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
-clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never from the
-workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A poor devil of a
-bookkeeper who had been working in Durham&rsquo;s for twenty years at a salary
-of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty more and do no better,
-would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far removed as the poles from the
-most skilled worker on the killing beds; he would dress differently, and live
-in another part of the town, and come to work at a different hour of the day,
-and in every way make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man.
-Perhaps this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people
-who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once more
-Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on a less
-melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or two later a
-dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three days after she had
-begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her activity in the
-union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the unions, and in addition
-they made a practice of buying up a certain number of the union officials, as
-many as they thought they needed. So every week they received reports as to
-what was going on, and often they knew things before the members of the union
-knew them. Any one who was considered to be dangerous by them would find that
-he was not a favorite with his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going
-after the foreign people and preaching to them. However that might be, the
-known facts were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija had been
-cheated out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls worked at a long
-table, and behind them walked a woman with pencil and notebook, keeping count
-of the number they finished. This woman was, of course, only human, and
-sometimes made mistakes; when this happened, there was no redress&mdash;if on
-Saturday you got less money than you had earned, you had to make the best of
-it. But Marija did not understand this, and made a disturbance. Marija&rsquo;s
-disturbances did not mean anything, and while she had known only Lithuanian and
-Polish, they had done no harm, for people only laughed at her and made her cry.
-But now Marija was able to call names in English, and so she got the woman who
-made the mistake to disliking her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she made
-mistakes on purpose after that; at any rate, she made them, and the third time
-it happened Marija went on the warpath and took the matter first to the
-forelady, and when she got no satisfaction there, to the superintendent. This
-was unheard-of presumption, but the superintendent said he would see about it,
-which Marija took to mean that she was going to get her money; after waiting
-three days, she went to see the superintendent again. This time the man
-frowned, and said that he had not had time to attend to it; and when Marija,
-against the advice and warning of every one, tried it once more, he ordered her
-back to her work in a passion. Just how things happened after that Marija was
-not sure, but that afternoon the forelady told her that her services would not
-be any longer required. Poor Marija could not have been more dumfounded had the
-woman knocked her over the head; at first she could not believe what she heard,
-and then she grew furious and swore that she would come anyway, that her place
-belonged to her. In the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept
-and wailed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong&mdash;she should have
-listened to those who had had experience. The next time she would know her
-place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija went out, and the family
-faced the problem of an existence again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before long, and
-Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this. He had heard dreadful stories
-of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas in Packingtown; and he had made up
-his mind that Ona must have a man-doctor. Jurgis could be very obstinate when
-he wanted to, and he was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who
-felt that a man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really belonged
-to them. The cheapest doctor they could find would charge them fifteen dollars,
-and perhaps more when the bill came in; and here was Jurgis, declaring that he
-would pay it, even if he had to stop eating in the meantime!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left. Day after day she wandered
-about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope of finding it. Marija
-could do the work of an able-bodied man, when she was cheerful, but
-discouragement wore her out easily, and she would come home at night a pitiable
-object. She learned her lesson this time, poor creature; she learned it ten
-times over. All the family learned it along with her&mdash;that when you have
-once got a job in Packingtown, you hang on to it, come what will.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she stopped
-paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the union, and cursed
-herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged into one. She had about made
-up her mind that she was a lost soul, when somebody told her of an opening, and
-she went and got a place as a &ldquo;beef-trimmer.&rdquo; She got this because
-the boss saw that she had the muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and
-put Marija to do his work, paying her a little more than half what he had been
-paying before.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such work as
-this. She was in another canning factory, and her work was to trim the meat of
-those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been told about not long before. She was
-shut up in one of the rooms where the people seldom saw the daylight; beneath
-her were the chilling rooms, where the meat was frozen, and above her were the
-cooking rooms; and so she stood on an ice-cold floor, while her head was often
-so hot that she could scarcely breathe. Trimming beef off the bones by the
-hundred-weight, while standing up from early morning till late at night, with
-heavy boots on and the floor always damp and full of puddles, liable to be
-thrown out of work indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade, liable
-again to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till she trembled in
-every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and gave herself a poisoned
-wound&mdash;that was the new life that unfolded itself before Marija. But
-because Marija was a human horse she merely laughed and went at it; it would
-enable her to pay her board again, and keep the family going. And as for
-Tamoszius&mdash;well, they had waited a long time, and they could wait a little
-longer. They could not possibly get along upon his wages alone, and the family
-could not live without hers. He could come and visit her, and sit in the
-kitchen and hold her hand, and he must manage to be content with that. But day
-by day the music of Tamoszius&rsquo; violin became more passionate and
-heartbreaking; and Marija would sit with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet
-and all her body a-tremble, hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the
-unborn generations which cried out in her for life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija&rsquo;s lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate. Ona,
-too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason than Marija. She
-did not tell half of her story at home, because she saw it was a torment to
-Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do. For a long time Ona had seen
-that Miss Henderson, the forelady in her department, did not like her. At first
-she thought it was the old-time mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to
-get married. Then she concluded it must be because she did not give the
-forelady a present occasionally&mdash;she was the kind that took presents from
-the girls, Ona learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor of those
-who gave them. In the end, however, Ona discovered that it was even worse than
-that. Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was some time before rumor made her
-out; but finally it transpired that she was a kept woman, the former mistress
-of the superintendent of a department in the same building. He had put her
-there to keep her quiet, it seemed&mdash;and that not altogether with success,
-for once or twice they had been heard quarreling. She had the temper of a
-hyena, and soon the place she ran was a witch&rsquo;s caldron. There were some
-of the girls who were of her own sort, who were willing to toady to her and
-flatter her; and these would carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were
-unchained in the place. Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdy-house
-downtown, with a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of
-the loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went to
-and from their work. In the slack seasons some of them would go with Miss
-Henderson to this house downtown&mdash;in fact, it would not be too much to say
-that she managed her department at Brown&rsquo;s in conjunction with it.
-Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of decent girls,
-and after other decent girls had been turned off to make room for them. When
-you worked in this woman&rsquo;s department the house downtown was never out of
-your thoughts all day&mdash;there were always whiffs of it to be caught, like
-the odor of the Packingtown rendering plants at night, when the wind shifted
-suddenly. There would be stories about it going the rounds; the girls opposite
-you would be telling them and winking at you. In such a place Ona would not
-have stayed a day, but for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that
-she could stay the next day. She understood now that the real reason that Miss
-Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she knew that
-the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same reason, and were doing
-their best to make her life miserable.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was particular
-about things of this sort; there was no place in it where a prostitute could
-not get along better than a decent girl. Here was 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
-was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of
-chattel slavery. Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the
-packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they
-did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in
-color between master and slave.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according to his
-whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an enormous big boy,
-and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it seemed quite incredible.
-Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by the hour, unable to believe that
-it had really happened.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him
-irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he might
-have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men in the
-saloons. There was nothing he cared for now so much as to sit and look at the
-baby. This was very curious, for Jurgis had never been interested in babies
-before. But then, this was a very unusual sort of a baby. He had the brightest
-little black eyes, and little black ringlets all over his head; he was the
-living image of his father, everybody said&mdash;and Jurgis found this a
-fascinating circumstance. It was sufficiently perplexing that this tiny mite of
-life should have come into the world at all in the manner that it had; that it
-should have come with a comical imitation of its father&rsquo;s nose was simply
-uncanny.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his baby;
-that it was his and Ona&rsquo;s, to care for all its life. Jurgis had never
-possessed anything nearly so interesting&mdash;a baby was, when you came to
-think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession. It would grow up to be a man,
-a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of its own! Such thoughts
-would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with all sorts of strange and almost
-painful excitements. He was wonderfully proud of little Antanas; he was curious
-about all the details of him&mdash;the washing and the dressing and the eating
-and the sleeping of him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him
-quite a while to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little
-creature&rsquo;s legs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt the chains
-about him more than just then. When he came home at night, the baby would be
-asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke before Jurgis had to go
-to sleep himself. Then in the morning there was no time to look at him, so
-really the only chance the father had was on Sundays. This was more cruel yet
-for Ona, who ought to have stayed home and nursed him, the doctor said, for her
-own health as well as the baby&rsquo;s; but Ona had to go to work, and leave
-him for Teta Elzbieta to feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at
-the corner grocery. Ona&rsquo;s confinement lost her only a week&rsquo;s
-wages&mdash;she would go to the factory the second Monday, and the best that
-Jurgis could persuade her was to ride in the car, and let him run along behind
-and help her to Brown&rsquo;s when she alighted. After that it would be all
-right, said Ona, it was no strain sitting still sewing hams all day; and if she
-waited longer she might find that her dreadful forelady had put some one else
-in her place. That would be a greater calamity than ever now, Ona continued, on
-account of the baby. They would all have to work harder now on his account. It
-was such a responsibility&mdash;they must not have the baby grow up to suffer
-as they had. And this indeed had been the first thing that Jurgis had thought
-of himself&mdash;he had clenched his hands and braced himself anew for the
-struggle, for the sake of that tiny mite of human possibility.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Ona went back to Brown&rsquo;s and saved her place and a week&rsquo;s
-wages; and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
-group under the title of &ldquo;womb trouble,&rdquo; and was never again a well
-person as long as she lived. It is difficult to convey in words all that this
-meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the punishment was so out of
-all proportion, that neither she nor any one else ever connected the two.
-&ldquo;Womb trouble&rdquo; to Ona did not mean a specialist&rsquo;s diagnosis,
-and a course of treatment, and perhaps an operation or two; it meant simply
-headaches and pains in the back, and depression and heartsickness, and
-neuralgia when she had to go to work in the rain. The great majority of the
-women who worked in Packingtown suffered in the same way, and from the same
-cause, so it was not deemed a thing to see the doctor about; instead Ona would
-try patent medicines, one after another, as her friends told her about them. As
-these all contained alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that they all
-did her good while she took them; and so she was always chasing the phantom of
-good health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
-
-<p>
-During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and Jurgis
-made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the previous
-summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men every week, it
-seemed&mdash;it was a regular system; and this number they would keep over to
-the next slack season, so that every one would have less than ever. Sooner or
-later, by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago trained
-to do their work. And how very cunning a trick was that! The men were to teach
-new hands, who would some day come and break their strike; and meantime they
-were kept so poor that they could not prepare for the trial!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier work for
-any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing more savage all
-the time; they were continually inventing new devices to crowd the work
-on&mdash;it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the mediæval torture
-chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the
-men on with new machinery&mdash;it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the
-speed at which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was
-increased a little every day. In piecework they would reduce the time,
-requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then,
-after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would
-reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had
-done this so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly
-desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two years, and
-a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break any day. Only a
-month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had
-left posted a cut that would divide the girls&rsquo; earnings almost squarely
-in half; and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without
-even a parley, and organized in the street outside. One of the girls had read
-somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so
-they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new
-union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces
-in three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl who
-had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great department
-store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling when
-their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors that one of the
-big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen cents an hour, and
-Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would come soon. He had learned by
-this time that Packingtown was really not a number of firms at all, but one
-great firm, the Beef Trust. And every week the managers of it got together and
-compared notes, and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and
-one standard of efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they
-would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the
-country; but that was something he did not understand or care about.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who congratulated herself,
-somewhat naïvely, that there had been one in her place only a short time before
-she came. Marija was getting to be a skilled beef-trimmer, and was mounting to
-the heights again. During the summer and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her
-back the last penny they owed her, and so she began to have a bank account.
-Tamoszius had a bank account also, and they ran a race, and began to figure
-upon household expenses once more.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities, however, as
-poor Marija found out. She had taken the advice of a friend and invested her
-savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue. Of course she knew nothing about it,
-except that it was big and imposing&mdash;what possible chance has a poor
-foreign working girl to understand the banking business, as it is conducted in
-this land of frenzied finance? So Marija lived in a continual dread lest
-something should happen to her bank, and would go out of her way mornings to
-make sure that it was still there. Her principal thought was of fire, for she
-had deposited her money in bills, and was afraid that if they were burned up
-the bank would not give her any others. Jurgis made fun of her for this, for he
-was a man and was proud of his superior knowledge, telling her that the bank
-had fireproof vaults, and all its millions of dollars hidden safely away in
-them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror and
-dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the avenue solid
-for half a block. All the blood went out of her face for terror. She broke into
-a run, shouting to the people to ask what was the matter, but not stopping to
-hear what they answered, till she had come to where the throng was so dense
-that she could no longer advance. There was a &ldquo;run on the bank,&rdquo;
-they told her then, but she did not know what that was, and turned from one
-person to another, trying in an agony of fear to make out what they meant. Had
-something gone wrong with the bank? Nobody was sure, but they thought so.
-Couldn&rsquo;t she get her money? There was no telling; the people were afraid
-not, and they were all trying to get it. It was too early yet to tell
-anything&mdash;the bank would not open for nearly three hours. So in a frenzy
-of despair Marija began to claw her way toward the doors of this building,
-through a throng of men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was
-a scene of wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and
-fainting, and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way. In the
-midst of the mêlée Marija recollected that she did not have her bankbook, and
-could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out and started on a run
-for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few minutes later the police
-reserves arrived.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
-breathless with running and sick with fear. The crowd was now formed in a line,
-extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen keeping guard, and
-so there was nothing for them to do but to take their places at the end of it.
-At nine o&rsquo;clock the bank opened and began to pay the waiting throng; but
-then, what good did that do Marija, who saw three thousand people before
-her&mdash;enough to take out the last penny of a dozen banks?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them to the skin;
-yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly toward the goal&mdash;all
-the afternoon they stood there, heartsick, seeing that the hour of closing was
-coming, and that they were going to be left out. Marija made up her mind that,
-come what might, she would stay there and keep her place; but as nearly all did
-the same, all through the long, cold night, she got very little closer to the
-bank for that. Toward evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the
-children, and he brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little
-easier.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever, and more
-policemen from downtown. Marija held on like grim death, and toward afternoon
-she got into the bank and got her money&mdash;all in big silver dollars, a
-handkerchief full. When she had once got her hands on them her fear vanished,
-and she wanted to put them back again; but the man at the window was savage,
-and said that the bank would receive no more deposits from those who had taken
-part in the run. So Marija was forced to take her dollars home with her,
-watching to right and left, expecting every instant that some one would try to
-rob her; and when she got home she was not much better off. Until she could
-find another bank there was nothing to do but sew them up in her clothes, and
-so Marija went about for a week or more, loaded down with bullion, and afraid
-to cross the street in front of the house, because Jurgis told her she would
-sink out of sight in the mud. Weighted this way she made her way to the yards,
-again in fear, this time to see if she had lost her place; but fortunately
-about ten per cent of the working people of Packingtown had been depositors in
-that bank, and it was not convenient to discharge that many at once. The cause
-of the panic had been the attempt of a policeman to arrest a drunken man in a
-saloon next door, which had drawn a crowd at the hour the people were on their
-way to work, and so started the &ldquo;run.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account. Besides having paid
-Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture, and could have that
-little sum to count on. So long as each of them could bring home nine or ten
-dollars a week, they were able to get along finely. Also election day came
-round again, and Jurgis made half a week&rsquo;s wages out of that, all net
-profit. It was a very close election that year, and the echoes of the battle
-reached even to Packingtown. The two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set
-off fireworks and made speeches, to try to get the people interested in the
-matter. Although Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by this time
-to realize that it was not supposed to be right to sell your vote. However, as
-every one did it, and his refusal to join would not have made the slightest
-difference in the results, the idea of refusing would have seemed absurd, had
-it ever come into his head.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter was
-coming again. It seemed as if the respite had been too short&mdash;they had not
-had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came, inexorably, and the
-hunted look began to come back into the eyes of little Stanislovas. The
-prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis also, for he knew that Ona was not
-fit to face the cold and the snowdrifts this year. And suppose that some day
-when a blizzard struck them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to
-give up, and should come the next day to find that her place had been given to
-some one who lived nearer and could be depended on?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then the soul
-of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion. There were four days that
-the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days, for the first time in
-his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really opposed. He had faced
-difficulties before, but they had been child&rsquo;s play; now there was a
-death struggle, and all the furies were unchained within him. The first morning
-they set out two hours before dawn, Ona wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon
-his shoulder like a sack of meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of
-sight, hanging by his coat-tails. There was a raging blast beating in his face,
-and the thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his knees,
-and in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits. It would catch his
-feet and try to trip him; it would build itself into a wall before him to beat
-him back; and he would fling himself into it, plunging like a wounded buffalo,
-puffing and snorting in rage. So foot by foot he drove his way, and when at
-last he came to Durham&rsquo;s he was staggering and almost blind, and leaned
-against a pillar, gasping, and thanking God that the cattle came late to the
-killing beds that day. In the evening the same thing had to be done again; and
-because Jurgis could not tell what hour of the night he would get off, he got a
-saloon-keeper to let Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was eleven
-o&rsquo;clock at night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for work
-was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any one. When it was
-over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met the enemy and conquered,
-and felt himself the master of his fate.&mdash;So it might be with some monarch
-of the forest that has vanquished his foes in fair fight, and then falls into
-some cowardly trap in the night-time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose. Sometimes, in
-the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the animals out on the floor
-before it was fully stunned, and it would get upon its feet and run amuck. Then
-there would be a yell of warning&mdash;the men would drop everything and dash
-for the nearest pillar, slipping here and there on the floor, and tumbling over
-each other. This was bad enough in the summer, when a man could see; in
-wintertime it was enough to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so
-full of steam that you could not make anything out five feet in front of you.
-To be sure, the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent
-on hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife, while
-nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the climax, the floor
-boss would come rushing up with a rifle and begin blazing away!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was in one of these mêlées that Jurgis fell into his trap. That is the only
-word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to be foreseen. At
-first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight accident&mdash;simply that in
-leaping out of the way he turned his ankle. There was a twinge of pain, but
-Jurgis was used to pain, and did not coddle himself. When he came to walk home,
-however, he realized that it was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning
-his ankle was swollen out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot
-into his shoe. Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and
-wrapped his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car. It chanced to be
-a rush day at Durham&rsquo;s, and all the long morning he limped about with his
-aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great that it made him faint, and
-after a couple of hours in the afternoon he was fairly beaten, and had to tell
-the boss. They sent for the company doctor, and he examined the foot and told
-Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he had probably laid himself up for
-months by his folly. The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be
-held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor
-was concerned.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an awful
-terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged his injured foot
-with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her dismay; when the rest
-came home at night she met them outside and told them, and they, too, put on a
-cheerful face, saying it would only be for a week or two, and that they would
-pull him through.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen fire and
-talked it over in frightened whispers. They were in for a siege, that was
-plainly to be seen. Jurgis had only about sixty dollars in the bank, and the
-slack season was upon them. Both Jonas and Marija might soon be earning no more
-than enough to pay their board, and besides that there were only the wages of
-Ona and the pittance of the little boy. There was the rent to pay, and still
-some on the furniture; there was the insurance just due, and every month there
-was sack after sack of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have
-to face privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her
-work now? She might lose her place&mdash;she was almost certain to lose it. And
-then little Stanislovas began to whimper&mdash;who would take care of him?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help, should
-have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily food and drink of
-Jurgis. It was of no use for them to try to deceive him; he knew as much about
-the situation as they did, and he knew that the family might literally starve
-to death. The worry of it fairly ate him up&mdash;he began to look haggard the
-first two or three days of it. In truth, it was almost maddening for a strong
-man like him, a fighter, to have to lie there helpless on his back. It was for
-all the world the old story of Prometheus bound. As Jurgis lay on his bed, hour
-after hour there came to him emotions that he had never known before. Before
-this he had met life with a welcome&mdash;it had its trials, but none that a
-man could not face. But now, in the nighttime, when he lay tossing about, there
-would come stalking into his chamber a grisly phantom, the sight of which made
-his flesh curl and his hair to bristle up. It was like seeing the world fall
-away from underneath his feet; like plunging down into a bottomless abyss into
-yawning caverns of despair. It might be true, then, after all, what others had
-told him about life, that the best powers of a man might not be equal to it! It
-might be true that, strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go
-down and be destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart;
-the thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those who
-were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and there would
-be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was true, it was
-true,&mdash;that here in this huge city, with its stores of heaped-up wealth,
-human creatures might be hunted down and destroyed by the wild-beast powers of
-nature, just as truly as ever they were in the days of the cave men!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas about
-thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and Marija, about
-forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent, interest, and installments on
-the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and deducting the coal, they had
-fifty. They did without everything that human beings could do without; they
-went in old and ragged clothing, that left them at the mercy of the cold, and
-when the children&rsquo;s shoes wore out, they tied them up with string. Half
-invalid as she was, Ona would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold
-when she ought to have ridden; they bought literally nothing but food&mdash;and
-still they could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month. They might have done
-it, if only they could have gotten pure food, and at fair prices; or if only
-they had known what to get&mdash;if they had not been so pitifully ignorant!
-But they had come to a new country, where everything was different, including
-the food. They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal of smoked
-sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in America was not the
-same&mdash;that its color was made by chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more
-chemicals, and that it was full of &ldquo;potato flour&rdquo; besides? Potato
-flour is the waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted;
-it has no more food value than so much wood, and as its use as a food
-adulterant is a penal offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are shipped to
-America every year. It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were
-needed every day, by eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was
-simply not enough to feed them, and there was no use trying; and so each week
-they made an inroad upon the pitiful little bank account that Ona had begun.
-Because the account was in her name, it was possible for her to keep this a
-secret from her husband, and to keep the heartsickness of it for her own.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had not been
-able to think. For he had no resources such as most invalids have; all he could
-do was to lie there and toss about from side to side. Now and then he would
-break into cursing, regardless of everything; and now and then his impatience
-would get the better of him, and he would try to get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta
-would have to plead with him in a frenzy. Elzbieta was all alone with him the
-greater part of the time. She would sit and smooth his forehead by the hour,
-and talk to him and try to make him forget. Sometimes it would be too cold for
-the children to go to school, and they would have to play in the kitchen, where
-Jurgis was, because it was the only room that was half warm. These were
-dreadful times, for Jurgis would get as cross as any bear; he was scarcely to
-be blamed, for he had enough to worry him, and it was hard when he was trying
-to take a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish children.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Elzbieta&rsquo;s only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed, it
-would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if it had not been
-for little Antanas. It was the one consolation of Jurgis&rsquo; long
-imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby. Teta Elzbieta would put
-the clothes-basket in which the baby slept alongside of his mattress, and
-Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and watch him by the hour, imagining things.
-Then little Antanas would open his eyes&mdash;he was beginning to take notice
-of things now; and he would smile&mdash;how he would smile! So Jurgis would
-begin to forget and be happy because he was in a world where there was a thing
-so beautiful as the smile of little Antanas, and because such a world could not
-but be good at the heart of it. He looked more like his father every hour,
-Elzbieta would say, and said it many times a day, because she saw that it
-pleased Jurgis; the poor little terror-stricken woman was planning all day and
-all night to soothe the prisoned giant who was intrusted to her care. Jurgis,
-who knew nothing about the age-long and everlasting hypocrisy of woman, would
-take the bait and grin with delight; and then he would hold his finger in front
-of little Antanas&rsquo; eyes, and move it this way and that, and laugh with
-glee to see the baby follow it. There is no pet quite so fascinating as a baby;
-he would look into Jurgis&rsquo; face with such uncanny seriousness, and Jurgis
-would start and cry: &ldquo;<i>Palauk!</i> Look, Muma, he knows his papa! He
-does, he does! <i>Tu mano szirdele</i>, the little rascal!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
-
-<p>
-For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a very
-obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain still continued.
-At the end of that time, however, he could contain himself no longer, and began
-trying to walk a little every day, laboring to persuade himself that he was
-better. No arguments could stop him, and three or four days later he declared
-that he was going back to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown&rsquo;s,
-where he found that the boss had kept his place&mdash;that is, was willing to
-turn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now
-and then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till
-nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that he could
-not go on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do it, and he stood
-leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two of the men had to help
-him to the car, and when he got out he had to sit down and wait in the snow
-till some one came along.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to have
-done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon out of place,
-and could never have gotten well without attention. Then he gripped the sides
-of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and turned white with agony, while the
-doctor pulled and wrenched away at his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor
-left, he told him that he would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if
-he went to work before that time he might lame himself for life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and Marija and
-Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour before daybreak, to
-try to get to the yards. About noon the last two came back, the boy screaming
-with pain. His fingers were all frosted, it seemed. They had had to give up
-trying to get to the yards, and had nearly perished in a drift. All that they
-knew how to do was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little
-Stanislovas spent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis
-flew into a passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he
-would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the family was
-half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places; and in the
-morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little fellow had been beaten
-with a stick by Jurgis. There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was
-a matter of life and death; little Stanislovas could not be expected to realize
-that he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift than lose his job at
-the lard machine. Ona was quite certain that she would find her place gone, and
-was all unnerved when she finally got to Brown&rsquo;s, and found that the
-forelady herself had failed to come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of three of
-the little boy&rsquo;s fingers were permanently disabled, and another that
-thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to work, whenever there
-was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called upon to do the beating, and as
-it hurt his foot he did it with a vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the
-sweetness of his temper. They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be
-kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing
-to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to
-curse everything.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry, Jurgis could
-not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless ghost, with his cheeks
-sunken in and his long black hair straggling into his eyes; he was too
-discouraged to cut it, or to think about his appearance. His muscles were
-wasting away, and what were left were soft and flabby. He had no appetite, and
-they could not afford to tempt him with delicacies. It was better, he said,
-that he should not eat, it was a saving. About the end of March he had got hold
-of Ona&rsquo;s bankbook, and learned that there was only three dollars left to
-them in the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that they lost
-another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night
-he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace of him were
-futile. It was said by the boss at Durham&rsquo;s that he had gotten his
-week&rsquo;s money and left there. That might not be true, of course, for
-sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest
-way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one
-of the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless
-fertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making his family
-unhappy. More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had deserted them,
-and gone on the road, seeking happiness. He had been discontented for a long
-time, and not without some cause. He paid good board, and was yet obliged to
-live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And Marija would keep giving
-them all her money, and of course he could not but feel that he was called upon
-to do the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sorts of misery; a man
-would have had to be a good deal of a hero to stand it all without grumbling,
-and Jonas was not in the least a hero&mdash;he was simply a weatherbeaten old
-fellow who liked to have a good supper and sit in the corner by the fire and
-smoke his pipe in peace before he went to bed. Here there was not room by the
-fire, and through the winter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for
-comfort. So, with the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea
-of escaping had come to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horse to a
-half-ton truck in Durham&rsquo;s dark cellars, with never a rest, save on
-Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word of
-thanks&mdash;only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog would have
-stood. And now the winter was over, and the spring winds were blowing&mdash;and
-with a day&rsquo;s walk a man might put the smoke of Packingtown behind him
-forever, and be where the grass was green and the flowers all the colors of the
-rainbow!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and the food
-demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off than ever. Also
-they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up her bank account, and
-spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and happiness. And they were even
-going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika and letting him impoverish himself. Poor
-Tamoszius was a man without any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides,
-and he ought to have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love, and
-so given hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to leave
-school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a girl, little
-Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys, Vilimas, who was eleven,
-and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last were bright boys, and there was
-no reason why their family should starve when tens of thousands of children no
-older were earning their own livings. So one morning they were given a quarter
-apiece and a roll with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy with
-good advice, were sent out to make their way to the city and learn to sell
-newspapers. They came back late at night in tears, having walked for the five
-or six miles to report that a man had offered to take them to a place where
-they sold newspapers, and had taken their money and gone into a store to get
-them, and nevermore been seen. So they both received a whipping, and the next
-morning set out again. This time they found the newspaper place, and procured
-their stock; and after wandering about till nearly noontime, saying
-&ldquo;Paper?&rdquo; to every one they saw, they had all their stock taken away
-and received a thrashing besides from a big newsman upon whose territory they
-had trespassed. Fortunately, however, they had already sold some papers, and
-came back with nearly as much as they started with.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to learn
-the ways of the trade&mdash;the names of the different papers, and how many of
-each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to, and where to go and
-where to stay away from. After this, leaving home at four o&rsquo;clock in the
-morning, and running about the streets, first with morning papers and then with
-evening, they might come home late at night with twenty or thirty cents
-apiece&mdash;possibly as much as forty cents. From this they had to deduct
-their carfare, since the distance was so great; but after a while they made
-friends, and learned still more, and then they would save their carfare. They
-would get on a car when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd;
-and three times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing
-them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask, they would hunt
-through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either have their fares paid
-by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on a new car. All this was
-fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that at the hours when workingmen were
-going to their work and back, the cars were so crowded that the conductors
-could not collect all the fares? And besides, the companies were thieves,
-people said&mdash;had stolen all their franchises with the help of scoundrelly
-politicians!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and no more
-coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children into when they
-cried, and enough money to get along from week to week with, Jurgis was less
-terrible than he had been. A man can get used to anything in the course of
-time, and Jurgis had gotten used to lying about the house. Ona saw this, and
-was very careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him know how very
-much pain she was suffering. It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona
-had often to ride to her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler
-every day, and sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained her that
-Jurgis did not notice it. She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if
-all this misery was not wearing out his love. She had to be away from him all
-the time, and bear her own troubles while he was bearing his; and then, when
-she came home, she was so worn out; and whenever they talked they had only
-their worries to talk of&mdash;truly it was hard, in such a life, to keep any
-sentiment alive. The woe of this would flame up in Ona sometimes&mdash;at night
-she would suddenly clasp her big husband in her arms and break into passionate
-weeping, demanding to know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in
-truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would
-not know what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he
-had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob herself to
-sleep.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a bandage
-to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to work. It needed more
-than the permission of the doctor, however, for when he showed up on the
-killing floor of Brown&rsquo;s, he was told by the foreman that it had not been
-possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis knew that this meant simply that the
-foreman had found some one else to do the work as well and did not want to
-bother to make a change. He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing
-his friends and companions at work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went
-out and took his place with the mob of the unemployed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor the same
-reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the throng, and the
-bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard, and his clothes were
-seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were hundreds who looked and felt
-just like him, and who had been wandering about Packingtown for months begging
-for work. This was a critical time in Jurgis&rsquo; life, and if he had been a
-weaker man he would have gone the way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches
-would stand about the packing houses every morning till the police drove them
-away, and then they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the
-nerve to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
-buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the morning,
-there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and
-night. Jurgis was saved from all this&mdash;partly, to be sure, because it was
-pleasant weather, and there was no need to be indoors; but mainly because he
-carried with him always the pitiful little face of his wife. He must get work,
-he told himself, fighting the battle with despair every hour of the day. He
-must get work! He must have a place again and some money saved up, before the
-next winter came.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his
-union&mdash;Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this&mdash;and begged
-them to speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a
-chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings; and in a
-week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into every room to which
-he had access, and learned that there was not a job anywhere, he persuaded
-himself that there might have been a change in the places he had first visited,
-and began the round all over; till finally the watchmen and the
-&ldquo;spotters&rdquo; of the companies came to know him by sight and to order
-him out with threats. Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the
-crowd in the morning, and keep in the front row and look eager, and when he
-failed, go back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning
-of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job
-the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and
-they did not want him. They had got the best of him&mdash;they had worn him
-out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him
-away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men
-and find that they had all had the same experience. There were some, of course,
-who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills;
-there were others who were out from their own fault&mdash;some, for instance,
-who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast
-majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless
-packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of them
-for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could not
-keep up with it any more. Some had been frankly told that they were too old,
-that a sprier man was needed; others had given occasion, by some act of
-carelessness or incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been the
-same as with Jurgis. They had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally
-some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had
-blood poisoning, or met with some other accident. When a man came back after
-that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss. To this
-there was no exception, save when the accident was one for which the firm was
-liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try
-to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was too smart for that, to
-promise him that he and his should always be provided with work. This promise
-they would keep, strictly and to the letter&mdash;for two years. Two years was
-the &ldquo;statute of limitations,&rdquo; and after that the victim could not
-sue.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the
-circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would probably have
-enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men, the
-&ldquo;splitters,&rdquo; made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six
-dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A man could
-live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen splitters in each
-place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family of twenty-two children,
-all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their father. For an unskilled man,
-who made ten dollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the dull, it all
-depended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried
-man could save, if he did not drink, and if he was absolutely
-selfish&mdash;that is, if he paid no heed to the demands of his old parents, or
-of his little brothers and sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as
-well as of the members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be
-starving to death next door.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
-
-<p>
-During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little
-Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both Kristoforas and his
-brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having lost one leg by having it
-run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dislocation of the hip, which made
-it impossible for him ever to walk. He was the last of Teta Elzbieta&rsquo;s
-children, and perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know that she
-had had enough. At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the
-rickets, and though he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an
-ordinary child of one. All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy
-little dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was
-always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran. This made him a
-nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family. For his mother, with
-unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children, and made a perpetual
-fuss over him&mdash;would let him do anything undisturbed, and would burst into
-tears when his fretting drove Jurgis wild.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that
-morning&mdash;which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork that
-was condemned as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after eating it, the
-child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he was rolling about on
-the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out
-screaming for help, and after a while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas
-had howled his last howl. No one was really sorry about this except poor
-Elzbieta, who was inconsolable. Jurgis announced that so far as he was
-concerned the child would have to be buried by the city, since they had no
-money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost went out of her senses,
-wringing her hands and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried
-in a pauper&rsquo;s grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by and hear it said
-without protesting! It was enough to make Ona&rsquo;s father rise up out of his
-grave to rebuke her! If it had come to this, they might as well give up at
-once, and be buried all of them together! . . . In the end Marija said that she
-would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis being still obdurate, Elzbieta went in
-tears and begged the money from the neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a
-mass and a hearse with white plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with
-a wooden cross to mark the place. The poor mother was not the same for months
-after that; the mere sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled
-about would make her weep. He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow,
-she would say. He had been handicapped from his birth. If only she had heard
-about it in time, so that she might have had that great doctor to cure him of
-his lameness! . . . Some time ago, Elzbieta was told, a Chicago billionaire had
-paid a fortune to bring a great European surgeon over to cure his little
-daughter of the same disease from which Kristoforas had suffered. And because
-this surgeon had to have bodies to demonstrate upon, he announced that he would
-treat the children of the poor, a piece of magnanimity over which the papers
-became quite eloquent. Elzbieta, alas, did not read the papers, and no one had
-told her; but perhaps it was as well, for just then they would not have had the
-carfare to spare to go every day to wait upon the surgeon, nor for that matter
-anybody with the time to take the child.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow hanging
-over Jurgis; as if a savage beast were lurking somewhere in the pathway of his
-life, and he knew it, and yet could not help approaching the place. There are
-all stages of being out of work in Packingtown, and he faced in dread the
-prospect of reaching the lowest. There is a place that waits for the lowest
-man&mdash;the fertilizer plant!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers. Not more than one in ten
-had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented themselves with hearsay
-evidence and a peep through the door. There were some things worse than even
-starving to death. They would ask Jurgis if he had worked there yet, and if he
-meant to; and Jurgis would debate the matter with himself. As poor as they
-were, and making all the sacrifices that they were, would he dare to refuse any
-sort of work that was offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could? Would
-he dare to go home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona, weak and
-complaining as she was, knowing that he had been given a chance, and had not
-had the nerve to take it?&mdash;And yet he might argue that way with himself
-all day, and one glimpse into the fertilizer works would send him away again
-shuddering. He was a man, and he would do his duty; he went and made
-application&mdash;but surely he was not also required to hope for success!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The fertilizer works of Durham&rsquo;s lay away from the rest of the plant. Few
-visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking like Dante,
-of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell. To this part of the
-yards came all the &ldquo;tankage&rdquo; and the waste products of all sorts;
-here they dried out the bones,&mdash;and in suffocating cellars where the
-daylight never came you might see men and women and children bending over
-whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing
-their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die, every one of them, within
-a certain definite time. Here they made the blood into albumen, and made other
-foul-smelling things into things still more foul-smelling. In the corridors and
-caverns where it was done you might lose yourself as in the great caves of
-Kentucky. In the dust and the steam the electric lights would shine like
-far-off twinkling stars&mdash;red and blue-green and purple stars, according to
-the color of the mist and the brew from which it came. For the odors of these
-ghastly charnel houses there may be words in Lithuanian, but there are none in
-English. The person entering would have to summon his courage as for a
-cold-water plunge. He would go in like a man swimming under water; he would put
-his handkerchief over his face, and begin to cough and choke; and then, if he
-were still obstinate, he would find his head beginning to ring, and the veins
-in his forehead to throb, until finally he would be assailed by an overpowering
-blast of ammonia fumes, and would turn and run for his life, and come out
-half-dazed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-On top of this were the rooms where they dried the &ldquo;tankage,&rdquo; the
-mass of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the
-carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried material
-they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had mixed it up well
-with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they brought in and ground
-up by the hundreds of carloads for that purpose, the substance was ready to be
-put into bags and sent out to the world as any one of a hundred different
-brands of standard bone phosphate. And then the farmer in Maine or California
-or Texas would buy this, at say twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with
-his corn; and for several days after the operation the fields would have a
-strong odor, and the farmer and his wagon and the very horses that had hauled
-it would all have it too. In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of
-being a flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on several acres under
-the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of tons of it in one building,
-heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor several inches
-deep, and filling the air with a choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm
-when the wind stirs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an unseen
-hand. The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and his secret prayers
-were granted; but early in June there came a record-breaking hot spell, and
-after that there were men wanted in the fertilizer mill.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and had
-marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about two
-o&rsquo;clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm of pain shoot
-through him&mdash;the boss beckoned to him! In ten minutes more Jurgis had
-pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth together and gone to work.
-Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of the vents
-of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground&mdash;rushing forth in a
-great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung forth in clouds.
-Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen others it was his task
-to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others were at work he knew by the
-sound, and by the fact that he sometimes collided with them; otherwise they
-might as well not have been there, for in the blinding dust storm a man could
-not see six feet in front of his face. When he had filled one cart he had to
-grope around him until another came, and if there was none on hand he continued
-to grope till one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of
-fertilizer from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so
-that he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids from
-caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like a brown ghost
-at twilight&mdash;from hair to shoes he became the color of the building and of
-everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards outside it. The building
-had to be left open, and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a great
-deal of fertilizer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a hundred, the
-phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis&rsquo; skin, and in five
-minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed. The blood was
-pounding in his brain like an engine&rsquo;s throbbing; there was a frightful
-pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly control his hands. Still,
-with the memory of his four months&rsquo; siege behind him, he fought on, in a
-frenzy of determination; and half an hour later he began to vomit&mdash;he
-vomited until it seemed as if his inwards must be torn into shreds. A man could
-get used to the fertilizer mill, the boss had said, if he would make up his
-mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was a question of making up his
-stomach.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to catch
-himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his bearings. Most of
-the men, when they came out, made straight for a saloon&mdash;they seemed to
-place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one class. But Jurgis was too ill to
-think of drinking&mdash;he could only make his way to the street and stagger on
-to a car. He had a sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he
-used to think it fun to board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however,
-he was too ill to notice it&mdash;how the people in the car began to gasp and
-sputter, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with
-furious glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up
-and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each side
-of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly
-empty&mdash;those passengers who could not get room on the platform having
-gotten out to walk.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute after
-entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin&mdash;his whole system
-was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of scrubbing, but of
-vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he could be compared with
-nothing known to men, save that newest discovery of the savants, a substance
-which emits energy for an unlimited time, without being itself in the least
-diminished in power. He smelled so that he made all the food at the table
-taste, and set the whole family to vomiting; for himself it was three days
-before he could keep anything upon his stomach&mdash;he might wash his hands,
-and use a knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled with the
-poison?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would stagger
-down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to shovel in the
-blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer man
-for life&mdash;he was able to eat again, and though his head never stopped
-aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over the
-country, and the country ate generously of packing house products, and there
-was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the packers&rsquo; efforts
-to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to pay their debts and to
-begin to save a little sum; but there were one or two sacrifices they
-considered too heavy to be made for long&mdash;it was too bad that the boys
-should have to sell papers at their age. It was utterly useless to caution them
-and plead with them; quite without knowing it, they were taking on the tone of
-their new environment. They were learning to swear in voluble English; they
-were learning to pick up cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their
-time gambling with pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the
-location of all the houses of prostitution on the &ldquo;Lêvée,&rdquo; and the
-names of the &ldquo;madames&rdquo; who kept them, and the days when they gave
-their state banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
-attended. If a visiting &ldquo;country customer&rdquo; were to ask them, they
-could show him which was &ldquo;Hinkydink&rsquo;s&rdquo; famous saloon, and
-could even point out to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and
-&ldquo;hold-up men&rdquo; who made the place their headquarters. And worse yet,
-the boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the
-use, they would ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding
-out to the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could
-crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well? So long
-as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered it when they
-brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing to come at all would
-not be a very long step, and so it was decided that Vilimas and Nikalojus
-should return to school in the fall, and that instead Elzbieta should go out
-and get some work, her place at home being taken by her younger daughter.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old; she
-had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also of the
-baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean house, and have
-supper ready when the workers came home in the evening. She was only thirteen,
-and small for her age, but she did all this without a murmur; and her mother
-went out, and after trudging a couple of days about the yards, settled down as
-a servant of a &ldquo;sausage machine.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for the
-reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven o&rsquo;clock
-in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till half-past five.
-For the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand it&mdash;she
-suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the fertilizer, and would come out
-at sundown with her head fairly reeling. Besides this, she was working in one
-of the dark holes, by electric light, and the dampness, too, was
-deadly&mdash;there were always puddles of water on the floor, and a sickening
-odor of moist flesh in the room. The people who worked here followed the
-ancient custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in
-the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he
-lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women
-who worked in this department were precisely the color of the &ldquo;fresh
-country sausage&rdquo; they made.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three minutes,
-and provided that you did not look at the people; the machines were perhaps the
-most wonderful things in the entire plant. Presumably sausages were once
-chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would be interesting to know how many
-workers had been displaced by these inventions. On one side of the room were
-the hoppers, into which men shoveled loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of
-spices; in these great bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand
-revolutions a minute, and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated with
-potato flour, and well mixed with water, it was forced to the stuffing machines
-on the other side of the room. The latter were tended by women; there was a
-sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose, and one of the women would take a
-long string of &ldquo;casing&rdquo; and put the end over the nozzle and then
-work the whole thing on, as one works on the finger of a tight glove. This
-string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would have it all on
-in a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press a lever, and a stream
-of sausage meat would be shot out, taking the casing with it as it came. Thus
-one might stand and see appear, miraculously born from the machine, a wriggling
-snake of sausage of incredible length. In front was a big pan which caught
-these creatures, and two more women who seized them as fast as they appeared
-and twisted them into links. This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing
-work of all; for all that the woman had to give was a single turn of the wrist;
-and in some way she contrived to give it so that instead of an endless chain of
-sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands a bunch of strings, all
-dangling from a single center. It was quite like the feat of a
-prestidigitator&mdash;for the woman worked so fast that the eye could literally
-not follow her, and there was only a mist of motion, and tangle after tangle of
-sausages appearing. In the midst of the mist, however, the visitor would
-suddenly notice the tense set face, with the two wrinkles graven in the
-forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the cheeks; and then he would suddenly
-recollect that it was time he was going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed
-right there&mdash;hour after hour, day after day, year after year, twisting
-sausage links and racing with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have
-a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it
-that she could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon
-her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and
-gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
-
-<p>
-With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage
-factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of
-Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was
-so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or
-else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had
-worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat
-industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old
-Packingtown jest&mdash;that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would often be
-found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and
-sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of
-chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted,
-whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the
-pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and
-increased the capacity of the plant&mdash;a machine consisting of a hollow
-needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working
-with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in
-spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so
-bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump into
-these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the
-odor&mdash;a process known to the workers as &ldquo;giving them thirty per
-cent.&rdquo; Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some
-that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as &ldquo;Number Three
-Grade,&rdquo; but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and
-now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and
-insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer
-Number One, Two, and Three Grade&mdash;there was only Number One Grade. The
-packers were always originating such schemes&mdash;they had what they called
-&ldquo;boneless hams,&rdquo; which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed
-into casings; and &ldquo;California hams,&rdquo; which were the shoulders, with
-big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy &ldquo;skinned
-hams,&rdquo; which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and
-coarse that no one would buy them&mdash;that is, until they had been cooked and
-chopped fine and labeled &ldquo;head cheese!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of
-Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed
-with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any
-difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for
-sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had
-been rejected, and that was moldy and white&mdash;it would be dosed with borax
-and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home
-consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt
-and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of
-consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the
-water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race
-about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man
-could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried
-dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned
-bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go
-into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would
-be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to
-lift out a rat even when he saw one&mdash;there were things that went into the
-sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no
-place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they
-made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
-sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned
-beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be
-dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid
-economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to
-do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste
-barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust
-and old nails and stale water&mdash;and cartload after cartload of it would be
-taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the
-public&rsquo;s breakfast. Some of it they would make into &ldquo;smoked&rdquo;
-sausage&mdash;but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they
-would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and
-color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the
-same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it
-&ldquo;special,&rdquo; and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was the
-work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her
-no time to think, no strength for anything. She was part of the machine she
-tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be
-crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about the cruel
-grind&mdash;that it gave her the gift of insensibility. Little by little she
-sank into a torpor&mdash;she fell silent. She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the
-evening, and the three would walk home together, often without saying a word.
-Ona, too, was falling into a habit of silence&mdash;Ona, who had once gone
-about singing like a bird. She was sick and miserable, and often she would
-barely have strength enough to drag herself home. And there they would eat what
-they had to eat, and afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of,
-they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it was
-time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines.
-They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only
-the children continued to fret when the food ran short.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet the soul of Ona was not dead&mdash;the souls of none of them were dead, but
-only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times.
-The gates of memory would roll open&mdash;old joys would stretch out their arms
-to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath
-the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They
-could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful
-than the agony of death. It was a thing scarcely to be spoken&mdash;a thing
-never spoken by all the world, that will not know its own defeat.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was not
-less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with wages and
-grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about
-them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child grow up to
-be strong. And now it was all gone&mdash;it would never be! They had played the
-game and they had lost. Six years more of toil they had to face before they
-could expect the least respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house;
-and how cruelly certain it was that they could never stand six years of such a
-life as they were living! They were lost, they were going down&mdash;and there
-was no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it gave them the vast
-city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a wilderness, a
-desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the nighttime, when
-something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the beating of her own heart,
-fronting the blood-red eyes of the old primeval terror of life. Once she cried
-aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross. After that she learned to weep
-silently&mdash;their moods so seldom came together now! It was as if their
-hopes were buried in separate graves.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter
-following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one else to
-speak of it&mdash;he had never acknowledged its existence to himself. Yet the
-battle with it took all the manhood that he had&mdash;and once or twice, alas,
-a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
-week&mdash;until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work
-without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day and
-night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went down the
-street. And from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a
-deliverance&mdash;he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off
-the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his
-thoughts, of his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find
-himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions&mdash;he would be a man
-again, and master of his life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three drinks. With
-the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself that that
-was economy; with the second he could eat another meal&mdash;but there would
-come a time when he could eat no more, and then to pay for a drink was an
-unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the age-long instincts of his
-hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he took the plunge, and drank up all
-that he had in his pockets, and went home half &ldquo;piped,&rdquo; as the men
-phrase it. He was happier than he had been in a year; and yet, because he knew
-that the happiness would not last, he was savage, too with those who would
-wreck it, and with the world, and with his life; and then again, beneath this,
-he was sick with the shame of himself. Afterward, when he saw the despair of
-his family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came into his
-eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one. But Jurgis did not
-realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for reflection. He simply
-knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in misery and despair as he was,
-merely to walk down the street was to be put upon the rack. There was surely a
-saloon on the corner&mdash;perhaps on all four corners, and some in the middle
-of the block as well; and each one stretched out a hand to him each one had a
-personality of its own, allurements unlike any other. Going and
-coming&mdash;before sunrise and after dark&mdash;there was warmth and a glow of
-light, and the steam of hot food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a
-word of good cheer. Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm
-whenever he went out on the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk
-fast. It was pitiful to have Ona know of this&mdash;it drove him wild to think
-of it; the thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not
-understand. Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing that
-she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her presence.
-They might drink together, and escape from the horror&mdash;escape for a while,
-come what would.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis consisted of
-a struggle with the craving for liquor. He would have ugly moods, when he hated
-Ona and the whole family, because they stood in his way. He was a fool to have
-married; he had tied himself down, had made himself a slave. It was all because
-he was a married man that he was compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not
-been for that he might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers.
-There were few single men in the fertilizer mill&mdash;and those few were
-working only for a chance to escape. Meantime, too, they had something to think
-about while they worked,&mdash;they had the memory of the last time they had
-been drunk, and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again. As for
-Jurgis, he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with
-the men at noontime&mdash;he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a
-pile of fertilizer dust.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family. But just
-now was a time of trial. Poor little Antanas, for instance&mdash;who had never
-failed to win him with a smile&mdash;little Antanas was not smiling just now,
-being a mass of fiery red pimples. He had had all the diseases that babies are
-heir to, in quick succession, scarlet fever, mumps, and whooping cough in the
-first year, and now he was down with the measles. There was no one to attend
-him but Kotrina; there was no doctor to help him, because they were too poor,
-and children did not die of the measles&mdash;at least not often. Now and then
-Kotrina would find time to sob over his woes, but for the greater part of the
-time he had to be left alone, barricaded upon the bed. The floor was full of
-drafts, and if he caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down, lest he
-should kick the covers off him, while the family lay in their stupor of
-exhaustion. He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then,
-when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment. He
-was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he
-was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a
-great purple lump of misery.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was, little
-Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family. He was quite able to
-bear his sufferings&mdash;it was as if he had all these complaints to show what
-a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of his parents&rsquo; youth and
-joy; he grew up like the conjurer&rsquo;s rosebush, and all the world was his
-oyster. In general, he toddled around the kitchen all day with a lean and
-hungry look&mdash;the portion of the family&rsquo;s allowance that fell to him
-was not enough, and he was unrestrainable in his demand for more. Antanas was
-but little over a year old, and already no one but his father could manage him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother&rsquo;s strength&mdash;had left
-nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again now, and
-it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and despairing as he
-was, could not but understand that yet other agonies were on the way, and
-shudder at the thought of them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was developing a
-cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She had had a trace of it
-ever since that fatal morning when the greedy streetcar corporation had turned
-her out into the rain; but now it was beginning to grow serious, and to wake
-her up at night. Even worse than that was the fearful nervousness from which
-she suffered; she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping;
-and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would
-fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was
-quite beside herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with
-fright. Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman
-was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to be
-persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had happened. She had never
-been like this before, he would argue&mdash;it was monstrous and unthinkable.
-It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had to do, that was
-killing her by inches. She was not fitted for it&mdash;no woman was fitted for
-it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work; if the world could not keep
-them alive any other way it ought to kill them at once and be done with it.
-They ought not to marry, to have children; no workingman ought to
-marry&mdash;if he, Jurgis, had known what a woman was like, he would have had
-his eyes torn out first. So he would carry on, becoming half hysterical
-himself, which was an unbearable thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull
-herself together and fling herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be
-still, that she would be better, it would be all right. So she would lie and
-sob out her grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless as a
-wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
-
-<p>
-The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each time Ona
-would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not happen
-again&mdash;but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more
-frightened, more disposed to distrust Elzbieta&rsquo;s consolations, and to
-believe that there was some terrible thing about all this that he was not
-allowed to know. Once or twice in these outbreaks he caught Ona&rsquo;s eye,
-and it seemed to him like the eye of a hunted animal; there were broken phrases
-of anguish and despair now and then, amid her frantic weeping. It was only
-because he was so numb and beaten himself that Jurgis did not worry more about
-this. But he never thought of it, except when he was dragged to it&mdash;he
-lived like a dumb beast of burden, knowing only the moment in which he was.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever. It was
-October, and the holiday rush had begun. It was necessary for the packing
-machines to grind till late at night to provide food that would be eaten at
-Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta and Ona, as part of the machine,
-began working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. There was no choice about
-this&mdash;whatever work there was to be done they had to do, if they wished to
-keep their places; besides that, it added another pittance to their incomes. So
-they staggered on with the awful load. They would start work every morning at
-seven, and eat their dinners at noon, and then work until ten or eleven at
-night without another mouthful of food. Jurgis wanted to wait for them, to help
-them home at night, but they would not think of this; the fertilizer mill was
-not running overtime, and there was no place for him to wait save in a saloon.
-Each would stagger out into the darkness, and make her way to the corner, where
-they met; or if the others had already gone, would get into a car, and begin a
-painful struggle to keep awake. When they got home they were always too tired
-either to eat or to undress; they would crawl into bed with their shoes on, and
-lie like logs. If they should fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held
-out, they might have enough coal for the winter.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm. It began in the
-afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen. Jurgis tried to wait for the
-women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took two drinks, and came out
-and ran home to escape from the demon; there he lay down to wait for them, and
-instantly fell asleep. When he opened his eyes again he was in the midst of a
-nightmare, and found Elzbieta shaking him and crying out. At first he could not
-realize what she was saying&mdash;Ona had not come home. What time was it, he
-asked. It was morning&mdash;time to be up. Ona had not been home that night!
-And it was bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis sat up with a start. Marija was crying with fright and the children were
-wailing in sympathy&mdash;little Stanislovas in addition, because the terror of
-the snow was upon him. Jurgis had nothing to put on but his shoes and his coat,
-and in half a minute he was out of the door. Then, however, he realized that
-there was no need of haste, that he had no idea where to go. It was still dark
-as midnight, and the thick snowflakes were sifting down&mdash;everything was so
-silent that he could hear the rustle of them as they fell. In the few seconds
-that he stood there hesitating he was covered white.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in the
-saloons that were open. Ona might have been overcome on the way; or else she
-might have met with an accident in the machines. When he got to the place where
-she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen&mdash;there had not been any
-accident, so far as the man had heard. At the time office, which he found
-already open, the clerk told him that Ona&rsquo;s check had been turned in the
-night before, showing that she had left her work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and forth in
-the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing. Already the yards were full of
-activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in the distance, and across
-the way the &ldquo;beef-luggers&rdquo; were toiling in the darkness, carrying
-two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the refrigerator cars. Before the
-first streaks of daylight there came the crowding throngs of workingmen,
-shivering, and swinging their dinner pails as they hurried by. Jurgis took up
-his stand by the time-office window, where alone there was light enough for him
-to see; the snow fell so quick that it was only by peering closely that he
-could make sure that Ona did not pass him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Seven o&rsquo;clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to
-move. Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill; but
-instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona. It was fifteen minutes
-after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow mist, and sprang toward
-it with a cry. It was she, running swiftly; as she saw him, she staggered
-forward, and half fell into his outstretched arms.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What has been the matter?&rdquo; he cried, anxiously. &ldquo;Where have
-you been?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was several seconds before she could get breath to answer him. &ldquo;I
-couldn&rsquo;t get home,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;The snow&mdash;the cars
-had stopped.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But where were you then?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I had to go home with a friend,&rdquo; she panted&mdash;&ldquo;with
-Jadvyga.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing and
-trembling&mdash;as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so.
-&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;What has
-happened?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!&rdquo; she said, clinging to him
-wildly. &ldquo;I have been so worried!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were near the time station window, and people were staring at them. Jurgis
-led her away. &ldquo;How do you mean?&rdquo; he asked, in perplexity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I was afraid&mdash;I was just afraid!&rdquo; sobbed Ona. &ldquo;I knew
-you wouldn&rsquo;t know where I was, and I didn&rsquo;t know what you might do.
-I tried to get home, but I was so tired. Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was so glad to get her back that he could not think clearly about anything
-else. It did not seem strange to him that she should be so very much upset; all
-her fright and incoherent protestations did not matter since he had her back.
-He let her cry away her tears; and then, because it was nearly eight
-o&rsquo;clock, and they would lose another hour if they delayed, he left her at
-the packing house door, with her ghastly white face and her haunted eyes of
-terror.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was another brief interval. Christmas was almost come; and because the
-snow still held, and the searching cold, morning after morning Jurgis half
-carried his wife to her post, staggering with her through the darkness; until
-at last, one night, came the end.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It lacked but three days of the holidays. About midnight Marija and Elzbieta
-came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found that Ona had not come. The two
-had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting, had gone to the room where she
-worked; only to find that the ham-wrapping girls had quit work an hour before,
-and left. There was no snow that night, nor was it especially cold; and still
-Ona had not come! Something more serious must be wrong this time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story. She must
-have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived only two blocks from
-the yards, and perhaps she had been tired. Nothing could have happened to
-her&mdash;and even if there had, there was nothing could be done about it until
-morning. Jurgis turned over in his bed, and was snoring again before the two
-had closed the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the morning, however, he was up and out nearly an hour before the usual
-time. Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards, beyond Halsted
-Street, with her mother and sisters, in a single basement room&mdash;for
-Mikolas had recently lost one hand from blood poisoning, and their marriage had
-been put off forever. The door of the room was in the rear, reached by a narrow
-court, and Jurgis saw a light in the window and heard something frying as he
-passed; he knocked, half expecting that Ona would answer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Instead there was one of Jadvyga&rsquo;s little sisters, who gazed at him
-through a crack in the door. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s Ona?&rdquo; he demanded; and
-the child looked at him in perplexity. &ldquo;Ona?&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t she here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the child, and Jurgis gave a start. A moment later came
-Jadvyga, peering over the child&rsquo;s head. When she saw who it was, she slid
-around out of sight, for she was not quite dressed. Jurgis must excuse her, she
-began, her mother was very ill&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ona isn&rsquo;t here?&rdquo; Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for
-her to finish.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why, no,&rdquo; said Jadvyga. &ldquo;What made you think she would be
-here? Had she said she was coming?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;But she hasn&rsquo;t come home&mdash;and
-I thought she would be here the same as before.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;As before?&rdquo; echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The time she spent the night here,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;There must be some mistake,&rdquo; she answered, quickly. &ldquo;Ona has
-never spent the night here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was only half able to realize the words. &ldquo;Why&mdash;why&mdash;&rdquo;
-he exclaimed. &ldquo;Two weeks ago. Jadvyga! She told me so the night it
-snowed, and she could not get home.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;There must be some mistake,&rdquo; declared the girl, again; &ldquo;she
-didn&rsquo;t come here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He steadied himself by the door-sill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety&mdash;for she
-was fond of Ona&mdash;opened the door wide, holding her jacket across her
-throat. &ldquo;Are you sure you didn&rsquo;t misunderstand her?&rdquo; she
-cried. &ldquo;She must have meant somewhere else. She&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;She said here,&rdquo; insisted Jurgis. &ldquo;She told me all about you,
-and how you were, and what you said. Are you sure? You haven&rsquo;t forgotten?
-You weren&rsquo;t away?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed&mdash;and then came a peevish
-voice&mdash;&ldquo;Jadvyga, you are giving the baby a cold. Shut the
-door!&rdquo; Jurgis stood for half a minute more, stammering his perplexity
-through an eighth of an inch of crack; and then, as there was really nothing
-more to be said, he excused himself and went away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went. Ona had deceived him!
-She had lied to him! And what could it mean&mdash;where had she been? Where was
-she now? He could hardly grasp the thing&mdash;much less try to solve it; but a
-hundred wild surmises came to him, a sense of impending calamity overwhelmed
-him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office to watch
-again. He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then went to the room
-where Ona worked to make inquiries of Ona&rsquo;s &ldquo;forelady.&rdquo; The
-&ldquo;forelady,&rdquo; he found, had not yet come; all the lines of cars that
-came from downtown were stalled&mdash;there had been an accident in the
-powerhouse, and no cars had been running since last night. Meantime, however,
-the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one else in charge of them. The
-girl who answered Jurgis was busy, and as she talked she looked to see if she
-were being watched. Then a man came up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for
-Ona&rsquo;s husband, and was curious about the mystery.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Maybe the cars had something to do with it,&rdquo; he
-suggested&mdash;&ldquo;maybe she had gone down-town.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;she never went down-town.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; said the man. Jurgis thought he saw him exchange a
-swift glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly. &ldquo;What do
-you know about it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on again,
-pushing his truck. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about it,&rdquo; he said,
-over his shoulder. &ldquo;How should I know where your wife goes?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and down before the building. All the
-morning he stayed there, with no thought of his work. About noon he went to the
-police station to make inquiries, and then came back again for another anxious
-vigil. Finally, toward the middle of the afternoon, he set out for home once
-more.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running again, and
-several passed him, packed to the steps with people. The sight of them set
-Jurgis to thinking again of the man&rsquo;s sarcastic remark; and half
-involuntarily he found himself watching the cars&mdash;with the result that he
-gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped short in his tracks.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car, only a
-little ways behind. That rusty black hat with the drooping red flower, it might
-not be Ona&rsquo;s, but there was very little likelihood of it. He would know
-for certain very soon, for she would get out two blocks ahead. He slowed down,
-and let the car go on.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street Jurgis
-broke into a run. Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was not ashamed to
-shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home, and then he ran again,
-and saw her as she went up the porch steps of the house. After that he turned
-back, and for five minutes paced up and down, his hands clenched tightly and
-his lips set, his mind in a turmoil. Then he went home and entered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for Ona, and
-had come home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger on her lips.
-Jurgis waited until she was close to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make any noise,&rdquo; she whispered, hurriedly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter&rsquo;?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Ona is
-asleep,&rdquo; she panted. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s been very ill. I&rsquo;m afraid
-her mind&rsquo;s been wandering, Jurgis. She was lost on the street all night,
-and I&rsquo;ve only just succeeded in getting her quiet.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When did she come in?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Soon after you left this morning,&rdquo; said Elzbieta.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And has she been out since?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, of course not. She&rsquo;s so weak, Jurgis, she&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And he set his teeth hard together. &ldquo;You are lying to me,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Elzbieta started, and turned pale. &ldquo;Why!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;What
-do you mean?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the bedroom door
-and opened it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ona was sitting on the bed. She turned a startled look upon him as he entered.
-He closed the door in Elzbieta&rsquo;s face, and went toward his wife.
-&ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her face was as
-white as paper, and drawn with pain. She gasped once or twice as she tried to
-answer him, and then began, speaking low, and swiftly. &ldquo;Jurgis, I&mdash;I
-think I have been out of my mind. I started to come last night, and I could not
-find the way. I walked&mdash;I walked all night, I think, and&mdash;and I only
-got home&mdash;this morning.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You needed a rest,&rdquo; he said, in a hard tone. &ldquo;Why did you go
-out again?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden fear and
-wild uncertainty that leaped into her eyes. &ldquo;I&mdash;I had to go
-to&mdash;to the store,&rdquo; she gasped, almost in a whisper, &ldquo;I had to
-go&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You are lying to me,&rdquo; said Jurgis. Then he clenched his hands and
-took a step toward her. &ldquo;Why do you lie to me?&rdquo; he cried, fiercely.
-&ldquo;What are you doing that you have to lie to me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Jurgis!&rdquo; she exclaimed, starting up in fright. &ldquo;Oh, Jurgis,
-how can you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You have lied to me, I say!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You told me you had
-been to Jadvyga&rsquo;s house that other night, and you hadn&rsquo;t. You had
-been where you were last night&mdash;somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off
-the car. Where were you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was as if he had struck a knife into her. She seemed to go all to pieces.
-For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying, staring at him with horror in
-her eyes; then, with a cry of anguish, she tottered forward, stretching out her
-arms to him. But he stepped aside, deliberately, and let her fall. She caught
-herself at the side of the bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her
-hands and bursting into frantic weeping.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often dismayed him. Ona
-sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building themselves up into long
-climaxes. Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over her, shaking her as
-the tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all her frame would quiver and
-throb with them&mdash;it was as if some dreadful thing rose up within her and
-took possession of her, torturing her, tearing her. This thing had been wont to
-set Jurgis quite beside himself; but now he stood with his lips set tightly and
-his hands clenched&mdash;she might weep till she killed herself, but she should
-not move him this time&mdash;not an inch, not an inch. Because the sounds she
-made set his blood to running cold and his lips to quivering in spite of
-himself, he was glad of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta, pale with fright,
-opened the door and rushed in; yet he turned upon her with an oath. &ldquo;Go
-out!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;go out!&rdquo; And then, as she stood hesitating,
-about to speak, he seized her by the arm, and half flung her from the room,
-slamming the door and barring it with a table. Then he turned again and faced
-Ona, crying&mdash;&ldquo;Now, answer me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet she did not hear him&mdash;she was still in the grip of the fiend. Jurgis
-could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching, roaming here and there
-over the bed at will, like living things; he could see convulsive shudderings
-start in her body and run through her limbs. She was sobbing and
-choking&mdash;it was as if there were too many sounds for one throat, they came
-chasing each other, like waves upon the sea. Then her voice would begin to rise
-into screams, louder and louder until it broke in wild, horrible peals of
-laughter. Jurgis bore it until he could bear it no longer, and then he sprang
-at her, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her, shouting into her ear:
-&ldquo;Stop it, I say! Stop it!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at his feet. She
-caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts to step aside, and with her
-face upon the floor lay writhing. It made a choking in Jurgis&rsquo; throat to
-hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than before: &ldquo;Stop it, I
-say!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent, save for the
-gasping sobs that wrenched all her frame. For a long minute she lay there,
-perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized her husband, thinking that she
-was dying. Suddenly, however, he heard her voice, faintly: &ldquo;Jurgis!
-Jurgis!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had to bend down to her, she was so weak. She was pleading with him, in
-broken phrases, painfully uttered: &ldquo;Have faith in me! Believe me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Believe what?&rdquo; he cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Believe that I&mdash;that I know best&mdash;that I love you! And do not
-ask me&mdash;what you did. Oh, Jurgis, please, please! It is for the
-best&mdash;it is&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading him off.
-&ldquo;If you will only do it! If you will only&mdash;only believe me! It
-wasn&rsquo;t my fault&mdash;I couldn&rsquo;t help it&mdash;it will be all
-right&mdash;it is nothing&mdash;it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis&mdash;please,
-please!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him; he could
-feel the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the bosom she pressed
-against him. She managed to catch one of his hands and gripped it convulsively,
-drawing it to her face, and bathing it in her tears. &ldquo;Oh, believe me,
-believe me!&rdquo; she wailed again; and he shouted in fury, &ldquo;I will
-not!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: &ldquo;Oh, Jurgis,
-think what you are doing! It will ruin us&mdash;it will ruin us! Oh, no, you
-must not do it! No, don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t do it. You must not do it! It will
-drive me mad&mdash;it will kill me&mdash;no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy&mdash;it is
-nothing. You do not really need to know. We can be happy&mdash;we can love each
-other just the same. Oh, please, please, believe me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Her words fairly drove him wild. He tore his hands loose, and flung her off.
-&ldquo;Answer me,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;God damn it, I say&mdash;answer
-me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again. It was like listening to
-the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it. He smote his fist
-upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her, &ldquo;Answer me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast:
-&ldquo;Ah! Ah! I can&rsquo;t! I can&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t you do it?&rdquo; he shouted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He sprang and caught her by the arm, lifting her up, and glaring into her face.
-&ldquo;Tell me where you were last night!&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;Quick, out
-with it!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then she began to whisper, one word at a time: &ldquo;I&mdash;was in&mdash;a
-house&mdash;downtown&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What house? What do you mean?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her. &ldquo;Miss Henderson&rsquo;s
-house,&rdquo; she gasped. He did not understand at first. &ldquo;Miss
-Henderson&rsquo;s house,&rdquo; he echoed. And then suddenly, as in an
-explosion, the horrible truth burst over him, and he reeled and staggered back
-with a scream. He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his
-forehead, staring about him, and whispering, &ldquo;Jesus! Jesus!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet. He seized
-her by the throat. &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; he gasped, hoarsely. &ldquo;Quick!
-Who took you to that place?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She tried to get away, making him furious; he thought it was fear, of the pain
-of his clutch&mdash;he did not understand that it was the agony of her shame.
-Still she answered him, &ldquo;Connor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Connor,&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;Who is Connor?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The boss,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;The man&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He tightened his grip, in his frenzy, and only when he saw her eyes closing did
-he realize that he was choking her. Then he relaxed his fingers, and crouched,
-waiting, until she opened her lids again. His breath beat hot into her face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; he whispered, at last, &ldquo;tell me about it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She lay perfectly motionless, and he had to hold his breath to catch her words.
-&ldquo;I did not want&mdash;to do it,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I tried&mdash;I
-tried not to do it. I only did it&mdash;to save us. It was our only
-chance.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again, for a space, there was no sound but his panting. Ona&rsquo;s eyes closed
-and when she spoke again she did not open them. &ldquo;He told me&mdash;he
-would have me turned off. He told me he would&mdash;we would all of us lose our
-places. We could never get anything to do&mdash;here&mdash;again. He&mdash;he
-meant it&mdash;he would have ruined us.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis&rsquo; arms were shaking so that he could scarcely hold himself up, and
-lurched forward now and then as he listened. &ldquo;When&mdash;when did this
-begin?&rdquo; he gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;At the very first,&rdquo; she said. She spoke as if in a trance.
-&ldquo;It was all&mdash;it was their plot&mdash;Miss Henderson&rsquo;s plot.
-She hated me. And he&mdash;he wanted me. He used to speak to me&mdash;out on
-the platform. Then he began to&mdash;to make love to me. He offered me money.
-He begged me&mdash;he said he loved me. Then he threatened me. He knew all
-about us, he knew we would starve. He knew your boss&mdash;he knew
-Marija&rsquo;s. He would hound us to death, he said&mdash;then he said if I
-would&mdash;if I&mdash;we would all of us be sure of work&mdash;always. Then
-one day he caught hold of me&mdash;he would not let
-go&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where was this?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;In the hallway&mdash;at night&mdash;after every one had gone. I could
-not help it. I thought of you&mdash;of the baby&mdash;of mother and the
-children. I was afraid of him&mdash;afraid to cry out.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A moment ago her face had been ashen gray, now it was scarlet. She was
-beginning to breathe hard again. Jurgis made not a sound.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;That was two months ago. Then he wanted me to come&mdash;to that house.
-He wanted me to stay there. He said all of us&mdash;that we would not have to
-work. He made me come there&mdash;in the evenings. I told you&mdash;you thought
-I was at the factory. Then&mdash;one night it snowed, and I couldn&rsquo;t get
-back. And last night&mdash;the cars were stopped. It was such a little
-thing&mdash;to ruin us all. I tried to walk, but I couldn&rsquo;t. I
-didn&rsquo;t want you to know. It would have&mdash;it would have been all
-right. We could have gone on&mdash;just the same&mdash;you need never have
-known about it. He was getting tired of me&mdash;he would have let me alone
-soon. I am going to have a baby&mdash;I am getting ugly. He told me
-that&mdash;twice, he told me, last night. He kicked me&mdash;last
-night&mdash;too. And now you will kill him&mdash;you&mdash;you will kill
-him&mdash;and we shall die.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this she had said without a quiver; she lay still as death, not an eyelid
-moving. And Jurgis, too, said not a word. He lifted himself by the bed, and
-stood up. He did not stop for another glance at her, but went to the door and
-opened it. He did not see Elzbieta, crouching terrified in the corner. He went
-out, hatless, leaving the street door open behind him. The instant his feet
-were on the sidewalk he broke into a run.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He ran like one possessed, blindly, furiously, looking neither to the right nor
-left. He was on Ashland Avenue before exhaustion compelled him to slow down,
-and then, noticing a car, he made a dart for it and drew himself aboard. His
-eyes were wild and his hair flying, and he was breathing hoarsely, like a
-wounded bull; but the people on the car did not notice this
-particularly&mdash;perhaps it seemed natural to them that a man who smelled as
-Jurgis smelled should exhibit an aspect to correspond. They began to give way
-before him as usual. The conductor took his nickel gingerly, with the tips of
-his fingers, and then left him with the platform to himself. Jurgis did not
-even notice it&mdash;his thoughts were far away. Within his soul it was like a
-roaring furnace; he stood waiting, waiting, crouching as if for a spring.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had some of his breath back when the car came to the entrance of the yards,
-and so he leaped off and started again, racing at full speed. People turned and
-stared at him, but he saw no one&mdash;there was the factory, and he bounded
-through the doorway and down the corridor. He knew the room where Ona worked,
-and he knew Connor, the boss of the loading-gang outside. He looked for the man
-as he sprang into the room.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The truckmen were hard at work, loading the freshly packed boxes and barrels
-upon the cars. Jurgis shot one swift glance up and down the platform&mdash;the
-man was not on it. But then suddenly he heard a voice in the corridor, and
-started for it with a bound. In an instant more he fronted the boss.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was a big, red-faced Irishman, coarse-featured, and smelling of liquor. He
-saw Jurgis as he crossed the threshold, and turned white. He hesitated one
-second, as if meaning to run; and in the next his assailant was upon him. He
-put up his hands to protect his face, but Jurgis, lunging with all the power of
-his arm and body, struck him fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward.
-The next moment he was on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To Jurgis this man&rsquo;s whole presence reeked of the crime he had committed;
-the touch of his body was madness to him&mdash;it set every nerve of him
-a-tremble, it aroused all the demon in his soul. It had worked its will upon
-Ona, this great beast&mdash;and now he had it, he had it! It was his turn now!
-Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud in his fury, lifting his
-victim and smashing his head upon the floor.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The place, of course, was in an uproar; women fainting and shrieking, and men
-rushing in. Jurgis was so bent upon his task that he knew nothing of this, and
-scarcely realized that people were trying to interfere with him; it was only
-when half a dozen men had seized him by the legs and shoulders and were pulling
-at him, that he understood that he was losing his prey. In a flash he had bent
-down and sunk his teeth into the man&rsquo;s cheek; and when they tore him away
-he was dripping with blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his
-mouth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They got him down upon the floor, clinging to him by his arms and legs, and
-still they could hardly hold him. He fought like a tiger, writhing and
-twisting, half flinging them off, and starting toward his unconscious enemy.
-But yet others rushed in, until there was a little mountain of twisted limbs
-and bodies, heaving and tossing, and working its way about the room. In the
-end, by their sheer weight, they choked the breath out of him, and then they
-carried him to the company police station, where he lay still until they had
-summoned a patrol wagon to take him away.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
-
-<p>
-When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough. He was exhausted and
-half-dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the policemen. He drove in
-a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching him; keeping as far away as
-possible, however, on account of the fertilizer. Then he stood before the
-sergeant&rsquo;s desk and gave his name and address, and saw a charge of
-assault and battery entered against him. On his way to his cell a burly
-policeman cursed him because he started down the wrong corridor, and then added
-a kick when he was not quick enough; nevertheless, Jurgis did not even lift his
-eyes&mdash;he had lived two years and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what
-the police were. It was as much as a man&rsquo;s very life was worth to anger
-them, here in their inmost lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at
-once, and pound his face into a pulp. It would be nothing unusual if he got his
-skull cracked in the mêlée&mdash;in which case they would report that he had
-been drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to know the
-difference or to care.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So a barred door clanged upon Jurgis and he sat down upon a bench and buried
-his face in his hands. He was alone; he had the afternoon and all of the night
-to himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At first he was like a wild beast that has glutted itself; he was in a dull
-stupor of satisfaction. He had done up the scoundrel pretty well&mdash;not as
-well as he would have if they had given him a minute more, but pretty well, all
-the same; the ends of his fingers were still tingling from their contact with
-the fellow&rsquo;s throat. But then, little by little, as his strength came
-back and his senses cleared, he began to see beyond his momentary
-gratification; that he had nearly killed the boss would not help Ona&mdash;not
-the horrors that she had borne, nor the memory that would haunt her all her
-days. It would not help to feed her and her child; she would certainly lose her
-place, while he&mdash;what was to happen to him God only knew.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Half the night he paced the floor, wrestling with this nightmare; and when he
-was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding instead, for the first
-time in his life, that his brain was too much for him. In the cell next to him
-was a drunken wife-beater and in the one beyond a yelling maniac. At midnight
-they opened the station house to the homeless wanderers who were crowded about
-the door, shivering in the winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor
-outside of the cells. Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare stone
-floor and fell to snoring, others sat up, laughing and talking, cursing and
-quarreling. The air was fetid with their breath, yet in spite of this some of
-them smelled Jurgis and called down the torments of hell upon him, while he lay
-in a far corner of his cell, counting the throbbings of the blood in his
-forehead.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They had brought him his supper, which was &ldquo;duffers and
-dope&rdquo;&mdash;being hunks of dry bread on a tin plate, and coffee, called
-&ldquo;dope&rdquo; because it was drugged to keep the prisoners quiet. Jurgis
-had not known this, or he would have swallowed the stuff in desperation; as it
-was, every nerve of him was a-quiver with shame and rage. Toward morning the
-place fell silent, and he got up and began to pace his cell; and then within
-the soul of him there rose up a fiend, red-eyed and cruel, and tore out the
-strings of his heart.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was not for himself that he suffered&mdash;what did a man who worked in
-Durham&rsquo;s fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do to
-him! What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny of the past, of
-the thing that had happened and could not be recalled, of the memory that could
-never be effaced! The horror of it drove him mad; he stretched out his arms to
-heaven, crying out for deliverance from it&mdash;and there was no deliverance,
-there was no power even in heaven that could undo the past. It was a ghost that
-would not drown; it followed him, it seized upon him and beat him to the
-ground. Ah, if only he could have foreseen it&mdash;but then, he would have
-foreseen it, if he had not been a fool! He smote his hands upon his forehead,
-cursing himself because he had ever allowed Ona to work where she had, because
-he had not stood between her and a fate which every one knew to be so common.
-He should have taken her away, even if it were to lie down and die of
-starvation in the gutters of Chicago&rsquo;s streets! And now&mdash;oh, it
-could not be true; it was too monstrous, too horrible.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was a thing that could not be faced; a new shuddering seized him every time
-he tried to think of it. No, there was no bearing the load of it, there was no
-living under it. There would be none for her&mdash;he knew that he might pardon
-her, might plead with her on his knees, but she would never look him in the
-face again, she would never be his wife again. The shame of it would kill
-her&mdash;there could be no other deliverance, and it was best that she should
-die.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was simple and clear, and yet, with cruel inconsistency, whenever he
-escaped from this nightmare it was to suffer and cry out at the vision of Ona
-starving. They had put him in jail, and they would keep him here a long time,
-years maybe. And Ona would surely not go to work again, broken and crushed as
-she was. And Elzbieta and Marija, too, might lose their places&mdash;if that
-hell fiend Connor chose to set to work to ruin them, they would all be turned
-out. And even if he did not, they could not live&mdash;even if the boys left
-school again, they could surely not pay all the bills without him and Ona. They
-had only a few dollars now&mdash;they had just paid the rent of the house a
-week ago, and that after it was two weeks overdue. So it would be due again in
-a week! They would have no money to pay it then&mdash;and they would lose the
-house, after all their long, heartbreaking struggle. Three times now the agent
-had warned him that he would not tolerate another delay. Perhaps it was very
-base of Jurgis to be thinking about the house when he had the other unspeakable
-thing to fill his mind; yet, how much he had suffered for this house, how much
-they had all of them suffered! It was their one hope of respite, as long as
-they lived; they had put all their money into it&mdash;and they were working
-people, poor people, whose money was their strength, the very substance of
-them, body and soul, the thing by which they lived and for lack of which they
-died.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And they would lose it all; they would be turned out into the streets, and have
-to hide in some icy garret, and live or die as best they could! Jurgis had all
-the night&mdash;and all of many more nights&mdash;to think about this, and he
-saw the thing in its details; he lived it all, as if he were there. They would
-sell their furniture, and then run into debt at the stores, and then be refused
-credit; they would borrow a little from the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen
-store was tottering on the brink of ruin; the neighbors would come and help
-them a little&mdash;poor, sick Jadvyga would bring a few spare pennies, as she
-always did when people were starving, and Tamoszius Kuszleika would bring them
-the proceeds of a night&rsquo;s fiddling. So they would struggle to hang on
-until he got out of jail&mdash;or would they know that he was in jail, would
-they be able to find out anything about him? Would they be allowed to see
-him&mdash;or was it to be part of his punishment to be kept in ignorance about
-their fate?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and tortured,
-Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get to work for the snow,
-the whole family turned out on the street. God Almighty! would they actually
-let them lie down in the street and die? Would there be no help even
-then&mdash;would they wander about in the snow till they froze? Jurgis had
-never seen any dead bodies in the streets, but he had seen people evicted and
-disappear, no one knew where; and though the city had a relief bureau, though
-there was a charity organization society in the stockyards district, in all his
-life there he had never heard of either of them. They did not advertise their
-activities, having more calls than they could attend to without that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&mdash;So on until morning. Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon, along
-with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several &ldquo;plain drunks&rdquo;
-and &ldquo;saloon fighters,&rdquo; a burglar, and two men who had been arrested
-for stealing meat from the packing houses. Along with them he was driven into a
-large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and crowded. In front, upon a raised
-platform behind a rail, sat a stout, florid-faced personage, with a nose broken
-out in purple blotches.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried. He wondered what
-for&mdash;whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they would
-do with him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death&mdash;nothing would have
-surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws. Yet he had picked up gossip
-enough to have it occur to him that the loud-voiced man upon the bench might be
-the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom the people of Packingtown spoke with
-bated breath.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Pat&rdquo; Callahan&mdash;&ldquo;Growler&rdquo; Pat, as he had been
-known before he ascended the bench&mdash;had begun life as a butcher boy and a
-bruiser of local reputation; he had gone into politics almost as soon as he had
-learned to talk, and had held two offices at once before he was old enough to
-vote. If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan was the first finger of the unseen
-hand whereby the packers held down the people of the district. No politician in
-Chicago ranked higher in their confidence; he had been at it a long
-time&mdash;had been the business agent in the city council of old Durham, the
-self-made merchant, way back in the early days, when the whole city of Chicago
-had been up at auction. &ldquo;Growler&rdquo; Pat had given up holding city
-offices very early in his career&mdash;caring only for party power, and giving
-the rest of his time to superintending his dives and brothels. Of late years,
-however, since his children were growing up, he had begun to value
-respectability, and had had himself made a magistrate; a position for which he
-was admirably fitted, because of his strong conservatism and his contempt for
-&ldquo;foreigners.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis sat gazing about the room for an hour or two; he was in hopes that some
-one of the family would come, but in this he was disappointed. Finally, he was
-led before the bar, and a lawyer for the company appeared against him. Connor
-was under the doctor&rsquo;s care, the lawyer explained briefly, and if his
-Honor would hold the prisoner for a week&mdash;&ldquo;Three hundred
-dollars,&rdquo; said his Honor, promptly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was staring from the judge to the lawyer in perplexity. &ldquo;Have you
-any one to go on your bond?&rdquo; demanded the judge, and then a clerk who
-stood at Jurgis&rsquo; elbow explained to him what this meant. The latter shook
-his head, and before he realized what had happened the policemen were leading
-him away again. They took him to a room where other prisoners were waiting and
-here he stayed until court adjourned, when he had another long and bitterly
-cold ride in a patrol wagon to the county jail, which is on the north side of
-the city, and nine or ten miles from the stockyards.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here they searched Jurgis, leaving him only his money, which consisted of
-fifteen cents. Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for a bath;
-after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated cell doors of
-the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the latter&mdash;the daily
-review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many and diverting were the
-comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the
-vain hope of getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids. The
-prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day there was one left over, and he
-was the one.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The cells were in tiers, opening upon galleries. His cell was about five feet
-by seven in size, with a stone floor and a heavy wooden bench built into it.
-There was no window&mdash;the only light came from windows near the roof at one
-end of the court outside. There were two bunks, one above the other, each with
-a straw mattress and a pair of gray blankets&mdash;the latter stiff as boards
-with filth, and alive with fleas, bedbugs, and lice. When Jurgis lifted up the
-mattress he discovered beneath it a layer of scurrying roaches, almost as badly
-frightened as himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here they brought him more &ldquo;duffers and dope,&rdquo; with the addition of
-a bowl of soup. Many of the prisoners had their meals brought in from a
-restaurant, but Jurgis had no money for that. Some had books to read and cards
-to play, with candles to burn by night, but Jurgis was all alone in darkness
-and silence. He could not sleep again; there was the same maddening procession
-of thoughts that lashed him like whips upon his naked back. When night fell he
-was pacing up and down his cell like a wild beast that breaks its teeth upon
-the bars of its cage. Now and then in his frenzy he would fling himself against
-the walls of the place, beating his hands upon them. They cut him and bruised
-him&mdash;they were cold and merciless as the men who had built them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the hours one by one.
-When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor with his head in his
-arms, listening. Instead of falling silent at the end, the bell broke into a
-sudden clangor. Jurgis raised his head; what could that mean&mdash;a fire? God!
-Suppose there were to be a fire in this jail! But then he made out a melody in
-the ringing; there were chimes. And they seemed to waken the city&mdash;all
-around, far and near, there were bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute
-Jurgis lay lost in wonder, before, all at once, the meaning of it broke over
-him&mdash;that this was Christmas Eve!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Christmas Eve&mdash;he had forgotten it entirely! There was a breaking of
-floodgates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into his mind. In
-far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to him as if it had
-been yesterday&mdash;himself a little child, with his lost brother and his dead
-father in the cabin&mdash;in the deep black forest, where the snow fell all day
-and all night and buried them from the world. It was too far off for Santa
-Claus in Lithuania, but it was not too far for peace and good will to men, for
-the wonder-bearing vision of the Christ Child. And even in Packingtown they had
-not forgotten it&mdash;some gleam of it had never failed to break their
-darkness. Last Christmas Eve and all Christmas Day Jurgis had toiled on the
-killing beds, and Ona at wrapping hams, and still they had found strength
-enough to take the children for a walk upon the avenue, to see the store
-windows all decorated with Christmas trees and ablaze with electric lights. In
-one window there would be live geese, in another marvels in sugar&mdash;pink
-and white canes big enough for ogres, and cakes with cherubs upon them; in a
-third there would be rows of fat yellow turkeys, decorated with rosettes, and
-rabbits and squirrels hanging; in a fourth would be a fairyland of
-toys&mdash;lovely dolls with pink dresses, and woolly sheep and drums and
-soldier hats. Nor did they have to go without their share of all this, either.
-The last time they had had a big basket with them and all their Christmas
-marketing to do&mdash;a roast of pork and a cabbage and some rye bread, and a
-pair of mittens for Ona, and a rubber doll that squeaked, and a little green
-cornucopia full of candy to be hung from the gas jet and gazed at by half a
-dozen pairs of longing eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had not been
-able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was a choking in
-Jurgis&rsquo; throat as he recalled that the very night Ona had not come home
-Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him an old valentine that she had
-picked up in a paper store for three cents&mdash;dingy and shopworn, but with
-bright colors, and figures of angels and doves. She had wiped all the specks
-off this, and was going to set it on the mantel, where the children could see
-it. Great sobs shook Jurgis at this memory&mdash;they would spend their
-Christmas in misery and despair, with him in prison and Ona ill and their home
-in desolation. Ah, it was too cruel! Why at least had they not left him
-alone&mdash;why, after they had shut him in jail, must they be ringing
-Christmas chimes in his ears!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But no, their bells were not ringing for him&mdash;their Christmas was not
-meant for him, they were simply not counting him at all. He was of no
-consequence&mdash;he was flung aside, like a bit of trash, the carcass of some
-animal. It was horrible, horrible! His wife might be dying, his baby might be
-starving, his whole family might be perishing in the cold&mdash;and all the
-while they were ringing their Christmas chimes! And the bitter mockery of
-it&mdash;all this was punishment for him! They put him in a place where the
-snow could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his bones; they
-brought him food and drink&mdash;why, in the name of heaven, if they must
-punish him, did they not put his family in jail and leave him outside&mdash;why
-could they find no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and
-six helpless children to starve and freeze? That was their law, that was their
-justice!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and his arms
-upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten thousand curses
-upon them and their law! Their justice&mdash;it was a lie, it was a lie, a
-hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any world but a world of
-nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery. There was no justice, there
-was no right, anywhere in it&mdash;it was only force, it was tyranny, the will
-and the power, reckless and unrestrained! They had ground him beneath their
-heel, they had devoured all his substance; they had murdered his old father,
-they had broken and wrecked his wife, they had crushed and cowed his whole
-family; and now they were through with him, they had no further use for
-him&mdash;and because he had interfered with them, had gotten in their way,
-this was what they had done to him! They had put him behind bars, as if he had
-been a wild beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights, without
-affections, without feelings. Nay, they would not even have treated a beast as
-they had treated him! Would any man in his senses have trapped a wild thing in
-its lair, and left its young behind to die?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of
-his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no wit to trace back
-the social crime to its far sources&mdash;he could not say that it was the
-thing men have called &ldquo;the system&rdquo; that was crushing him to the
-earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had bought up the law of the
-land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat of justice. He
-only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the
-law, that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe. And every
-hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of
-defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,<br />
-    Bloom well in prison air;<br />
-It is only what is good in Man<br />
-    That wastes and withers there;<br />
-Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,<br />
-    And the Warder is Despair.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p class="poem">
-I know not whether Laws be right,<br />
-    Or whether Laws be wrong;<br />
-All that we know who lie in gaol<br />
-    Is that the wall is strong.<br />
-And they do well to hide their hell,<br />
-    For in it things are done<br />
-That Son of God nor son of Man<br />
-    Ever should look upon!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
-
-<p>
-At seven o&rsquo;clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to wash
-his cell&mdash;a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of the
-prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells became so filthy that the
-guards interposed. Then he had more &ldquo;duffers and dope,&rdquo; and
-afterward was allowed three hours for exercise, in a long, cement-walked court
-roofed with glass. Here were all the inmates of the jail crowded together. At
-one side of the court was a place for visitors, cut off by two heavy wire
-screens, a foot apart, so that nothing could be passed in to the prisoners;
-here Jurgis watched anxiously, but there came no one to see him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let in another
-prisoner. He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown mustache and blue
-eyes, and a graceful figure. He nodded to Jurgis, and then, as the keeper
-closed the door upon him, began gazing critically about him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, pal,&rdquo; he said, as his glance encountered Jurgis again,
-&ldquo;good morning.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;A rum go for Christmas, eh?&rdquo; added the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis nodded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted up the
-mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation. &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he
-said, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the worst yet.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He glanced at Jurgis again. &ldquo;Looks as if it hadn&rsquo;t been slept in
-last night. Couldn&rsquo;t stand it, eh?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to sleep last night,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When did you come in?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yesterday.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other had another look around, and then wrinkled up his nose.
-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the devil of a stink in here,&rdquo; he said, suddenly.
-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s me,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, me.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t they make you wash?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, but this don&rsquo;t wash.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Fertilizer.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Fertilizer! The deuce! What are you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I work in the stockyards&mdash;at least I did until the other day.
-It&rsquo;s in my clothes.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a new one on me,&rdquo; said the newcomer. &ldquo;I thought
-I&rsquo;d been up against &lsquo;em all. What are you in for?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I hit my boss.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Oh&mdash;that&rsquo;s it. What did he do?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;He&mdash;he treated me mean.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see. You&rsquo;re what&rsquo;s called an honest workingman!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What are you?&rdquo; Jurgis asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I?&rdquo; The other laughed. &ldquo;They say I&rsquo;m a
-cracksman,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; asked Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Safes, and such things,&rdquo; answered the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stared at the speaker in awe.
-&ldquo;You mean you break into them&mdash;you&mdash;you&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; laughed the other, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what they say.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis found
-afterward, he was thirty. He spoke like a man of education, like what the world
-calls a &ldquo;gentleman.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Is that what you&rsquo;re here for?&rdquo; Jurgis inquired.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; was the answer. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here for disorderly conduct.
-They were mad because they couldn&rsquo;t get any evidence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo; the young fellow continued after a pause.
-&ldquo;My name&rsquo;s Duane&mdash;Jack Duane. I&rsquo;ve more than a dozen,
-but that&rsquo;s my company one.&rdquo; He seated himself on the floor with his
-back to the wall and his legs crossed, and went on talking easily; he soon put
-Jurgis on a friendly footing&mdash;he was evidently a man of the world, used to
-getting on, and not too proud to hold conversation with a mere laboring man. He
-drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one unmentionable
-thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He was a great one for
-stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to jail had apparently not
-disturbed his cheerfulness; he had &ldquo;done time&rdquo; twice before, it
-seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with women and wine and
-the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to rest now and then.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for Jurgis by the arrival of a
-cell mate. He could not turn his face to the wall and sulk, he had to speak
-when he was spoken to; nor could he help being interested in the conversation
-of Duane&mdash;the first educated man with whom he had ever talked. How could
-he help listening with wonder while the other told of midnight ventures and
-perilous escapes, of feastings and orgies, of fortunes squandered in a night?
-The young fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule;
-he, too, had felt the world&rsquo;s injustice, but instead of bearing it
-patiently, he had struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the
-time&mdash;there was war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter,
-living off the enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but
-then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break his spirit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Withal he was a goodhearted fellow&mdash;too much so, it appeared. His story
-came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the long hours that
-dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk and nothing to talk of but
-themselves. Jack Duane was from the East; he was a college-bred man&mdash;had
-been studying electrical engineering. Then his father had met with misfortune
-in business and killed himself; and there had been his mother and a younger
-brother and sister. Also, there was an invention of Duane&rsquo;s; Jurgis could
-not understand it clearly, but it had to do with telegraphing, and it was a
-very important thing&mdash;there were fortunes in it, millions upon millions of
-dollars. And Duane had been robbed of it by a great company, and got tangled up
-in lawsuits and lost all his money. Then somebody had given him a tip on a
-horse race, and he had tried to retrieve his fortune with another
-person&rsquo;s money, and had to run away, and all the rest had come from that.
-The other asked him what had led him to safe-breaking&mdash;to Jurgis a wild
-and appalling occupation to think about. A man he had met, his cell mate had
-replied&mdash;one thing leads to another. Didn&rsquo;t he ever wonder about his
-family, Jurgis asked. Sometimes, the other answered, but not often&mdash;he
-didn&rsquo;t allow it. Thinking about it would make it no better. This
-wasn&rsquo;t a world in which a man had any business with a family; sooner or
-later Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight and shift for
-himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate was as
-open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him adventures, he was so
-full of wonder and admiration, he was so new to the ways of the country. Duane
-did not even bother to keep back names and places&mdash;he told all his
-triumphs and his failures, his loves and his griefs. Also he introduced Jurgis
-to many of the other prisoners, nearly half of whom he knew by name. The crowd
-had already given Jurgis a name&mdash;they called him &ldquo;the
-stinker.&rdquo; This was cruel, but they meant no harm by it, and he took it
-with a good-natured grin.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Our friend had caught now and then a whiff from the sewers over which he lived,
-but this was the first time that he had ever been splashed by their filth. This
-jail was a Noah&rsquo;s ark of the city&rsquo;s crime&mdash;there were
-murderers, &ldquo;hold-up men&rdquo; and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters
-and forgers, bigamists, &ldquo;shoplifters,&rdquo; &ldquo;confidence
-men,&rdquo; petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers,
-beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young,
-Americans and natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened
-criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally
-not yet in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of
-society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to. All life had
-turned to rottenness and stench in them&mdash;love was a beastliness, joy was a
-snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled here and there about the
-courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them. He was ignorant and they were wise;
-they had been everywhere and tried everything. They could tell the whole
-hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in which justice and
-honor, women&rsquo;s bodies and men&rsquo;s souls, were for sale in the
-marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like
-wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and
-humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into
-this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had
-taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no
-disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They
-were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and
-put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To most of this Jurgis tried not to listen. They frightened him with their
-savage mockery; and all the while his heart was far away, where his loved ones
-were calling. Now and then in the midst of it his thoughts would take flight;
-and then the tears would come into his eyes&mdash;and he would be called back
-by the jeering laughter of his companions.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He spent a week in this company, and during all that time he had no word from
-his home. He paid one of his fifteen cents for a postal card, and his companion
-wrote a note to the family, telling them where he was and when he would be
-tried. There came no answer to it, however, and at last, the day before New
-Year&rsquo;s, Jurgis bade good-by to Jack Duane. The latter gave him his
-address, or rather the address of his mistress, and made Jurgis promise to look
-him up. &ldquo;Maybe I could help you out of a hole some day,&rdquo; he said,
-and added that he was sorry to have him go. Jurgis rode in the patrol wagon
-back to Justice Callahan&rsquo;s court for trial.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One of the first things he made out as he entered the room was Teta Elzbieta
-and little Kotrina, looking pale and frightened, seated far in the rear. His
-heart began to pound, but he did not dare to try to signal to them, and neither
-did Elzbieta. He took his seat in the prisoners&rsquo; pen and sat gazing at
-them in helpless agony. He saw that Ona was not with them, and was full of
-foreboding as to what that might mean. He spent half an hour brooding over
-this&mdash;and then suddenly he straightened up and the blood rushed into his
-face. A man had come in&mdash;Jurgis could not see his features for the
-bandages that swathed him, but he knew the burly figure. It was Connor! A
-trembling seized him, and his limbs bent as if for a spring. Then suddenly he
-felt a hand on his collar, and heard a voice behind him: &ldquo;Sit down, you
-son of a&mdash;!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He subsided, but he never took his eyes off his enemy. The fellow was still
-alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it was pleasant to see
-him, all in penitential plasters. He and the company lawyer, who was with him,
-came and took seats within the judge&rsquo;s railing; and a minute later the
-clerk called Jurgis&rsquo; name, and the policeman jerked him to his feet and
-led him before the bar, gripping him tightly by the arm, lest he should spring
-upon the boss.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis listened while the man entered the witness chair, took the oath, and
-told his story. The wife of the prisoner had been employed in a department near
-him, and had been discharged for impudence to him. Half an hour later he had
-been violently attacked, knocked down, and almost choked to death. He had
-brought witnesses&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They will probably not be necessary,&rdquo; observed the judge and he
-turned to Jurgis. &ldquo;You admit attacking the plaintiff?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Him?&rdquo; inquired Jurgis, pointing at the boss.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the judge. &ldquo;I hit him, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Say &lsquo;your Honor,&rsquo;&rdquo; said the officer, pinching his arm
-hard.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Your Honor,&rdquo; said Jurgis, obediently.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You tried to choke him?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, sir, your Honor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ever been arrested before?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, sir, your Honor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What have you to say for yourself?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had learned to
-speak English for practical purposes, but these had never included the
-statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his wife. He tried once or
-twice, stammering and balking, to the annoyance of the judge, who was gasping
-from the odor of fertilizer. Finally, the prisoner made it understood that his
-vocabulary was inadequate, and there stepped up a dapper young man with waxed
-mustaches, bidding him speak in any language he knew.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis began; supposing that he would be given time, he explained how the boss
-had taken advantage of his wife&rsquo;s position to make advances to her and
-had threatened her with the loss of her place. When the interpreter had
-translated this, the judge, whose calendar was crowded, and whose automobile
-was ordered for a certain hour, interrupted with the remark: &ldquo;Oh, I see.
-Well, if he made love to your wife, why didn&rsquo;t she complain to the
-superintendent or leave the place?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis hesitated, somewhat taken aback; he began to explain that they were very
-poor&mdash;that work was hard to get&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Justice Callahan; &ldquo;so instead you thought you
-would knock him down.&rdquo; He turned to the plaintiff, inquiring, &ldquo;Is
-there any truth in this story, Mr. Connor?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Not a particle, your Honor,&rdquo; said the boss. &ldquo;It is very
-unpleasant&mdash;they tell some such tale every time you have to discharge a
-woman&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said the judge. &ldquo;I hear it often enough. The
-fellow seems to have handled you pretty roughly. Thirty days and costs. Next
-case.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had been listening in perplexity. It was only when the policeman who had
-him by the arm turned and started to lead him away that he realized that
-sentence had been passed. He gazed round him wildly. &ldquo;Thirty days!&rdquo;
-he panted and then he whirled upon the judge. &ldquo;What will my family
-do?&rdquo; he cried frantically. &ldquo;I have a wife and baby, sir, and they
-have no money&mdash;my God, they will starve to death!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You would have done well to think about them before you committed the
-assault,&rdquo; said the judge dryly, as he turned to look at the next
-prisoner.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis would have spoken again, but the policeman had seized him by the collar
-and was twisting it, and a second policeman was making for him with evidently
-hostile intentions. So he let them lead him away. Far down the room he saw
-Elzbieta and Kotrina, risen from their seats, staring in fright; he made one
-effort to go to them, and then, brought back by another twist at his throat, he
-bowed his head and gave up the struggle. They thrust him into a cell room,
-where other prisoners were waiting; and as soon as court had adjourned they led
-him down with them into the &ldquo;Black Maria,&rdquo; and drove him away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This time Jurgis was bound for the &ldquo;Bridewell,&rdquo; a petty jail where
-Cook County prisoners serve their time. It was even filthier and more crowded
-than the county jail; all the smaller fry out of the latter had been sifted
-into it&mdash;the petty thieves and swindlers, the brawlers and vagrants. For
-his cell mate Jurgis had an Italian fruit seller who had refused to pay his
-graft to the policeman, and been arrested for carrying a large pocketknife; as
-he did not understand a word of English our friend was glad when he left. He
-gave place to a Norwegian sailor, who had lost half an ear in a drunken brawl,
-and who proved to be quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis because he moved in his bunk
-and caused the roaches to drop upon the lower one. It would have been quite
-intolerable, staying in a cell with this wild beast, but for the fact that all
-day long the prisoners were put at work breaking stone.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ten days of his thirty Jurgis spent thus, without hearing a word from his
-family; then one day a keeper came and informed him that there was a visitor to
-see him. Jurgis turned white, and so weak at the knees that he could hardly
-leave his cell.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man led him down the corridor and a flight of steps to the visitors&rsquo;
-room, which was barred like a cell. Through the grating Jurgis could see some
-one sitting in a chair; and as he came into the room the person started up, and
-he saw that it was little Stanislovas. At the sight of some one from home the
-big fellow nearly went to pieces&mdash;he had to steady himself by a chair, and
-he put his other hand to his forehead, as if to clear away a mist.
-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said, weakly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Little Stanislovas was also trembling, and all but too frightened to speak.
-&ldquo;They&mdash;they sent me to tell you&mdash;&rdquo; he said, with a gulp.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; Jurgis repeated. He followed the boy&rsquo;s glance to
-where the keeper was standing watching them. &ldquo;Never mind that,&rdquo;
-Jurgis cried, wildly. &ldquo;How are they?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ona is very sick,&rdquo; Stanislovas said; &ldquo;and we are almost
-starving. We can&rsquo;t get along; we thought you might be able to help
-us.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis gripped the chair tighter; there were beads of perspiration on his
-forehead, and his hand shook. &ldquo;I&mdash;can&rsquo;t help you,&rdquo; he
-said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ona lies in her room all day,&rdquo; the boy went on, breathlessly.
-&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t eat anything, and she cries all the time. She
-won&rsquo;t tell what is the matter and she won&rsquo;t go to work at all. Then
-a long time ago the man came for the rent. He was very cross. He came again
-last week. He said he would turn us out of the house. And then
-Marija&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A sob choked Stanislovas, and he stopped. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with
-Marija?&rdquo; cried Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s cut her hand!&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s cut it
-bad, this time, worse than before. She can&rsquo;t work and it&rsquo;s all
-turning green, and the company doctor says she may&mdash;she may have to have
-it cut off. And Marija cries all the time&mdash;her money is nearly all gone,
-too, and we can&rsquo;t pay the rent and the interest on the house; and we have
-no coal and nothing more to eat, and the man at the store, he
-says&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The little fellow stopped again, beginning to whimper. &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; the
-other panted in frenzy&mdash;&ldquo;Go on!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;I will,&rdquo; sobbed Stanislovas. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so&mdash;so
-cold all the time. And last Sunday it snowed again&mdash;a deep, deep
-snow&mdash;and I couldn&rsquo;t&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t get to work.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;God!&rdquo; Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child.
-There was an old hatred between them because of the snow&mdash;ever since that
-dreadful morning when the boy had had his fingers frozen and Jurgis had had to
-beat him to send him to work. Now he clenched his hands, looking as if he would
-try to break through the grating. &ldquo;You little villain,&rdquo; he cried,
-&ldquo;you didn&rsquo;t try!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I did&mdash;I did!&rdquo; wailed Stanislovas, shrinking from him in
-terror. &ldquo;I tried all day&mdash;two days. Elzbieta was with me, and she
-couldn&rsquo;t either. We couldn&rsquo;t walk at all, it was so deep. And we
-had nothing to eat, and oh, it was so cold! I tried, and then the third day Ona
-went with me&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ona!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes. She tried to get to work, too. She had to. We were all starving.
-But she had lost her place&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis reeled, and gave a gasp. &ldquo;She went back to that place?&rdquo; he
-screamed. &ldquo;She tried to,&rdquo; said Stanislovas, gazing at him in
-perplexity. &ldquo;Why not, Jurgis?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man breathed hard, three or four times. &ldquo;Go&mdash;on,&rdquo; he
-panted, finally.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I went with her,&rdquo; said Stanislovas, &ldquo;but Miss Henderson
-wouldn&rsquo;t take her back. And Connor saw her and cursed her. He was still
-bandaged up&mdash;why did you hit him, Jurgis?&rdquo; (There was some
-fascinating mystery about this, the little fellow knew; but he could get no
-satisfaction.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis could not speak; he could only stare, his eyes starting out. &ldquo;She
-has been trying to get other work,&rdquo; the boy went on; &ldquo;but
-she&rsquo;s so weak she can&rsquo;t keep up. And my boss would not take me
-back, either&mdash;Ona says he knows Connor, and that&rsquo;s the reason;
-they&rsquo;ve all got a grudge against us now. So I&rsquo;ve got to go downtown
-and sell papers with the rest of the boys and Kotrina&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Kotrina!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, she&rsquo;s been selling papers, too. She does best, because
-she&rsquo;s a girl. Only the cold is so bad&mdash;it&rsquo;s terrible coming
-home at night, Jurgis. Sometimes they can&rsquo;t come home at
-all&mdash;I&rsquo;m going to try to find them tonight and sleep where they do,
-it&rsquo;s so late and it&rsquo;s such a long ways home. I&rsquo;ve had to
-walk, and I didn&rsquo;t know where it was&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know how to get
-back, either. Only mother said I must come, because you would want to know, and
-maybe somebody would help your family when they had put you in jail so you
-couldn&rsquo;t work. And I walked all day to get here&mdash;and I only had a
-piece of bread for breakfast, Jurgis. Mother hasn&rsquo;t any work either,
-because the sausage department is shut down; and she goes and begs at houses
-with a basket, and people give her food. Only she didn&rsquo;t get much
-yesterday; it was too cold for her fingers, and today she was
-crying&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood, gripping
-the table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his head would burst; it
-was like having weights piled upon him, one after another, crushing the life
-out of him. He struggled and fought within himself&mdash;as if in some terrible
-nightmare, in which a man suffers an agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry
-out, but feels that he is going mad, that his brain is on fire&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would kill him,
-little Stanislovas stopped. &ldquo;You cannot help us?&rdquo; he said weakly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis shook his head.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They won&rsquo;t give you anything here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He shook it again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When are you coming out?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Three weeks yet,&rdquo; Jurgis answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the boy gazed around him uncertainly. &ldquo;Then I might as well
-go,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into his pocket and
-drew it out, shaking. &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, holding out the fourteen
-cents. &ldquo;Take this to them.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Stanislovas took it, and after a little more hesitation, started for the
-door. &ldquo;Good-by, Jurgis,&rdquo; he said, and the other noticed that he
-walked unsteadily as he passed out of sight.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to his chair, reeling and swaying;
-then the keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and went back to breaking
-stone.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had expected. To
-his sentence there were added &ldquo;court costs&rdquo; of a dollar and a
-half&mdash;he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him in jail, and
-not having the money, was obliged to work it off by three days more of toil.
-Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him this&mdash;only after counting the
-days and looking forward to the end in an agony of impatience, when the hour
-came that he expected to be free he found himself still set at the stone heap,
-and laughed at when he ventured to protest. Then he concluded he must have
-counted wrong; but as another day passed, he gave up all hope&mdash;and was
-sunk in the depths of despair, when one morning after breakfast a keeper came
-to him with the word that his time was up at last. So he doffed his prison
-garb, and put on his old fertilizer clothing, and heard the door of the prison
-clang behind him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it was
-true,&mdash;that the sky was above him again and the open street before him;
-that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through his clothes,
-and he started quickly away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety rain was
-falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone. He had not stopped
-for his-overcoat when he set out to &ldquo;do up&rdquo; Connor, and so his
-rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences; his clothing was old and
-worn thin, and it never had been very warm. Now as he trudged on the rain soon
-wet it through; there were six inches of watery slush on the sidewalks, so that
-his feet would soon have been soaked, even had there been no holes in his
-shoes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been the least
-trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago; but even so, he had
-not grown strong&mdash;the fear and grief that had preyed upon his mind had
-worn him thin. Now he shivered and shrunk from the rain, hiding his hands in
-his pockets and hunching his shoulders together. The Bridewell grounds were on
-the outskirts of the city and the country around them was unsettled and
-wild&mdash;on one side was the big drainage canal, and on the other a maze of
-railroad tracks, and so the wind had full sweep.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
-&ldquo;Hey, sonny!&rdquo; The boy cocked one eye at him&mdash;he knew that
-Jurgis was a &ldquo;jailbird&rdquo; by his shaven head. &ldquo;Wot yer
-want?&rdquo; he queried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How do you go to the stockyards?&rdquo; Jurgis demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; replied the boy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, &ldquo;I mean which is the
-way?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t yer say so then?&rdquo; was the response, and the boy
-pointed to the northwest, across the tracks. &ldquo;That way.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How far is it?&rdquo; Jurgis asked. &ldquo;I dunno,&rdquo; said the
-other. &ldquo;Mebbe twenty miles or so.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Twenty miles!&rdquo; Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk
-every foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his
-pockets.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking, he forgot
-everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful imaginations that had
-haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind at once. The agony was almost
-over&mdash;he was going to find out; and he clenched his hands in his pockets
-as he strode, following his flying desire, almost at a run. Ona&mdash;the
-baby&mdash;the family&mdash;the house&mdash;he would know the truth about them
-all! And he was coming to the rescue&mdash;he was free again! His hands were
-his own, and he could help them, he could do battle for them against the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him. He
-seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning into a country
-road, leading out to the westward; there were snow-covered fields on either
-side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving a two-horse wagon loaded with straw,
-and he stopped him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Is this the way to the stockyards?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The farmer scratched his head. &ldquo;I dunno jest where they be,&rdquo; he
-said. &ldquo;But they&rsquo;re in the city somewhere, and you&rsquo;re going
-dead away from it now.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis looked dazed. &ldquo;I was told this was the way,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Who told you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;A boy.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye. The best thing ye kin do is to
-go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman. I&rsquo;d take ye in, only
-I&rsquo;ve come a long ways an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m loaded heavy. Git up!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning he began to
-see Chicago again. Past endless blocks of two-story shanties he walked, along
-wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways treacherous with deep slush holes. Every
-few blocks there would be a railroad crossing on the level with the sidewalk, a
-deathtrap for the unwary; long freight trains would be passing, the cars
-clanking and crashing together, and Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up
-with a fever of impatience. Occasionally the cars would stop for some minutes,
-and wagons and streetcars would crowd together waiting, the drivers swearing at
-each other, or hiding beneath umbrellas out of the rain; at such times Jurgis
-would dodge under the gates and run across the tracks and between the cars,
-taking his life into his hands.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He crossed a long bridge over a river frozen solid and covered with slush. Not
-even on the river bank was the snow white&mdash;the rain which fell was a
-diluted solution of smoke, and Jurgis&rsquo; hands and face were streaked with
-black. Then he came into the business part of the city, where the streets were
-sewers of inky blackness, with horses sleeping and plunging, and women and
-children flying across in panic-stricken droves. These streets were huge
-canyons formed by towering black buildings, echoing with the clang of car gongs
-and the shouts of drivers; the people who swarmed in them were as busy as
-ants&mdash;all hurrying breathlessly, never stopping to look at anything nor at
-each other. The solitary trampish-looking foreigner, with water-soaked clothing
-and haggard face and anxious eyes, was as much alone as he hurried past them,
-as much unheeded and as lost, as if he had been a thousand miles deep in a
-wilderness.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A policeman gave him his direction and told him that he had five miles to go.
-He came again to the slum districts, to avenues of saloons and cheap stores,
-with long dingy red factory buildings, and coal-yards and railroad tracks; and
-then Jurgis lifted up his head and began to sniff the air like a startled
-animal&mdash;scenting the far-off odor of home. It was late afternoon then, and
-he was hungry, but the dinner invitations hung out of the saloons were not for
-him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he came at last to the stockyards, to the black volcanoes of smoke and the
-lowing cattle and the stench. Then, seeing a crowded car, his impatience got
-the better of him and he jumped aboard, hiding behind another man, unnoticed by
-the conductor. In ten minutes more he had reached his street, and home.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was half running as he came round the corner. There was the house, at any
-rate&mdash;and then suddenly he stopped and stared. What was the matter with
-the house?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis looked twice, bewildered; then he glanced at the house next door and at
-the one beyond&mdash;then at the saloon on the corner. Yes, it was the right
-place, quite certainly&mdash;he had not made any mistake. But the
-house&mdash;the house was a different color!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He came a couple of steps nearer. Yes; it had been gray and now it was yellow!
-The trimmings around the windows had been red, and now they were green! It was
-all newly painted! How strange it made it seem!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went closer yet, but keeping on the other side of the street. A sudden
-and horrible spasm of fear had come over him. His knees were shaking beneath
-him, and his mind was in a whirl. New paint on the house, and new
-weatherboards, where the old had begun to rot off, and the agent had got after
-them! New shingles over the hole in the roof, too, the hole that had for six
-months been the bane of his soul&mdash;he having no money to have it fixed and
-no time to fix it himself, and the rain leaking in, and overflowing the pots
-and pans he put to catch it, and flooding the attic and loosening the plaster.
-And now it was fixed! And the broken windowpane replaced! And curtains in the
-windows! New, white curtains, stiff and shiny!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then suddenly the front door opened. Jurgis stood, his chest heaving as he
-struggled to catch his breath. A boy had come out, a stranger to him; a big,
-fat, rosy-cheeked youngster, such as had never been seen in his home before.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis stared at the boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling, kicking
-off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and then leaned
-against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later he looked around and saw
-Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile glance, the boy evidently thinking
-that the other had suspicions of the snowball. When Jurgis started slowly
-across the street toward him, he gave a quick glance about, meditating retreat,
-but then he concluded to stand his ground.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis took hold of the railing of the steps, for he was a little unsteady.
-&ldquo;What&mdash;what are you doing here?&rdquo; he managed to gasp.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said the boy.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You&mdash;&rdquo; Jurgis tried again. &ldquo;What do you want
-here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Me?&rdquo; answered the boy, angrily. &ldquo;I live here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You live here!&rdquo; Jurgis panted. He turned white and clung more
-tightly to the railing. &ldquo;You live here! Then where&rsquo;s my
-family?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The boy looked surprised. &ldquo;Your family!&rdquo; he echoed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis started toward him. &ldquo;I&mdash;this is my house!&rdquo; he
-cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Come off!&rdquo; said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened,
-and he called: &ldquo;Hey, ma! Here&rsquo;s a fellow says he owns this
-house.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
-that?&rdquo; she demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis turned toward her. &ldquo;Where is my family?&rdquo; he cried, wildly.
-&ldquo;I left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought she was
-dealing with a maniac&mdash;Jurgis looked like one. &ldquo;Your home!&rdquo;
-she echoed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;My home!&rdquo; he half shrieked. &ldquo;I lived here, I tell
-you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You must be mistaken,&rdquo; she answered him. &ldquo;No one ever lived
-here. This is a new house. They told us so. They&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What have they done with my family?&rdquo; shouted Jurgis, frantically.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts of what
-&ldquo;they&rdquo; had told her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where your family
-is,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I bought the house only three days ago, and there
-was nobody here, and they told me it was all new. Do you really mean you had
-ever rented it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Rented it!&rdquo; panted Jurgis. &ldquo;I bought it! I paid for it! I
-own it! And they&mdash;my God, can&rsquo;t you tell me where my people
-went?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She made him understand at last that she knew nothing. Jurgis&rsquo; brain was
-so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his family had
-been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving to be dream people, who
-never had existed at all. He was quite lost&mdash;but then suddenly he thought
-of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next block. She would know! He
-turned and started at a run.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She cried out when she saw
-Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes, yes, she could tell him. The family had
-moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they had been turned out into
-the snow, and the house had been repainted and sold again the next week. No,
-she had not heard how they were, but she could tell him that they had gone back
-to Aniele Jukniene, with whom they had stayed when they first came to the
-yards. Wouldn&rsquo;t Jurgis come in and rest? It was certainly too
-bad&mdash;if only he had not got into jail&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go very far round the
-corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a saloon, and hid
-his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry, racking sobs.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage, overwhelmed
-him&mdash;what was any imagination of the thing to this heartbreaking, crushing
-reality of it&mdash;to the sight of strange people living in his house, hanging
-their curtains to his windows, staring at him with hostile eyes! It was
-monstrous, it was unthinkable&mdash;they could not do it&mdash;it could not be
-true! Only think what he had suffered for that house&mdash;what miseries they
-had all suffered for it&mdash;the price they had paid for it!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the beginning, their
-three hundred dollars that they had scraped together, all they owned in the
-world, all that stood between them and starvation! And then their toil, month
-by month, to get together the twelve dollars, and the interest as well, and now
-and then the taxes, and the other charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why,
-they had put their very souls into their payments on that house, they had paid
-for it with their sweat and tears&mdash;yes, more, with their very lifeblood.
-Dede Antanas had died of the struggle to earn that money&mdash;he would have
-been alive and strong today if he had not had to work in Durham&rsquo;s dark
-cellars to earn his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and strength to
-pay for it&mdash;she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so was he, who
-had been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat here shivering, broken,
-cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah! they had cast their all into the
-fight; and they had lost, they had lost! All that they had paid was
-gone&mdash;every cent of it. And their house was gone&mdash;they were back
-where they had started from, flung out into the cold to starve and freeze!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis could see all the truth now&mdash;could see himself, through the whole
-long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn into his
-vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured him, mocking
-him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the horror of it, the monstrous,
-hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He and his family, helpless women and
-children, struggling to live, ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they
-were&mdash;and the enemies that had been lurking for them, crouching upon their
-trail and thirsting for their blood! That first lying circular, that
-smooth-tongued slippery agent! That trap of the extra payments, the interest,
-and all the other charges that they had not the means to pay, and would never
-have attempted to pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their masters,
-the tyrants who ruled them&mdash;the shutdowns and the scarcity of work, the
-irregular hours and the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of wages, the raising
-of prices! The mercilessness of nature about them, of heat and cold, rain and
-snow; the mercilessness of the city, of the country in which they lived, of its
-laws and customs that they did not understand! All of these things had worked
-together for the company that had marked them for its prey and was waiting for
-its chance. And now, with this last hideous injustice, its time had come, and
-it had turned them out bag and baggage, and taken their house and sold it
-again! And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot&mdash;the law
-was against them, the whole machinery of society was at their oppressors&rsquo;
-command! If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them, back he would go into
-that wild-beast pen from which he had just escaped!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave the
-strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering in the rain
-for hours before he could do that, had it not been for the thought of his
-family. It might be that he had worse things yet to learn&mdash;and so he got
-to his feet and started away, walking on, wearily, half-dazed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To Aniele&rsquo;s house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles; the
-distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the familiar
-dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the steps and began to
-hammer upon the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The old woman herself came to open it. She had shrunk all up with her
-rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow parchment face stared
-up at him from a little above the level of the doorknob. She gave a start when
-she saw him. &ldquo;Is Ona here?&rdquo; he cried, breathlessly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; was the answer, &ldquo;she&rsquo;s here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How&mdash;&rdquo; Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching
-convulsively at the side of the door. From somewhere within the house had come
-a sudden cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish. And the voice was
-Ona&rsquo;s. For a moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright; then he
-bounded past the old woman and into the room.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was Aniele&rsquo;s kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a dozen
-women, pale and frightened. One of them started to her feet as Jurgis entered;
-she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one arm tied up in bandages&mdash;he
-hardly realized that it was Marija. He looked first for Ona; then, not seeing
-her, he stared at the women, expecting them to speak. But they sat dumb, gazing
-back at him, panic-stricken; and a second later came another piercing scream.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs. Jurgis bounded to a door of
-the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading through a trap door to
-the garret, and he was at the foot of it when suddenly he heard a voice behind
-him, and saw Marija at his heels. She seized him by the sleeve with her good
-hand, panting wildly, &ldquo;No, no, Jurgis! Stop!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; he gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t go up,&rdquo; she cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the
-matter?&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning above, and
-he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for her reply. &ldquo;No,
-no,&rdquo; she rushed on. &ldquo;Jurgis! You mustn&rsquo;t go up!
-It&rsquo;s&mdash;it&rsquo;s the child!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The child?&rdquo; he echoed in perplexity. &ldquo;Antanas?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija answered him, in a whisper: &ldquo;The new one!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder. He stared at her
-as if she were a ghost. &ldquo;The new one!&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;But it
-isn&rsquo;t time,&rdquo; he added, wildly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija nodded. &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but it&rsquo;s
-come.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then again came Ona&rsquo;s scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
-making him wince and turn white. Her voice died away into a wail&mdash;then he
-heard her sobbing again, &ldquo;My God&mdash;let me die, let me die!&rdquo; And
-Marija hung her arms about him, crying: &ldquo;Come out! Come away!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had gone all
-to pieces. It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen in&mdash;he was
-blasted with horror. In the room he sank into a chair, trembling like a leaf,
-Marija still holding him, and the women staring at him in dumb, helpless
-fright.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here, and he
-staggered to his feet. &ldquo;How long has this been going on?&rdquo; he
-panted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Not very long,&rdquo; Marija answered, and then, at a signal from
-Aniele, she rushed on: &ldquo;You go away, Jurgis you can&rsquo;t help&mdash;go
-away and come back later. It&rsquo;s all right&mdash;it&rsquo;s&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s with her?&rdquo; Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija
-hesitating, he cried again, &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s with her?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s&mdash;she&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; she answered.
-&ldquo;Elzbieta&rsquo;s with her.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But the doctor!&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;Some one who knows!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath a whisper
-as she replied, &ldquo;We&mdash;we have no money.&rdquo; Then, frightened at
-the look on his face, she exclaimed: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, Jurgis! You
-don&rsquo;t understand&mdash;go away&mdash;go away! Ah, if you only had
-waited!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of his mind. It
-was all new to him, raw and horrible&mdash;it had fallen upon him like a
-lightning stroke. When little Antanas was born he had been at work, and had
-known nothing about it until it was over; and now he was not to be controlled.
-The frightened women were at their wits&rsquo; end; one after another they
-tried to reason with him, to make him understand that this was the lot of
-woman. In the end they half drove him out into the rain, where he began to pace
-up and down, bareheaded and frantic. Because he could hear Ona from the street,
-he would first go away to escape the sounds, and then come back because he
-could not help it. At the end of a quarter of an hour he rushed up the steps
-again, and for fear that he would break in the door they had to open it and let
-him in.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was no arguing with him. They could not tell him that all was going
-well&mdash;how could they know, he cried&mdash;why, she was dying, she was
-being torn to pieces! Listen to her&mdash;listen! Why, it was
-monstrous&mdash;it could not be allowed&mdash;there must be some help for it!
-Had they tried to get a doctor? They might pay him afterward&mdash;they could
-promise&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t promise, Jurgis,&rdquo; protested Marija. &ldquo;We
-had no money&mdash;we have scarcely been able to keep alive.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But I can work,&rdquo; Jurgis exclaimed. &ldquo;I can earn money!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered&mdash;&ldquo;but we thought you were in jail.
-How could we know when you would return? They will not work for nothing.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how they had
-demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in cash. &ldquo;And I
-had only a quarter,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have spent every cent of my
-money&mdash;all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been
-coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don&rsquo;t mean to
-pay him. And we owe Aniele for two weeks&rsquo; rent, and she is nearly
-starving, and is afraid of being turned out. We have been borrowing and begging
-to keep alive, and there is nothing more we can do&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And the children?&rdquo; cried Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been so
-bad. They could not know what is happening&mdash;it came suddenly, two months
-before we expected it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand; his head
-sank and his arms shook&mdash;it looked as if he were going to collapse. Then
-suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him, fumbling in her skirt
-pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner of which she had something
-tied.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Here, Jurgis!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have some money. <i>Palauk!</i>
-See!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She unwrapped it and counted it out&mdash;thirty-four cents. &ldquo;You go,
-now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and try and get somebody yourself. And maybe the
-rest can help&mdash;give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day,
-and it will do him good to have something to think about, even if he
-doesn&rsquo;t succeed. When he comes back, maybe it will be over.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks; most of
-them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all. Mrs. Olszewski, who
-lived next door, and had a husband who was a skilled cattle butcher, but a
-drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar, enough to raise the whole sum to a
-dollar and a quarter. Then Jurgis thrust it into his pocket, still holding it
-tightly in his fist, and started away at a run.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Madame Haupt Hebamme&rdquo;, ran a sign, swinging from a second-story
-window over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign, with a
-hand pointing up a dingy flight of stairs. Jurgis went up them, three at a
-time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Madame Haupt was frying pork and onions, and had her door half open to let out
-the smoke. When he tried to knock upon it, it swung open the rest of the way,
-and he had a glimpse of her, with a black bottle turned up to her lips. Then he
-knocked louder, and she started and put it away. She was a Dutchwoman,
-enormously fat&mdash;when she walked she rolled like a small boat on the ocean,
-and the dishes in the cupboard jostled each other. She wore a filthy blue
-wrapper, and her teeth were black.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Vot is it?&rdquo; she said, when she saw Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had run like mad all the way and was so out of breath he could hardly speak.
-His hair was flying and his eyes wild&mdash;he looked like a man that had risen
-from the tomb. &ldquo;My wife!&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;Come quickly!&rdquo;
-Madame Haupt set the frying pan to one side and wiped her hands on her wrapper.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You vant me to come for a case?&rdquo; she inquired.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; gasped Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I haf yust come back from a case,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I haf had no
-time to eat my dinner. Still&mdash;if it is so bad&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes&mdash;it is!&rdquo; cried he.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Vell, den, perhaps&mdash;vot you pay?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;how much do you want?&rdquo; Jurgis stammered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Tventy-five dollars.&rdquo; His face fell. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t pay
-that,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The woman was watching him narrowly. &ldquo;How much do you pay?&rdquo; she
-demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Must I pay now&mdash;right away?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes; all my customers do.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;I haven&rsquo;t much money,&rdquo; Jurgis began in an agony of
-dread. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in&mdash;in trouble&mdash;and my money is gone.
-But I&rsquo;ll pay you&mdash;every cent&mdash;just as soon as I can; I can
-work&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Vot is your work?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have no place now. I must get one. But I&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How much haf you got now?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He could hardly bring himself to reply. When he said &ldquo;A dollar and a
-quarter,&rdquo; the woman laughed in his face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter,&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;ve got,&rdquo; he pleaded, his voice breaking.
-&ldquo;I must get some one&mdash;my wife will die. I can&rsquo;t help
-it&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove. She turned to him
-and answered, out of the steam and noise: &ldquo;Git me ten dollars cash, und
-so you can pay me the rest next mont&rsquo;.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do it&mdash;I haven&rsquo;t got it!&rdquo; Jurgis
-protested. &ldquo;I tell you I have only a dollar and a quarter.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The woman turned to her work. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe you,&rdquo; she
-said. &ldquo;Dot is all to try to sheat me. Vot is de reason a big man like you
-has got only a dollar und a quarter?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just been in jail,&rdquo; Jurgis cried&mdash;he was ready to
-get down upon his knees to the woman&mdash;&ldquo;and I had no money before,
-and my family has almost starved.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They are all poor,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;They gave me this. I have
-done everything I can&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got notting you can sell?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have nothing, I tell you&mdash;I have nothing,&rdquo; he cried,
-frantically.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you borrow it, den? Don&rsquo;t your store people trust
-you?&rdquo; Then, as he shook his head, she went on: &ldquo;Listen to
-me&mdash;if you git me you vill be glad of it. I vill save your wife und baby
-for you, and it vill not seem like mooch to you in de end. If you loose dem now
-how you tink you feel den? Und here is a lady dot knows her business&mdash;I
-could send you to people in dis block, und dey vould tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Madame Haupt was pointing her cooking-fork at Jurgis persuasively; but her
-words were more than he could bear. He flung up his hands with a gesture of
-despair and turned and started away. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no use,&rdquo; he
-exclaimed&mdash;but suddenly he heard the woman&rsquo;s voice behind him
-again&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I vill make it five dollars for you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She followed behind him, arguing with him. &ldquo;You vill be foolish not to
-take such an offer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You von&rsquo;t find nobody go out
-on a rainy day like dis for less. Vy, I haf never took a case in my life so
-sheap as dot. I couldn&rsquo;t pay mine room rent&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis interrupted her with an oath of rage. &ldquo;If I haven&rsquo;t got
-it,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;how can I pay it? Damn it, I would pay you if I
-could, but I tell you I haven&rsquo;t got it. I haven&rsquo;t got it! Do you
-hear me&mdash;<i>I haven&rsquo;t got it!</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He turned and started away again. He was halfway down the stairs before Madame
-Haupt could shout to him: &ldquo;Vait! I vill go mit you! Come back!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He went back into the room again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It is not goot to tink of anybody suffering,&rdquo; she said, in a
-melancholy voice. &ldquo;I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot you
-offer me, but I vill try to help you. How far is it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Three or four blocks from here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Tree or four! Und so I shall get soaked! Gott in Himmel, it ought to be
-vorth more! Vun dollar und a quarter, und a day like dis!&mdash;But you
-understand now&mdash;you vill pay me de rest of twenty-five dollars
-soon?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;As soon as I can.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Some time dis mont&rsquo;?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, within a month,&rdquo; said poor Jurgis. &ldquo;Anything! Hurry
-up!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Vere is de dollar und a quarter?&rdquo; persisted Madame Haupt,
-relentlessly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis put the money on the table and the woman counted it and stowed it away.
-Then she wiped her greasy hands again and proceeded to get ready, complaining
-all the time; she was so fat that it was painful for her to move, and she
-grunted and gasped at every step. She took off her wrapper without even taking
-the trouble to turn her back to Jurgis, and put on her corsets and dress. Then
-there was a black bonnet which had to be adjusted carefully, and an umbrella
-which was mislaid, and a bag full of necessaries which had to be collected from
-here and there&mdash;the man being nearly crazy with anxiety in the meantime.
-When they were on the street he kept about four paces ahead of her, turning now
-and then, as if he could hurry her on by the force of his desire. But Madame
-Haupt could only go so far at a step, and it took all her attention to get the
-needed breath for that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women in the
-kitchen. It was not over yet, Jurgis learned&mdash;he heard Ona crying still;
-and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid it on the mantelpiece,
-and got out of her bag, first an old dress and then a saucer of goose grease,
-which she proceeded to rub upon her hands. The more cases this goose grease is
-used in, the better luck it brings to the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her
-kitchen mantelpiece or stowed away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes, for
-months, and sometimes even for years.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then they escorted her to the ladder, and Jurgis heard her give an exclamation
-of dismay. &ldquo;Gott in Himmel, vot for haf you brought me to a place like
-dis? I could not climb up dot ladder. I could not git troo a trap door! I vill
-not try it&mdash;vy, I might kill myself already. Vot sort of a place is dot
-for a woman to bear a child in&mdash;up in a garret, mit only a ladder to it?
-You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!&rdquo; Jurgis stood in the doorway and
-listened to her scolding, half drowning out the horrible moans and screams of
-Ona.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent; then,
-however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned her about the
-floor of the garret. They had no real floor&mdash;they had laid old boards in
-one part to make a place for the family to live; it was all right and safe
-there, but the other part of the garret had only the joists of the floor, and
-the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and if one stepped on this there
-would be a catastrophe. As it was half dark up above, perhaps one of the others
-had best go up first with a candle. Then there were more outcries and
-threatening, until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs
-disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt
-started to walk. Then suddenly Aniele came to him and took him by the arm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you go away. Do as I tell you&mdash;you
-have done all you can, and you are only in the way. Go away and stay
-away.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But where shall I go?&rdquo; Jurgis asked, helplessly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know where,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Go on the street,
-if there is no other place&mdash;only go! And stay all night!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the end she and Marija pushed him out of the door and shut it behind him. It
-was just about sundown, and it was turning cold&mdash;the rain had changed to
-snow, and the slush was freezing. Jurgis shivered in his thin clothing, and put
-his hands into his pockets and started away. He had not eaten since morning,
-and he felt weak and ill; with a sudden throb of hope he recollected he was
-only a few blocks from the saloon where he had been wont to eat his dinner.
-They might have mercy on him there, or he might meet a friend. He set out for
-the place as fast as he could walk.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hello, Jack,&rdquo; said the saloon-keeper, when he entered&mdash;they
-call all foreigners and unskilled men &ldquo;Jack&rdquo; in Packingtown.
-&ldquo;Where&rsquo;ve you been?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went straight to the bar. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in jail,&rdquo; he
-said, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve just got out. I walked home all the way, and
-I&rsquo;ve not a cent, and had nothing to eat since this morning. And
-I&rsquo;ve lost my home, and my wife&rsquo;s ill, and I&rsquo;m done up.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The saloon-keeper gazed at him, with his haggard white face and his blue
-trembling lips. Then he pushed a big bottle toward him. &ldquo;Fill her
-up!&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis could hardly hold the bottle, his hands shook so.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,&rdquo; said the saloon-keeper, &ldquo;fill her
-up!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis drank a large glass of whisky, and then turned to the lunch counter,
-in obedience to the other&rsquo;s suggestion. He ate all he dared, stuffing it
-in as fast as he could; and then, after trying to speak his gratitude, he went
-and sat down by the big red stove in the middle of the room.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was too good to last, however&mdash;like all things in this hard world. His
-soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of fertilizer to fill
-the room. In an hour or so the packing houses would be closing and the men
-coming in from their work; and they would not come into a place that smelt of
-Jurgis. Also it was Saturday night, and in a couple of hours would come a
-violin and a cornet, and in the rear part of the saloon the families of the
-neighborhood would dance and feast upon wienerwurst and lager, until two or
-three o&rsquo;clock in the morning. The saloon-keeper coughed once or twice,
-and then remarked, &ldquo;Say, Jack, I&rsquo;m afraid you&rsquo;ll have to
-quit.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was used to the sight of human wrecks, this saloon-keeper; he
-&ldquo;fired&rdquo; dozens of them every night, just as haggard and cold and
-forlorn as this one. But they were all men who had given up and been counted
-out, while Jurgis was still in the fight, and had reminders of decency about
-him. As he got up meekly, the other reflected that he had always been a steady
-man, and might soon be a good customer again. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been up
-against it, I see,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Come this way.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the rear of the saloon were the cellar stairs. There was a door above and
-another below, both safely padlocked, making the stairs an admirable place to
-stow away a customer who might still chance to have money, or a political light
-whom it was not advisable to kick out of doors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis spent the night. The whisky had only half warmed him, and he could
-not sleep, exhausted as he was; he would nod forward, and then start up,
-shivering with the cold, and begin to remember again. Hour after hour passed,
-until he could only persuade himself that it was not morning by the sounds of
-music and laughter and singing that were to be heard from the room. When at
-last these ceased, he expected that he would be turned out into the street; as
-this did not happen, he fell to wondering whether the man had forgotten him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the end, when the silence and suspense were no longer to be borne, he got up
-and hammered on the door; and the proprietor came, yawning and rubbing his
-eyes. He was keeping open all night, and dozing between customers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I want to go home,&rdquo; Jurgis said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m worried about my
-wife&mdash;I can&rsquo;t wait any longer.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why the hell didn&rsquo;t you say so before?&rdquo; said the man.
-&ldquo;I thought you didn&rsquo;t have any home to go to.&rdquo; Jurgis went
-outside. It was four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, and as black as night. There
-were three or four inches of fresh snow on the ground, and the flakes were
-falling thick and fast. He turned toward Aniele&rsquo;s and started at a run.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a light burning in the kitchen window and the blinds were drawn. The
-door was unlocked and Jurgis rushed in.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Aniele, Marija, and the rest of the women were huddled about the stove, exactly
-as before; with them were several newcomers, Jurgis noticed&mdash;also he
-noticed that the house was silent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-No one answered him, they sat staring at him with their pale faces. He cried
-again: &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, by the light of the smoky lamp, he saw Marija who sat nearest him,
-shaking her head slowly. &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis gave a cry of dismay. &ldquo;Not <i>yet?</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again Marija&rsquo;s head shook. The poor fellow stood dumfounded. &ldquo;I
-don&rsquo;t hear her,&rdquo; he gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s been quiet a long time,&rdquo; replied the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was another pause&mdash;broken suddenly by a voice from the attic:
-&ldquo;Hello, there!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Several of the women ran into the next room, while Marija sprang toward Jurgis.
-&ldquo;Wait here!&rdquo; she cried, and the two stood, pale and trembling,
-listening. In a few moments it became clear that Madame Haupt was engaged in
-descending the ladder, scolding and exhorting again, while the ladder creaked
-in protest. In a moment or two she reached the ground, angry and breathless,
-and they heard her coming into the room. Jurgis gave one glance at her, and
-then turned white and reeled. She had her jacket off, like one of the workers
-on the killing beds. Her hands and arms were smeared with blood, and blood was
-splashed upon her clothing and her face.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She stood breathing hard, and gazing about her; no one made a sound. &ldquo;I
-haf done my best,&rdquo; she began suddenly. &ldquo;I can do noffing
-more&mdash;dere is no use to try.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again there was silence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It ain&rsquo;t my fault,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You had ought to haf
-had a doctor, und not vaited so long&mdash;it vas too late already ven I
-come.&rdquo; Once more there was deathlike stillness. Marija was clutching
-Jurgis with all the power of her one well arm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then suddenly Madame Haupt turned to Aniele. &ldquo;You haf not got something
-to drink, hey?&rdquo; she queried. &ldquo;Some brandy?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Aniele shook her head.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Herr Gott!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Haupt. &ldquo;Such people! Perhaps
-you vill give me someting to eat den&mdash;I haf had noffing since yesterday
-morning, und I haf vorked myself near to death here. If I could haf known it
-vas like dis, I vould never haf come for such money as you gif me.&rdquo; At
-this moment she chanced to look round, and saw Jurgis: She shook her finger at
-him. &ldquo;You understand me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you pays me dot money
-yust de same! It is not my fault dat you send for me so late I can&rsquo;t help
-your vife. It is not my fault if der baby comes mit one arm first, so dot I
-can&rsquo;t save it. I haf tried all night, und in dot place vere it is not fit
-for dogs to be born, und mit notting to eat only vot I brings in mine own
-pockets.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here Madame Haupt paused for a moment to get her breath; and Marija, seeing the
-beads of sweat on Jurgis&rsquo;s forehead, and feeling the quivering of his
-frame, broke out in a low voice: &ldquo;How is Ona?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How is she?&rdquo; echoed Madame Haupt. &ldquo;How do you tink she can
-be ven you leave her to kill herself so? I told dem dot ven they send for de
-priest. She is young, und she might haf got over it, und been vell und strong,
-if she had been treated right. She fight hard, dot girl&mdash;she is not yet
-quite dead.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis gave a frantic scream. &ldquo;<i>Dead!</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;She vill die, of course,&rdquo; said the other angrily. &ldquo;Der baby
-is dead now.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The garret was lighted by a candle stuck upon a board; it had almost burned
-itself out, and was sputtering and smoking as Jurgis rushed up the ladder. He
-could make out dimly in one corner a pallet of rags and old blankets, spread
-upon the floor; at the foot of it was a crucifix, and near it a priest
-muttering a prayer. In a far corner crouched Elzbieta, moaning and wailing.
-Upon the pallet lay Ona.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She was covered with a blanket, but he could see her shoulders and one arm
-lying bare; she was so shrunken he would scarcely have known her&mdash;she was
-all but a skeleton, and as white as a piece of chalk. Her eyelids were closed,
-and she lay still as death. He staggered toward her and fell upon his knees
-with a cry of anguish: &ldquo;Ona! Ona!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She did not stir. He caught her hand in his, and began to clasp it frantically,
-calling: &ldquo;Look at me! Answer me! It is Jurgis come back&mdash;don&rsquo;t
-you hear me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was the faintest quivering of the eyelids, and he called again in frenzy:
-&ldquo;Ona! Ona!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then suddenly her eyes opened one instant. One instant she looked at
-him&mdash;there was a flash of recognition between them, he saw her afar off,
-as through a dim vista, standing forlorn. He stretched out his arms to her, he
-called her in wild despair; a fearful yearning surged up in him, hunger for her
-that was agony, desire that was a new being born within him, tearing his
-heartstrings, torturing him. But it was all in vain&mdash;she faded from him,
-she slipped back and was gone. And a wail of anguish burst from him, great sobs
-shook all his frame, and hot tears ran down his cheeks and fell upon her. He
-clutched her hands, he shook her, he caught her in his arms and pressed her to
-him but she lay cold and still&mdash;she was gone&mdash;she was gone!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The word rang through him like the sound of a bell, echoing in the far depths
-of him, making forgotten chords to vibrate, old shadowy fears to
-stir&mdash;fears of the dark, fears of the void, fears of annihilation. She was
-dead! She was dead! He would never see her again, never hear her again! An icy
-horror of loneliness seized him; he saw himself standing apart and watching all
-the world fade away from him&mdash;a world of shadows, of fickle dreams. He was
-like a little child, in his fright and grief; he called and called, and got no
-answer, and his cries of despair echoed through the house, making the women
-downstairs draw nearer to each other in fear. He was inconsolable, beside
-himself&mdash;the priest came and laid his hand upon his shoulder and whispered
-to him, but he heard not a sound. He was gone away himself, stumbling through
-the shadows, and groping after the soul that had fled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he lay. The gray dawn came up and crept into the attic. The priest left, the
-women left, and he was alone with the still, white figure&mdash;quieter now,
-but moaning and shuddering, wrestling with the grisly fiend. Now and then he
-would raise himself and stare at the white mask before him, then hide his eyes
-because he could not bear it. Dead! <i>dead!</i> And she was only a girl, she
-was barely eighteen! Her life had hardly begun&mdash;and here she lay
-murdered&mdash;mangled, tortured to death!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was morning when he rose up and came down into the kitchen&mdash;haggard and
-ashen gray, reeling and dazed. More of the neighbors had come in, and they
-stared at him in silence as he sank down upon a chair by the table and buried
-his face in his arms.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A few minutes later the front door opened; a blast of cold and snow rushed in,
-and behind it little Kotrina, breathless from running, and blue with the cold.
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m home again!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I could
-hardly&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, seeing Jurgis, she stopped with an exclamation. Looking from one to
-another she saw that something had happened, and she asked, in a lower voice:
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before anyone could reply, Jurgis started up; he went toward her, walking
-unsteadily. &ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Selling papers with the boys,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The
-snow&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Have you any money?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How much?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Nearly three dollars, Jurgis.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Give it to me.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the others. &ldquo;Give it to
-me!&rdquo; he commanded again, and she put her hand into her pocket and pulled
-out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag. Jurgis took it without a word, and
-went out of the door and down the street.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Three doors away was a saloon. &ldquo;Whisky,&rdquo; he said, as he entered,
-and as the man pushed him some, he tore at the rag with his teeth and pulled
-out half a dollar. &ldquo;How much is the bottle?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I want
-to get drunk.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
-
-<p>
-But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was Sunday
-morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick, realizing that he
-had spent every cent the family owned, and had not bought a single
-instant&rsquo;s forgetfulness with it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the morrow
-they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the potter&rsquo;s
-field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of the neighbors,
-to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children were upstairs
-starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had been spending their
-money on drink. So spoke Aniele, scornfully, and when he started toward the
-fire she added the information that her kitchen was no longer for him to fill
-with his phosphate stinks. She had crowded all her boarders into one room on
-Ona&rsquo;s account, but now he could go up in the garret where he
-belonged&mdash;and not there much longer, either, if he did not pay her some
-rent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping boarders
-in the next room, ascended the ladder. It was dark up above; they could not
-afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as outdoors. In a corner, as far
-away from the corpse as possible, sat Marija, holding little Antanas in her one
-good arm and trying to soothe him to sleep. In another corner crouched poor
-little Juozapas, wailing because he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija said
-not a word to Jurgis; he crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by
-the body.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children, and upon
-his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself up again to the
-luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a sound; he sat
-motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never dreamed how much he
-loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now that he sat here, knowing
-that on the morrow they would take her away, and that he would never lay eyes
-upon her again&mdash;never all the days of his life. His old love, which had
-been starved to death, beaten to death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of
-memory were lifted&mdash;he saw all their life together, saw her as he had seen
-her in Lithuania, the first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing
-like a bird. He saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with
-her heart of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in his
-ears, the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long, cruel battle
-with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not changed
-her&mdash;she had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching out her arms
-to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and tenderness. And she had
-suffered&mdash;so cruelly she had suffered, such agonies, such
-infamies&mdash;ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne. What a monster
-of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been! Every angry word that he had ever
-spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife; every selfish act that he had
-done&mdash;with what torments he paid for them now! And such devotion and awe
-as welled up in his soul&mdash;now that it could never be spoken, now that it
-was too late, too late! His bosom-was choking with it, bursting with it; he
-crouched here in the darkness beside her, stretching out his arms to
-her&mdash;and she was gone forever, she was dead! He could have screamed aloud
-with the horror and despair of it; a sweat of agony beaded his forehead, yet he
-dared not make a sound&mdash;he scarcely dared to breathe, because of his shame
-and loathing of himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass, and paid for
-it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home. She brought also
-a bit of stale rye bread that some one had given her, and with that they
-quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she came over to Jurgis and
-sat down beside him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She said not a word of reproach&mdash;she and Marija had chosen that course
-before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead wife.
-Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded out of her soul
-by fear. She had to bury one of her children&mdash;but then she had done it
-three times before, and each time risen up and gone back to take up the battle
-for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the primitive creatures: like the angleworm,
-which goes on living though cut in half; like a hen, which, deprived of her
-chickens one by one, will mother the last that is left her. She did this
-because it was her nature&mdash;she asked no questions about the justice of it,
-nor the worth-whileness of life in which destruction and death ran riot.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis, pleading
-with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others were left and
-they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children. She and Marija could
-care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his own son. Ona had given
-Antanas to him&mdash;the little fellow was the only remembrance of her that he
-had; he must treasure it and protect it, he must show himself a man. He knew
-what Ona would have had him do, what she would ask of him at this moment, if
-she could speak to him. It was a terrible thing that she should have died as
-she had; but the life had been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was
-terrible that they were not able to bury her, that he could not even have a day
-to mourn her&mdash;but so it was. Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent,
-and the children would perish&mdash;some money must be had. Could he not be a
-man for Ona&rsquo;s sake, and pull himself together? In a little while they
-would be out of danger&mdash;now that they had given up the house they could
-live more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along, if
-only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish intensity.
-It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid that Jurgis would go on
-drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was wild with dread at the
-thought that he might desert them, might take to the road, as Jonas had done.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But with Ona&rsquo;s dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think of
-treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of Antanas. He
-would give the little fellow his chance&mdash;would get to work at once, yes,
-tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They might trust him, he
-would keep his word, come what might.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache, heartache, and
-all. He went straight to Graham&rsquo;s fertilizer mill, to see if he could get
-back his job. But the boss shook his head when he saw him&mdash;no, his place
-had been filled long ago, and there was no room for him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Do you think there will be?&rdquo; Jurgis asked. &ldquo;I may have to
-wait.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;it will not be worth your while to
-wait&mdash;there will be nothing for you here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; he
-asked. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t I do my work?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
-&ldquo;There will be nothing for you here, I said.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident, and he
-went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his stand with the mob
-of hungry wretches who were standing about in the snow before the time station.
-Here he stayed, breakfastless, for two hours, until the throng was driven away
-by the clubs of the police. There was no work for him that day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
-yards&mdash;there were saloonkeepers who would trust him for a drink and a
-sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at a pinch. It
-was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he might hunt all day,
-and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on thus for weeks, like hundreds
-and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the
-Hyde Park district, and the children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele,
-and keep them all alive.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in the
-bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a chance in one of
-the cellars of Jones&rsquo;s big packing plant. He saw a foreman passing the
-open doorway, and hailed him for a job.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Push a truck?&rdquo; inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, &ldquo;Yes,
-sir!&rdquo; before the words were well out of his mouth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo; demanded the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Jurgis Rudkus.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Worked in the yards before?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Whereabouts?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Two places&mdash;Brown&rsquo;s killing beds and Durham&rsquo;s
-fertilizer mill.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why did you leave there?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for a
-month.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see. Well, I&rsquo;ll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask
-for Mr. Thomas.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job&mdash;that the
-terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a celebration
-that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place half an hour before the
-time of opening. The foreman came in shortly afterward, and when he saw Jurgis
-he frowned.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I promised you a job, didn&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m sorry, but I made a mistake. I can&rsquo;t use
-you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis stared, dumfounded. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;only I can&rsquo;t use you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of the
-fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word, and he turned
-and went away.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it; they
-gazed at him with pitying eyes&mdash;poor devil, he was blacklisted! What had
-he done? they asked&mdash;knocked down his boss? Good heavens, then he might
-have known! Why, he stood as much chance of getting a job in Packingtown as of
-being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his time hunting? They had him
-on a secret list in every office, big and little, in the place. They had his
-name by this time in St. Louis and New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas
-City and St. Joseph. He was condemned and sentenced, without trial and without
-appeal; he could never work for the packers again&mdash;he could not even clean
-cattle pens or drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try
-it, if he chose, as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He
-would never be told anything about it; he would never get any more satisfaction
-than he had gotten just now; but he would always find when the time came that
-he was not needed. It would not do for him to give any other name,
-either&mdash;they had company &ldquo;spotters&rdquo; for just that purpose, and
-he wouldn&rsquo;t keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was worth a fortune
-to the packers to keep their blacklist effective, as a warning to the men and a
-means of keeping down union agitation and political discontent.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council. It was a
-most cruel thing; here in this district was his home, such as it was, the place
-he was used to and the friends he knew&mdash;and now every possibility of
-employment in it was closed to him. There was nothing in Packingtown but
-packing houses; and so it was the same thing as evicting him from his home.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It would
-be convenient, downtown, to the children&rsquo;s place of work; but then Marija
-was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job in the yards; and
-though she did not see her old-time lover once a month, because of the misery
-of their state, yet she could not make up her mind to go away and give him up
-forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had heard something about a chance to scrub floors
-in Durham&rsquo;s offices and was waiting every day for word. In the end it was
-decided that Jurgis should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they
-would decide after he got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow
-there, and he dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that
-every day he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of
-their earnings, upon which he could keep going. Then all day he was to pace the
-streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches inquiring at
-stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and at night he was to crawl
-into some doorway or underneath a truck, and hide there until midnight, when he
-might get into one of the station houses, and spread a newspaper upon the
-floor, and lie down in the midst of a throng of &ldquo;bums&rdquo; and beggars,
-reeking with alcohol and tobacco, and filthy with vermin and disease.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he got a
-chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an old
-woman&rsquo;s valise and was given a quarter. This let him into a lodging-house
-on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death; and it also
-gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up
-jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a paper to be thrown away.
-This, however, was really not the advantage it seemed, for the newspaper
-advertisements were a cause of much loss of precious time and of many weary
-journeys. A full half of these were &ldquo;fakes,&rdquo; put in by the endless
-variety of establishments which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the
-unemployed. If Jurgis lost only his time, it was because he had nothing else to
-lose; whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful positions
-he had on hand, he could only shake his head sorrowfully and say that he had
-not the necessary dollar to deposit; when it was explained to him what
-&ldquo;big money&rdquo; he and all his family could make by coloring
-photographs, he could only promise to come in again when he had two dollars to
-invest in the outfit.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an old-time
-acquaintance of his union days. He met this man on his way to work in the giant
-factories of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told him to come along and he
-would speak a good word for him to his boss, whom he knew well. So Jurgis
-trudged four or five miles, and passed through a waiting throng of unemployed
-at the gate under the escort of his friend. His knees nearly gave way beneath
-him when the foreman, after looking him over and questioning him, told him that
-he could find an opening for him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages; for he found
-that the harvester works were the sort of place to which philanthropists and
-reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought for its employees; its
-workshops were big and roomy, it provided a restaurant where the workmen could
-buy good food at cost, it had even a reading room, and decent places where its
-girl-hands could rest; also the work was free from many of the elements of
-filth and repulsiveness that prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis
-discovered these things&mdash;things never expected nor dreamed of by
-him&mdash;until this new place came to seem a kind of a heaven to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred and sixty acres of ground,
-employing five thousand people, and turning out over three hundred thousand
-machines every year&mdash;a good part of all the harvesting and mowing machines
-used in the country. Jurgis saw very little of it, of course&mdash;it was all
-specialized work, the same as at the stockyards; each one of the hundreds of
-parts of a mowing machine was made separately, and sometimes handled by
-hundreds of men. Where Jurgis worked there was a machine which cut and stamped
-a certain piece of steel about two square inches in size; the pieces came
-tumbling out upon a tray, and all that human hands had to do was to pile them
-in regular rows, and change the trays at intervals. This was done by a single
-boy, who stood with eyes and thought centered upon it, and fingers flying so
-fast that the sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was like the
-music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night. This was
-&ldquo;piece-work,&rdquo; of course; and besides it was made certain that the
-boy did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest possible speed of
-human hands. Thirty thousand of these pieces he handled every day, nine or ten
-million every year&mdash;how many in a lifetime it rested with the gods to say.
-Near by him men sat bending over whirling grindstones, putting the finishing
-touches to the steel knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket with
-the right hand, pressing first one side and then the other against the stone
-and finally dropping them with the left hand into another basket. One of these
-men told Jurgis that he had sharpened three thousand pieces of steel a day for
-thirteen years. In the next room were wonderful machines that ate up long steel
-rods by slow stages, cutting them off, seizing the pieces, stamping heads upon
-them, grinding them and polishing them, threading them, and finally dropping
-them into a basket, all ready to bolt the harvesters together. From yet another
-machine came tens of thousands of steel burs to fit upon these bolts. In other
-places all these various parts were dipped into troughs of paint and hung up to
-dry, and then slid along on trolleys to a room where men streaked them with red
-and yellow, so that they might look cheerful in the harvest fields.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis&rsquo;s friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task was to
-make the molds of a certain part. He shoveled black sand into an iron
-receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden; then it would be
-taken out, and molten iron poured into it. This man, too, was paid by the
-mold&mdash;or rather for perfect castings, nearly half his work going for
-naught. You might see him, along with dozens of others, toiling like one
-possessed by a whole community of demons; his arms working like the driving
-rods of an engine, his long, black hair flying wild, his eyes starting out, the
-sweat rolling in rivers down his face. When he had shoveled the mold full of
-sand, and reached for the pounder to pound it with, it was after the manner of
-a canoeist running rapids and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All
-day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of
-making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then
-his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of
-industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are
-nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. If we are the greatest
-nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been
-able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy; though there are a few
-other things that are great among us including our drink-bill, which is a
-billion and a quarter of dollars a year, and doubling itself every decade.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then another which,
-with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the sitting-down portion of the
-American farmer. Then they were piled upon a truck, and it was Jurgis&rsquo;s
-task to wheel them to the room where the machines were &ldquo;assembled.&rdquo;
-This was child&rsquo;s play for him, and he got a dollar and seventy-five cents
-a day for it; on Saturday he paid Aniele the seventy-five cents a week he owed
-her for the use of her garret, and also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta
-had put in pawn when he was in jail.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This last was a great blessing. A man cannot go about in midwinter in Chicago
-with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Jurgis had to walk or ride five or six
-miles back and forth to his work. It so happened that half of this was in one
-direction and half in another, necessitating a change of cars; the law required
-that transfers be given at all intersecting points, but the railway corporation
-had gotten round this by arranging a pretense at separate ownership. So
-whenever he wished to ride, he had to pay ten cents each way, or over ten per
-cent of his income to this power, which had gotten its franchises long ago by
-buying up the city council, in the face of popular clamor amounting almost to a
-rebellion. Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter cold as it was in the
-morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the hours other workmen were
-traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few cars that there
-would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them and often crouching
-upon the snow-covered roof. Of course the doors could never be closed, and so
-the cars were as cold as outdoors; Jurgis, like many others, found it better to
-spend his fare for a drink and a free lunch, to give him strength to walk.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-These, however, were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from
-Durham&rsquo;s fertilizer mill. Jurgis began to pick up heart again and to make
-plans. He had lost his house but then the awful load of the rent and interest
-was off his shoulders, and when Marija was well again they could start over and
-save. In the shop where he worked was a man, a Lithuanian like himself, whom
-the others spoke of in admiring whispers, because of the mighty feats he was
-performing. All day he sat at a machine turning bolts; and then in the evening
-he went to the public school to study English and learn to read. In addition,
-because he had a family of eight children to support and his earnings were not
-enough, on Saturdays and Sundays he served as a watchman; he was required to
-press two buttons at opposite ends of a building every five minutes, and as the
-walk only took him two minutes, he had three minutes to study between each
-trip. Jurgis felt jealous of this fellow; for that was the sort of thing he
-himself had dreamed of, two or three years ago. He might do it even yet, if he
-had a fair chance&mdash;he might attract attention and become a skilled man or
-a boss, as some had done in this place. Suppose that Marija could get a job in
-the big mill where they made binder twine&mdash;then they would move into this
-neighborhood, and he would really have a chance. With a hope like that, there
-was some use in living; to find a place where you were treated like a human
-being&mdash;by God! he would show them how he could appreciate it. He laughed
-to himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then one afternoon, the ninth of his work in the place, when he went to get
-his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a placard on the door, and
-when he went over and asked what it was, they told him that beginning with the
-morrow his department of the harvester works would be closed until further
-notice!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
-
-<p>
-That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour&rsquo;s
-warning&mdash;the works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the
-men, and it would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting
-machines that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out! It
-was nobody&rsquo;s fault&mdash;that was the way of it; and thousands of men and
-women were turned out in the dead of winter, to live upon their savings if they
-had any, and otherwise to die. So many tens of thousands already in the city,
-homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand more added to them!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken,
-overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more pitfall was
-revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on the part of
-employers&mdash;when they could not keep a job for him, when there were more
-harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy! What a hellish mockery
-it was, anyway, that a man should slave to make harvesting machines for the
-country, only to be turned out to starve for doing his duty too well!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment. He did
-not drink anything, because Elzbieta got his money for safekeeping, and knew
-him too well to be in the least frightened by his angry demands. He stayed up
-in the garret however, and sulked&mdash;what was the use of a man&rsquo;s
-hunting a job when it was taken from him before he had time to learn the work?
-But then their money was going again, and little Antanas was hungry, and crying
-with the bitter cold of the garret. Also Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after
-him for some money. So he went out once more.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city, sick
-and hungry, begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices, in
-restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards, in
-warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that went to every
-corner of the world. There were often one or two chances&mdash;but there were
-always a hundred men for every chance, and his turn would not come. At night he
-crept into sheds and cellars and doorways&mdash;until there came a spell of
-belated winter weather, with a raging gale, and the thermometer five degrees
-below zero at sundown and falling all night. Then Jurgis fought like a wild
-beast to get into the big Harrison Street police station, and slept down in a
-corridor, crowded with two other men upon a single step.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the factory
-gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found, for instance, that
-the business of carrying satchels for railroad passengers was a pre-empted
-one&mdash;whenever he essayed it, eight or ten men and boys would fall upon him
-and force him to run for his life. They always had the policeman
-&ldquo;squared,&rdquo; and so there was no use in expecting protection.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the children
-brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the cold was almost
-more than the children could bear; and then they, too, were in perpetual peril
-from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law was against them,
-too&mdash;little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did not look to be eight,
-was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in spectacles, who told him
-that he was too young to be working and that if he did not stop selling papers
-she would send a truant officer after him. Also one night a strange man caught
-little Kotrina by the arm and tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an
-experience which filled her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at
-work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went home by
-stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting for him for
-three days&mdash;there was a chance of a job for him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger these
-days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had only one leg,
-having been run over by a wagon when a little child, but he had got himself a
-broomstick, which he put under his arm for a crutch. He had fallen in with some
-other children and found the way to Mike Scully&rsquo;s dump, which lay three
-or four blocks away. To this place there came every day many hundreds of
-wagon-loads of garbage and trash from the lake front, where the rich people
-lived; and in the heaps the children raked for food&mdash;there were hunks of
-bread and potato peelings and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen
-and quite unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a
-newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in.
-Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the dumps
-was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it and Juozapas
-began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go again. And that
-afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had been digging away with
-a stick, a lady upon the street had called him. A real fine lady, the little
-boy explained, a beautiful lady; and she wanted to know all about him, and
-whether he got the garbage for chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick,
-and why Ona had died, and how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the
-matter with Marija, and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived,
-and said that she was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to walk
-with. She had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas added, and a long fur
-snake around her neck.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the garret,
-and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of the blood stains
-on the floor where Ona had died. She was a &ldquo;settlement worker,&rdquo; she
-explained to Elzbieta&mdash;she lived around on Ashland Avenue. Elzbieta knew
-the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to go there, but she had
-not cared to, for she thought that it must have something to do with religion,
-and the priest did not like her to have anything to do with strange religions.
-They were rich people who came to live there to find out about the poor people;
-but what good they expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So
-spoke Elzbieta, naïvely, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss
-for an answer&mdash;she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical
-remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink of the
-pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their
-woes&mdash;what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their home,
-and Marija&rsquo;s accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could get no
-work. As she listened the pretty young lady&rsquo;s eyes filled with tears, and
-in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on Elzbieta&rsquo;s
-shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on a dirty old
-wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor Elzbieta was ashamed of
-herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other had to beg and plead
-with her to get her to go on. The end of it was that the young lady sent them a
-basket of things to eat, and left a letter that Jurgis was to take to a
-gentleman who was superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelworks in
-South Chicago. &ldquo;He will get Jurgis something to do,&rdquo; the young lady
-had said, and added, smiling through her tears&mdash;&ldquo;If he
-doesn&rsquo;t, he will never marry me.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so contrived that
-one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the sky was flaring with
-the red glare that leaped from rows of towering chimneys&mdash;for it was pitch
-dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast works, a city in themselves, were surrounded
-by a stockade; and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate where
-new hands were taken on. Soon after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then
-suddenly thousands of men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses
-across the way, leaping from trolley cars that passed&mdash;it seemed as if
-they rose out of the ground, in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in
-through the gate&mdash;and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were
-only a few late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the
-hungry strangers stamping and shivering.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly, and put him
-through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he had taken
-the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for the gatekeeper to do
-but send it to the person to whom it was addressed. A messenger came back to
-say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came inside of the gate, perhaps not
-sorry enough that there were others less fortunate watching him with greedy
-eyes. The great mills were getting under way&mdash;one could hear a vast
-stirring, a rolling and rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew
-plain: towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds,
-little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of
-billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a
-dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers came to load.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before he
-was summoned. He went into the office building, where a company timekeeper
-interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he said, but he (the timekeeper)
-would try to find Jurgis a job. He had never worked in a steel mill before? But
-he was ready for anything? Well, then, they would go and see.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He wondered
-if ever he could get used to working in a place like this, where the air shook
-with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked warnings on all sides of him at
-once; where miniature steam engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling,
-quivering, white-hot masses of metal sped past him, and explosions of fire and
-flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face. The men in these mills were
-all black with soot, and hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce
-intensity, rushing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from their
-tasks. Jurgis clung to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while
-the latter hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another
-unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of steel&mdash;a
-dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood where the balcony
-of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the stage, he saw three giant
-caldrons, big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of
-something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes
-were blowing through it&mdash;one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid
-fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below&mdash;and men
-were working there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with
-fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
-come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the
-receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and
-another train would back up&mdash;and suddenly, without an instant&rsquo;s
-warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple, flinging out a jet
-of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was
-an accident; there fell a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing
-like a huge tree falling in the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way
-across the building, overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then
-Jurgis looked through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the
-caldron a cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
-scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue, red, and
-golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white, ineffable. Out
-of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life; and the soul leaped
-up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and resistless, back into
-far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell. Then the great caldron tilted
-back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief that no one was hurt, and
-turned and followed his guide out into the sunlight.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars of steel
-were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around and above giant
-machine arms were flying, giant wheels were turning, great hammers crashing;
-traveling cranes creaked and groaned overhead, reaching down iron hands and
-seizing iron prey&mdash;it was like standing in the center of the earth, where
-the machinery of time was revolving.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and Jurgis heard
-a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with a white-hot ingot
-upon it, the size of a man&rsquo;s body. There was a sudden crash and the car
-came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon a moving platform, where steel
-fingers and arms seized hold of it, punching it and prodding it into place, and
-hurrying it into the grip of huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other
-side, and there were more crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped,
-like a pancake on a gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through
-another squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing
-thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing; it did
-not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate, it was tumbled
-on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By and by it was long and
-thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory; and then, as it slid through
-the rollers, you would have sworn that it was alive&mdash;it writhed and
-squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed out through its tail, all but
-flinging it off by their violence. There was no rest for it until it was cold
-and black&mdash;and then it needed only to be cut and straightened to be ready
-for a railroad.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was at the end of this rail&rsquo;s progress that Jurgis got his chance.
-They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use another
-man. So he took off his coat and set to work on the spot.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a dollar and
-twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he wrapped his bedding in
-a bundle and took it with him, and one of his fellow workingmen introduced him
-to a Polish lodging-house, where he might have the privilege of sleeping upon
-the floor for ten cents a night. He got his meals at free-lunch counters, and
-every Saturday night he went home&mdash;bedding and all&mdash;and took the
-greater part of his money to the family. Elzbieta was sorry for this
-arrangement, for she feared that it would get him into the habit of living
-without them, and once a week was not very often for him to see his baby; but
-there was no other way of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the
-steelworks, and Marija was now ready for work again, and lured on from day to
-day by the hope of finding it at the yards.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment in the
-rail mill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the miracles and
-terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling and crashing. From
-blind fear he went to the other extreme; he became reckless and indifferent,
-like all the rest of the men, who took but little thought of themselves in the
-ardor of their work. It was wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these
-men should have taken an interest in the work they did&mdash;they had no share
-in it&mdash;they were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested.
-Also they knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and
-forgotten&mdash;and still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short
-cuts, would use methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the
-fact that they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man
-stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and
-before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful
-accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white through every crack
-with the molten steel inside. Some of these were bulging dangerously, yet men
-worked before them, wearing blue glasses when they opened and shut the doors.
-One morning as Jurgis was passing, a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a
-shower of liquid fire. As they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in
-agony, Jurgis rushed to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the
-skin from the inside of one of his hands. The company doctor bandaged it up,
-but he got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days
-without any pay.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited chance to go
-at five o&rsquo;clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of one of
-the packers. Jurgis came home and covered himself with blankets to keep warm,
-and divided his time between sleeping and playing with little Antanas. Juozapas
-was away raking in the dump a good part of the time, and Elzbieta and Marija
-were hunting for more work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking machine.
-He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it seemed to him as if
-he had a new child. He would sit down and listen and stare at him, and give
-vent to delighted exclamations&mdash;&ldquo;<i>Palauk! Muma! Tu mano
-szirdele!</i>&rdquo; The little fellow was now really the one delight that Jurgis
-had in the world&mdash;his one hope, his one victory. Thank God, Antanas was a
-boy! And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the appetite of a wolf.
-Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him; he had come through all the
-suffering and deprivation unscathed&mdash;only shriller-voiced and more
-determined in his grip upon life. He was a terrible child to manage, was
-Antanas, but his father did not mind that&mdash;he would watch him and smile to
-himself with satisfaction. The more of a fighter he was the better&mdash;he
-would need to fight before he got through.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the money;
-a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole armful, with
-all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that Jurgis could spell
-out slowly, with the children to help him at the long words. There was battle
-and murder and sudden death&mdash;it was marvelous how they ever heard about so
-many entertaining and thrilling happenings; the stories must be all true, for
-surely no man could have made such things up, and besides, there were pictures
-of them all, as real as life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and
-nearly as good as a spree&mdash;certainly a most wonderful treat for a
-workingman, who was tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education,
-and whose work was one dull, sordid grind, day after day, and year after year,
-with never a sight of a green field nor an hour&rsquo;s entertainment, nor
-anything but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other things, these
-papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy in life
-to little Antanas. He treasured them up, and would drag them out and make his
-father tell him about them; there were all sorts of animals among them, and
-Antanas could tell the names of all of them, lying upon the floor for hours and
-pointing them out with his chubby little fingers. Whenever the story was plain
-enough for Jurgis to make out, Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then
-he would remember it, prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with
-other stories in an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation of
-words was such a delight&mdash;and the phrases he would pick up and remember,
-the most outlandish and impossible things! The first time that the little
-rascal burst out with &ldquo;God damn,&rdquo; his father nearly rolled off the
-chair with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this, for Antanas was soon
-&ldquo;God-damning&rdquo; everything and everybody.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his bedding again and
-went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April, and the snow had
-given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in front of Aniele&rsquo;s
-house was turned into a canal. Jurgis would have to wade through it to get
-home, and if it was late he might easily get stuck to his waist in the mire.
-But he did not mind this much&mdash;it was a promise that summer was coming.
-Marija had now gotten a place as beef-trimmer in one of the smaller packing
-plants; and he told himself that he had learned his lesson now, and would meet
-with no more accidents&mdash;so that at last there was prospect of an end to
-their long agony. They could save money again, and when another winter came
-they would have a comfortable place; and the children would be off the streets
-and in school again, and they might set to work to nurse back into life their
-habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgis began to make plans and
-dream dreams.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home, with the
-sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had been pouring floods
-of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a rainbow in the sky, and
-another in his breast&mdash;for he had thirty-six hours&rsquo; rest before him,
-and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly he came in sight of the house,
-and noticed that there was a crowd before the door. He ran up the steps and
-pushed his way in, and saw Aniele&rsquo;s kitchen crowded with excited women.
-It reminded him so vividly of the time when he had come home from jail and
-found Ona dying, that his heart almost stood still. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the
-matter?&rdquo; he cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was staring at
-him. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he exclaimed again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija&rsquo;s
-voice. He started for the ladder&mdash;and Aniele seized him by the arm.
-&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go up there!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he shouted.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the old woman answered him weakly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Antanas. He&rsquo;s
-dead. He was drowned out in the street!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he caught
-himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room, clenching his
-hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he pushed Aniele aside and strode
-into the next room and climbed the ladder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it; and beside it
-lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis could not tell. Marija was
-pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He clenched his hands
-tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija scarcely heard him in her agony. He repeated the question, louder and
-yet more harshly. &ldquo;He fell off the sidewalk!&rdquo; she wailed. The
-sidewalk in front of the house was a platform made of half-rotten boards, about
-five feet above the level of the sunken street.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How did he come to be there?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;He went&mdash;he went out to play,&rdquo; Marija sobbed, her voice
-choking her. &ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t make him stay in. He must have got caught
-in the mud!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Are you sure that he is dead?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ai! ai!&rdquo; she wailed. &ldquo;Yes; we had the doctor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then Jurgis stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He took one
-glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it, and then turned
-suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence fell once more in the
-room as he entered. He went straight to the door, passed out, and started down
-the street.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When his wife had died, Jurgis made for the nearest saloon, but he did not do
-that now, though he had his week&rsquo;s wages in his pocket. He walked and
-walked, seeing nothing, splashing through mud and water. Later on he sat down
-upon a step and hid his face in his hands and for half an hour or so he did not
-move. Now and then he would whisper to himself: &ldquo;Dead!
-<i>Dead!</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Finally, he got up and walked on again. It was about sunset, and he went on and
-on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a railroad crossing. The gates
-were down, and a long train of freight cars was thundering by. He stood and
-watched it; and all at once a wild impulse seized him, a thought that had been
-lurking within him, unspoken, unrecognized, leaped into sudden life. He started
-down the track, and when he was past the gate-keeper&rsquo;s shanty he sprang
-forward and swung himself on to one of the cars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-By and by the train stopped again, and Jurgis sprang down and ran under the
-car, and hid himself upon the truck. Here he sat, and when the train started
-again, he fought a battle with his soul. He gripped his hands and set his teeth
-together&mdash;he had not wept, and he would not&mdash;not a tear! It was past
-and over, and he was done with it&mdash;he would fling it off his shoulders, be
-free of it, the whole business, that night. It should go like a black, hateful
-nightmare, and in the morning he would be a new man. And every time that a
-thought of it assailed him&mdash;a tender memory, a trace of a tear&mdash;he
-rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it down.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in his desperation.
-He had been a fool, a fool! He had wasted his life, he had wrecked himself,
-with his accursed weakness; and now he was done with it&mdash;he would tear it
-out of him, root and branch! There should be no more tears and no more
-tenderness; he had had enough of them&mdash;they had sold him into slavery! Now
-he was going to be free, to tear off his shackles, to rise up and fight. He was
-glad that the end had come&mdash;it had to come some time, and it was just as
-well now. This was no world for women and children, and the sooner they got out
-of it the better for them. Whatever Antanas might suffer where he was, he could
-suffer no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth. And meantime his
-father had thought the last thought about him that he meant to; he was going to
-think of himself, he was going to fight for himself, against the world that had
-baffled him and tortured him!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and
-setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and a storm of
-dust blew in his face; but though it stopped now and then through the night, he
-clung where he was&mdash;he would cling there until he was driven off, for
-every mile that he got from Packingtown meant another load from his mind.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whenever the cars stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze laden with the
-perfume of fresh fields, of honeysuckle and clover. He snuffed it, and it made
-his heart beat wildly&mdash;he was out in the country again! He was going to
-<i>live</i> in the country! When the dawn came he was peering out with hungry
-eyes, getting glimpses of meadows and woods and rivers. At last he could stand
-it no longer, and when the train stopped again he crawled out. Upon the top of
-the car was a brakeman, who shook his fist and swore; Jurgis waved his hand
-derisively, and started across the country.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for three long years
-he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound! Excepting for that
-one walk when he left jail, when he was too much worried to notice anything,
-and for a few times that he had rested in the city parks in the winter time
-when he was out of work, he had literally never seen a tree! And now he felt
-like a bird lifted up and borne away upon a gale; he stopped and stared at each
-new sight of wonder&mdash;at a herd of cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at
-hedgerows set thick with June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then he came to a farm-house, and after getting himself a stick for protection,
-he approached it. The farmer was greasing a wagon in front of the barn, and
-Jurgis went to him. &ldquo;I would like to get some breakfast, please,&rdquo;
-he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Do you want to work?&rdquo; said the farmer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jurgis. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Then you can&rsquo;t get anything here,&rdquo; snapped the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I meant to pay for it,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the farmer; and then added sarcastically, &ldquo;We
-don&rsquo;t serve breakfast after 7 A.M.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I am very hungry,&rdquo; said Jurgis gravely; &ldquo;I would like to buy
-some food.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ask the woman,&rdquo; said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder. The
-&ldquo;woman&rdquo; was more tractable, and for a dime Jurgis secured two thick
-sandwiches and a piece of pie and two apples. He walked off eating the pie, as
-the least convenient thing to carry. In a few minutes he came to a stream, and
-he climbed a fence and walked down the bank, along a woodland path. By and by
-he found a comfortable spot, and there he devoured his meal, slaking his thirst
-at the stream. Then he lay for hours, just gazing and drinking in joy; until at
-last he felt sleepy, and lay down in the shade of a bush.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face. He sat up and stretched his
-arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. There was a deep pool, sheltered
-and silent, below him, and a sudden wonderful idea rushed upon him. He might
-have a bath! The water was free, and he might get into it&mdash;all the way
-into it! It would be the first time that he had been all the way into the water
-since he left Lithuania!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean as any
-workingman could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold and hunger
-and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the vermin in his home,
-he had given up washing in winter, and in summer only as much of him as would
-go into a basin. He had had a shower bath in jail, but nothing since&mdash;and
-now he would have a swim!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his glee.
-Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank, and proceeded to scrub
-himself&mdash;soberly and methodically, scouring every inch of him with sand.
-While he was doing it he would do it thoroughly, and see how it felt to be
-clean. He even scrubbed his head with sand, and combed what the men called
-&ldquo;crumbs&rdquo; out of his long, black hair, holding his head under water
-as long as he could, to see if he could not kill them all. Then, seeing that
-the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the bank and proceeded to wash
-them, piece by piece; as the dirt and grease went floating off downstream he
-grunted with satisfaction and soused the clothes again, venturing even to dream
-that he might get rid of the fertilizer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He hung them all up, and while they were drying he lay down in the sun and had
-another long sleep. They were hot and stiff as boards on top, and a little damp
-on the underside, when he awakened; but being hungry, he put them on and set
-out again. He had no knife, but with some labor he broke himself a good stout
-club, and, armed with this, he marched down the road again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before long he came to a big farmhouse, and turned up the lane that led to it.
-It was just supper-time, and the farmer was washing his hands at the kitchen
-door. &ldquo;Please, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;can I have something to
-eat? I can pay.&rdquo; To which the farmer responded promptly, &ldquo;We
-don&rsquo;t feed tramps here. Get out!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went without a word; but as he passed round the barn he came to a
-freshly ploughed and harrowed field, in which the farmer had set out some young
-peach trees; and as he walked he jerked up a row of them by the roots, more
-than a hundred trees in all, before he reached the end of the field. That was
-his answer, and it showed his mood; from now on he was fighting, and the man
-who hit him would get all that he gave, every time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Beyond the orchard Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and then a field of
-winter grain, and came at last to another road. Before long he saw another
-farmhouse, and, as it was beginning to cloud over a little, he asked here for
-shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eying him dubiously, he added,
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be glad to sleep in the barn.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, I dunno,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;Do you smoke?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ll do it out of
-doors.&rdquo; When the man had assented, he inquired, &ldquo;How much will it
-cost me? I haven&rsquo;t very much money.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I reckon about twenty cents for supper,&rdquo; replied the farmer.
-&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t charge ye for the barn.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went in, and sat down at the table with the farmer&rsquo;s wife and
-half a dozen children. It was a bountiful meal&mdash;there were baked beans and
-mashed potatoes and asparagus chopped and stewed, and a dish of strawberries,
-and great, thick slices of bread, and a pitcher of milk. Jurgis had not had
-such a feast since his wedding day, and he made a mighty effort to put in his
-twenty cents&rsquo; worth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were all of them too hungry to talk; but afterward they sat upon the steps
-and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. When Jurgis had explained that
-he was a workingman from Chicago, and that he did not know just whither he was
-bound, the other said, &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you stay here and work for
-me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not looking for work just now,&rdquo; Jurgis answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll pay ye good,&rdquo; said the other, eying his big
-form&mdash;&ldquo;a dollar a day and board ye. Help&rsquo;s terrible scarce
-round here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Is that winter as well as summer?&rdquo; Jurgis demanded quickly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;N&mdash;no,&rdquo; said the farmer; &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t keep ye
-after November&mdash;I ain&rsquo;t got a big enough place for that.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what I thought. When
-you get through working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in the
-snow?&rdquo; (Jurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It ain&rsquo;t quite the same,&rdquo; the farmer answered, seeing the
-point. &ldquo;There ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do,
-in the cities, or some place, in the winter time.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what they all think; and so
-they crowd into the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then
-people ask &rsquo;em why they don&rsquo;t go into the country, where help is
-scarce.&rdquo; The farmer meditated awhile.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How about when your money&rsquo;s gone?&rdquo; he inquired, finally.
-&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to, then, won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Wait till she&rsquo;s gone,&rdquo; said Jurgis; &ldquo;then I&rsquo;ll
-see.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had a long sleep in the barn and then a big breakfast of coffee and bread
-and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the man charged him only fifteen
-cents, perhaps having been influenced by his arguments. Then Jurgis bade
-farewell, and went on his way.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp. It was seldom he got as fair
-treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time went on he learned to shun
-the houses and to prefer sleeping in the fields. When it rained he would find a
-deserted building, if he could, and if not, he would wait until after dark and
-then, with his stick ready, begin a stealthy approach upon a barn. Generally he
-could get in before the dog got scent of him, and then he would hide in the hay
-and be safe until morning; if not, and the dog attacked him, he would rise up
-and make a retreat in battle order. Jurgis was not the mighty man he had once
-been, but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he needed to
-hit more than once.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before long there came raspberries, and then blackberries, to help him save his
-money; and there were apples in the orchards and potatoes in the
-ground&mdash;he learned to note the places and fill his pockets after dark.
-Twice he even managed to capture a chicken, and had a feast, once in a deserted
-barn and the other time in a lonely spot alongside of a stream. When all of
-these things failed him he used his money carefully, but without
-worry&mdash;for he saw that he could earn more whenever he chose. Half an
-hour&rsquo;s chopping wood in his lively fashion was enough to bring him a
-meal, and when the farmer had seen him working he would sometimes try to bribe
-him to stay.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Jurgis was not staying. He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old
-<i>Wanderlust</i> had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy
-of seeking, of hoping without limit. There were mishaps and
-discomforts&mdash;but at least there was always something new; and only think
-what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place, seeing
-nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories, to be suddenly set
-loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes, new places, and new
-people every hour! To a man whose whole life had consisted of doing one certain
-thing all day, until he was so exhausted that he could only lie down and sleep
-until the next day&mdash;and to be now his own master, working as he pleased
-and when he pleased, and facing a new adventure every hour!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then, too, his health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor, his joy
-and power that he had mourned and forgotten! It came with a sudden rush,
-bewildering him, startling him; it was as if his dead childhood had come back
-to him, laughing and calling! What with plenty to eat and fresh air and
-exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken from his sleep and
-start off not knowing what to do with his energy, stretching his arms,
-laughing, singing old songs of home that came back to him. Now and then, of
-course, he could not help but think of little Antanas, whom he should never see
-again, whose little voice he should never hear; and then he would have to
-battle with himself. Sometimes at night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and
-stretch out his arms to her, and wet the ground with his tears. But in the
-morning he would get up and shake himself, and stride away again to battle with
-the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big enough,
-he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it. And of course
-he could always have company for the asking&mdash;everywhere he went there were
-men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcome to join. He was a stranger
-at the business, but they were not clannish, and they taught him all their
-tricks&mdash;what towns and villages it was best to keep away from, and how to
-read the secret signs upon the fences, and when to beg and when to steal, and
-just how to do both. They laughed at his ideas of paying for anything with
-money or with work&mdash;for they got all they wanted without either. Now and
-then Jurgis camped out with a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged
-with them in the neighborhood at night. And then among them some one would
-&ldquo;take a shine&rdquo; to him, and they would go off together and travel
-for a week, exchanging reminiscences.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been shiftless and
-vicious all their lives. But the vast majority of them had been workingmen, had
-fought the long fight as Jurgis had, and found that it was a losing fight, and
-given up. Later on he encountered yet another sort of men, those from whose
-ranks the tramps were recruited, men who were homeless and wandering, but still
-seeking work&mdash;seeking it in the harvest fields. Of these there was an
-army, the huge surplus labor army of society; called into being under the stern
-system of nature, to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were
-transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that
-they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that
-the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas, and as the
-crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending with the fall
-in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber camps, where there was
-winter work; or failing in this, would drift to the cities, and live upon what
-they had managed to save, with the help of such transient work as was there the
-loading and unloading of steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the
-shoveling of snow. If there were more of them on hand than chanced to be
-needed, the weaker ones died off of cold and hunger, again according to the
-stern system of nature.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri, that he came
-upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for three or four
-months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly all unless they could
-find others to help them for a week or two. So all over the land there was a
-cry for labor&mdash;agencies were set up and all the cities were drained of
-men, even college boys were brought by the carload, and hordes of frantic
-farmers would hold up trains and carry off wagon-loads of men by main force.
-Not that they did not pay them well&mdash;any man could get two dollars a day
-and his board, and the best men could get two dollars and a half or three.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in him could
-be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and worked from dawn
-till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without a break. Then he had a
-sum of money that would have been a fortune to him in the old days of
-misery&mdash;but what could he do with it now? To be sure he might have put it
-in a bank, and, if he were fortunate, get it back again when he wanted it. But
-Jurgis was now a homeless man, wandering over a continent; and what did he know
-about banking and drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about
-with him, he would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him
-to do but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a town
-with his fellows; and because it was raining, and there was no other place
-provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some who treated him and
-whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing and good cheer; and
-then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl&rsquo;s face, red-cheeked and
-merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped suddenly in his throat. He
-nodded to her, and she came and sat by him, and they had more drink, and then
-he went upstairs into a room with her, and the wild beast rose up within him
-and screamed, as it has screamed in the Jungle from the dawn of time. And then
-because of his memories and his shame, he was glad when others joined them, men
-and women; and they had more drink and spent the night in wild rioting and
-debauchery. In the van of the surplus-labor army, there followed another, an
-army of women, they also struggling for life under the stern system of nature.
-Because there were rich men who sought pleasure, there had been ease and plenty
-for them so long as they were young and beautiful; and later on, when they were
-crowded out by others younger and more beautiful, they went out to follow upon
-the trail of the workingmen. Sometimes they came of themselves, and the
-saloon-keepers shared with them; or sometimes they were handled by agencies,
-the same as the labor army. They were in the towns in harvest time, near the
-lumber camps in the winter, in the cities when the men came there; if a
-regiment were encamped, or a railroad or canal being made, or a great
-exposition getting ready, the crowd of women were on hand, living in shanties
-or saloons or tenement rooms, sometimes eight or ten of them together.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the morning Jurgis had not a cent, and he went out upon the road again. He
-was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of his life, he crushed his
-feelings down. He had made a fool of himself, but he could not help it
-now&mdash;all he could do was to see that it did not happen again. So he
-tramped on until exercise and fresh air banished his headache, and his strength
-and joy returned. This happened to him every time, for Jurgis was still a
-creature of impulse, and his pleasures had not yet become business. It would be
-a long time before he could be like the majority of these men of the road, who
-roamed until the hunger for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to
-work with a purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-On the contrary, try as he would, Jurgis could not help being made miserable by
-his conscience. It was the ghost that would not down. It would come upon him in
-the most unexpected places&mdash;sometimes it fairly drove him to drink.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a little
-house just outside of a town. It was a working-man&rsquo;s home, and the owner
-was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from White Russia; he bade Jurgis
-welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the kitchen-fire and dry
-himself. He had no bed for him, but there was straw in the garret, and he could
-make out. The man&rsquo;s wife was cooking the supper, and their children were
-playing about on the floor. Jurgis sat and exchanged thoughts with him about
-the old country, and the places where they had been and the work they had done.
-Then they ate, and afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and
-how they found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis stopped, seeing
-that the woman had brought a big basin of water and was proceeding to undress
-her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the closet where they slept, but
-the baby was to have a bath, the workingman explained. The nights had begun to
-be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the climate in America, had sewed him
-up for the winter; then it had turned warm again, and some kind of a rash had
-broken out on the child. The doctor had said she must bathe him every night,
-and she, foolish woman, believed him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. He was about a
-year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a round ball of a
-stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did not seem to bother him
-much, and he was wild with glee over the bath, kicking and squirming and
-chuckling with delight, pulling at his mother&rsquo;s face and then at his own
-little toes. When she put him into the basin he sat in the midst of it and
-grinned, splashing the water over himself and squealing like a little pig. He
-spoke in Russian, of which Jurgis knew some; he spoke it with the quaintest of
-baby accents&mdash;and every word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his
-own dead little one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly motionless,
-silent, but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm gathered in his bosom and
-a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could bear it no
-more, but buried his face in his hands and burst into tears, to the alarm and
-amazement of his hosts. Between the shame of this and his woe Jurgis could not
-stand it, and got up and rushed out into the rain.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where he hid
-and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that, what despair,
-when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of his old life came forth
-to scourge him! What terror to see what he had been and now could never
-be&mdash;to see Ona and his child and his own dead self stretching out their
-arms to him, calling to him across a bottomless abyss&mdash;and to know that
-they were gone from him forever, and he writhing and suffocating in the mire of
-his own vileness!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
-
-<p>
-Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went out of
-tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and, like many
-thousands of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by coming early he
-could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with him, hidden away in one
-of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from the saloon-keepers, not so much
-by his conscience, as by the fear which filled him at the thought of being out
-of work in the city in the winter time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight cars at
-night, and liable to be thrown off at any time, regardless of the speed of the
-train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for he had money and they did
-not, and he meant to save himself in this fight. He would bring to it all the
-skill that practice had brought him, and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair
-nights he would sleep in the park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and
-when it was rainy or cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent
-lodging-house, or pay three cents for the privileges of a
-&ldquo;squatter&rdquo; in a tenement hallway. He would eat at free lunches,
-five cents a meal, and never a cent more&mdash;so he might keep alive for two
-months and more, and in that time he would surely find a job. He would have to
-bid farewell to his summer cleanliness, of course, for he would come out of the
-first night&rsquo;s lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no
-place in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to the
-lake front&mdash;and there it would soon be all ice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that his
-places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away from the
-stockyards&mdash;he was a single man now, he told himself, and he meant to stay
-one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He began the long, weary
-round of factories and warehouses, tramping all day, from one end of the city
-to the other, finding everywhere from ten to a hundred men ahead of him. He
-watched the newspapers, too&mdash;but no longer was he to be taken in by
-smooth-spoken agents. He had been told of all those tricks while &ldquo;on the
-road.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly a month
-of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he thought it was
-a &ldquo;fake,&rdquo; he went because the place was near by. He found a line of
-men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out of an alley and break the
-line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a place. Men threatened him and
-tried to throw him out, but he cursed and made a disturbance to attract a
-policeman, upon which they subsided, knowing that if the latter interfered it
-would be to &ldquo;fire&rdquo; them all.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman behind a
-desk.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ever worked in Chicago before?&rdquo; the man inquired; and whether it
-was a good angel that put it into Jurgis&rsquo;s mind, or an intuition of his
-sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, &ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where do you come from?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Kansas City, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Any references?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, sir. I&rsquo;m just an unskilled man. I&rsquo;ve got good
-arms.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I want men for hard work&mdash;it&rsquo;s all underground, digging
-tunnels for telephones. Maybe it won&rsquo;t suit you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m willing, sir&mdash;anything for me. What&rsquo;s the
-pay?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Fifteen cents an hour.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m willing, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right; go back there and give your name.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of the city.
-The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was about eight feet
-high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had innumerable
-branches&mdash;a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis walked over half a
-mile with his gang to the place where they were to work. Stranger yet, the
-tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it was laid a double-tracked,
-narrow-gauge railroad!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the matter a
-thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally learned the meaning of
-this whole affair. The City Council had passed a quiet and innocent little bill
-allowing a company to construct telephone conduits under the city streets; and
-upon the strength of this, a great corporation had proceeded to tunnel all
-Chicago with a system of railway freight-subways. In the city there was a
-combination of employers, representing hundreds of millions of capital, and
-formed for the purpose of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which
-troubled it was the teamsters&rsquo;; and when these freight tunnels were
-completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the railroad
-depots, they would have the teamsters&rsquo; union by the throat. Now and then
-there were rumors and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen, and once there was a
-committee to investigate&mdash;but each time another small fortune was paid
-over, and the rumors died away; until at last the city woke up with a start to
-find the work completed. There was a tremendous scandal, of course; it was
-found that the city records had been falsified and other crimes committed, and
-some of Chicago&rsquo;s big capitalists got into jail&mdash;figuratively
-speaking. The aldermen declared that they had had no idea of it all, in spite
-of the fact that the main entrance to the work had been in the rear of the
-saloon of one of them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he had an
-all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a spree that
-night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a place in a tenement
-room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw mattress along with four other
-workingmen. This was one dollar a week, and for four more he got his food in a
-boardinghouse near his work. This would leave him four dollars extra each week,
-an unthinkable sum for him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools,
-and also to buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces,
-and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
-spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat. There
-was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died in the room
-next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her rent; in the end,
-however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by day
-and in bed at night.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more quickly than
-ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from seven o&rsquo;clock until
-half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which meant that he never saw the
-sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there was no place for him to go except a
-barroom; no place where there was light and warmth, where he could hear a
-little music or sit with a companion and talk. He had now no home to go to; he
-had no affection left in his life&mdash;only the pitiful mockery of it in the
-<i>camaraderie</i> of vice. On Sundays the churches were open&mdash;but where
-was there a church in which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling
-upon his neck, could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He
-had, of course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window
-opening upon a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare streets, with
-the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he had only the
-saloons&mdash;and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them. If he drank now
-and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or a pack of
-greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money, or to look at a
-beer-stained pink &ldquo;sporting paper,&rdquo; with pictures of murderers and
-half-naked women. It was for such pleasures as these that he spent his money;
-and such was his life during the six weeks and a half that he toiled for the
-merchants of Chicago, to enable them to break the grip of their
-teamsters&rsquo; union.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare of the
-laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and several manglings;
-it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or two men heard of any one
-accident. The work was all done by the new boring machinery, with as little
-blasting as possible; but there would be falling rocks and crushed supports,
-and premature explosions&mdash;and in addition all the dangers of railroading.
-So it was that one night, as Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine
-and a loaded car dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and
-struck him upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and
-knocking him senseless.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of an
-ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was threading its
-way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took him to the county
-hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he was washed and laid upon a
-bed in a ward with a score or two more of maimed and mangled men.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
-Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
-investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that doctors were
-allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients; but Jurgis knew nothing
-of this&mdash;his only complaint was that they used to feed him upon tinned
-meat, which no man who had ever worked in Packingtown would feed to his dog.
-Jurgis had often wondered just who ate the canned corned beef and &ldquo;roast
-beef&rdquo; of the stockyards; now he began to understand&mdash;that it was
-what you might call &ldquo;graft meat,&rdquo; put up to be sold to public
-officials and contractors, and eaten by soldiers and sailors, prisoners and
-inmates of institutions, &ldquo;shantymen&rdquo; and gangs of railroad
-laborers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This did not
-mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to work, but
-simply that he could get along without further attention, and that his place
-was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was utterly helpless, and
-had no means of keeping himself alive in the meantime, was something which did
-not concern the hospital authorities, nor any one else in the city.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his last
-week&rsquo;s board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance of his
-Saturday&rsquo;s pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets, and a
-dollar and a half due him for the day&rsquo;s work he had done before he was
-hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got some damages for his
-injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not the company&rsquo;s business
-to tell him. He went and got his pay and his tools, which he left in a pawnshop
-for fifty cents. Then he went to his landlady, who had rented his place and had
-no other for him; and then to his boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and
-questioned him. As he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and
-had boarded there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be
-worth the risk to keep him on trust.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was bitterly
-cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face. He had no overcoat,
-and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five cents in his pocket, with
-the certainty that he could not earn another cent for months. The snow meant no
-chance to him now; he must walk along and see others shoveling, vigorous and
-active&mdash;and he with his left arm bound to his side! He could not hope to
-tide himself over by odd jobs of loading trucks; he could not even sell
-newspapers or carry satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival.
-Words could not paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this. He
-was like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his
-enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him because of
-his weakness&mdash;it was no one&rsquo;s business to help him in such distress,
-to make the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he took to begging, he
-would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in good time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of the awful
-cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to frequent and bought a
-drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and waiting to be ordered out.
-According to an unwritten law, the buying a drink included the privilege of
-loafing for just so long; then one had to buy another drink or move on. That
-Jurgis was an old customer entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he
-had been away two weeks, and was evidently &ldquo;on the bum.&rdquo; He might
-plead and tell his &ldquo;hard luck story,&rdquo; but that would not help him
-much; a saloon-keeper who was to be moved by such means would soon have his
-place jammed to the doors with &ldquo;hoboes&rdquo; on a day like this.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He was so
-hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an indulgence
-which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was again told to move
-on, he made his way to a &ldquo;tough&rdquo; place in the &ldquo;Lêvée&rdquo;
-district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed Bohemian
-workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It was Jurgis&rsquo;s vain
-hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a &ldquo;sitter.&rdquo;
-In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers would often allow
-one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered with snow or soaked with
-rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to attract custom. A workingman
-would come in, feeling cheerful after his day&rsquo;s work was over, and it
-would trouble him to have to take his glass with such a sight under his nose;
-and so he would call out: &ldquo;Hello, Bub, what&rsquo;s the matter? You look
-as if you&rsquo;d been up against it!&rdquo; And then the other would begin to
-pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, &ldquo;Come have a glass,
-and maybe that&rsquo;ll brace you up.&rdquo; And so they would drink together,
-and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking, or good enough at the
-&ldquo;gab,&rdquo; they might have two; and if they were to discover that they
-were from the same country, or had lived in the same city or worked at the same
-trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in
-talk&mdash;and before they got through the saloon-keeper would have taken in a
-dollar. All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise
-to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to
-adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will;
-and the saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
-the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The market for &ldquo;sitters&rdquo; was glutted that afternoon, however, and
-there was no place for Jurgis. In all he had to spend six nickels in keeping a
-shelter over him that frightful day, and then it was just dark, and the station
-houses would not open until midnight! At the last place, however, there was a
-bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him doze at one of the tables
-until the boss came back; and also, as he was going out, the man gave him a
-tip&mdash;on the next block there was a religious revival of some sort, with
-preaching and singing, and hundreds of hoboes would go there for the shelter
-and warmth.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door would
-open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran, a block, and hid awhile in a
-doorway and then ran again, and so on until the hour. At the end he was all but
-frozen, and fought his way in with the rest of the throng (at the risk of
-having his arm broken again), and got close to the big stove.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-By eight o&rsquo;clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to have
-been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at the door men were
-packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly gentlemen in black
-upon the platform, and a young lady who played the piano in front. First they
-sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin,
-and wearing black spectacles, began an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it,
-for the reason that terror kept him awake&mdash;he knew that he snored
-abominably, and to have been put out just then would have been like a sentence
-of death to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The evangelist was preaching &ldquo;sin and redemption,&rdquo; the infinite
-grace of God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and
-he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with hatred.
-What did he know about sin and suffering&mdash;with his smooth, black coat and
-his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his
-pocket&mdash;and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the
-death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold!&mdash;This, of course,
-was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the life they
-discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves
-were part of the problem&mdash;they were part of the order established that was
-crushing men down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent
-possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and
-so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and
-listen! They were trying to save their souls&mdash;and who but a fool could
-fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not
-been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into the
-snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got repentance and gone up
-on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station house would open, and
-Jurgis had no overcoat&mdash;and was weak from a long illness. During that hour
-he nearly perished. He was obliged to run hard to keep his blood moving at
-all&mdash;and then he came back to the station house and found a crowd blocking
-the street before the door! This was in the month of January, 1904, when the
-country was on the verge of &ldquo;hard times,&rdquo; and the newspapers were
-reporting the shutting down of factories every day&mdash;it was estimated that
-a million and a half men were thrown out of work before the spring. So all the
-hiding places of the city were crowded, and before that station house door men
-fought and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was
-jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and Jurgis,
-with his helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a
-lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do this, at
-half-past twelve o&rsquo;clock, after he had wasted the night at the meeting
-and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging-house promptly at
-seven&mdash;they had the shelves which served as bunks so contrived that they
-could be dropped, and any man who was slow about obeying orders could be
-tumbled to the floor.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At the end of
-six days every cent of Jurgis&rsquo; money was gone; and then he went out on
-the streets to beg for his life.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would sally
-forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no policeman in sight,
-would approach every likely-looking person who passed him, telling his woeful
-story and pleading for a nickel or a dime. Then when he got one, he would dart
-round the corner and return to his base to get warm; and his victim, seeing him
-do this, would go away, vowing that he would never give a cent to a beggar
-again. The victim never paused to ask where else Jurgis could have gone under
-the circumstances&mdash;where he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon
-Jurgis could not only get more food and better food than he could buy in any
-restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm him up. Also
-he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could chat with a companion
-until he was as warm as toast. At the saloon, too, he felt at home. Part of the
-saloon-keeper&rsquo;s business was to offer a home and refreshments to beggars
-in exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was there any one else in
-the whole city who would do this&mdash;would the victim have done it himself?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He was just
-out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm;
-also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, it was again the
-case of the honest merchant, who finds that the genuine and unadulterated
-article is driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar,
-was simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific
-professionalism. He was just out of the hospital&mdash;but the story was worn
-threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling&mdash;and it
-was a device a regular beggar&rsquo;s little boy would have scorned. He was
-pale and shivering&mdash;but they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied
-the art of chattering their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among
-them you would meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen
-duster and a pair of cotton trousers&mdash;so cleverly had they concealed the
-several suits of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional
-mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of dollars in the
-bank; some of them had retired upon their earnings, and gone into the business
-of fitting out and doctoring others, or working children at the trade. There
-were some who had both their arms bound tightly to their sides, and padded
-stumps in their sleeves, and a sick child hired to carry a cup for them. There
-were some who had no legs, and pushed themselves upon a wheeled
-platform&mdash;some who had been favored with blindness, and were led by pretty
-little dogs. Some less fortunate had mutilated themselves or burned themselves,
-or had brought horrible sores upon themselves with chemicals; you might
-suddenly encounter upon the street a man holding out to you a finger rotting
-and discolored with gangrene&mdash;or one with livid scarlet wounds half
-escaped from their filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the
-city&rsquo;s cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of
-old ramshackle tenements, in &ldquo;stale-beer dives&rdquo; and opium joints,
-with abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot&rsquo;s
-progress&mdash;women who had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to
-die. Every day the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and
-in the detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature
-inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease,
-laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking like dogs,
-gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in delirium.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
-
-<p>
-In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a
-lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death.
-Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold, his soul filled full of
-bitterness and despair. He saw the world of civilization then more plainly than
-ever he had seen it before; a world in which nothing counted but brutal might,
-an order devised by those who possessed it for the subjugation of those who did
-not. He was one of the latter; and all outdoors, all life, was to him one
-colossal prison, which he paced like a pent-up tiger, trying one bar after
-another, and finding them all beyond his power. He had lost in the fierce
-battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all society was
-busied to see that he did not escape the sentence. Everywhere that he turned
-were prison bars, and hostile eyes following him; the well-fed, sleek
-policemen, from whose glances he shrank, and who seemed to grip their clubs
-more tightly when they saw him; the saloon-keepers, who never ceased to watch
-him while he was in their places, who were jealous of every moment he lingered
-after he had paid his money; the hurrying throngs upon the streets, who were
-deaf to his entreaties, oblivious of his very existence&mdash;and savage and
-contemptuous when he forced himself upon them. They had their own affairs, and
-there was no place for him among them. There was no place for him
-anywhere&mdash;every direction he turned his gaze, this fact was forced upon
-him: Everything was built to express it to him: the residences, with their
-heavy walls and bolted doors, and basement windows barred with iron; the great
-warehouses filled with the products of the whole world, and guarded by iron
-shutters and heavy gates; the banks with their unthinkable billions of wealth,
-all buried in safes and vaults of steel.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then one day there befell Jurgis the one adventure of his life. It was late
-at night, and he had failed to get the price of a lodging. Snow was falling,
-and he had been out so long that he was covered with it, and was chilled to the
-bone. He was working among the theater crowds, flitting here and there, taking
-large chances with the police, in his desperation half hoping to be arrested.
-When he saw a blue-coat start toward him, however, his heart failed him, and he
-dashed down a side street and fled a couple of blocks. When he stopped again he
-saw a man coming toward him, and placed himself in his path.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Please, sir,&rdquo; he began, in the usual formula, &ldquo;will you give
-me the price of a lodging? I&rsquo;ve had a broken arm, and I can&rsquo;t work,
-and I&rsquo;ve not a cent in my pocket. I&rsquo;m an honest working-man, sir,
-and I never begged before! It&rsquo;s not my fault, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis usually went on until he was interrupted, but this man did not
-interrupt, and so at last he came to a breathless stop. The other had halted,
-and Jurgis suddenly noticed that he stood a little unsteadily. &ldquo;Whuzzat
-you say?&rdquo; he queried suddenly, in a thick voice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis began again, speaking more slowly and distinctly; before he was half
-through the other put out his hand and rested it upon his shoulder. &ldquo;Poor
-ole chappie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Been up&mdash;hic&mdash;up&mdash;against
-it, hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then he lurched toward Jurgis, and the hand upon his shoulder became an arm
-about his neck. &ldquo;Up against it myself, ole sport,&rdquo; he said.
-&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a hard ole world.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They were close to a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the other. He was a
-young fellow&mdash;not much over eighteen, with a handsome boyish face. He wore
-a silk hat and a rich soft overcoat with a fur collar; and he smiled at Jurgis
-with benignant sympathy. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m hard up, too, my goo&rsquo;
-fren&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got cruel parents, or I&rsquo;d
-set you up. Whuzzamatter whizyer?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been in the hospital.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hospital!&rdquo; exclaimed the young fellow, still smiling sweetly,
-&ldquo;thass too bad! Same&rsquo;s my Aunt Polly&mdash;hic&mdash;my Aunt
-Polly&rsquo;s in the hospital, too&mdash;ole auntie&rsquo;s been havin&rsquo;
-twins! Whuzzamatter whiz you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a broken arm&mdash;&rdquo; Jurgis began.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;So,&rdquo; said the other, sympathetically. &ldquo;That ain&rsquo;t so
-bad&mdash;you get over that. I wish somebody&rsquo;d break <i>my</i> arm, ole
-chappie&mdash;damfidon&rsquo;t! Then they&rsquo;d treat me
-better&mdash;hic&mdash;hole me up, ole sport! Whuzzit you wamme do?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m hungry, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hungry! Why don&rsquo;t you hassome supper?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got no money, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No money! Ho, ho&mdash;less be chums, ole boy&mdash;jess like me! No
-money, either&mdash;a&rsquo;most busted! Why don&rsquo;t you go home, then,
-same&rsquo;s me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t any home,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No home! Stranger in the city, hey? Goo&rsquo; God, thass bad! Better
-come home wiz me&mdash;yes, by Harry, thass the trick, you&rsquo;ll come home
-an&rsquo; hassome supper&mdash;hic&mdash;wiz me! Awful lonesome&mdash;nobody
-home! Guv&rsquo;ner gone abroad&mdash;Bubby on&rsquo;s honeymoon&mdash;Polly
-havin&rsquo; twins&mdash;every damn soul gone away! Nuff&mdash;hic&mdash;nuff
-to drive a feller to drink, I say! Only ole Ham standin&rsquo; by,
-passin&rsquo; plates&mdash;damfican eat like that, no sir! The club for me
-every time, my boy, I say. But then they won&rsquo;t lemme sleep
-there&mdash;guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s orders, by Harry&mdash;home every night, sir!
-Ever hear anythin&rsquo; like that? &lsquo;Every mornin&rsquo; do?&rsquo; I
-asked him. &lsquo;No, sir, every night, or no allowance at all, sir.&rsquo;
-Thass my guv&rsquo;ner&mdash;&lsquo;nice as nails, by Harry! Tole ole Ham to
-watch me, too&mdash;servants spyin&rsquo; on me&mdash;whuzyer think that, my
-fren&rsquo;? A nice, quiet&mdash;hic&mdash;goodhearted young feller like me,
-an&rsquo; his daddy can&rsquo;t go to Europe&mdash;hup!&mdash;an&rsquo; leave
-him in peace! Ain&rsquo;t that a shame, sir? An&rsquo; I gotter go home every
-evenin&rsquo; an&rsquo; miss all the fun, by Harry! Thass whuzzamatter
-now&mdash;thass why I&rsquo;m here! Hadda come away an&rsquo; leave
-Kitty&mdash;hic&mdash;left her cryin&rsquo;, too&mdash;whujja think of that,
-ole sport? &lsquo;Lemme go, Kittens,&rsquo; says I&mdash;&lsquo;come early
-an&rsquo; often&mdash;I go where duty&mdash;hic&mdash;calls me. Farewell,
-farewell, my own true love&mdash;farewell, farewehell, my&mdash;own
-true&mdash;love!&rsquo;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This last was a song, and the young gentleman&rsquo;s voice rose mournful and
-wailing, while he swung upon Jurgis&rsquo;s neck. The latter was glancing about
-nervously, lest some one should approach. They were still alone, however.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But I came all right, all right,&rdquo; continued the youngster,
-aggressively, &ldquo;I can&mdash;hic&mdash;I can have my own way when I want
-it, by Harry&mdash;Freddie Jones is a hard man to handle when he gets
-goin&rsquo;! &lsquo;No, sir,&rsquo; says I, &lsquo;by thunder, and I
-don&rsquo;t need anybody goin&rsquo; home with me, either&mdash;whujja take me
-for, hey? Think I&rsquo;m drunk, dontcha, hey?&mdash;I know you! But I&rsquo;m
-no more drunk than you are, Kittens,&rsquo; says I to her. And then says she,
-&lsquo;Thass true, Freddie dear&rsquo; (she&rsquo;s a smart one, is Kitty),
-&lsquo;but I&rsquo;m stayin&rsquo; in the flat, an&rsquo; you&rsquo;re
-goin&rsquo; out into the cold, cold night!&rsquo; &lsquo;Put it in a pome,
-lovely Kitty,&rsquo; says I. &lsquo;No jokin&rsquo;, Freddie, my boy,&rsquo;
-says she. &lsquo;Lemme call a cab now, like a good dear&rsquo;&mdash;but I can
-call my own cabs, dontcha fool yourself&mdash;and I know what I&rsquo;m
-a-doin&rsquo;, you bet! Say, my fren&rsquo;, whatcha say&mdash;willye come home
-an&rsquo; see me, an&rsquo; hassome supper? Come &rsquo;long like a good
-feller&mdash;don&rsquo;t be haughty! You&rsquo;re up against it, same as me,
-an&rsquo; you can unerstan&rsquo; a feller; your heart&rsquo;s in the right
-place, by Harry&mdash;come &rsquo;long, ole chappie, an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll
-light up the house, an&rsquo; have some fizz, an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll raise hell,
-we will&mdash;whoop-la! S&rsquo;long&rsquo;s I&rsquo;m inside the house I can
-do as I please&mdash;the guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s own very orders, b&rsquo;God!
-Hip! hip!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They had started down the street, arm in arm, the young man pushing Jurgis
-along, half dazed. Jurgis was trying to think what to do&mdash;he knew he could
-not pass any crowded place with his new acquaintance without attracting
-attention and being stopped. It was only because of the falling snow that
-people who passed here did not notice anything wrong.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suddenly, therefore, Jurgis stopped. &ldquo;Is it very far?&rdquo; he inquired.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Not very,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;Tired, are you, though? Well,
-we&rsquo;ll ride&mdash;whatcha say? Good! Call a cab!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, gripping Jurgis tight with one hand, the young fellow began searching
-his pockets with the other. &ldquo;You call, ole sport, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll
-pay,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;How&rsquo;s that, hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And he pulled out from somewhere a big roll of bills. It was more money than
-Jurgis had ever seen in his life before, and he stared at it with startled
-eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Looks like a lot, hey?&rdquo; said Master Freddie, fumbling with it.
-&ldquo;Fool you, though, ole chappie&mdash;they&rsquo;re all little ones!
-I&rsquo;ll be busted in one week more, sure thing&mdash;word of honor.
-An&rsquo; not a cent more till the first&mdash;hic&mdash;guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s
-orders&mdash;hic&mdash;not a <i>cent</i>, by Harry! Nuff to set a feller crazy,
-it is. I sent him a cable, this af&rsquo;noon&mdash;thass one reason more why
-I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; home. &lsquo;Hangin&rsquo; on the verge of
-starvation,&rsquo; I says&mdash;&lsquo;for the honor of the
-family&mdash;hic&mdash;sen&rsquo; me some bread. Hunger will compel me to join
-you&mdash;Freddie.&rsquo; Thass what I wired him, by Harry, an&rsquo; I mean
-it&mdash;I&rsquo;ll run away from school, b&rsquo;God, if he don&rsquo;t
-sen&rsquo; me some.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After this fashion the young gentleman continued to prattle on&mdash;and
-meantime Jurgis was trembling with excitement. He might grab that wad of bills
-and be out of sight in the darkness before the other could collect his wits.
-Should he do it? What better had he to hope for, if he waited longer? But
-Jurgis had never committed a crime in his life, and now he hesitated half a
-second too long. &ldquo;Freddie&rdquo; got one bill loose, and then stuffed the
-rest back into his trousers&rsquo; pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Here, ole man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you take it.&rdquo; He held it out
-fluttering. They were in front of a saloon; and by the light of the window
-Jurgis saw that it was a hundred-dollar bill! &ldquo;You take it,&rdquo; the
-other repeated. &ldquo;Pay the cabbie an&rsquo; keep the
-change&mdash;I&rsquo;ve got&mdash;hic&mdash;no head for business! Guv&rsquo;ner
-says so hisself, an&rsquo; the guv&rsquo;ner knows&mdash;the
-guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s got a head for business, you bet! &lsquo;All right,
-guv&rsquo;ner,&rsquo; I told him, &lsquo;you run the show, and I&rsquo;ll take
-the tickets!&rsquo; An&rsquo; so he set Aunt Polly to watch
-me&mdash;hic&mdash;an&rsquo; now Polly&rsquo;s off in the hospital havin&rsquo;
-twins, an&rsquo; me out raisin&rsquo; Cain! Hello, there! Hey! Call him!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A cab was driving by; and Jurgis sprang and called, and it swung round to the
-curb. Master Freddie clambered in with some difficulty, and Jurgis had started
-to follow, when the driver shouted: &ldquo;Hi, there! Get out&mdash;you!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis hesitated, and was half obeying; but his companion broke out:
-&ldquo;Whuzzat? Whuzzamatter wiz you, hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the cabbie subsided, and Jurgis climbed in. Then Freddie gave a number on
-the Lake Shore Drive, and the carriage started away. The youngster leaned back
-and snuggled up to Jurgis, murmuring contentedly; in half a minute he was sound
-asleep, Jurgis sat shivering, speculating as to whether he might not still be
-able to get hold of the roll of bills. He was afraid to try to go through his
-companion&rsquo;s pockets, however; and besides the cabbie might be on the
-watch. He had the hundred safe, and he would have to be content with that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At the end of half an hour or so the cab stopped. They were out on the
-waterfront, and from the east a freezing gale was blowing off the ice-bound
-lake. &ldquo;Here we are,&rdquo; called the cabbie, and Jurgis awakened his
-companion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Master Freddie sat up with a start.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Where are we? Whuzzis? Who are you, hey?
-Oh, yes, sure nuff! Mos&rsquo; forgot you&mdash;hic&mdash;ole chappie! Home,
-are we? Lessee! Br-r-r&mdash;it&rsquo;s cold! Yes&mdash;come
-&rsquo;long&mdash;we&rsquo;re home&mdash;it ever
-so&mdash;hic&mdash;humble!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before them there loomed an enormous granite pile, set far back from the
-street, and occupying a whole block. By the light of the driveway lamps Jurgis
-could see that it had towers and huge gables, like a mediæval castle. He
-thought that the young fellow must have made a mistake&mdash;it was
-inconceivable to him that any person could have a home like a hotel or the city
-hall. But he followed in silence, and they went up the long flight of steps,
-arm in arm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a button here, ole sport,&rdquo; said Master Freddie.
-&ldquo;Hole my arm while I find her! Steady, now&mdash;oh, yes, here she is!
-Saved!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A bell rang, and in a few seconds the door was opened. A man in blue livery
-stood holding it, and gazing before him, silent as a statue.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They stood for a moment blinking in the light. Then Jurgis felt his companion
-pulling, and he stepped in, and the blue automaton closed the door.
-Jurgis&rsquo;s heart was beating wildly; it was a bold thing for him to
-do&mdash;into what strange unearthly place he was venturing he had no idea.
-Aladdin entering his cave could not have been more excited.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The place where he stood was dimly lighted; but he could see a vast hall, with
-pillars fading into the darkness above, and a great staircase opening at the
-far end of it. The floor was of tesselated marble, smooth as glass, and from
-the walls strange shapes loomed out, woven into huge portieres in rich,
-harmonious colors, or gleaming from paintings, wonderful and mysterious-looking
-in the half-light, purple and red and golden, like sunset glimmers in a shadowy
-forest.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man in livery had moved silently toward them; Master Freddie took off his
-hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis&rsquo; arm, tried to
-get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he accomplished this, with
-the lackey&rsquo;s help, and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and
-portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He bore straight down upon Jurgis,
-who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm without a word, and started
-toward the door with him. Then suddenly came Master Freddie&rsquo;s voice,
-&ldquo;Hamilton! My fren&rsquo; will remain wiz me.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man paused and half released Jurgis. &ldquo;Come &rsquo;long ole
-chappie,&rdquo; said the other, and Jurgis started toward him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Master Frederick!&rdquo; exclaimed the man.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;See that the cabbie&mdash;hic&mdash;is paid,&rdquo; was the
-other&rsquo;s response; and he linked his arm in Jurgis&rsquo;. Jurgis was
-about to say, &ldquo;I have the money for him,&rdquo; but he restrained
-himself. The stout man in uniform signaled to the other, who went out to the
-cab, while he followed Jurgis and his young master.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went down the great hall, and then turned. Before them were two huge
-doors.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hamilton,&rdquo; said Master Freddie.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, sir?&rdquo; said the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Whuzzamatter wizze dinin&rsquo;-room doors?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Nothing is the matter, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Then why dontcha openum?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man rolled them back; another vista lost itself in the darkness.
-&ldquo;Lights,&rdquo; commanded Master Freddie; and the butler pressed a
-button, and a flood of brilliant incandescence streamed from above,
-half-blinding Jurgis. He stared; and little by little he made out the great
-apartment, with a domed ceiling from which the light poured, and walls that
-were one enormous painting&mdash;nymphs and dryads dancing in a flower-strewn
-glade&mdash;Diana with her hounds and horses, dashing headlong through a
-mountain streamlet&mdash;a group of maidens bathing in a forest pool&mdash;all
-life-size, and so real that Jurgis thought that it was some work of
-enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eye passed to the long
-table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony, and gleaming with
-wrought silver and gold. In the center of it was a huge carven bowl, with the
-glistening gleam of ferns and the red and purple of rare orchids, glowing from
-a light hidden somewhere in their midst.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;This&rsquo;s the dinin&rsquo; room,&rdquo; observed Master Freddie.
-&ldquo;How you like it, hey, ole sport?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He always insisted on having an answer to his remarks, leaning over Jurgis and
-smiling into his face. Jurgis liked it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Rummy ole place to feed in all &rsquo;lone, though,&rdquo; was
-Freddie&rsquo;s comment&mdash;&ldquo;rummy&rsquo;s hell! Whuzya think,
-hey?&rdquo; Then another idea occurred to him and he went on, without waiting:
-&ldquo;Maybe you never saw anythin&mdash;hic&mdash;like this &rsquo;fore? Hey,
-ole chappie?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Come from country, maybe&mdash;hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Aha! I thosso! Lossa folks from country never saw such a place.
-Guv&rsquo;ner brings &rsquo;em&mdash;free show&mdash;hic&mdash;reg&rsquo;lar
-circus! Go home tell folks about it. Ole man Jones&rsquo;s place&mdash;Jones
-the packer&mdash;beef-trust man. Made it all out of hogs, too, damn ole
-scoundrel. Now we see where our pennies go&mdash;rebates, an&rsquo; private car
-lines&mdash;hic&mdash;by Harry! Bully place, though&mdash;worth seein&rsquo;!
-Ever hear of Jones the packer, hey, ole chappie?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had started involuntarily; the other, whose sharp eyes missed nothing,
-demanded: &ldquo;Whuzzamatter, hey? Heard of him?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis managed to stammer out: &ldquo;I have worked for him in the
-yards.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried Master Freddie, with a yell. &ldquo;<i>You!</i> In
-the yards? Ho, ho! Why, say, thass good! Shake hands on it, ole man&mdash;by
-Harry! Guv&rsquo;ner ought to be here&mdash;glad to see you. Great fren&rsquo;s
-with the men, guv&rsquo;ner&mdash;labor an&rsquo; capital, commun&rsquo;ty
-&rsquo;f int&rsquo;rests, an&rsquo; all that&mdash;hic! Funny things happen in
-this world, don&rsquo;t they, ole man? Hamilton, lemme interduce
-you&mdash;fren&rsquo; the family&mdash;ole fren&rsquo; the
-guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s&mdash;works in the yards. Come to spend the night wiz me,
-Hamilton&mdash;have a hot time. Me fren&rsquo;, Mr.&mdash;whuzya name, ole
-chappie? Tell us your name.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Rudkus&mdash;Jurgis Rudkus.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;My fren&rsquo;, Mr. Rednose, Hamilton&mdash;shake han&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The stately butler bowed his head, but made not a sound; and suddenly Master
-Freddie pointed an eager finger at him. &ldquo;I know whuzzamatter wiz you,
-Hamilton&mdash;lay you a dollar I know! You think&mdash;hic&mdash;you think
-I&rsquo;m drunk! Hey, now?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the butler again bowed his head. &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; he said, at which
-Master Freddie hung tightly upon Jurgis&rsquo;s neck and went into a fit of
-laughter. &ldquo;Hamilton, you damn ole scoundrel,&rdquo; he roared,
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll &rsquo;scharge you for impudence, you see &rsquo;f I
-don&rsquo;t! Ho, ho, ho! I&rsquo;m drunk! Ho, ho!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The two waited until his fit had spent itself, to see what new whim would seize
-him. &ldquo;Whatcha wanta do?&rdquo; he queried suddenly. &ldquo;Wanta see the
-place, ole chappie? Wamme play the guv&rsquo;ner&mdash;show you roun&rsquo;?
-State parlors&mdash;Looee Cans&mdash;Looee Sez&mdash;chairs cost three thousand
-apiece. Tea room Maryanntnet&mdash;picture of shepherds
-dancing&mdash;Ruysdael&mdash;twenty-three thousan&rsquo;!
-Ballroom&mdash;balc&rsquo;ny pillars&mdash;hic&mdash;imported&mdash;special
-ship&mdash;sixty-eight thousan&rsquo;! Ceilin&rsquo; painted in
-Rome&mdash;whuzzat feller&rsquo;s name, Hamilton&mdash;Mattatoni? Macaroni?
-Then this place&mdash;silver bowl&mdash;Benvenuto Cellini&mdash;rummy ole Dago!
-An&rsquo; the organ&mdash;thirty thousan&rsquo; dollars, sir&mdash;starter up,
-Hamilton, let Mr. Rednose hear it. No&mdash;never mind&mdash;clean
-forgot&mdash;says he&rsquo;s hungry, Hamilton&mdash;less have some supper.
-Only&mdash;hic&mdash;don&rsquo;t less have it here&mdash;come up to my place,
-ole sport&mdash;nice an&rsquo; cosy. This way&mdash;steady now, don&rsquo;t
-slip on the floor. Hamilton, we&rsquo;ll have a cole spread, an&rsquo; some
-fizz&mdash;don&rsquo;t leave out the fizz, by Harry. We&rsquo;ll have some of
-the eighteen-thirty Madeira. Hear me, sir?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the butler, &ldquo;but, Master Frederick, your
-father left orders&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Master Frederick drew himself up to a stately height. &ldquo;My
-father&rsquo;s orders were left to me&mdash;hic&mdash;an&rsquo; not to
-you,&rdquo; he said. Then, clasping Jurgis tightly by the neck, he staggered
-out of the room; on the way another idea occurred to him, and he asked:
-&ldquo;Any&mdash;hic&mdash;cable message for me, Hamilton?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; said the butler.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Guv&rsquo;ner must be travelin&rsquo;. An&rsquo; how&rsquo;s the twins,
-Hamilton?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They are doing well, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said Master Freddie; and added fervently: &ldquo;God bless
-&rsquo;em, the little lambs!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went up the great staircase, one step at a time; at the top of it there
-gleamed at them out of the shadows the figure of a nymph crouching by a
-fountain, a figure ravishingly beautiful, the flesh warm and glowing with the
-hues of life. Above was a huge court, with domed roof, the various apartments
-opening into it. The butler had paused below but a few minutes to give orders,
-and then followed them; now he pressed a button, and the hall blazed with
-light. He opened a door before them, and then pressed another button, as they
-staggered into the apartment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was fitted up as a study. In the center was a mahogany table, covered with
-books, and smokers&rsquo; implements; the walls were decorated with college
-trophies and colors&mdash;flags, posters, photographs and
-knickknacks&mdash;tennis rackets, canoe paddles, golf clubs, and polo sticks.
-An enormous moose head, with horns six feet across, faced a buffalo head on the
-opposite wall, while bear and tiger skins covered the polished floor. There
-were lounging chairs and sofas, window seats covered with soft cushions of
-fantastic designs; there was one corner fitted in Persian fashion, with a huge
-canopy and a jeweled lamp beneath. Beyond, a door opened upon a bedroom, and
-beyond that was a swimming pool of the purest marble, that had cost about forty
-thousand dollars.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Master Freddie stood for a moment or two, gazing about him; then out of the
-next room a dog emerged, a monstrous bulldog, the most hideous object that
-Jurgis had ever laid eyes upon. He yawned, opening a mouth like a
-dragon&rsquo;s; and he came toward the young man, wagging his tail.
-&ldquo;Hello, Dewey!&rdquo; cried his master. &ldquo;Been havin&rsquo; a
-snooze, ole boy? Well, well&mdash;hello there, whuzzamatter?&rdquo; (The dog
-was snarling at Jurgis.) &ldquo;Why, Dewey&mdash;this&rsquo; my fren&rsquo;,
-Mr. Rednose&mdash;ole fren&rsquo; the guv&rsquo;ner&rsquo;s! Mr. Rednose,
-Admiral Dewey; shake han&rsquo;s&mdash;hic. Ain&rsquo;t he a daisy,
-though&mdash;blue ribbon at the New York show&mdash;eighty-five hundred at a
-clip! How&rsquo;s that, hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The speaker sank into one of the big armchairs, and Admiral Dewey crouched
-beneath it; he did not snarl again, but he never took his eyes off Jurgis. He
-was perfectly sober, was the Admiral.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The butler had closed the door, and he stood by it, watching Jurgis every
-second. Now there came footsteps outside, and, as he opened the door a man in
-livery entered, carrying a folding table, and behind him two men with covered
-trays. They stood like statues while the first spread the table and set out the
-contents of the trays upon it. There were cold pates, and thin slices of meat,
-tiny bread and butter sandwiches with the crust cut off, a bowl of sliced
-peaches and cream (in January), little fancy cakes, pink and green and yellow
-and white, and half a dozen ice-cold bottles of wine.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Thass the stuff for you!&rdquo; cried Master Freddie, exultantly, as he
-spied them. &ldquo;Come &rsquo;long, ole chappie, move up.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And he seated himself at the table; the waiter pulled a cork, and he took the
-bottle and poured three glasses of its contents in succession down his throat.
-Then he gave a long-drawn sigh, and cried again to Jurgis to seat himself.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The butler held the chair at the opposite side of the table, and Jurgis thought
-it was to keep him out of it; but finally he understand that it was the
-other&rsquo;s intention to put it under him, and so he sat down, cautiously and
-mistrustingly. Master Freddie perceived that the attendants embarrassed him,
-and he remarked with a nod to them, &ldquo;You may go.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went, all save the butler.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You may go too, Hamilton,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Master Frederick&mdash;&rdquo; the man began.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Go!&rdquo; cried the youngster, angrily. &ldquo;Damn you, don&rsquo;t
-you hear me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man went out and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he, observed
-that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might peer through the
-keyhole.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Master Frederick turned to the table again. &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said,
-&ldquo;go for it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis gazed at him doubtingly. &ldquo;Eat!&rdquo; cried the other. &ldquo;Pile
-in, ole chappie!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you want anything?&rdquo; Jurgis asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t hungry,&rdquo; was the reply&mdash;&ldquo;only thirsty.
-Kitty and me had some candy&mdash;you go on.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis began, without further parley. He ate as with two shovels, his fork
-in one hand and his knife in the other; when he once got started his
-wolf-hunger got the better of him, and he did not stop for breath until he had
-cleared every plate. &ldquo;Gee whiz!&rdquo; said the other, who had been
-watching him in wonder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then he held Jurgis the bottle. &ldquo;Lessee you drink now,&rdquo; he said;
-and Jurgis took the bottle and turned it up to his mouth, and a wonderfully
-unearthly liquid ecstasy poured down his throat, tickling every nerve of him,
-thrilling him with joy. He drank the very last drop of it, and then he gave
-vent to a long-drawn &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Good stuff, hey?&rdquo; said Freddie, sympathetically; he had leaned
-back in the big chair, putting his arm behind his head and gazing at Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis gazed back at him. He was clad in spotless evening dress, was
-Freddie, and looked very handsome&mdash;he was a beautiful boy, with light
-golden hair and the head of an Antinous. He smiled at Jurgis confidingly, and
-then started talking again, with his blissful <i>insouciance</i>. This time he
-talked for ten minutes at a stretch, and in the course of the speech he told
-Jurgis all of his family history. His big brother Charlie was in love with the
-guileless maiden who played the part of &ldquo;Little Bright-Eyes&rdquo; in
-&ldquo;The Kaliph of Kamskatka.&rdquo; He had been on the verge of marrying her
-once, only &ldquo;the guv&rsquo;ner&rdquo; had sworn to disinherit him, and had
-presented him with a sum that would stagger the imagination, and that had
-staggered the virtue of &ldquo;Little Bright-Eyes.&rdquo; Now Charlie had got
-leave from college, and had gone away in his automobile on the next best thing
-to a honeymoon. &ldquo;The guv&rsquo;ner&rdquo; had made threats to disinherit
-another of his children also, sister Gwendolen, who had married an Italian
-marquis with a string of titles and a dueling record. They lived in his
-chateau, or rather had, until he had taken to firing the breakfast dishes at
-her; then she had cabled for help, and the old gentleman had gone over to find
-out what were his Grace&rsquo;s terms. So they had left Freddie all alone, and
-he with less than two thousand dollars in his pocket. Freddie was up in arms
-and meant serious business, as they would find in the end&mdash;if there was no
-other way of bringing them to terms he would have his &ldquo;Kittens&rdquo;
-wire that she was about to marry him, and see what happened then.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So the cheerful youngster rattled on, until he was tired out. He smiled his
-sweetest smile at Jurgis, and then he closed his eyes, sleepily. Then he opened
-them again, and smiled once more, and finally closed them and forgot to open
-them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For several minutes Jurgis sat perfectly motionless, watching him, and reveling
-in the strange sensation of the champagne. Once he stirred, and the dog
-growled; after that he sat almost holding his breath&mdash;until after a while
-the door of the room opened softly, and the butler came in.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He walked toward Jurgis upon tiptoe, scowling at him; and Jurgis rose up, and
-retreated, scowling back. So until he was against the wall, and then the butler
-came close, and pointed toward the door. &ldquo;Get out of here!&rdquo; he
-whispered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis hesitated, giving a glance at Freddie, who was snoring softly. &ldquo;If
-you do, you son of a&mdash;&rdquo; hissed the butler, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll mash in
-your face for you before you get out of here!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis wavered but an instant more. He saw &ldquo;Admiral Dewey&rdquo;
-coming up behind the man and growling softly, to back up his threats. Then he
-surrendered and started toward the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went out without a sound, and down the great echoing staircase, and
-through the dark hall. At the front door he paused, and the butler strode close
-to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hold up your hands,&rdquo; he snarled. Jurgis took a step back,
-clinching his one well fist.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What for?&rdquo; he cried; and then understanding that the fellow
-proposed to search him, he answered, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll see you in hell
-first.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Do you want to go to jail?&rdquo; demanded the butler, menacingly.
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have the police&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Have &rsquo;em!&rdquo; roared Jurgis, with fierce passion. &ldquo;But
-you won&rsquo;t put your hands on me till you do! I haven&rsquo;t touched
-anything in your damned house, and I&rsquo;ll not have you touch me!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So the butler, who was terrified lest his young master should waken, stepped
-suddenly to the door, and opened it. &ldquo;Get out of here!&rdquo; he said;
-and then as Jurgis passed through the opening, he gave him a ferocious kick
-that sent him down the great stone steps at a run, and landed him sprawling in
-the snow at the bottom.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the great castle was
-dark and impregnable. Then the icy teeth of the blast bit into him, and he
-turned and went away at a run.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When he stopped again it was because he was coming to frequented streets and
-did not wish to attract attention. In spite of that last humiliation, his heart
-was thumping fast with triumph. He had come out ahead on that deal! He put his
-hand into his trousers&rsquo; pocket every now and then, to make sure that the
-precious hundred-dollar bill was still there.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Yet he was in a plight&mdash;a curious and even dreadful plight, when he came
-to realize it. He had not a single cent but that one bill! And he had to find
-some shelter that night he had to change it!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. There was no one he
-could go to for help&mdash;he had to manage it all alone. To get it changed in
-a lodging-house would be to take his life in his hands&mdash;he would almost
-certainly be robbed, and perhaps murdered, before morning. He might go to some
-hotel or railroad depot and ask to have it changed; but what would they think,
-seeing a &ldquo;bum&rdquo; like him with a hundred dollars? He would probably
-be arrested if he tried it; and what story could he tell? On the morrow Freddie
-Jones would discover his loss, and there would be a hunt for him, and he would
-lose his money. The only other plan he could think of was to try in a saloon.
-He might pay them to change it, if it could not be done otherwise.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He began peering into places as he walked; he passed several as being too
-crowded&mdash;then finally, chancing upon one where the bartender was all
-alone, he gripped his hands in sudden resolution and went in.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Can you change me a hundred-dollar bill?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The bartender was a big, husky fellow, with the jaw of a prize fighter, and a
-three weeks&rsquo; stubble of hair upon it. He stared at Jurgis.
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that youse say?&rdquo; he demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I said, could you change me a hundred-dollar bill?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where&rsquo;d youse get it?&rdquo; he inquired incredulously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Jurgis; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it, and I want it
-changed. I&rsquo;ll pay you if you&rsquo;ll do it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other stared at him hard. &ldquo;Lemme see it,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Will you change it?&rdquo; Jurgis demanded, gripping it tightly in his
-pocket.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How the hell can I know if it&rsquo;s good or not?&rdquo; retorted the
-bartender. &ldquo;Whatcher take me for, hey?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then Jurgis slowly and warily approached him; he took out the bill, and fumbled
-it for a moment, while the man stared at him with hostile eyes across the
-counter. Then finally he handed it over.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his fingers,
-and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside down, and edgeways.
-It was new and rather stiff, and that made him dubious. Jurgis was watching him
-like a cat all the time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Humph,&rdquo; he said, finally, and gazed at the stranger, sizing him
-up&mdash;a ragged, ill-smelling tramp, with no overcoat and one arm in a
-sling&mdash;and a hundred-dollar bill! &ldquo;Want to buy anything?&rdquo; he
-demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take a glass of beer.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll change it.&rdquo;
-And he put the bill in his pocket, and poured Jurgis out a glass of beer, and
-set it on the counter. Then he turned to the cash register, and punched up five
-cents, and began to pull money out of the drawer. Finally, he faced Jurgis,
-counting it out&mdash;two dimes, a quarter, and fifty cents.
-&ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For a second Jurgis waited, expecting to see him turn again. &ldquo;My
-ninety-nine dollars,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What ninety-nine dollars?&rdquo; demanded the bartender.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;My change!&rdquo; he cried&mdash;&ldquo;the rest of my hundred!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said the bartender, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re nutty!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis stared at him with wild eyes. For an instant horror reigned in
-him&mdash;black, paralyzing, awful horror, clutching him at the heart; and then
-came rage, in surging, blinding floods&mdash;he screamed aloud, and seized the
-glass and hurled it at the other&rsquo;s head. The man ducked, and it missed
-him by half an inch; he rose again and faced Jurgis, who was vaulting over the
-bar with his one well arm, and dealt him a smashing blow in the face, hurling
-him backward upon the floor. Then, as Jurgis scrambled to his feet again and
-started round the counter after him, he shouted at the top of his voice,
-&ldquo;Help! help!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis seized a bottle off the counter as he ran; and as the bartender made a
-leap he hurled the missile at him with all his force. It just grazed his head,
-and shivered into a thousand pieces against the post of the door. Then Jurgis
-started back, rushing at the man again in the middle of the room. This time, in
-his blind frenzy, he came without a bottle, and that was all the bartender
-wanted&mdash;he met him halfway and floored him with a sledgehammer drive
-between the eyes. An instant later the screen doors flew open, and two men
-rushed in&mdash;just as Jurgis was getting to his feet again, foaming at the
-mouth with rage, and trying to tear his broken arm out of its bandages.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Look out!&rdquo; shouted the bartender. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got a
-knife!&rdquo; Then, seeing that the two were disposed to join the fray, he made
-another rush at Jurgis, and knocked aside his feeble defense and sent him
-tumbling again; and the three flung themselves upon him, rolling and kicking
-about the place.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A second later a policeman dashed in, and the bartender yelled once
-more&mdash;&ldquo;Look out for his knife!&rdquo; Jurgis had fought himself half
-to his knees, when the policeman made a leap at him, and cracked him across the
-face with his club. Though the blow staggered him, the wild-beast frenzy still
-blazed in him, and he got to his feet, lunging into the air. Then again the
-club descended, full upon his head, and he dropped like a log to the floor.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The policeman crouched over him, clutching his stick, waiting for him to try to
-rise again; and meantime the barkeeper got up, and put his hand to his head.
-&ldquo;Christ!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I thought I was done for that time. Did
-he cut me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t see anything, Jake,&rdquo; said the policeman.
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with him?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Just crazy drunk,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;A lame duck,
-too&mdash;but he &rsquo;most got me under the bar. Youse had better call the
-wagon, Billy.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the officer. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s got no more fight in him,
-I guess&mdash;and he&rsquo;s only got a block to go.&rdquo; He twisted his hand
-in Jurgis&rsquo;s collar and jerked at him. &ldquo;Git up here, you!&rdquo; he
-commanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar, and after
-stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding place, came and poured a
-glass of water over Jurgis. Then, as the latter began to moan feebly, the
-policeman got him to his feet and dragged him out of the place. The station
-house was just around the corner, and so in a few minutes Jurgis was in a cell.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance moaning in torment,
-with a blinding headache and a racking thirst. Now and then he cried aloud for
-a drink of water, but there was no one to hear him. There were others in that
-same station house with split heads and a fever; there were hundreds of them in
-the great city, and tens of thousands of them in the great land, and there was
-no one to hear any of them.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of bread, and then
-hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the nearest police court. He sat in
-the pen with a score of others until his turn came.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The bartender&mdash;who proved to be a well-known bruiser&mdash;was called to
-the stand. He took the oath and told his story. The prisoner had come into his
-saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had ordered a glass of beer and
-tendered a dollar bill in payment. He had been given ninety-five cents&rsquo;
-change, and had demanded ninety-nine dollars more, and before the plaintiff
-could even answer had hurled the glass at him and then attacked him with a
-bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the place.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then the prisoner was sworn&mdash;a forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with
-an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut, and bloody, and one
-eye purplish black and entirely closed. &ldquo;What have you to say for
-yourself?&rdquo; queried the magistrate.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Your Honor,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;I went into his place and asked
-the man if he could change me a hundred-dollar bill. And he said he would if I
-bought a drink. I gave him the bill and then he wouldn&rsquo;t give me the
-change.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity. &ldquo;You gave him a
-hundred-dollar bill!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, your Honor,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where did you get it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;A man gave it to me, your Honor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;A man? What man, and what for?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;A young man I met upon the street, your Honor. I had been
-begging.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding Jurgis put up
-his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled without trying to hide it.
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true, your Honor!&rdquo; cried Jurgis, passionately.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?&rdquo;
-inquired the magistrate. &ldquo;No, your Honor&mdash;&rdquo; protested Jurgis.
-&ldquo;I&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You had not had anything to drink?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why, yes, your Honor, I had&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What did you have?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I had a bottle of something&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know what it
-was&mdash;something that burned&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as the
-magistrate looked up and frowned. &ldquo;Have you ever been arrested
-before?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The question took Jurgis aback. &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Tell me the truth, now!&rdquo; commanded the other, sternly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, your Honor,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How often?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Only once, your Honor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;For knocking down my boss, your Honor. I was working in the stockyards,
-and he&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said his Honor; &ldquo;I guess that will do. You ought to
-stop drinking if you can&rsquo;t control yourself. Ten days and costs. Next
-case.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the policeman, who
-seized him by the collar. He was jerked out of the way, into a room with the
-convicted prisoners, where he sat and wept like a child in his impotent rage.
-It seemed monstrous to him that policemen and judges should esteem his word as
-nothing in comparison with the bartender&rsquo;s&mdash;poor Jurgis could not
-know that the owner of the saloon paid five dollars each week to the policeman
-alone for Sunday privileges and general favors&mdash;nor that the pugilist
-bartender was one of the most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the
-district, and had helped only a few months before to hustle out a
-record-breaking vote as a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the
-target of odious kid-gloved reformers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time. In his tumbling
-around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not work, but had to be attended
-by the physician. Also his head and his eye had to be tied up&mdash;and so he
-was a pretty-looking object when, the second day after his arrival, he went out
-into the exercise court and encountered&mdash;Jack Duane!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged him. &ldquo;By
-God, if it isn&rsquo;t &lsquo;the Stinker&rsquo;!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;And
-what is it&mdash;have you been through a sausage machine?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ve been in a railroad wreck
-and a fight.&rdquo; And then, while some of the other prisoners gathered round
-he told his wild story; most of them were incredulous, but Duane knew that
-Jurgis could never have made up such a yarn as that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hard luck, old man,&rdquo; he said, when they were alone; &ldquo;but
-maybe it&rsquo;s taught you a lesson.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned some things since I saw you last,&rdquo; said Jurgis
-mournfully. Then he explained how he had spent the last summer, &ldquo;hoboing
-it,&rdquo; as the phrase was. &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; he asked finally.
-&ldquo;Have you been here ever since?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Lord, no!&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;I only came in the day before
-yesterday. It&rsquo;s the second time they&rsquo;ve sent me up on a trumped-up
-charge&mdash;I&rsquo;ve had hard luck and can&rsquo;t pay them what they want.
-Why don&rsquo;t you quit Chicago with me, Jurgis?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no place to go,&rdquo; said Jurgis, sadly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Neither have I,&rdquo; replied the other, laughing lightly. &ldquo;But
-we&rsquo;ll wait till we get out and see.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the Bridewell Jurgis met few who had been there the last time, but he met
-scores of others, old and young, of exactly the same sort. It was like breakers
-upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave looked just the same. He
-strolled about and talked with them, and the biggest of them told tales of
-their prowess, while those who were weaker, or younger and inexperienced,
-gathered round and listened in admiring silence. The last time he was there,
-Jurgis had thought of little but his family; but now he was free to listen to
-these men, and to realize that he was one of them&mdash;that their point of
-view was his point of view, and that the way they kept themselves alive in the
-world was the way he meant to do it in the future.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so, when he was turned out of prison again, without a penny in his pocket,
-he went straight to Jack Duane. He went full of humility and gratitude; for
-Duane was a gentleman, and a man with a profession&mdash;and it was remarkable
-that he should be willing to throw in his lot with a humble workingman, one who
-had even been a beggar and a tramp. Jurgis could not see what help he could be
-to him; but he did not understand that a man like himself&mdash;who could be
-trusted to stand by any one who was kind to him&mdash;was as rare among
-criminals as among any other class of men.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The address Jurgis had was a garret room in the Ghetto district, the home of a
-pretty little French girl, Duane&rsquo;s mistress, who sewed all day, and eked
-out her living by prostitution. He had gone elsewhere, she told Jurgis&mdash;he
-was afraid to stay there now, on account of the police. The new address was a
-cellar dive, whose proprietor said that he had never heard of Duane; but after
-he had put Jurgis through a catechism he showed him a back stairs which led to
-a &ldquo;fence&rdquo; in the rear of a pawnbroker&rsquo;s shop, and thence to a
-number of assignation rooms, in one of which Duane was hiding.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Duane was glad to see him; he was without a cent of money, he said, and had
-been waiting for Jurgis to help him get some. He explained his plan&mdash;in
-fact he spent the day in laying bare to his friend the criminal world of the
-city, and in showing him how he might earn himself a living in it. That winter
-he would have a hard time, on account of his arm, and because of an unwonted
-fit of activity of the police; but so long as he was unknown to them he would
-be safe if he were careful. Here at &ldquo;Papa&rdquo; Hanson&rsquo;s (so they
-called the old man who kept the dive) he might rest at ease, for
-&ldquo;Papa&rdquo; Hanson was &ldquo;square&rdquo;&mdash;would stand by him so
-long as he paid, and gave him an hour&rsquo;s notice if there were to be a
-police raid. Also Rosensteg, the pawnbroker, would buy anything he had for a
-third of its value, and guarantee to keep it hidden for a year.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was an oil stove in the little cupboard of a room, and they had some
-supper; and then about eleven o&rsquo;clock at night they sallied forth
-together, by a rear entrance to the place, Duane armed with a slingshot. They
-came to a residence district, and he sprang up a lamppost and blew out the
-light, and then the two dodged into the shelter of an area step and hid in
-silence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Pretty soon a man came by, a workingman&mdash;and they let him go. Then after a
-long interval came the heavy tread of a policeman, and they held their breath
-till he was gone. Though half-frozen, they waited a full quarter of an hour
-after that&mdash;and then again came footsteps, walking briskly. Duane nudged
-Jurgis, and the instant the man had passed they rose up. Duane stole out as
-silently as a shadow, and a second later Jurgis heard a thud and a stifled cry.
-He was only a couple of feet behind, and he leaped to stop the man&rsquo;s
-mouth, while Duane held him fast by the arms, as they had agreed. But the man
-was limp and showed a tendency to fall, and so Jurgis had only to hold him by
-the collar, while the other, with swift fingers, went through his
-pockets&mdash;ripping open, first his overcoat, and then his coat, and then his
-vest, searching inside and outside, and transferring the contents into his own
-pockets. At last, after feeling of the man&rsquo;s fingers and in his necktie,
-Duane whispered, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all!&rdquo; and they dragged him to the
-area and dropped him in. Then Jurgis went one way and his friend the other,
-walking briskly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the
-&ldquo;swag.&rdquo; There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and
-locket; there was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small
-change, and finally a card-case. This last Duane opened feverishly&mdash;there
-were letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back
-part, a wad of bills. He counted them&mdash;there was a twenty, five tens, four
-fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long breath. &ldquo;That lets us
-out!&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After further examination, they burned the card-case and its contents, all but
-the bills, and likewise the picture of a little girl in the locket. Then Duane
-took the watch and trinkets downstairs, and came back with sixteen dollars.
-&ldquo;The old scoundrel said the case was filled,&rdquo; he said.
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lie, but he knows I want the money.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share fifty-five dollars and
-some change. He protested that it was too much, but the other had agreed to
-divide even. That was a good haul, he said, better than average.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a paper; one of the
-pleasures of committing a crime was the reading about it afterward. &ldquo;I
-had a pal that always did it,&rdquo; Duane remarked,
-laughing&mdash;&ldquo;until one day he read that he had left three thousand
-dollars in a lower inside pocket of his party&rsquo;s vest!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a half-column account of the robbery&mdash;it was evident that a gang
-was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper, for it was the third within
-a week, and the police were apparently powerless. The victim was an insurance
-agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten dollars that did not belong to him. He
-had chanced to have his name marked on his shirt, otherwise he would not have
-been identified yet. His assailant had hit him too hard, and he was suffering
-from concussion of the brain; and also he had been half-frozen when found, and
-would lose three fingers on his right hand. The enterprising newspaper reporter
-had taken all this information to his family, and told how they had received
-it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Since it was Jurgis&rsquo;s first experience, these details naturally caused
-him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly&mdash;it was the way of the
-game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no more of it
-than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a case
-of us or the other fellow, and I say the other fellow, every time,&rdquo; he
-observed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Still,&rdquo; said Jurgis, reflectively, &ldquo;he never did us any
-harm.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure of
-that,&rdquo; said his friend.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Duane had already explained to Jurgis that if a man of their trade were known
-he would have to work all the time to satisfy the demands of the police.
-Therefore it would be better for Jurgis to stay in hiding and never be seen in
-public with his pal. But Jurgis soon got very tired of staying in hiding. In a
-couple of weeks he was feeling strong and beginning to use his arm, and then he
-could not stand it any longer. Duane, who had done a job of some sort by
-himself, and made a truce with the powers, brought over Marie, his little
-French girl, to share with him; but even that did not avail for long, and in
-the end he had to give up arguing, and take Jurgis out and introduce him to the
-saloons and &ldquo;sporting houses&rdquo; where the big crooks and
-&ldquo;holdup men&rdquo; hung out.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis got a glimpse of the high-class criminal world of Chicago. The
-city, which was owned by an oligarchy of business men, being nominally ruled by
-the people, a huge army of graft was necessary for the purpose of effecting the
-transfer of power. Twice a year, in the spring and fall elections, millions of
-dollars were furnished by the business men and expended by this army; meetings
-were held and clever speakers were hired, bands played and rockets sizzled,
-tons of documents and reservoirs of drinks were distributed, and tens of
-thousands of votes were bought for cash. And this army of graft had, of course,
-to be maintained the year round. The leaders and organizers were maintained by
-the business men directly&mdash;aldermen and legislators by means of bribes,
-party officials out of the campaign funds, lobbyists and corporation lawyers in
-the form of salaries, contractors by means of jobs, labor union leaders by
-subsidies, and newspaper proprietors and editors by advertisements. The rank
-and file, however, were either foisted upon the city, or else lived off the
-population directly. There was the police department, and the fire and water
-departments, and the whole balance of the civil list, from the meanest office
-boy to the head of a city department; and for the horde who could find no room
-in these, there was the world of vice and crime, there was license to seduce,
-to swindle and plunder and prey. The law forbade Sunday drinking; and this had
-delivered the saloon-keepers into the hands of the police, and made an alliance
-between them necessary. The law forbade prostitution; and this had brought the
-&ldquo;madames&rdquo; into the combination. It was the same with the
-gambling-house keeper and the poolroom man, and the same with any other man or
-woman who had a means of getting &ldquo;graft,&rdquo; and was willing to pay
-over a share of it: the green-goods man and the highwayman, the pickpocket and
-the sneak thief, and the receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated
-milk, of stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary tenements,
-the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the &ldquo;pushcart man,&rdquo;
-the prize fighter and the professional slugger, the race-track
-&ldquo;tout,&rdquo; the procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer
-of young girls. All of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and
-leagued in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often
-than not they were one and the same person,&mdash;the police captain would own
-the brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his headquarters in
-his saloon. &ldquo;Hinkydink&rdquo; or &ldquo;Bathhouse John,&rdquo; or others
-of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives in Chicago, and also
-the &ldquo;gray wolves&rdquo; of the city council, who gave away the streets of
-the city to the business men; and those who patronized their places were the
-gamblers and prize fighters who set the law at defiance, and the burglars and
-holdup men who kept the whole city in terror. On election day all these powers
-of vice and crime were one power; they could tell within one per cent what the
-vote of their district would be, and they could change it at an hour&rsquo;s
-notice.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the streets; and now
-suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had entered into a world where
-money and all the good things of life came freely. He was introduced by his
-friend to an Irishman named &ldquo;Buck&rdquo; Halloran, who was a political
-&ldquo;worker&rdquo; and on the inside of things. This man talked with Jurgis
-for a while, and then told him that he had a little plan by which a man who
-looked like a workingman might make some easy money; but it was a private
-affair, and had to be kept quiet. Jurgis expressed himself as agreeable, and
-the other took him that afternoon (it was Saturday) to a place where city
-laborers were being paid off. The paymaster sat in a little booth, with a pile
-of envelopes before him, and two policemen standing by. Jurgis went, according
-to directions, and gave the name of &ldquo;Michael O&rsquo;Flaherty,&rdquo; and
-received an envelope, which he took around the corner and delivered to
-Halloran, who was waiting for him in a saloon. Then he went again; and gave the
-name of &ldquo;Johann Schmidt,&rdquo; and a third time, and give the name of
-&ldquo;Serge Reminitsky.&rdquo; Halloran had quite a list of imaginary
-workingmen, and Jurgis got an envelope for each one. For this work he received
-five dollars, and was told that he might have it every week, so long as he kept
-quiet. As Jurgis was excellent at keeping quiet, he soon won the trust of
-&ldquo;Buck&rdquo; Halloran, and was introduced to others as a man who could be
-depended upon.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This acquaintance was useful to him in another way, also before long Jurgis
-made his discovery of the meaning of &ldquo;pull,&rdquo; and just why his boss,
-Connor, and also the pugilist bartender, had been able to send him to jail. One
-night there was given a ball, the &ldquo;benefit&rdquo; of &ldquo;One-eyed
-Larry,&rdquo; a lame man who played the violin in one of the big
-&ldquo;high-class&rdquo; houses of prostitution on Clark Street, and was a wag
-and a popular character on the &ldquo;Lêvée.&rdquo; This ball was held in a big
-dance hall, and was one of the occasions when the city&rsquo;s powers of
-debauchery gave themselves up to madness. Jurgis attended and got half insane
-with drink, and began quarreling over a girl; his arm was pretty strong by
-then, and he set to work to clean out the place, and ended in a cell in the
-police station. The police station being crowded to the doors, and stinking
-with &ldquo;bums,&rdquo; Jurgis did not relish staying there to sleep off his
-liquor, and sent for Halloran, who called up the district leader and had Jurgis
-bailed out by telephone at four o&rsquo;clock in the morning. When he was
-arraigned that same morning, the district leader had already seen the clerk of
-the court and explained that Jurgis Rudkus was a decent fellow, who had been
-indiscreet; and so Jurgis was fined ten dollars and the fine was
-&ldquo;suspended&rdquo;&mdash;which meant that he did not have to pay for it,
-and never would have to pay it, unless somebody chose to bring it up against
-him in the future.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an
-entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown; yet,
-strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he had as a
-workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and hopelessness; he
-had now something to work for, to struggle for. He soon found that if he kept
-his wits about him, he would come upon new opportunities; and being naturally
-an active man, he not only kept sober himself, but helped to steady his friend,
-who was a good deal fonder of both wine and women than he.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-One thing led to another. In the saloon where Jurgis met &ldquo;Buck&rdquo;
-Halloran he was sitting late one night with Duane, when a &ldquo;country
-customer&rdquo; (a buyer for an out-of-town merchant) came in, a little more
-than half &ldquo;piped.&rdquo; There was no one else in the place but the
-bartender, and as the man went out again Jurgis and Duane followed him; he went
-round the corner, and in a dark place made by a combination of the elevated
-railroad and an unrented building, Jurgis leaped forward and shoved a revolver
-under his nose, while Duane, with his hat pulled over his eyes, went through
-the man&rsquo;s pockets with lightning fingers. They got his watch and his
-&ldquo;wad,&rdquo; and were round the corner again and into the saloon before
-he could shout more than once. The bartender, to whom they had tipped the wink,
-had the cellar door open for them, and they vanished, making their way by a
-secret entrance to a brothel next door. From the roof of this there was access
-to three similar places beyond. By means of these passages the customers of any
-one place could be gotten out of the way, in case a falling out with the police
-chanced to lead to a raid; and also it was necessary to have a way of getting a
-girl out of reach in case of an emergency. Thousands of them came to Chicago
-answering advertisements for &ldquo;servants&rdquo; and &ldquo;factory
-hands,&rdquo; and found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and
-locked up in a bawdy-house. It was generally enough to take all their clothes
-away from them; but sometimes they would have to be &ldquo;doped&rdquo; and
-kept prisoners for weeks; and meantime their parents might be telegraphing the
-police, and even coming on to see why nothing was done. Occasionally there was
-no way of satisfying them but to let them search the place to which the girl
-had been traced.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For his help in this little job, the bartender received twenty out of the
-hundred and thirty odd dollars that the pair secured; and naturally this put
-them on friendly terms with him, and a few days later he introduced them to a
-little &ldquo;sheeny&rdquo; named Goldberger, one of the &ldquo;runners&rdquo;
-of the &ldquo;sporting house&rdquo; where they had been hidden. After a few
-drinks Goldberger began, with some hesitation, to narrate how he had had a
-quarrel over his best girl with a professional &ldquo;cardsharp,&rdquo; who had
-hit him in the jaw. The fellow was a stranger in Chicago, and if he was found
-some night with his head cracked there would be no one to care very much.
-Jurgis, who by this time would cheerfully have cracked the heads of all the
-gamblers in Chicago, inquired what would be coming to him; at which the Jew
-became still more confidential, and said that he had some tips on the New
-Orleans races, which he got direct from the police captain of the district,
-whom he had got out of a bad scrape, and who &ldquo;stood in&rdquo; with a big
-syndicate of horse owners. Duane took all this in at once, but Jurgis had to
-have the whole race-track situation explained to him before he realized the
-importance of such an opportunity.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was the gigantic Racing Trust. It owned the legislatures in every state
-in which it did business; it even owned some of the big newspapers, and made
-public opinion&mdash;there was no power in the land that could oppose it
-unless, perhaps, it were the Poolroom Trust. It built magnificent racing parks
-all over the country, and by means of enormous purses it lured the people to
-come, and then it organized a gigantic shell game, whereby it plundered them of
-hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Horse racing had once been a sport,
-but nowadays it was a business; a horse could be &ldquo;doped&rdquo; and
-doctored, undertrained or overtrained; it could be made to fall at any
-moment&mdash;or its gait could be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all
-the spectators would take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the lead.
-There were scores of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners who played
-them and made fortunes, sometimes it was the jockeys and trainers, sometimes it
-was outsiders, who bribed them&mdash;but most of the time it was the chiefs of
-the trust. Now for instance, they were having winter racing in New Orleans and
-a syndicate was laying out each day&rsquo;s program in advance, and its agents
-in all the Northern cities were &ldquo;milking&rdquo; the poolrooms. The word
-came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a little while before
-each race; and any man who could get the secret had as good as a fortune. If
-Jurgis did not believe it, he could try it, said the little Jew&mdash;let them
-meet at a certain house on the morrow and make a test. Jurgis was willing, and
-so was Duane, and so they went to one of the high-class poolrooms where brokers
-and merchants gambled (with society women in a private room), and they put up
-ten dollars each upon a horse called &ldquo;Black Beldame,&rdquo; a six to one
-shot, and won. For a secret like that they would have done a good many
-sluggings&mdash;but the next day Goldberger informed them that the offending
-gambler had got wind of what was coming to him, and had skipped the town.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a living, inside
-of a jail, if not out of it. Early in April the city elections were due, and
-that meant prosperity for all the powers of graft. Jurgis, hanging round in
-dives and gambling houses and brothels, met with the heelers of both parties,
-and from their conversation he came to understand all the ins and outs of the
-game, and to hear of a number of ways in which he could make himself useful
-about election time. &ldquo;Buck&rdquo; Halloran was a &ldquo;Democrat,&rdquo;
-and so Jurgis became a Democrat also; but he was not a bitter one&mdash;the
-Republicans were good fellows, too, and were to have a pile of money in this
-next campaign. At the last election the Republicans had paid four dollars a
-vote to the Democrats&rsquo; three; and &ldquo;Buck&rdquo; Halloran sat one
-night playing cards with Jurgis and another man, who told how Halloran had been
-charged with the job voting a &ldquo;bunch&rdquo; of thirty-seven newly landed
-Italians, and how he, the narrator, had met the Republican worker who was after
-the very same gang, and how the three had effected a bargain, whereby the
-Italians were to vote half and half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the
-balance of the fund went to the conspirators!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and vicissitudes of
-miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the career for that of a politician.
-Just at this time there was a tremendous uproar being raised concerning the
-alliance between the criminals and the police. For the criminal graft was one
-in which the business men had no direct part&mdash;it was what is called a
-&ldquo;side line,&rdquo; carried by the police. &ldquo;Wide open&rdquo;
-gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to &ldquo;trade,&rdquo; but
-burglaries and holdups did not. One night it chanced that while Jack Duane was
-drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed by the night
-watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to know him well, and who
-took the responsibility of letting him make his escape. Such a howl from the
-newspapers followed this that Duane was slated for sacrifice, and barely got
-out of town in time. And just at that juncture it happened that Jurgis was
-introduced to a man named Harper whom he recognized as the night watchman at
-Brown&rsquo;s, who had been instrumental in making him an American citizen, the
-first year of his arrival at the yards. The other was interested in the
-coincidence, but did not remember Jurgis&mdash;he had handled too many
-&ldquo;green ones&rdquo; in his time, he said. He sat in a dance hall with
-Jurgis and Halloran until one or two in the morning, exchanging experiences. He
-had a long story to tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his
-department, and how he was now a plain workingman, and a good union man as
-well. It was not until some months afterward that Jurgis understood that the
-quarrel with the superintendent had been prearranged, and that Harper was in
-reality drawing a salary of twenty dollars a week from the packers for an
-inside report of his union&rsquo;s secret proceedings. The yards were seething
-with agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a unionist. The people of
-Packingtown had borne about all that they would bear, and it looked as if a
-strike might begin any week.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a couple of days
-later he came to him with an interesting proposition. He was not absolutely
-certain, he said, but he thought that he could get him a regular salary if he
-would come to Packingtown and do as he was told, and keep his mouth shut.
-Harper&mdash;&ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper, he was called&mdash;was a right-hand
-man of Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards; and in the coming
-election there was a peculiar situation. There had come to Scully a proposition
-to nominate a certain rich brewer who lived upon a swell boulevard that skirted
-the district, and who coveted the big badge and the &ldquo;honorable&rdquo; of
-an alderman. The brewer was a Jew, and had no brains, but he was harmless, and
-would put up a rare campaign fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone
-to the Republicans with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage the
-&ldquo;sheeny,&rdquo; and he did not mean to take any chances with his
-district; let the Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable friend of
-Scully&rsquo;s, who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an Ashland Avenue
-saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the &ldquo;sheeny&rsquo;s&rdquo;
-money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was more than they would
-get otherwise. In return for this the Republicans would agree to put up no
-candidate the following year, when Scully himself came up for reelection as the
-other alderman from the ward. To this the Republicans had assented at once; but
-the hell of it was&mdash;so Harper explained&mdash;that the Republicans were
-all of them fools&mdash;a man had to be a fool to be a Republican in the
-stockyards, where Scully was king. And they didn&rsquo;t know how to work, and
-of course it would not do for the Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the
-War Whoop League, to support the Republican openly. The difficulty would not
-have been so great except for another fact&mdash;there had been a curious
-development in stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new party having
-leaped into being. They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess, said
-&ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper. The one image which the word &ldquo;Socialist&rdquo;
-brought to Jurgis was of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called
-himself one, and would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and
-shout himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had tried to
-explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was not of an
-imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present he was content
-with his companion&rsquo;s explanation that the Socialists were the enemies of
-American institutions&mdash;could not be bought, and would not combine or make
-any sort of a &ldquo;dicker.&rdquo; Mike Scully was very much worried over the
-opportunity which his last deal gave to them&mdash;the stockyards Democrats
-were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist for their candidate, and while
-they were changing they might possibly conclude that a Socialist firebrand was
-preferable to a Republican bum. And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to
-make himself a place in the world, explained &ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper; he had
-been a union man, and he was known in the yards as a workingman; he must have
-hundreds of acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he
-might come out as a Republican now without exciting the least suspicion. There
-were barrels of money for the use of those who could deliver the goods; and
-Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully, who had never yet gone back on a friend.
-Just what could he do? Jurgis asked, in some perplexity, and the other
-explained in detail. To begin with, he would have to go to the yards and work,
-and he mightn&rsquo;t relish that; but he would have what he earned, as well as
-the rest that came to him. He would get active in the union again, and perhaps
-try to get an office, as he, Harper, had; he would tell all his friends the
-good points of Doyle, the Republican nominee, and the bad ones of the
-&ldquo;sheeny&rdquo;; and then Scully would furnish a meeting place, and he
-would start the &ldquo;Young Men&rsquo;s Republican Association,&rdquo; or
-something of that sort, and have the rich brewer&rsquo;s best beer by the
-hogshead, and fireworks and speeches, just like the War Whoop League. Surely
-Jurgis must know hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun; and there
-would be the regular Republican leaders and workers to help him out, and they
-would deliver a big enough majority on election day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis demanded: &ldquo;But
-how can I get a job in Packingtown? I&rsquo;m blacklisted.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At which &ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper laughed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll attend to that
-all right,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the other replied, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a go, then; I&rsquo;m your man.&rdquo;
-So Jurgis went out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political
-lord of the district, the boss of Chicago&rsquo;s mayor. It was Scully who
-owned the brick-yards and the dump and the ice pond&mdash;though Jurgis did not
-know it. It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which
-Jurgis&rsquo;s child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office
-the magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was
-principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
-tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these
-things&mdash;any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of the
-packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the &ldquo;biggest&rdquo; man he had
-ever met.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief talk with
-his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making up his mind about
-him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one of the head managers of
-Durham&rsquo;s&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I would
-like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. He was once
-indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to overlook that.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this. &ldquo;What does he mean by
-&lsquo;indiscreet&rsquo;?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I was blacklisted, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At which the other frowned. &ldquo;Blacklisted?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How do
-you mean?&rdquo; And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist. &ldquo;I&mdash;that is&mdash;I
-had difficulty in getting a place,&rdquo; he stammered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What was the matter?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I got into a quarrel with a foreman&mdash;not my own boss, sir&mdash;and
-struck him.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the other, and meditated for a few moments.
-&ldquo;What do you wish to do?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Anything, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis&mdash;&ldquo;only I had a broken arm
-this winter, and so I have to be careful.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How would it suit you to be a night watchman?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;That wouldn&rsquo;t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I see&mdash;politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, &ldquo;Take this man to Pat Murphy
-and tell him to find room for him somehow.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the days
-gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily, and smiled to
-himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss&rsquo;s face as the timekeeper
-said, &ldquo;Mr. Harmon says to put this man on.&rdquo; It would overcrowd his
-department and spoil the record he was trying to make&mdash;but he said not a
-word except &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he sought out his
-old friends, and joined the union, and began to &ldquo;root&rdquo; for
-&ldquo;Scotty&rdquo; Doyle. Doyle had done him a good turn once, he explained,
-and was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman himself, and would
-represent the workingmen&mdash;why did they want to vote for a millionaire
-&ldquo;sheeny,&rdquo; and what the hell had Mike Scully ever done for them that
-they should back his candidates all the time? And meantime Scully had given
-Jurgis a note to the Republican leader of the ward, and he had gone there and
-met the crowd he was to work with. Already they had hired a big hall, with some
-of the brewer&rsquo;s money, and every night Jurgis brought in a dozen new
-members of the &ldquo;Doyle Republican Association.&rdquo; Pretty soon they had
-a grand opening night; and there was a brass band, which marched through the
-streets, and fireworks and bombs and red lights in front of the hall; and there
-was an enormous crowd, with two overflow meetings&mdash;so that the pale and
-trembling candidate had to recite three times over the little speech which one
-of Scully&rsquo;s henchmen had written, and which he had been a month learning
-by heart. Best of all, the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks,
-presidential candidate, rode out in an automobile to discuss the sacred
-privileges of American citizenship, and protection and prosperity for the
-American workingman. His inspiriting address was quoted to the extent of half a
-column in all the morning newspapers, which also said that it could be stated
-upon excellent authority that the unexpected popularity developed by Doyle, the
-Republican candidate for alderman, was giving great anxiety to Mr. Scully, the
-chairman of the Democratic City Committee.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight procession came
-off, with the members of the Doyle Republican Association all in red capes and
-hats, and free beer for every voter in the ward&mdash;the best beer ever given
-away in a political campaign, as the whole electorate testified. During this
-parade, and at innumerable cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored
-tirelessly. He did not make any speeches&mdash;there were lawyers and other
-experts for that&mdash;but he helped to manage things; distributing notices and
-posting placards and bringing out the crowds; and when the show was on he
-attended to the fireworks and the beer. Thus in the course of the campaign he
-handled many hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer&rsquo;s money,
-administering it with naïve and touching fidelity. Toward the end, however, he
-learned that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the &ldquo;boys,&rdquo;
-because he compelled them either to make a poorer showing than he or to do
-without their share of the pie. After that Jurgis did his best to please them,
-and to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra
-bungholes of the campaign barrel.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He pleased Mike Scully, also. On election morning he was out at four
-o&rsquo;clock, &ldquo;getting out the vote&rdquo;; he had a two-horse carriage
-to ride in, and he went from house to house for his friends, and escorted them
-in triumph to the polls. He voted half a dozen times himself, and voted some of
-his friends as often; he brought bunch after bunch of the newest
-foreigners&mdash;Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks&mdash;and when he had
-put them through the mill he turned them over to another man to take to the
-next polling place. When Jurgis first set out, the captain of the precinct gave
-him a hundred dollars, and three times in the course of the day he came for
-another hundred, and not more than twenty-five out of each lot got stuck in his
-own pocket. The balance all went for actual votes, and on a day of Democratic
-landslides they elected &ldquo;Scotty&rdquo; Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by
-nearly a thousand plurality&mdash;and beginning at five o&rsquo;clock in the
-afternoon, and ending at three the next morning, Jurgis treated himself to a
-most unholy and horrible &ldquo;jag.&rdquo; Nearly every one else in
-Packingtown did the same, however, for there was universal exultation over this
-triumph of popular government, this crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by
-the power of the common people.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
-
-<p>
-After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his job. The
-agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was continuing, and it
-seemed to him best to &ldquo;lay low&rdquo; for the present. He had nearly
-three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered himself entitled
-to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of habit kept him at it.
-Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised him that something might
-&ldquo;turn up&rdquo; before long.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial friends. He
-had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that Elzbieta and her family had
-gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought to them. He went with a new
-set, now, young unmarried fellows who were &ldquo;sporty.&rdquo; Jurgis had
-long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and since going into politics he had
-donned a linen collar and a greasy red necktie. He had some reason for thinking
-of his dress, for he was making about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of
-it he might spend upon his pleasures without ever touching his savings.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the cheap theaters
-and the music halls and other haunts with which they were familiar. Many of the
-saloons in Packingtown had pool tables, and some of them bowling alleys, by
-means of which he could spend his evenings in petty gambling. Also, there were
-cards and dice. One time Jurgis got into a game on a Saturday night and won
-prodigiously, and because he was a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and
-the game continued until late Sunday afternoon, and by that time he was
-&ldquo;out&rdquo; over twenty dollars. On Saturday nights, also, a number of
-balls were generally given in Packingtown; each man would bring his
-&ldquo;girl&rdquo; with him, paying half a dollar for a ticket, and several
-dollars additional for drinks in the course of the festivities, which continued
-until three or four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting.
-During all this time the same man and woman would dance together,
-half-stupefied with sensuality and drink.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something &ldquo;turning
-up.&rdquo; In May the agreement between the packers and the unions expired, and
-a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going on, and the yards
-were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had dealt with the wages of the
-skilled men only; and of the members of the Meat Workers&rsquo; Union about
-two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago these latter were receiving, for the
-most part, eighteen and a half cents an hour, and the unions wished to make
-this the general wage for the next year. It was not nearly so large a wage as
-it seemed&mdash;in the course of the negotiations the union officers examined
-time checks to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the
-highest wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars
-and five cents, and the average of the whole, six dollars and sixty-five cents.
-And six dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too much for a man to keep a
-family on, considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had increased
-nearly fifty per cent in the last five years, while the price of &ldquo;beef on
-the hoof&rdquo; had decreased as much, it would have seemed that the packers
-ought to be able to pay it; but the packers were unwilling to pay it&mdash;they
-rejected the union demand, and to show what their purpose was, a week or two
-after the agreement expired they put down the wages of about a thousand men to
-sixteen and a half cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would
-put them to fifteen before he got through. There were a million and a half of
-men in the country looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right in
-Chicago; and were the packers to let the union stewards march into their places
-and bind them to a contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day
-for a year? Not much!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a
-referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the same in
-all the packing house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and public woke up to
-face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All sorts of pleas for a
-reconsideration were made, but the packers were obdurate; and all the while
-they were reducing wages, and heading off shipments of cattle, and rushing in
-wagon-loads of mattresses and cots. So the men boiled over, and one night
-telegrams went out from the union headquarters to all the big packing
-centers&mdash;to St. Paul, South Omaha, Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City,
-East St. Louis, and New York&mdash;and the next day at noon between fifty and
-sixty thousand men drew off their working clothes and marched out of the
-factories, and the great &ldquo;Beef Strike&rdquo; was on.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike Scully, who
-lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been decently paved and lighted
-for his especial benefit. Scully had gone into semi-retirement, and looked
-nervous and worried. &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; he demanded, when he saw
-Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the
-strike,&rdquo; the other replied.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning&rsquo;s papers
-Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully, who had
-declared that if they did not treat their people better the city authorities
-would end the matter by tearing down their plants. Now, therefore, Jurgis was
-not a little taken aback when the other demanded suddenly, &ldquo;See here,
-Rudkus, why don&rsquo;t you stick by your job?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis started. &ldquo;Work as a scab?&rdquo; he cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; demanded Scully. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it
-for granted that he should go out with his union. &ldquo;The packers need good
-men, and need them bad,&rdquo; continued the other, &ldquo;and they&rsquo;ll
-treat a man right that stands by them. Why don&rsquo;t you take your chance and
-fix yourself?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;how could I ever be of any use to
-you&mdash;in politics?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t be it anyhow,&rdquo; said Scully, abruptly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hell, man!&rdquo; cried the other. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know
-you&rsquo;re a Republican? And do you think I&rsquo;m always going to elect
-Republicans? My brewer has found out already how we served him, and there is
-the deuce to pay.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it before.
-&ldquo;I could be a Democrat,&rdquo; he said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; responded the other, &ldquo;but not right away; a man
-can&rsquo;t change his politics every day. And besides, I don&rsquo;t need
-you&mdash;there&rsquo;d be nothing for you to do. And it&rsquo;s a long time to
-election day, anyhow; and what are you going to do meantime?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I thought I could count on you,&rdquo; began Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; responded Scully, &ldquo;so you could&mdash;I never yet went
-back on a friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for
-another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today, and what can I do?
-I&rsquo;ve put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this one
-week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn&rsquo;t do for me
-to tell other men what I tell you, but you&rsquo;ve been on the inside, and you
-ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What have you to gain by a
-strike?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t thought,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Scully, &ldquo;but you&rsquo;d better. Take my word
-for it, the strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and
-meantime what you can get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The men had
-left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and the foreman was
-directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and
-office boys to finish up the job and get them into the chilling rooms. Jurgis
-went straight up to him and announced, &ldquo;I have come back to work, Mr.
-Murphy.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The boss&rsquo;s face lighted up. &ldquo;Good man!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Come
-ahead!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Just a moment,&rdquo; said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. &ldquo;I
-think I ought to get a little more wages.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the other, &ldquo;of course. What do you
-want?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he clenched
-his hands. &ldquo;I think I ought to have&rsquo; three dollars a day,&rdquo; he
-said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said the other, promptly; and before the day was out
-our friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys were
-getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis became one of the new &ldquo;American heroes,&rdquo; a man whose
-virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley
-Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was generously
-paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring cot and a mattress
-and three substantial meals a day; also he was perfectly at ease, and safe from
-all peril of life and limb, save only in the case that a desire for beer should
-lead him to venture outside of the stockyards gates. And even in the exercise
-of this privilege he was not left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate
-police force of Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting
-criminals, and rushed out to serve him. The police, and the strikers also, were
-determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party
-interested which was minded to the contrary&mdash;and that was the press. On
-the first day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a
-spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and
-get a drink. They accepted, and went through the big Halsted Street gate, where
-several policemen were watching, and also some union pickets, scanning sharply
-those who passed in and out. Jurgis and his companions went south on Halsted
-Street; past the hotel, and then suddenly half a dozen men started across the
-street toward them and proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of
-their ways. As the arguments were not taken in the proper spirit, they went on
-to threats; and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and
-flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then, as a cry of
-&ldquo;Scab!&rdquo; was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons
-and doorways, a second man&rsquo;s heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and
-the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of a quick
-exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and fled back of the
-hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course, policemen were coming on a
-run, and as a crowd gathered other police got excited and sent in a riot call.
-Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to &ldquo;Packers&rsquo;
-Avenue,&rdquo; and in front of the &ldquo;Central Time Station&rdquo; he saw
-one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating to an
-ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded by a howling
-mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While he stood listening, smiling
-cynically, several dapper young men stood by with notebooks in their hands, and
-it was not more than two hours later that Jurgis saw newsboys running about
-with armfuls of newspapers, printed in red and black letters six inches high:
-</p>
-
-<p class="center">
-VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent">
-If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States the next
-morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit was being
-perused by some two score millions of people, and had served as a text for
-editorials in half the staid and solemn business-men&rsquo;s newspapers in the
-land.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work being
-over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad direct from the yards,
-or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been laid in rows. He chose
-the latter, but to his regret, for all night long gangs of strikebreakers kept
-arriving. As very few of the better class of workingmen could be got for such
-work, these specimens of the new American hero contained an assortment of the
-criminals and thugs of the city, besides Negroes and the lowest
-foreigners&mdash;Greeks, Roumanians, Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been
-attracted more by the prospect of disorder than by the big wages; and they made
-the night hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the
-time came for them to get up to work.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, &ldquo;Pat&rdquo;
-Murphy ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
-experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump with
-excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come&mdash;that he was
-to be a boss!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone out with
-the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had been left most
-in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least afford it; the smoking
-and canning and salting of meat might wait, and all the by-products might be
-wasted&mdash;but fresh meats must be had, or the restaurants and hotels and
-brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and then &ldquo;public opinion&rdquo;
-would take a startling turn.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis seized
-it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it to others.
-But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect to keep
-it&mdash;they would not turn him off at the end of the strike? To which the
-superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham&rsquo;s for
-that&mdash;they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all those
-foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five dollars a day
-during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was settled.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So our friend got a pair of &ldquo;slaughter pen&rdquo; boots and
-&ldquo;jeans,&rdquo; and flung himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there
-on the killing beds&mdash;a throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who
-could not understand a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced,
-hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and
-the sickening stench of fresh blood&mdash;and all struggling to dress a dozen
-or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old killing
-gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning out four
-hundred carcasses every hour!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Negroes and the &ldquo;toughs&rdquo; from the Lêvée did not want to work,
-and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and recuperate.
-In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up to cool off the
-rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest on; and meantime they could
-go out and find a shady corner and take a &ldquo;snooze,&rdquo; and as there
-was no place for any one in particular, and no system, it might be hours before
-their boss discovered them. As for the poor office employees, they did their
-best, moved to it by terror; thirty of them had been &ldquo;fired&rdquo; in a
-bunch that first morning for refusing to serve, besides a number of women
-clerks and typewriters who had declined to act as waitresses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his best,
-flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the tricks; he had
-never given an order in his life before, but he had taken enough of them to
-know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it, and roared and stormed like any
-old stager. He had not the most tractable pupils, however. &ldquo;See hyar,
-boss,&rdquo; a big black &ldquo;buck&rdquo; would begin, &ldquo;ef you
-doan&rsquo; like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody else to do
-it.&rdquo; Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the
-first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every Negro
-had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon discovered; and he
-fell in with the spirit of the thing&mdash;there was no reason why he should
-wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed and rendered
-useless there was no way of tracing it to any one; and if a man lay off and
-forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the
-rest would quit in the meantime. Everything went, during the strike, and the
-packers paid. Before long Jurgis found that the custom of resting had suggested
-to some alert minds the possibility of registering at more than one place and
-earning more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he
-&ldquo;fired&rdquo; him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man
-tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course, before
-long this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good income from
-it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves lucky if
-they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in transit and the hogs
-that had developed disease. Frequently, in the course of a two or three
-days&rsquo; trip, in hot weather and without water, some hog would develop
-cholera, and die; and the rest would attack him before he had ceased kicking,
-and when the car was opened there would be nothing of him left but the bones.
-If all the hogs in this carload were not killed at once, they would soon be
-down with the dread disease, and there would be nothing to do but make them
-into lard. It was the same with cattle that were gored and dying, or were
-limping with broken bones stuck through their flesh&mdash;they must be killed,
-even if brokers and buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats and
-help drive and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the packers were
-gathering gangs of Negroes in the country districts of the far South, promising
-them five dollars a day and board, and being careful not to mention there was a
-strike; already carloads of them were on the way, with special rates from the
-railroads, and all traffic ordered out of the way. Many towns and cities were
-taking advantage of the chance to clear out their jails and workhouses&mdash;in
-Detroit the magistrates would release every man who agreed to leave town within
-twenty-four hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship
-them right. And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for their
-accommodation, including beer and whisky, so that they might not be tempted to
-go outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati to &ldquo;pack
-fruit,&rdquo; and when they arrived put them at work canning corned beef, and
-put cots for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which the men passed.
-As the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of squads of police, they
-stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car sheds, crowded
-so closely together that the cots touched. In some places they would use the
-same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the men would put their cots
-upon the tables, to keep away from the swarms of rats.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized. Ninety per cent
-of the men had walked out; and they faced the task of completely remaking their
-labor force&mdash;and with the price of meat up thirty per cent, and the public
-clamoring for a settlement. They made an offer to submit the whole question at
-issue to arbitration; and at the end of ten days the unions accepted it, and
-the strike was called off. It was agreed that all the men were to be
-re-employed within forty-five days, and that there was to be &ldquo;no
-discrimination against union men.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back &ldquo;without
-discrimination,&rdquo; he would lose his present place. He sought out the
-superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him &ldquo;wait and see.&rdquo;
-Durham&rsquo;s strikebreakers were few of them leaving.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Whether or not the &ldquo;settlement&rdquo; was simply a trick of the packers
-to gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and cripple
-the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there went out from the
-office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the big packing centers,
-&ldquo;Employ no union leaders.&rdquo; And in the morning, when the twenty
-thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner pails and working
-clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room, where he had
-worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager men, with a score or two of
-policemen watching them; and he saw a superintendent come out and walk down the
-line, and pick out man after man that pleased him; and one after another came,
-and there were some men up near the head of the line who were never
-picked&mdash;they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis
-had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there were
-louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle butchers were
-waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he hurried there. One big
-butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades Council, had been passed over
-five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had appointed a committee of
-three to go in and see the superintendent, and the committee had made three
-attempts, and each time the police had clubbed them back from the door. Then
-there were yells and hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to
-the door. &ldquo;We all go back or none of us do!&rdquo; cried a hundred
-voices. And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, &ldquo;You went out
-of here like cattle, and like cattle you&rsquo;ll come back!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones and
-yelled: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s off, boys. We&rsquo;ll all of us quit again!&rdquo;
-And so the cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering
-their members from the other plants, where the same trick had been played, they
-marched down Packers&rsquo; Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass of
-workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the killing beds
-dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here and there on horseback,
-shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of Packingtown was on
-strike again, and beside itself with fury.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this&mdash;the place was
-a seething caldron of passion, and the &ldquo;scab&rdquo; who ventured into it
-fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the newspapers
-detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet ten years before,
-when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was a strike, and national
-troops had to be called, and there were pitched battles fought at night, by the
-light of blazing freight trains. Packingtown was always a center of violence;
-in &ldquo;Whisky Point,&rdquo; where there were a hundred saloons and one glue
-factory, there was always fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Any
-one who had taken the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have
-found that there was less violence that summer than ever before&mdash;and this
-while twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day but
-brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle the union
-leaders were fighting&mdash;to hold this huge army in rank, to keep it from
-straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a hundred thousand
-people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long weeks of hunger and
-disappointment and despair.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of making a new
-labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were brought in every night,
-and distributed among the various plants. Some of them were experienced
-workers,&mdash;butchers, salesmen, and managers from the packers&rsquo; branch
-stores, and a few union men who had deserted from other cities; but the vast
-majority were &ldquo;green&rdquo; Negroes from the cotton districts of the far
-South, and they were herded into the packing plants like sheep. There was a law
-forbidding the use of buildings as lodginghouses unless they were licensed for
-the purpose, and provided with proper windows, stairways, and fire escapes; but
-here, in a &ldquo;paint room,&rdquo; reached only by an enclosed
-&ldquo;chute,&rdquo; a room without a single window and only one door, a
-hundred men were crowded upon mattresses on the floor. Up on the third story of
-the &ldquo;hog house&rdquo; of Jones&rsquo;s was a storeroom, without a window,
-into which they crowded seven hundred men, sleeping upon the bare springs of
-cots, and with a second shift to use them by day. And when the clamor of the
-public led to an investigation into these conditions, and the mayor of the city
-was forced to order the enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge to
-issue an injunction forbidding him to do it!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end to gambling and
-prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of professional gamblers had
-leagued themselves with the police to fleece the strikebreakers; and any night,
-in the big open space in front of Brown&rsquo;s, one might see brawny Negroes
-stripped to the waist and pounding each other for money, while a howling throng
-of three or four thousand surged about, men and women, young white girls from
-the country rubbing elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their boots,
-while rows of woolly heads peered down from every window of the surrounding
-factories. The ancestors of these black people had been savages in Africa; and
-since then they had been chattel slaves, or had been held down by a community
-ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now for the first time they were
-free&mdash;free to gratify every passion, free to wreck themselves. They were
-wanted to break a strike, and when it was broken they would be shipped away,
-and their present masters would never see them again; and so whisky and women
-were brought in by the carload and sold to them, and hell was let loose in the
-yards. Every night there were stabbings and shootings; it was said that the
-packers had blank permits, which enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city
-without troubling the authorities. They lodged men and women on the same floor;
-and with the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery&mdash;scenes such as
-never before had been witnessed in America. And as the women were the dregs
-from the brothels of Chicago, and the men were for the most part ignorant
-country Negroes, the nameless diseases of vice were soon rife; and this where
-food was being handled which was sent out to every corner of the civilized
-world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The &ldquo;Union Stockyards&rdquo; were never a pleasant place; but now they
-were not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place of an
-army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the blazing
-midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of
-thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed
-contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks, and huge
-blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of
-fresh air to penetrate them; and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and
-car-loads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories
-and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell&mdash;there were also
-tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers
-hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black with flies, and
-toilet rooms that were open sewers.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
-play&mdash;fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
-laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked in the
-yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize fights and crap
-games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the corner one might see a
-bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed Negress, lean and witchlike, her hair
-flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling and chanting of the fires of
-perdition and the blood of the &ldquo;Lamb,&rdquo; while men and women lay down
-upon the ground and moaned and screamed in convulsions of terror and remorse.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched in sullen
-despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its food, and the
-packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new workers, and could be
-more stern with the old ones&mdash;could put them on piecework, and dismiss
-them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis was now one of their agents in
-this process; and he could feel the change day by day, like the slow starting
-up of a huge machine. He had gotten used to being a master of men; and because
-of the stifling heat and the stench, and the fact that he was a
-&ldquo;scab&rdquo; and knew it and despised himself. He was drinking, and
-developing a villainous temper, and he stormed and cursed and raged at his men,
-and drove them until they were ready to drop with exhaustion.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place and shouted to
-Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. They followed him outside, to
-where, in the midst of a dense throng, they saw several two-horse trucks
-waiting, and three patrol-wagon loads of police. Jurgis and his men sprang upon
-one of the trucks, and the driver yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering
-away at a gallop. Some steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers
-had got hold of them, and there would be the chance of a scrap!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of the
-&ldquo;dump.&rdquo; There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and
-women rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were eight
-or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no disturbance until they
-came to a place where the street was blocked with a dense throng. Those on the
-flying truck yelled a warning and the crowd scattered pell-mell, disclosing one
-of the steers lying in its blood. There were a good many cattle butchers about
-just then, with nothing much to do, and hungry children at home; and so some
-one had knocked out the steer&mdash;and as a first-class man can kill and dress
-one in a couple of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts already
-missing. This called for punishment, of course; and the police proceeded to
-administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at every head they saw.
-There were yells of rage and pain, and the terrified people fled into houses
-and stores, or scattered helter-skelter down the street. Jurgis and his gang
-joined in the sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring
-him to bay and punch him. If he fled into a house his pursuer would smash in
-the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting every one who came within
-reach, and finally dragging his squealing quarry from under a bed or a pile of
-old clothes in a closet.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room. One of them took
-shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and proceeded to whack
-him over the back and shoulders, until he lay down and gave a chance at his
-head. The others leaped a fence in the rear, balking the second policeman, who
-was fat; and as he came back, furious and cursing, a big Polish woman, the
-owner of the saloon, rushed in screaming, and received a poke in the stomach
-that doubled her up on the floor. Meantime Jurgis, who was of a practical
-temper, was helping himself at the bar; and the first policeman, who had laid
-out his man, joined him, handing out several more bottles, and filling his
-pockets besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance
-with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor brought
-the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman came up behind
-her and put his knee into her back and his hands over her eyes&mdash;and then
-called to his companion, who went back and broke open the cash drawer and
-filled his pockets with the contents. Then the three went outside, and the man
-who was holding the woman gave her a shove and dashed out himself. The gang
-having already got the carcass on to the truck, the party set out at a trot,
-followed by screams and curses, and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen
-enemies. These bricks and stones would figure in the accounts of the
-&ldquo;riot&rdquo; which would be sent out to a few thousand newspapers within
-an hour or two; but the episode of the cash drawer would never be mentioned
-again, save only in the heartbreaking legends of Packingtown.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out the
-remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been killed, and then
-knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to supper, with three friends who
-had been on the other trucks, and they exchanged reminiscences on the way.
-Afterward they drifted into a roulette parlor, and Jurgis, who was never lucky
-at gambling, dropped about fifteen dollars. To console himself he had to drink
-a good deal, and he went back to Packingtown about two o&rsquo;clock in the
-morning, very much the worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed,
-entirely deserving the calamity that was in store for him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-cheeked woman in
-a greasy &ldquo;kimono,&rdquo; and she put her arm about his waist to steady
-him; they turned into a dark room they were passing&mdash;but scarcely had they
-taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open, and a man entered, carrying
-a lantern. &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; he called sharply. And Jurgis
-started to mutter some reply; but at the same instant the man raised his light,
-which flashed in his face, so that it was possible to recognize him. Jurgis
-stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap like a mad thing. The man was
-Connor!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Connor, the boss of the loading gang! The man who had seduced his
-wife&mdash;who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life!
-He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown, but it had
-been as of something far off, that no longer concerned him. Now, however, when
-he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing happened to him that had
-happened before&mdash;a flood of rage boiled up in him, a blind frenzy seized
-him. And he flung himself at the man, and smote him between the eyes&mdash;and
-then, as he fell, seized him by the throat and began to pound his head upon the
-stones.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had been
-upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a thing; but they
-could hear Jurgis panting, and hear the thumping of his victim&rsquo;s skull,
-and they rushed there and tried to pull him off. Precisely as before, Jurgis
-came away with a piece of his enemy&rsquo;s flesh between his teeth; and, as
-before, he went on fighting with those who had interfered with him, until a
-policeman had come and beaten him into insensibility.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards station house.
-This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came to his senses
-he could get something to drink, and also a messenger to take word of his
-plight to &ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper. Harper did not appear, however, until
-after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been hailed into court and
-remanded at five hundred dollars&rsquo; bail to await the result of his
-victim&rsquo;s injuries. Jurgis was wild about this, because a different
-magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he had stated that he had never
-been arrested before, and also that he had been attacked first&mdash;and if
-only someone had been there to speak a good word for him, he could have been
-let off at once.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the message.
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s happened to you?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been doing a fellow up,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;and
-I&rsquo;ve got to get five hundred dollars&rsquo; bail.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I can arrange that all right,&rdquo; said the other&mdash;&ldquo;though
-it may cost you a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It was a man that did me a mean trick once,&rdquo; answered Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a foreman in Brown&rsquo;s or used to be. His name&rsquo;s
-Connor.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the other gave a start. &ldquo;Connor!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Not Phil
-Connor!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the fellow. Why?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; exclaimed the other, &ldquo;then you&rsquo;re in for
-it, old man! <i>I</i> can&rsquo;t help you!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Not help me! Why not?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why, he&rsquo;s one of Scully&rsquo;s biggest men&mdash;he&rsquo;s a
-member of the War-Whoop League, and they talked of sending him to the
-legislature! Phil Connor! Great heavens!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!&rdquo; declared the
-other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I have Scully get me off before he finds out about
-it?&rdquo; asked Jurgis, at length.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But Scully&rsquo;s out of town,&rdquo; the other answered. &ldquo;I
-don&rsquo;t even know where he is&mdash;he&rsquo;s run away to dodge the
-strike.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull had run up
-against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! &ldquo;But what am I going to
-do?&rdquo; he asked, weakly.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How should I know?&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t even
-dare to get bail for you&mdash;why, I might ruin myself for life!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again there was silence. &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you do it for me,&rdquo; Jurgis
-asked, &ldquo;and pretend that you didn&rsquo;t know who I&rsquo;d hit?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?&rdquo;
-asked Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two.
-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing&mdash;unless it&rsquo;s this,&rdquo; he said.
-&ldquo;I could have your bail reduced; and then if you had the money you could
-pay it and skip.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How much will it be?&rdquo; Jurgis asked, after he had had this
-explained more in detail.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;How much do you
-own?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got about three hundred dollars,&rdquo; was the answer.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; was Harper&rsquo;s reply, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure, but
-I&rsquo;ll try and get you off for that. I&rsquo;ll take the risk for
-friendship&rsquo;s sake&mdash;for I&rsquo;d hate to see you sent to
-state&rsquo;s prison for a year or two.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook&mdash;which was sewed up in his
-trousers&mdash;and signed an order, which &ldquo;Bush&rdquo; Harper wrote, for
-all the money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
-the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a decent fellow and
-a friend of Scully&rsquo;s, who had been attacked by a strike-breaker. So the
-bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and Harper went on it himself; he
-did not tell this to Jurgis, however&mdash;nor did he tell him that when the
-time for trial came it would be an easy matter for him to avoid the forfeiting
-of the bail, and pocket the three hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of
-offending Mike Scully! All that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and
-that the best thing he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so
-Jurgis overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and fourteen
-cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put it with the two
-dollars and quarter that was left from his last night&rsquo;s celebration, and
-boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of Chicago.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
-
-<p>
-Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was crippled&mdash;he
-was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost its claws, or been
-torn out of its shell. He had been shorn, at one cut, of all those mysterious
-weapons whereby he had been able to make a living easily and to escape the
-consequences of his actions. He could no longer command a job when he wanted
-it; he could no longer steal with impunity&mdash;he must take his chances with
-the common herd. Nay worse, he dared not mingle with the herd&mdash;he must
-hide himself, for he was one marked out for destruction. His old companions
-would betray him, for the sake of the influence they would gain thereby; and he
-would be made to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed, but for
-others which would be laid at his door, just as had been done for some poor
-devil on the occasion of that assault upon the &ldquo;country customer&rdquo;
-by him and Duane.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new standards
-of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had been out of work
-before, he had been content if he could sleep in a doorway or under a truck out
-of the rain, and if he could get fifteen cents a day for saloon lunches. But
-now he desired all sorts of other things, and suffered because he had to do
-without them. He must have a drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and
-apart from the food that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to
-master every other consideration&mdash;he would have it, though it were his
-last nickel and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates. But never since he had
-been in Chicago had he stood less chance of getting a job than just then. For
-one thing, there was the economic crisis, the million or two of men who had
-been out of work in the spring and summer, and were not yet all back, by any
-means. And then there was the strike, with seventy thousand men and women all
-over the country idle for a couple of months&mdash;twenty thousand in Chicago,
-and many of them now seeking work throughout the city. It did not remedy
-matters that a few days later the strike was given up and about half the
-strikers went back to work; for every one taken on, there was a
-&ldquo;scab&rdquo; who gave up and fled. The ten or fifteen thousand
-&ldquo;green&rdquo; Negroes, foreigners, and criminals were now being turned
-loose to shift for themselves. Everywhere Jurgis went he kept meeting them, and
-he was in an agony of fear lest some one of them should know that he was
-&ldquo;wanted.&rdquo; He would have left Chicago, only by the time he had
-realized his danger he was almost penniless; and it would be better to go to
-jail than to be caught out in the country in the winter time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few pennies left; and he had not
-yet found a job&mdash;not even a day&rsquo;s work at anything, not a chance to
-carry a satchel. Once again, as when he had come out of the hospital, he was
-bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom of starvation. Raw, naked
-terror possessed him, a maddening passion that would never leave him, and that
-wore him down more quickly than the actual want of food. He was going to die of
-hunger! The fiend reached out its scaly arms for him&mdash;it touched him, its
-breath came into his face; and he would cry out for the awfulness of it, he
-would wake up in the night, shuddering, and bathed in perspiration, and start
-up and flee. He would walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted; he could
-not remain still&mdash;he would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing about him
-with restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from one end of the vast city to the
-other, there were hundreds of others like him; everywhere was the sight of
-plenty and the merciless hand of authority waving them away. There is one kind
-of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is
-outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and
-the man is outside.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When he was down to his last quarter, Jurgis learned that before the bakeshops
-closed at night they sold out what was left at half price, and after that he
-would go and get two loaves of stale bread for a nickel, and break them up and
-stuff his pockets with them, munching a bit from time to time. He would not
-spend a penny save for this; and, after two or three days more, he even became
-sparing of the bread, and would stop and peer into the ash barrels as he walked
-along the streets, and now and then rake out a bit of something, shake it free
-from dust, and count himself just so many minutes further from the end.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So for several days he had been going about, ravenous all the time, and growing
-weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had a hideous experience, that
-almost broke his heart. He was passing down a street lined with warehouses, and
-a boss offered him a job, and then, after he had started to work, turned him
-off because he was not strong enough. And he stood by and saw another man put
-into his place, and then picked up his coat, and walked off, doing all that he
-could to keep from breaking down and crying like a baby. He was lost! He was
-doomed! There was no hope for him! But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave
-place to rage. He fell to cursing. He would come back there after dark, and he
-would show that scoundrel whether he was good for anything or not!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came upon a
-green-grocery, with a tray full of cabbages in front of it. Jurgis, after one
-swift glance about him, stooped and seized the biggest of them, and darted
-round the corner with it. There was a hue and cry, and a score of men and boys
-started in chase of him; but he came to an alley, and then to another branching
-off from it and leading him into another street, where he fell into a walk, and
-slipped his cabbage under his coat and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When
-he had gotten a safe distance away he sat down and devoured half the cabbage
-raw, stowing the balance away in his pockets till the next day.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers, which made much of the
-&ldquo;common people,&rdquo; opened a &ldquo;free-soup kitchen&rdquo; for the
-benefit of the unemployed. Some people said that they did this for the sake of
-the advertising it gave them, and some others said that their motive was a fear
-lest all their readers should be starved off; but whatever the reason, the soup
-was thick and hot, and there was a bowl for every man, all night long. When
-Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow &ldquo;hobo,&rdquo; he vowed that he would
-have half a dozen bowls before morning; but, as it proved, he was lucky to get
-one, for there was a line of men two blocks long before the stand, and there
-was just as long a line when the place was finally closed up.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis&mdash;in the
-&ldquo;Lêvée&rdquo; district, where he was known; but he went there, all the
-same, for he was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a
-place of refuge. So far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every
-night in a vacant lot; but now there fell suddenly a shadow of the advancing
-winter, a chill wind from the north and a driving storm of rain. That day
-Jurgis bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter, and at night he spent his
-last two pennies in a &ldquo;stale-beer dive.&rdquo; This was a place kept by a
-Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of beer that lay in barrels set
-outside of the saloons; and after he had doctored it with chemicals to make it
-&ldquo;fizz,&rdquo; he sold it for two cents a can, the purchase of a can
-including the privilege of sleeping the night through upon the floor, with a
-mass of degraded outcasts, men and women.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he was always
-contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost. For instance, just now it
-was election time again&mdash;within five or six weeks the voters of the
-country would select a President; and he heard the wretches with whom he
-associated discussing it, and saw the streets of the city decorated with
-placards and banners&mdash;and what words could describe the pangs of grief and
-despair that shot through him?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For instance, there was a night during this cold spell. He had begged all day,
-for his very life, and found not a soul to heed him, until toward evening he
-saw an old lady getting off a streetcar and helped her down with her umbrellas
-and bundles and then told her his &ldquo;hard-luck story,&rdquo; and after
-answering all her suspicious questions satisfactorily, was taken to a
-restaurant and saw a quarter paid down for a meal. And so he had soup and
-bread, and boiled beef and potatoes and beans, and pie and coffee, and came out
-with his skin stuffed tight as a football. And then, through the rain and the
-darkness, far down the street he saw red lights flaring and heard the thumping
-of a bass drum; and his heart gave a leap, and he made for the place on the
-run&mdash;knowing without the asking that it meant a political meeting.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The campaign had so far been characterized by what the newspapers termed
-&ldquo;apathy.&rdquo; For some reason the people refused to get excited over
-the struggle, and it was almost impossible to get them to come to meetings, or
-to make any noise when they did come. Those which had been held in Chicago so
-far had proven most dismal failures, and tonight, the speaker being no less a
-personage than a candidate for the vice-presidency of the nation, the political
-managers had been trembling with anxiety. But a merciful providence had sent
-this storm of cold rain&mdash;and now all it was necessary to do was to set off
-a few fireworks, and thump awhile on a drum, and all the homeless wretches from
-a mile around would pour in and fill the hall! And then on the morrow the
-newspapers would have a chance to report the tremendous ovation, and to add
-that it had been no &ldquo;silk-stocking&rdquo; audience, either, proving
-clearly that the high tariff sentiments of the distinguished candidate were
-pleasing to the wage-earners of the nation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated with flags and
-bunting; and after the chairman had made his little speech, and the orator of
-the evening rose up, amid an uproar from the band&mdash;only fancy the emotions
-of Jurgis upon making the discovery that the personage was none other than the
-famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks, who had addressed the &ldquo;Doyle
-Republican Association&rdquo; at the stockyards, and helped to elect Mike
-Scully&rsquo;s tenpin setter to the Chicago Board of Aldermen!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-In truth, the sight of the senator almost brought the tears into Jurgis&rsquo;s
-eyes. What agony it was to him to look back upon those golden hours, when he,
-too, had a place beneath the shadow of the plum tree! When he, too, had been of
-the elect, through whom the country is governed&mdash;when he had had a bung in
-the campaign barrel for his own! And this was another election in which the
-Republicans had all the money; and but for that one hideous accident he might
-have had a share of it, instead of being where he was!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The eloquent senator was explaining the system of protection; an ingenious
-device whereby the workingman permitted the manufacturer to charge him higher
-prices, in order that he might receive higher wages; thus taking his money out
-of his pocket with one hand, and putting a part of it back with the other. To
-the senator this unique arrangement had somehow become identified with the
-higher verities of the universe. It was because of it that Columbia was the gem
-of the ocean; and all her future triumphs, her power and good repute among the
-nations, depended upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up
-the hands of those who were toiling to maintain it. The name of this heroic
-company was &ldquo;the Grand Old Party&rdquo;&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And here the band began to play, and Jurgis sat up with a violent start.
-Singular as it may seem, Jurgis was making a desperate effort to understand
-what the senator was saying&mdash;to comprehend the extent of American
-prosperity, the enormous expansion of American commerce, and the
-Republic&rsquo;s future in the Pacific and in South America, and wherever else
-the oppressed were groaning. The reason for it was that he wanted to keep
-awake. He knew that if he allowed himself to fall asleep he would begin to
-snore loudly; and so he must listen&mdash;he must be interested! But he had
-eaten such a big dinner, and he was so exhausted, and the hall was so warm, and
-his seat was so comfortable! The senator&rsquo;s gaunt form began to grow dim
-and hazy, to tower before him and dance about, with figures of exports and
-imports. Once his neighbor gave him a savage poke in the ribs, and he sat up
-with a start and tried to look innocent; but then he was at it again, and men
-began to stare at him with annoyance, and to call out in vexation. Finally one
-of them called a policeman, who came and grabbed Jurgis by the collar, and
-jerked him to his feet, bewildered and terrified. Some of the audience turned
-to see the commotion, and Senator Spareshanks faltered in his speech; but a
-voice shouted cheerily: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re just firing a bum! Go ahead, old
-sport!&rdquo; And so the crowd roared, and the senator smiled genially, and
-went on; and in a few seconds poor Jurgis found himself landed out in the rain,
-with a kick and a string of curses.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He got into the shelter of a doorway and took stock of himself. He was not
-hurt, and he was not arrested&mdash;more than he had any right to expect. He
-swore at himself and his luck for a while, and then turned his thoughts to
-practical matters. He had no money, and no place to sleep; he must begin
-begging again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He went out, hunching his shoulders together and shivering at the touch of the
-icy rain. Coming down the street toward him was a lady, well dressed, and
-protected by an umbrella; and he turned and walked beside her. &ldquo;Please,
-ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;could you lend me the price of a
-night&rsquo;s lodging? I&rsquo;m a poor working-man&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then, suddenly, he stopped short. By the light of a street lamp he had caught
-sight of the lady&rsquo;s face. He knew her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was Alena Jasaityte, who had been the belle of his wedding feast! Alena
-Jasaityte, who had looked so beautiful, and danced with such a queenly air,
-with Juozas Raczius, the teamster! Jurgis had only seen her once or twice
-afterward, for Juozas had thrown her over for another girl, and Alena had gone
-away from Packingtown, no one knew where. And now he met her here!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She was as much surprised as he was. &ldquo;Jurgis Rudkus!&rdquo; she gasped.
-&ldquo;And what in the world is the matter with you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;I&rsquo;ve had hard luck,&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
-out of work, and I&rsquo;ve no home and no money. And you, Alena&mdash;are you
-married?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not married, but I&rsquo;ve
-got a good place.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-They stood staring at each other for a few moments longer. Finally Alena spoke
-again. &ldquo;Jurgis,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d help you if I could,
-upon my word I would, but it happens that I&rsquo;ve come out without my purse,
-and I honestly haven&rsquo;t a penny with me: I can do something better for
-you, though&mdash;I can tell you how to get help. I can tell you where Marija
-is.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis gave a start. &ldquo;Marija!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Alena; &ldquo;and she&rsquo;ll help you. She&rsquo;s
-got a place, and she&rsquo;s doing well; she&rsquo;ll be glad to see
-you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was not much more than a year since Jurgis had left Packingtown, feeling
-like one escaped from jail; and it had been from Marija and Elzbieta that he
-was escaping. But now, at the mere mention of them, his whole being cried out
-with joy. He wanted to see them; he wanted to go home! They would help
-him&mdash;they would be kind to him. In a flash he had thought over the
-situation. He had a good excuse for running away&mdash;his grief at the death
-of his son; and also he had a good excuse for not returning&mdash;the fact that
-they had left Packingtown. &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
-go.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So she gave him a number on Clark Street, adding, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no need
-to give you my address, because Marija knows it.&rdquo; And Jurgis set out,
-without further ado. He found a large brownstone house of aristocratic
-appearance, and rang the basement bell. A young colored girl came to the door,
-opening it about an inch, and gazing at him suspiciously.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; she demanded.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Does Marija Berczynskas live here?&rdquo; he inquired.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I dunno,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;What you want wid her?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I want to see her,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;she&rsquo;s a relative of
-mine.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The girl hesitated a moment. Then she opened the door and said, &ldquo;Come
-in.&rdquo; Jurgis came and stood in the hall, and she continued:
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go see. What&rsquo;s yo&rsquo; name?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Tell her it&rsquo;s Jurgis,&rdquo; he answered, and the girl went
-upstairs. She came back at the end of a minute or two, and replied, &ldquo;Dey
-ain&rsquo;t no sich person here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis&rsquo;s heart went down into his boots. &ldquo;I was told this was where
-she lived!&rdquo; he cried. But the girl only shook her head. &ldquo;De lady
-says dey ain&rsquo;t no sich person here,&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And he stood for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. Then he turned to
-go to the door. At the same instant, however, there came a knock upon it, and
-the girl went to open it. Jurgis heard the shuffling of feet, and then heard
-her give a cry; and the next moment she sprang back, and past him, her eyes
-shining white with terror, and bounded up the stairway, screaming at the top of
-her lungs: &ldquo;<i>Police! Police! We&rsquo;re pinched!</i>&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis stood for a second, bewildered. Then, seeing blue-coated forms rushing
-upon him, he sprang after the Negress. Her cries had been the signal for a wild
-uproar above; the house was full of people, and as he entered the hallway he
-saw them rushing hither and thither, crying and screaming with alarm. There
-were men and women, the latter clad for the most part in wrappers, the former
-in all stages of <i>déshabille</i>. At one side Jurgis caught a glimpse of a
-big apartment with plush-covered chairs, and tables covered with trays and
-glasses. There were playing cards scattered all over the floor&mdash;one of the
-tables had been upset, and bottles of wine were rolling about, their contents
-running out upon the carpet. There was a young girl who had fainted, and two
-men who were supporting her; and there were a dozen others crowding toward the
-front door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suddenly, however, there came a series of resounding blows upon it, causing the
-crowd to give back. At the same instant a stout woman, with painted cheeks and
-diamonds in her ears, came running down the stairs, panting breathlessly:
-&ldquo;To the rear! Quick!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She led the way to a back staircase, Jurgis following; in the kitchen she
-pressed a spring, and a cupboard gave way and opened, disclosing a dark
-passageway. &ldquo;Go in!&rdquo; she cried to the crowd, which now amounted to
-twenty or thirty, and they began to pass through. Scarcely had the last one
-disappeared, however, before there were cries from in front, and then the
-panic-stricken throng poured out again, exclaiming: &ldquo;They&rsquo;re there
-too! We&rsquo;re trapped!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Upstairs!&rdquo; cried the woman, and there was another rush of the mob,
-women and men cursing and screaming and fighting to be first. One flight, two,
-three&mdash;and then there was a ladder to the roof, with a crowd packed at the
-foot of it, and one man at the top, straining and struggling to lift the trap
-door. It was not to be stirred, however, and when the woman shouted up to
-unhook it, he answered: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s already unhooked. There&rsquo;s
-somebody sitting on it!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And a moment later came a voice from downstairs: &ldquo;You might as well quit,
-you people. We mean business, this time.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So the crowd subsided; and a few moments later several policemen came up,
-staring here and there, and leering at their victims. Of the latter the men
-were for the most part frightened and sheepish-looking. The women took it as a
-joke, as if they were used to it&mdash;though if they had been pale, one could
-not have told, for the paint on their cheeks. One black-eyed young girl perched
-herself upon the top of the balustrade, and began to kick with her slippered
-foot at the helmets of the policemen, until one of them caught her by the ankle
-and pulled her down. On the floor below four or five other girls sat upon
-trunks in the hall, making fun of the procession which filed by them. They were
-noisy and hilarious, and had evidently been drinking; one of them, who wore a
-bright red kimono, shouted and screamed in a voice that drowned out all the
-other sounds in the hall&mdash;and Jurgis took a glance at her, and then gave a
-start, and a cry, &ldquo;Marija!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She heard him, and glanced around; then she shrank back and half sprang to her
-feet in amazement. &ldquo;Jurgis!&rdquo; she gasped.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For a second or two they stood staring at each other. &ldquo;How did you come
-here?&rdquo; Marija exclaimed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I came to see you,&rdquo; he answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Just now.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;But how did you know&mdash;who told you I was here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Alena Jasaityte. I met her on the street.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Again there was a silence, while they gazed at each other. The rest of the
-crowd was watching them, and so Marija got up and came closer to him.
-&ldquo;And you?&rdquo; Jurgis asked. &ldquo;You live here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marija, &ldquo;I live here.&rdquo; Then suddenly came a
-hail from below: &ldquo;Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along.
-You&rsquo;d best begin, or you&rsquo;ll be sorry&mdash;it&rsquo;s raining
-outside.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Br-r-r!&rdquo; shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the
-various doors which lined the hallway.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a
-tiny place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand and
-some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered about on the
-floor, and hopeless confusion everywhere&mdash;boxes of rouge and bottles of
-perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the dresser, and a pair of
-slippers and a clock and a whisky bottle on a chair.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings; yet she proceeded
-to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble to close the door.
-He had by this time divined what sort of a place he was in; and he had seen a
-great deal of the world since he had left home, and was not easy to
-shock&mdash;and yet it gave him a painful start that Marija should do this.
-They had always been decent people at home, and it seemed to him that the
-memory of old times ought to have ruled her. But then he laughed at himself for
-a fool. What was he, to be pretending to decency!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How long have you been living here?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Nearly a year,&rdquo; she answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why did you come?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I had to live,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;and I couldn&rsquo;t see the
-children starve.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He paused for a moment, watching her. &ldquo;You were out of work?&rdquo; he
-asked, finally.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I got sick,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and after that I had no money.
-And then Stanislovas died&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Stanislovas dead!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marija, &ldquo;I forgot. You didn&rsquo;t know about
-it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How did he die?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Rats killed him,&rdquo; she answered.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis gave a gasp. &ldquo;<i>Rats</i> killed him!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the other; she was bending over, lacing her shoes as
-she spoke. &ldquo;He was working in an oil factory&mdash;at least he was hired
-by the men to get their beer. He used to carry cans on a long pole; and
-he&rsquo;d drink a little out of each can, and one day he drank too much, and
-fell asleep in a corner, and got locked up in the place all night. When they
-found him the rats had killed him and eaten him nearly all up.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis sat, frozen with horror. Marija went on lacing up her shoes. There was a
-long silence.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suddenly a big policeman came to the door. &ldquo;Hurry up, there,&rdquo; he
-said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;As quick as I can,&rdquo; said Marija, and she stood up and began
-putting on her corsets with feverish haste.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Are the rest of the people alive?&rdquo; asked Jurgis, finally.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where are they?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They live not far from here. They&rsquo;re all right now.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;They are working?&rdquo; he inquired.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Elzbieta is,&rdquo; said Marija, &ldquo;when she can. I take care of
-them most of the time&mdash;I&rsquo;m making plenty of money now.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was silent for a moment. &ldquo;Do they know you live here&mdash;how you
-live?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Elzbieta knows,&rdquo; answered Marija. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t lie to
-her. And maybe the children have found out by this time. It&rsquo;s nothing to
-be ashamed of&mdash;we can&rsquo;t help it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And Tamoszius?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Does <i>he</i> know?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija shrugged her shoulders. &ldquo;How do I know?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
-haven&rsquo;t seen him for over a year. He got blood poisoning and lost one
-finger, and couldn&rsquo;t play the violin any more; and then he went
-away.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija was standing in front of the glass fastening her dress. Jurgis sat
-staring at her. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman he had
-known in the old days; she was so quiet&mdash;so hard! It struck fear to his
-heart to watch her.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. &ldquo;You look as if you had been
-having a rough time of it yourself,&rdquo; she said.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t a cent in my pockets,
-and nothing to do.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All over. I&rsquo;ve been hoboing it. Then I went back to the
-yards&mdash;just before the strike.&rdquo; He paused for a moment, hesitating.
-&ldquo;I asked for you,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;I found you had gone away, no
-one knew where. Perhaps you think I did you a dirty trick running away as I
-did, Marija&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t blame you. We never
-have&mdash;any of us. You did your best&mdash;the job was too much for
-us.&rdquo; She paused a moment, then added: &ldquo;We were too
-ignorant&mdash;that was the trouble. We didn&rsquo;t stand any chance. If
-I&rsquo;d known what I know now we&rsquo;d have won out.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You&rsquo;d have come here?&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;but that&rsquo;s not what I meant. I
-meant you&mdash;how differently you would have behaved&mdash;about Ona.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was silent; he had never thought of that aspect of it.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When people are starving,&rdquo; the other continued, &ldquo;and they
-have anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say. I guess you realize
-it now when it&rsquo;s too late. Ona could have taken care of us all, in the
-beginning.&rdquo; Marija spoke without emotion, as one who had come to regard
-things from the business point of view.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;yes, I guess so,&rdquo; Jurgis answered hesitatingly. He did not
-add that he had paid three hundred dollars, and a foreman&rsquo;s job, for the
-satisfaction of knocking down &ldquo;Phil&rdquo; Connor a second time.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The policeman came to the door again just then. &ldquo;Come on, now,&rdquo; he
-said. &ldquo;Lively!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big
-enough to be a drum major&rsquo;s, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out
-into the hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman remaining to look under the
-bed and behind the door.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s going to come of this?&rdquo; Jurgis asked, as they started
-down the steps.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The raid, you mean? Oh, nothing&mdash;it happens to us every now and
-then. The madame&rsquo;s having some sort of time with the police; I
-don&rsquo;t know what it is, but maybe they&rsquo;ll come to terms before
-morning. Anyhow, they won&rsquo;t do anything to you. They always let the men
-off.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Maybe so,&rdquo; he responded, &ldquo;but not me&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid
-I&rsquo;m in for it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How do you mean?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m wanted by the police,&rdquo; he said, lowering his voice,
-though of course their conversation was in Lithuanian. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll
-send me up for a year or two, I&rsquo;m afraid.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; said Marija. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s too bad. I&rsquo;ll see if
-I can&rsquo;t get you off.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Downstairs, where the greater part of the prisoners were now massed, she sought
-out the stout personage with the diamond earrings, and had a few whispered
-words with her. The latter then approached the police sergeant who was in
-charge of the raid. &ldquo;Billy,&rdquo; she said, pointing to Jurgis,
-&ldquo;there&rsquo;s a fellow who came in to see his sister. He&rsquo;d just
-got in the door when you knocked. You aren&rsquo;t taking hoboes, are
-you?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The sergeant laughed as he looked at Jurgis. &ldquo;Sorry,&rdquo; he said,
-&ldquo;but the orders are every one but the servants.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging behind each
-other like sheep that have smelled a wolf. There were old men and young men,
-college boys and gray-beards old enough to be their grandfathers; some of them
-wore evening dress&mdash;there was no one among them save Jurgis who showed any
-signs of poverty.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the party marched
-out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the curb, and the whole neighborhood
-had turned out to see the sport; there was much chaffing, and a universal
-craning of necks. The women stared about them with defiant eyes, or laughed and
-joked, while the men kept their heads bowed, and their hats pulled over their
-faces. They were crowded into the patrol wagons as if into streetcars, and then
-off they went amid a din of cheers. At the station house Jurgis gave a Polish
-name and was put into a cell with half a dozen others; and while these sat and
-talked in whispers, he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his
-thoughts.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit, and grown used to
-the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all humanity as vile and
-hideous, he had somehow always excepted his own family that he had loved; and
-now this sudden horrible discovery&mdash;Marija a whore, and Elzbieta and the
-children living off her shame! Jurgis might argue with himself all he chose,
-that he had done worse, and was a fool for caring&mdash;but still he could not
-get over the shock of that sudden unveiling, he could not help being sunk in
-grief because of it. The depths of him were troubled and shaken, memories were
-stirred in him that had been sleeping so long he had counted them dead.
-Memories of the old life&mdash;his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old
-dreams of decency and independence! He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle voice
-pleading with him. He saw little Antanas, whom he had meant to make a man. He
-saw his trembling old father, who had blessed them all with his wonderful love.
-He lived again through that day of horror when he had discovered Ona&rsquo;s
-shame&mdash;God, how he had suffered, what a madman he had been! How dreadful
-it had all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat and listened, and half
-agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool! Yes&mdash;told him that he
-ought to have sold his wife&rsquo;s honor and lived by it!&mdash;And then there
-was Stanislovas and his awful fate&mdash;that brief story which Marija had
-narrated so calmly, with such dull indifference! The poor little fellow, with
-his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the snow&mdash;his wailing voice rang
-in Jurgis&rsquo;s ears, as he lay there in the darkness, until the sweat
-started on his forehead. Now and then he would quiver with a sudden spasm of
-horror, at the picture of little Stanislovas shut up in the deserted building
-and fighting for his life with the rats!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis; it was so long
-since they had troubled him that he had ceased to think they might ever trouble
-him again. Helpless, trapped, as he was, what good did they do him&mdash;why
-should he ever have allowed them to torment him? It had been the task of his
-recent life to fight them down, to crush them out of him; never in his life
-would he have suffered from them again, save that they had caught him unawares,
-and overwhelmed him before he could protect himself. He heard the old voices of
-his soul, he saw its old ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to
-him! But they were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and
-bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the past once more. Their
-voices would die, and never again would he hear them&mdash;and so the last
-faint spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
-
-<p>
-After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with the
-prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of recognizing
-one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men were called up first,
-and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed; but, Jurgis, to his terror, was
-called separately, as being a suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same
-court that he had been tried, that time when his sentence had been
-&ldquo;suspended&rdquo;; it was the same judge, and the same clerk. The latter
-now stared at Jurgis, as if he half thought that he knew him; but the judge had
-no suspicions&mdash;just then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was
-expecting from a friend of the police captain of the district, telling what
-disposition he should make of the case of &ldquo;Polly&rdquo; Simpson, as the
-&ldquo;madame&rdquo; of the house was known. Meantime, he listened to the story
-of how Jurgis had been looking for his sister, and advised him dryly to keep
-his sister in a better place; then he let him go, and proceeded to fine each of
-the girls five dollars, which fines were paid in a bunch from a wad of bills
-which Madame Polly extracted from her stocking.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija. The police had left the
-house, and already there were a few visitors; by evening the place would be
-running again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime, Marija took Jurgis
-upstairs to her room, and they sat and talked. By daylight, Jurgis was able to
-observe that the color on her cheeks was not the old natural one of abounding
-health; her complexion was in reality a parchment yellow, and there were black
-rings under her eyes.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Have you been sick?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Sick?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Hell!&rdquo; (Marija had learned to
-scatter her conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule
-driver.) &ldquo;How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her gloomily. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
-morphine,&rdquo; she said, at last. &ldquo;I seem to take more of it every
-day.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that for?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the way of it; I don&rsquo;t know why. If it isn&rsquo;t
-that, it&rsquo;s drink. If the girls didn&rsquo;t booze they couldn&rsquo;t
-stand it any time at all. And the madame always gives them dope when they first
-come, and they learn to like it; or else they take it for headaches and such
-things, and get the habit that way. I&rsquo;ve got it, I know; I&rsquo;ve tried
-to quit, but I never will while I&rsquo;m here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How long are you going to stay?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Always, I guess. What else
-could I do?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you save any money?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Save!&rdquo; said Marija. &ldquo;Good Lord, no! I get enough, I suppose,
-but it all goes. I get a half share, two dollars and a half for each customer,
-and sometimes I make twenty-five or thirty dollars a night, and you&rsquo;d
-think I ought to save something out of that! But then I am charged for my room
-and my meals&mdash;and such prices as you never heard of; and then for extras,
-and drinks&mdash;for everything I get, and some I don&rsquo;t. My laundry bill
-is nearly twenty dollars each week alone&mdash;think of that! Yet what can I
-do? I either have to stand it or quit, and it would be the same anywhere else.
-It&rsquo;s all I can do to save the fifteen dollars I give Elzbieta each week,
-so the children can go to school.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija sat brooding in silence for a while; then, seeing that Jurgis was
-interested, she went on: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the way they keep the
-girls&mdash;they let them run up debts, so they can&rsquo;t get away. A young
-girl comes from abroad, and she doesn&rsquo;t know a word of English, and she
-gets into a place like this, and when she wants to go the madame shows her that
-she is a couple of hundred dollars in debt, and takes all her clothes away, and
-threatens to have her arrested if she doesn&rsquo;t stay and do as she&rsquo;s
-told. So she stays, and the longer she stays, the more in debt she gets. Often,
-too, they are girls that didn&rsquo;t know what they were coming to, that had
-hired out for housework. Did you notice that little French girl with the yellow
-hair, that stood next to me in the court?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis answered in the affirmative.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, she came to America about a year ago. She was a store clerk, and
-she hired herself to a man to be sent here to work in a factory. There were six
-of them, all together, and they were brought to a house just down the street
-from here, and this girl was put into a room alone, and they gave her some dope
-in her food, and when she came to she found that she had been ruined. She
-cried, and screamed, and tore her hair, but she had nothing but a wrapper, and
-couldn&rsquo;t get away, and they kept her half insensible with drugs all the
-time, until she gave up. She never got outside of that place for ten months,
-and then they sent her away, because she didn&rsquo;t suit. I guess
-they&rsquo;ll put her out of here, too&mdash;she&rsquo;s getting to have crazy
-fits, from drinking absinthe. Only one of the girls that came out with her got
-away, and she jumped out of a second-story window one night. There was a great
-fuss about that&mdash;maybe you heard of it.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;I heard of it afterward.&rdquo; (It
-had happened in the place where he and Duane had taken refuge from their
-&ldquo;country customer.&rdquo; The girl had become insane, fortunately for the
-police.)
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;There&rsquo;s lots of money in it,&rdquo; said Marija&mdash;&ldquo;they
-get as much as forty dollars a head for girls, and they bring them from all
-over. There are seventeen in this place, and nine different countries among
-them. In some places you might find even more. We have half a dozen French
-girls&mdash;I suppose it&rsquo;s because the madame speaks the language. French
-girls are bad, too, the worst of all, except for the Japanese. There&rsquo;s a
-place next door that&rsquo;s full of Japanese women, but I wouldn&rsquo;t live
-in the same house with one of them.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija paused for a moment or two, and then she added: &ldquo;Most of the women
-here are pretty decent&mdash;you&rsquo;d be surprised. I used to think they did
-it because they liked to; but fancy a woman selling herself to every kind of
-man that comes, old or young, black or white&mdash;and doing it because she
-likes to!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Some of them say they do,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;they say anything. They&rsquo;re in, and
-they know they can&rsquo;t get out. But they didn&rsquo;t like it when they
-began&mdash;you&rsquo;d find out&mdash;it&rsquo;s always misery! There&rsquo;s
-a little Jewish girl here who used to run errands for a milliner, and got sick
-and lost her place; and she was four days on the streets without a mouthful of
-food, and then she went to a place just around the corner and offered herself,
-and they made her give up her clothes before they would give her a bite to
-eat!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Marija sat for a minute or two, brooding somberly. &ldquo;Tell me about
-yourself, Jurgis,&rdquo; she said, suddenly. &ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he told her the long story of his adventures since his flight from home; his
-life as a tramp, and his work in the freight tunnels, and the accident; and
-then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the stockyards, and his
-downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy to
-believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed it all. &ldquo;You
-found me just in the nick of time,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stand by
-you&mdash;I&rsquo;ll help you till you can get some work.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to let you&mdash;&rdquo; he began.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Why not? Because I&rsquo;m here?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, not that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I went off and left
-you&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Marija. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think about it. I
-don&rsquo;t blame you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You must be hungry,&rdquo; she said, after a minute or two. &ldquo;You
-stay here to lunch&mdash;I&rsquo;ll have something up in the room.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-She pressed a button, and a colored woman came to the door and took her order.
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice to have somebody to wait on you,&rdquo; she observed,
-with a laugh, as she lay back on the bed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-As the prison breakfast had not been liberal, Jurgis had a good appetite, and
-they had a little feast together, talking meanwhile of Elzbieta and the
-children and old times. Shortly before they were through, there came another
-colored girl, with the message that the &ldquo;madame&rdquo; wanted
-Marija&mdash;&ldquo;Lithuanian Mary,&rdquo; as they called her here.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;That means you have to go,&rdquo; she said to Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he got up, and she gave him the new address of the family, a tenement over
-in the Ghetto district. &ldquo;You go there,&rdquo; she said.
-&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be glad to see you.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Jurgis stood hesitating.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like to,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Honest, Marija,
-why don&rsquo;t you just give me a little money and let me look for work
-first?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How do you need money?&rdquo; was her reply. &ldquo;All you want is
-something to eat and a place to sleep, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but then I don&rsquo;t like to go there
-after I left them&mdash;and while I have nothing to do, and while
-you&mdash;you&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Marija, giving him a push. &ldquo;What are you
-talking?&mdash;I won&rsquo;t give you money,&rdquo; she added, as she followed
-him to the door, &ldquo;because you&rsquo;ll drink it up, and do yourself harm.
-Here&rsquo;s a quarter for you now, and go along, and they&rsquo;ll be so glad
-to have you back, you won&rsquo;t have time to feel ashamed. Good-by!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went out, and walked down the street to think it over. He decided
-that he would first try to get work, and so he put in the rest of the day
-wandering here and there among factories and warehouses without success. Then,
-when it was nearly dark, he concluded to go home, and set out; but he came to a
-restaurant, and went in and spent his quarter for a meal; and when he came out
-he changed his mind&mdash;the night was pleasant, and he would sleep somewhere
-outside, and put in the morrow hunting, and so have one more chance of a job.
-So he started away again, when suddenly he chanced to look about him, and found
-that he was walking down the same street and past the same hall where he had
-listened to the political speech the night before. There was no red fire and no
-band now, but there was a sign out, announcing a meeting, and a stream of
-people pouring in through the entrance. In a flash Jurgis had decided that he
-would chance it once more, and sit down and rest while making up his mind what
-to do. There was no one taking tickets, so it must be a free show again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He entered. There were no decorations in the hall this time; but there was
-quite a crowd upon the platform, and almost every seat in the place was filled.
-He took one of the last, far in the rear, and straightway forgot all about his
-surroundings. Would Elzbieta think that he had come to sponge off her, or would
-she understand that he meant to get to work again and do his share? Would she
-be decent to him, or would she scold him? If only he could get some sort of a
-job before he went&mdash;if that last boss had only been willing to try him!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&mdash;Then suddenly Jurgis looked up. A tremendous roar had burst from the
-throats of the crowd, which by this time had packed the hall to the very doors.
-Men and women were standing up, waving handkerchiefs, shouting, yelling.
-Evidently the speaker had arrived, thought Jurgis; what fools they were making
-of themselves! What were they expecting to get out of it anyhow&mdash;what had
-they to do with elections, with governing the country? Jurgis had been behind
-the scenes in politics.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He went back to his thoughts, but with one further fact to reckon
-with&mdash;that he was caught here. The hall was now filled to the doors; and
-after the meeting it would be too late for him to go home, so he would have to
-make the best of it outside. Perhaps it would be better to go home in the
-morning, anyway, for the children would be at school, and he and Elzbieta could
-have a quiet explanation. She always had been a reasonable person; and he
-really did mean to do right. He would manage to persuade her of it&mdash;and
-besides, Marija was willing, and Marija was furnishing the money. If Elzbieta
-were ugly, he would tell her that in so many words.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis went on meditating; until finally, when he had been an hour or two in
-the hall, there began to prepare itself a repetition of the dismal catastrophe
-of the night before. Speaking had been going on all the time, and the audience
-was clapping its hands and shouting, thrilling with excitement; and little by
-little the sounds were beginning to blur in Jurgis&rsquo;s ears, and his
-thoughts were beginning to run together, and his head to wobble and nod. He
-caught himself many times, as usual, and made desperate resolutions; but the
-hall was hot and close, and his long walk and his dinner were too much for
-him&mdash;in the end his head sank forward and he went off again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then again someone nudged him, and he sat up with his old terrified start!
-He had been snoring again, of course! And now what? He fixed his eyes ahead of
-him, with painful intensity, staring at the platform as if nothing else ever
-had interested him, or ever could interest him, all his life. He imagined the
-angry exclamations, the hostile glances; he imagined the policeman striding
-toward him&mdash;reaching for his neck. Or was he to have one more chance? Were
-they going to let him alone this time? He sat trembling; waiting&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman&rsquo;s voice, gentle and
-sweet, &ldquo;If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be
-interested.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the touch of a
-policeman. He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and did not stir; but his heart
-gave a great leap. Comrade! Who was it that called him &ldquo;comrade&rdquo;?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was no longer
-watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes at the woman who sat
-beside him. She was young and beautiful; she wore fine clothes, and was what is
-called a &ldquo;lady.&rdquo; And she called him &ldquo;comrade&rdquo;!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better; then he began
-to watch her, fascinated. She had apparently forgotten all about him, and was
-looking toward the platform. A man was speaking there&mdash;Jurgis heard his
-voice vaguely; but all his thoughts were for this woman&rsquo;s face. A feeling
-of alarm stole over him as he stared at her. It made his flesh creep. What was
-the matter with her, what could be going on, to affect any one like that? She
-sat as one turned to stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly
-that he could see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of
-excitement upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling mightily, or
-witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her nostrils; and now and
-then she would moisten her lips with feverish haste. Her bosom rose and fell as
-she breathed, and her excitement seemed to mount higher and higher, and then to
-sink away again, like a boat tossing upon ocean surges. What was it? What was
-the matter? It must be something that the man was saying, up there on the
-platform. What sort of a man was he? And what sort of thing was this,
-anyhow?&mdash;So all at once it occurred to Jurgis to look at the speaker.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature&mdash;a mountain
-forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea. Jurgis had
-an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder, of wild and
-meaningless uproar. The man was tall and gaunt, as haggard as his auditor
-himself; a thin black beard covered half of his face, and one could see only
-two black hollows where the eyes were. He was speaking rapidly, in great
-excitement; he used many gestures&mdash;as he spoke he moved here and there
-upon the stage, reaching with his long arms as if to seize each person in his
-audience. His voice was deep, like an organ; it was some time, however, before
-Jurgis thought of the voice&mdash;he was too much occupied with his eyes to
-think of what the man was saying. But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had
-begun pointing straight at him, as if he had singled him out particularly for
-his remarks; and so Jurgis became suddenly aware of his voice, trembling,
-vibrant with emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things
-unutterable, not to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be suddenly
-arrested, to be gripped, transfixed.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You listen to these things,&rdquo; the man was saying, &ldquo;and you
-say, &lsquo;Yes, they are true, but they have been that way always.&rsquo; Or
-you say, &lsquo;Maybe it will come, but not in my time&mdash;it will not help
-me.&rsquo; And so you return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be
-ground up for profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long
-hours for another&rsquo;s advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work
-in dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger and
-privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and death. And each day
-the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day you have to toil a
-little harder, and feel the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little
-tighter. Months pass, years maybe&mdash;and then you come again; and again I am
-here to plead with you, to know if want and misery have yet done their work
-with you, if injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes! I shall still
-be waiting&mdash;there is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness
-where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them;
-though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed
-system&mdash;I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the
-dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the
-service of organized and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot
-be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good
-repute&mdash;and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit!
-Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness, not by hatred and
-obloquy, by threats and ridicule&mdash;not by prison and persecution, if they
-should come&mdash;not by any power that is upon the earth or above the earth,
-that was, or is, or ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can only try
-tomorrow; knowing that the fault must be mine&mdash;that if once the vision of
-my soul were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of its defeat were uttered
-in human speech, it would break the stoutest barriers of prejudice, it would
-shake the most sluggish soul to action! It would abash the most cynical, it
-would terrify the most selfish; and the voice of mockery would be silenced, and
-fraud and falsehood would slink back into their dens, and the truth would stand
-forth alone! For I speak with the voice of the millions who are voiceless! Of
-them that are oppressed and have no comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for
-whom there is no respite and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison, a
-dungeon of torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils
-tonight in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb with agony,
-and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by candlelight in her
-tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the mortal hunger of her
-babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags, wrestling in his last sickness
-and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of the young girl who, somewhere at this
-moment, is walking the streets of this horrible city, beaten and starving, and
-making her choice between the brothel and the lake! With the voice of those,
-whoever and wherever they may be, who are caught beneath the wheels of the
-Juggernaut of Greed! With the voice of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of
-the everlasting soul of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of its
-prison&mdash;rending the bands of oppression and ignorance&mdash;groping its
-way to the light!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The speaker paused. There was an instant of silence, while men caught their
-breaths, and then like a single sound there came a cry from a thousand people.
-Through it all Jurgis sat still, motionless and rigid, his eyes fixed upon the
-speaker; he was trembling, smitten with wonder.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I plead with you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;whoever you may be, provided
-that you care about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-man, with
-those to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to be
-dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten&mdash;to whom
-they are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the chains upon
-their limbs, the lash upon their backs, the iron in their souls. To you,
-working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this land, and have no voice in
-its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow that others may reap, to labor and
-obey, and ask no more than the wages of a beast of burden, the food and shelter
-to keep you alive from day to day. It is to you that I come with my message of
-salvation, it is to you that I appeal. I know how much it is to ask of
-you&mdash;I know, for I have been in your place, I have lived your life, and
-there is no man before me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what
-it is to be a street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and
-sleeping in cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to
-dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish&mdash;to see
-all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the wild-beast
-powers of my life. I know what is the price that a working-man pays for
-knowledge&mdash;I have paid for it with food and sleep, with agony of body and
-mind, with health, almost with life itself; and so, when I come to you with a
-story of hope and freedom, with the vision of a new earth to be created, of a
-new labor to be dared, I am not surprised that I find you sordid and material,
-sluggish and incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the
-forces that are driving behind you&mdash;because I know the raging lash of
-poverty, the sting of contempt and mastership, &lsquo;the insolence of office
-and the spurns.&rsquo; Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to
-me tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how many may
-have come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule&mdash;there will be
-some one man whom pain and suffering have made desperate, whom some chance
-vision of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into attention. And to him
-my words will come like a sudden flash of lightning to one who travels in
-darkness&mdash;revealing the way before him, the perils and the
-obstacles&mdash;solving all problems, making all difficulties clear! The scales
-will fall from his eyes, the shackles will be torn from his limbs&mdash;he will
-leap up with a cry of thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at last! A
-man delivered from his self-created slavery! A man who will never more be
-trapped&mdash;whom no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten;
-who from tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will study and
-understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the army of his
-comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good tidings to others, as I have
-carried them to him&mdash;priceless gift of liberty and light that is neither
-mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of man! Working-men,
-working-men&mdash;comrades! open your eyes and look about you! You have lived
-so long in the toil and heat that your senses are dulled, your souls are
-numbed; but realize once in your lives this world in which you dwell&mdash;tear
-off the rags of its customs and conventions&mdash;behold it as it is, in all
-its hideous nakedness! Realize it, <i>realize it!</i> Realize that out upon the
-plains of Manchuria tonight two hostile armies are facing each other&mdash;that
-now, while we are seated here, a million human beings may be hurled at each
-other&rsquo;s throats, striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to
-pieces! And this in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the
-Prince of Peace was born on earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have
-been preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and tearing
-each other like the wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers have reasoned,
-prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded&mdash;and still this
-hideous Monster roams at large! We have schools and colleges, newspapers and
-books; we have searched the heavens and the earth, we have weighed and probed
-and reasoned&mdash;and all to equip men to destroy each other! We call it War,
-and pass it by&mdash;but do not put me off with platitudes and
-conventions&mdash;come with me, come with me&mdash;<i>realize it!</i> See the
-bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by bursting shells! Hear
-the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human flesh; hear the groans and
-shrieks of agony, see the faces of men crazed by pain, turned into fiends by
-fury and hate! Put your hand upon that piece of flesh&mdash;it is hot and
-quivering&mdash;just now it was a part of a man! This blood is still
-steaming&mdash;it was driven by a human heart! Almighty God! and this goes
-on&mdash;it is systematic, organized, premeditated! And we know it, and read of
-it, and take it for granted; our papers tell of it, and the presses are not
-stopped&mdash;our churches know of it, and do not close their doors&mdash;the
-people behold it, and do not rise up in horror and revolution!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you&mdash;come home with me
-then, come here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are
-shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live. And we
-know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in the image of your
-mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters; the child whom you left at
-home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the morning&mdash;that fate
-may be waiting for her! To-night in Chicago there are ten thousand men,
-homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for a chance, yet starving,
-and fronting in terror the awful winter cold! Tonight in Chicago there are a
-hundred thousand children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives
-in the effort to earn their bread! There are a hundred thousand mothers who are
-living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little
-ones! There are a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless, waiting
-for death to take them from their torments! There are a million people, men and
-women and children, who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour
-they can stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are condemned
-till the end of their days to monotony and weariness, to hunger and misery, to
-heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And
-then turn over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of the picture.
-There are a thousand&mdash;ten thousand, maybe&mdash;who are the masters of
-these slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they receive,
-they do not even have to ask for it&mdash;it comes to them of itself, their
-only care is to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in luxury and
-extravagance&mdash;such as no words can describe, as makes the imagination reel
-and stagger, makes the soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars
-for a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for horses
-and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets, for little shiny stones
-with which to deck their bodies. Their life is a contest among themselves for
-supremacy in ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and
-necessary things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of their fellow
-creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, the sweat and tears and blood
-of the human race! It is all theirs&mdash;it comes to them; just as all the
-springs pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and the rivers
-into the oceans&mdash;so, automatically and inevitably, all the wealth of
-society comes to them. The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs in the earth,
-the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents,
-the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired man sings&mdash;and
-all the result, the products of the labor of brain and muscle, are gathered
-into one stupendous stream and poured into their laps! The whole of society is
-in their grip, the whole labor of the world lies at their mercy&mdash;and like
-fierce wolves they rend and destroy, like ravening vultures they devour and
-tear! The whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond
-recall&mdash;do what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and
-dies for them! They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought the
-governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen power to intrench
-themselves in their privileges, to dig wider and deeper the channels through
-which the river of profits flows to them!&mdash;And you, workingmen,
-workingmen! You have been brought up to it, you plod on like beasts of burden,
-thinking only of the day and its pain&mdash;yet is there a man among you who
-can believe that such a system will continue forever&mdash;is there a man here
-in this audience tonight so hardened and debased that he dare rise up before me
-and say that he believes it can continue forever; that the product of the labor
-of society, the means of existence of the human race, will always belong to
-idlers and parasites, to be spent for the gratification of vanity and
-lust&mdash;to be spent for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any
-individual will whatever&mdash;that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity
-will not belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of humanity, to be
-controlled by the will of humanity? And if this is ever to be, how is it to
-be&mdash;what power is there that will bring it about? Will it be the task of
-your masters, do you think&mdash;will they write the charter of your liberties?
-Will they forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they marshal you the
-army and lead it to the fray? Will their wealth be spent for the
-purpose&mdash;will they build colleges and churches to teach you, will they
-print papers to herald your progress, and organize political parties to guide
-and carry on the struggle? Can you not see that the task is your
-task&mdash;yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute? That if ever it
-is carried out, it will be in the face of every obstacle that wealth and
-mastership can oppose&mdash;in the face of ridicule and slander, of hatred and
-persecution, of the bludgeon and the jail? That it will be by the power of your
-naked bosoms, opposed to the rage of oppression! By the grim and bitter
-teaching of blind and merciless affliction! By the painful gropings of the
-untutored mind, by the feeble stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad
-and lonely hunger of the spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by
-heartache and despairing, by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by money paid
-for with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated under
-the shadow of the gallows! It will be a movement beginning in the far-off past,
-a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing easy to ridicule, easy to despise; a
-thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of vengeance and hate&mdash;but to you, the
-working-man, the wage-slave, calling with a voice insistent,
-imperious&mdash;with a voice that you cannot escape, wherever upon the earth
-you may be! With the voice of all your wrongs, with the voice of all your
-desires; with the voice of your duty and your hope&mdash;of everything in the
-world that is worth while to you! The voice of the poor, demanding that poverty
-shall cease! The voice of the oppressed, pronouncing the doom of oppression!
-The voice of power, wrought out of suffering&mdash;of resolution, crushed out
-of weakness&mdash;of joy and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and
-despair! The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying
-prostrate&mdash;mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant of his
-strength. And now a dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling with fear;
-until suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps&mdash;and a thrill shoots through
-him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and in a flash the dream becomes an
-act! He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered, the burdens roll
-off him&mdash;he rises&mdash;towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet, he
-shouts in his newborn exultation&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And the speaker&rsquo;s voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his feelings;
-he stood with his arms stretched out above him, and the power of his vision
-seemed to lift him from the floor. The audience came to its feet with a yell;
-men waved their arms, laughing aloud in their excitement. And Jurgis was with
-them, he was shouting to tear his throat; shouting because he could not help
-it, because the stress of his feeling was more than he could bear. It was not
-merely the man&rsquo;s words, the torrent of his eloquence. It was his
-presence, it was his voice: a voice with strange intonations that rang through
-the chambers of the soul like the clanging of a bell&mdash;that gripped the
-listener like a mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled him
-with sudden fright, with a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries never
-spoken before, of presences of awe and terror! There was an unfolding of vistas
-before him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring, a
-trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no longer&mdash;there were
-powers within him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending, age-long
-wonders struggling to be born; and he sat oppressed with pain and joy, while a
-tingling stole down into his finger tips, and his breath came hard and fast.
-The sentences of this man were to Jurgis like the crashing of thunder in his
-soul; a flood of emotions surged up in him&mdash;all his old hopes and
-longings, his old griefs and rages and despairs. All that he had ever felt in
-his whole life seemed to come back to him at once, and with one new emotion,
-hardly to be described. That he should have suffered such oppressions and such
-horrors was bad enough; but that he should have been crushed and beaten by
-them, that he should have submitted, and forgotten, and lived in
-peace&mdash;ah, truly that was a thing not to be put into words, a thing not to
-be borne by a human creature, a thing of terror and madness!
-&ldquo;What,&rdquo; asks the prophet, &ldquo;is the murder of them that kill
-the body, to the murder of them that kill the soul?&rdquo; And Jurgis was a man
-whose soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to struggle&mdash;who
-had made terms with degradation and despair; and now, suddenly, in one awful
-convulsion, the black and hideous fact was made plain to him! There was a
-falling in of all the pillars of his soul, the sky seemed to split above
-him&mdash;he stood there, with his clenched hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot,
-and the veins standing out purple in his face, roaring in the voice of a wild
-beast, frantic, incoherent, maniacal. And when he could shout no more he still
-stood there, gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: &ldquo;By God! By
-God! By God!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
-
-<p>
-The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis realized that his
-speech was over. The applause continued for several minutes; and then some one
-started a song, and the crowd took it up, and the place shook with it. Jurgis
-had never heard it, and he could not make out the words, but the wild and
-wonderful spirit of it seized upon him&mdash;it was the
-&ldquo;Marseillaise!&rdquo; As stanza after stanza of it thundered forth, he
-sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve. He had never been so
-stirred in his life&mdash;it was a miracle that had been wrought in him. He
-could not think at all, he was stunned; yet he knew that in the mighty upheaval
-that had taken place in his soul, a new man had been born. He had been torn out
-of the jaws of destruction, he had been delivered from the thraldom of despair;
-the whole world had been changed for him&mdash;he was free, he was free! Even
-if he were to suffer as he had before, even if he were to beg and starve,
-nothing would be the same to him; he would understand it, and bear it. He would
-no longer be the sport of circumstances, he would be a man, with a will and a
-purpose; he would have something to fight for, something to die for, if need
-be! Here were men who would show him and help him; and he would have friends
-and allies, he would dwell in the sight of justice, and walk arm in arm with
-power.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The audience subsided again, and Jurgis sat back. The chairman of the meeting
-came forward and began to speak. His voice sounded thin and futile after the
-other&rsquo;s, and to Jurgis it seemed a profanation. Why should any one else
-speak, after that miraculous man&mdash;why should they not all sit in silence?
-The chairman was explaining that a collection would now be taken up to defray
-the expenses of the meeting, and for the benefit of the campaign fund of the
-party. Jurgis heard; but he had not a penny to give, and so his thoughts went
-elsewhere again.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He kept his eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his head leaning
-on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion. But suddenly he stood up
-again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of the meeting saying that the speaker
-would now answer any questions which the audience might care to put to him. The
-man came forward, and some one&mdash;a woman&mdash;arose and asked about some
-opinion the speaker had expressed concerning Tolstoy. Jurgis had never heard of
-Tolstoy, and did not care anything about him. Why should any one want to ask
-such questions, after an address like that? The thing was not to talk, but to
-do; the thing was to get bold of others and rouse them, to organize them and
-prepare for the fight! But still the discussion went on, in ordinary
-conversational tones, and it brought Jurgis back to the everyday world. A few
-minutes ago he had felt like seizing the hand of the beautiful lady by his
-side, and kissing it; he had felt like flinging his arms about the neck of the
-man on the other side of him. And now he began to realize again that he was a
-&ldquo;hobo,&rdquo; that he was ragged and dirty, and smelled bad, and had no
-place to sleep that night!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so, at last, when the meeting broke up, and the audience started to leave,
-poor Jurgis was in an agony of uncertainty. He had not thought of
-leaving&mdash;he had thought that the vision must last forever, that he had
-found comrades and brothers. But now he would go out, and the thing would fade
-away, and he would never be able to find it again! He sat in his seat,
-frightened and wondering; but others in the same row wanted to get out, and so
-he had to stand up and move along. As he was swept down the aisle he looked
-from one person to another, wistfully; they were all excitedly discussing the
-address&mdash;but there was nobody who offered to discuss it with him. He was
-near enough to the door to feel the night air, when desperation seized him. He
-knew nothing at all about that speech he had heard, not even the name of the
-orator; and he was to go away&mdash;no, no, it was preposterous, he must speak
-to some one; he must find that man himself and tell him. He would not despise
-him, tramp as he was!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So he stepped into an empty row of seats and watched, and when the crowd had
-thinned out, he started toward the platform. The speaker was gone; but there
-was a stage door that stood open, with people passing in and out, and no one on
-guard. Jurgis summoned up his courage and went in, and down a hallway, and to
-the door of a room where many people were crowded. No one paid any attention to
-him, and he pushed in, and in a corner he saw the man he sought. The orator sat
-in a chair, with his shoulders sunk together and his eyes half closed; his face
-was ghastly pale, almost greenish in hue, and one arm lay limp at his side. A
-big man with spectacles on stood near him, and kept pushing back the crowd,
-saying, &ldquo;Stand away a little, please; can&rsquo;t you see the comrade is
-worn out?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis stood watching, while five or ten minutes passed. Now and then the
-man would look up, and address a word or two to those who were near him; and,
-at last, on one of these occasions, his glance rested on Jurgis. There seemed
-to be a slight hint of inquiry about it, and a sudden impulse seized the other.
-He stepped forward.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I wanted to thank you, sir!&rdquo; he began, in breathless haste.
-&ldquo;I could not go away without telling you how much&mdash;how glad I am I
-heard you. I&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t know anything about it all&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The big man with the spectacles, who had moved away, came back at this moment.
-&ldquo;The comrade is too tired to talk to any one&mdash;&rdquo; he began; but
-the other held up his hand.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He has something to say to me.&rdquo; And
-then he looked into Jurgis&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;You want to know more about
-Socialism?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis started. &ldquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered. &ldquo;Is it
-Socialism? I didn&rsquo;t know. I want to know about what you spoke of&mdash;I
-want to help. I have been through all that.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Where do you live?&rdquo; asked the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have no home,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;I am out of work.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You are a foreigner, are you not?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Lithuanian, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The man thought for a moment, and then turned to his friend. &ldquo;Who is
-there, Walters?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;There is Ostrinski&mdash;but he is a
-Pole&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ostrinski speaks Lithuanian,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;All right,
-then; would you mind seeing if he has gone yet?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other started away, and the speaker looked at Jurgis again. He had deep,
-black eyes, and a face full of gentleness and pain. &ldquo;You must excuse me,
-comrade,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am just tired out&mdash;I have spoken every
-day for the last month. I will introduce you to some one who will be able to
-help you as well as I could&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The messenger had had to go no further than the door, he came back, followed by
-a man whom he introduced to Jurgis as &ldquo;Comrade Ostrinski.&rdquo; Comrade
-Ostrinski was a little man, scarcely up to Jurgis&rsquo;s shoulder, wizened and
-wrinkled, very ugly, and slightly lame. He had on a long-tailed black coat,
-worn green at the seams and the buttonholes; his eyes must have been weak, for
-he wore green spectacles that gave him a grotesque appearance. But his
-handclasp was hearty, and he spoke in Lithuanian, which warmed Jurgis to him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You want to know about Socialism?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Surely. Let us
-go out and take a stroll, where we can be quiet and talk some.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis bade farewell to the master wizard, and went out. Ostrinski asked
-where he lived, offering to walk in that direction; and so he had to explain
-once more that he was without a home. At the other&rsquo;s request he told his
-story; how he had come to America, and what had happened to him in the
-stockyards, and how his family had been broken up, and how he had become a
-wanderer. So much the little man heard, and then he pressed Jurgis&rsquo;s arm
-tightly. &ldquo;You have been through the mill, comrade!&rdquo; he said.
-&ldquo;We will make a fighter out of you!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Then Ostrinski in turn explained his circumstances. He would have asked Jurgis
-to his home&mdash;but he had only two rooms, and had no bed to offer. He would
-have given up his own bed, but his wife was ill. Later on, when he understood
-that otherwise Jurgis would have to sleep in a hallway, he offered him his
-kitchen floor, a chance which the other was only too glad to accept.
-&ldquo;Perhaps tomorrow we can do better,&rdquo; said Ostrinski. &ldquo;We try
-not to let a comrade starve.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ostrinski&rsquo;s home was in the Ghetto district, where he had two rooms in
-the basement of a tenement. There was a baby crying as they entered, and he
-closed the door leading into the bedroom. He had three young children, he
-explained, and a baby had just come. He drew up two chairs near the kitchen
-stove, adding that Jurgis must excuse the disorder of the place, since at such
-a time one&rsquo;s domestic arrangements were upset. Half of the kitchen was
-given up to a workbench, which was piled with clothing, and Ostrinski explained
-that he was a &ldquo;pants finisher.&rdquo; He brought great bundles of
-clothing here to his home, where he and his wife worked on them. He made a
-living at it, but it was getting harder all the time, because his eyes were
-failing. What would come when they gave out he could not tell; there had been
-no saving anything&mdash;a man could barely keep alive by twelve or fourteen
-hours&rsquo; work a day. The finishing of pants did not take much skill, and
-anybody could learn it, and so the pay was forever getting less. That was the
-competitive wage system; and if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was,
-it was there he had best begin. The workers were dependent upon a job to exist
-from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no man could get more
-than the lowest man would consent to work for. And thus the mass of the people
-were always in a life-and-death struggle with poverty. That was
-&ldquo;competition,&rdquo; so far as it concerned the wage-earner, the man who
-had only his labor to sell; to those on top, the exploiters, it appeared very
-differently, of course&mdash;there were few of them, and they could combine and
-dominate, and their power would be unbreakable. And so all over the world two
-classes were forming, with an unbridged chasm between them&mdash;the capitalist
-class, with its enormous fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by
-unseen chains. The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were
-ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of their exploiters
-until they were organized&mdash;until they had become
-&ldquo;class-conscious.&rdquo; It was a slow and weary process, but it would go
-on&mdash;it was like the movement of a glacier, once it was started it could
-never be stopped. Every Socialist did his share, and lived upon the vision of
-the &ldquo;good time coming,&rdquo;&mdash;when the working class should go to
-the polls and seize the powers of government, and put an end to private
-property in the means of production. No matter how poor a man was, or how much
-he suffered, he could never be really unhappy while he knew of that future;
-even if he did not live to see it himself, his children would, and, to a
-Socialist, the victory of his class was his victory. Also he had always the
-progress to encourage him; here in Chicago, for instance, the movement was
-growing by leaps and bounds. Chicago was the industrial center of the country,
-and nowhere else were the unions so strong; but their organizations did the
-workers little good, for the employers were organized, also; and so the strikes
-generally failed, and as fast as the unions were broken up the men were coming
-over to the Socialists.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ostrinski explained the organization of the party, the machinery by which the
-proletariat was educating itself. There were &ldquo;locals&rdquo; in every big
-city and town, and they were being organized rapidly in the smaller places; a
-local had anywhere from six to a thousand members, and there were fourteen
-hundred of them in all, with a total of about twenty-five thousand members, who
-paid dues to support the organization. &ldquo;Local Cook County,&rdquo; as the
-city organization was called, had eighty branch locals, and it alone was
-spending several thousand dollars in the campaign. It published a weekly in
-English, and one each in Bohemian and German; also there was a monthly
-published in Chicago, and a cooperative publishing house, that issued a million
-and a half of Socialist books and pamphlets every year. All this was the growth
-of the last few years&mdash;there had been almost nothing of it when Ostrinski
-first came to Chicago.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age. He had lived in Silesia, a
-member of a despised and persecuted race, and had taken part in the proletarian
-movement in the early seventies, when Bismarck, having conquered France, had
-turned his policy of blood and iron upon the &ldquo;International.&rdquo;
-Ostrinski himself had twice been in jail, but he had been young then, and had
-not cared. He had had more of his share of the fight, though, for just when
-Socialism had broken all its barriers and become the great political force of
-the empire, he had come to America, and begun all over again. In America every
-one had laughed at the mere idea of Socialism then&mdash;in America all men
-were free. As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!
-said Ostrinski.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair, with his feet
-stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in low whispers, so as not to
-waken those in the next room. To Jurgis he seemed a scarcely less wonderful
-person than the speaker at the meeting; he was poor, the lowest of the low,
-hunger-driven and miserable&mdash;and yet how much he knew, how much he had
-dared and achieved, what a hero he had been! There were others like him,
-too&mdash;thousands like him, and all of them workingmen! That all this
-wonderful machinery of progress had been created by his fellows&mdash;Jurgis
-could not believe it, it seemed too good to be true.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first converted to
-Socialism he was like a crazy person&mdash;he could not understand how others
-could fail to see it, and he expected to convert all the world the first week.
-After a while he would realize how hard a task it was; and then it would be
-fortunate that other new hands kept coming, to save him from settling down into
-a rut. Just now Jurgis would have plenty of chance to vent his excitement, for
-a presidential campaign was on, and everybody was talking politics. Ostrinski
-would take him to the next meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and
-he might join the party. The dues were five cents a week, but any one who could
-not afford this might be excused from paying. The Socialist party was a really
-democratic political organization&mdash;it was controlled absolutely by its own
-membership, and had no bosses. All of these things Ostrinski explained, as also
-the principles of the party. You might say that there was really but one
-Socialist principle&mdash;that of &ldquo;no compromise,&rdquo; which was the
-essence of the proletarian movement all over the world. When a Socialist was
-elected to office he voted with old party legislators for any measure that was
-likely to be of help to the working class, but he never forgot that these
-concessions, whatever they might be, were trifles compared with the great
-purpose&mdash;the organizing of the working class for the revolution. So far,
-the rule in America had been that one Socialist made another Socialist once
-every two years; and if they should maintain the same rate they would carry the
-country in 1912&mdash;though not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as
-that.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was an
-international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest the world had ever
-known. It numbered thirty million of adherents, and it cast eight million
-votes. It had started its first newspaper in Japan, and elected its first
-deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of cabinets, and in Italy and
-Australia it held the balance of power and turned out ministries. In Germany,
-where its vote was more than a third of the total vote of the empire, all other
-parties and powers had united to fight it. It would not do, Ostrinski
-explained, for the proletariat of one nation to achieve the victory, for that
-nation would be crushed by the military power of the others; and so the
-Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization of all mankind to
-establish liberty and fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity&mdash;or
-you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but
-the literal application of all the teachings of Christ.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his new
-acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to him&mdash;an almost
-supernatural experience. It was like encountering an inhabitant of the fourth
-dimension of space, a being who was free from all one&rsquo;s own limitations.
-For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and blundering in the depths of
-a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and
-lifted him out of it, and set him upon a mountain-top, from which he could
-survey it all&mdash;could see the paths from which he had wandered, the
-morasses into which he had stumbled, the hiding places of the beasts of prey
-that had fallen upon him. There were his Packingtown experiences, for
-instance&mdash;what was there about Packingtown that Ostrinski could not
-explain! To Jurgis the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed
-him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital,
-which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was
-preying upon the people. Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to
-Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel
-and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog;
-now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had
-been&mdash;one of the packers&rsquo; hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all
-the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from
-the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the
-hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was
-it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere
-in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be
-something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and
-ferocity&mdash;it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a
-hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made
-himself familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very quickly, he
-would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all sorts of aspects, and he would
-find it everywhere the same; it was the incarnation of blind and insensate
-Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a
-thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher&mdash;it was the spirit of Capitalism
-made flesh. Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed as a pirate ship; it had
-hoisted the black flag and declared war upon civilization. Bribery and
-corruption were its everyday methods. In Chicago the city government was simply
-one of its branch offices; it stole billions of gallons of city water openly,
-it dictated to the courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it forbade the
-mayor to enforce the building laws against it. In the national capital it had
-power to prevent inspection of its product, and to falsify government reports;
-it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was threatened it burned
-its books and sent its criminal agents out of the country. In the commercial
-world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out thousands of businesses every year,
-it drove men to madness and suicide. It had forced the price of cattle so low
-as to destroy the stock-raising industry, an occupation upon which whole states
-existed; it had ruined thousands of butchers who had refused to handle its
-products. It divided the country into districts, and fixed the price of meat in
-all of them; and it owned all the refrigerator cars, and levied an enormous
-tribute upon all poultry and eggs and fruit and vegetables. With the millions
-of dollars a week that poured in upon it, it was reaching out for the control
-of other interests, railroads and trolley lines, gas and electric light
-franchises&mdash;it already owned the leather and the grain business of the
-country. The people were tremendously stirred up over its encroachments, but
-nobody had any remedy to suggest; it was the task of Socialists to teach and
-organize them, and prepare them for the time when they were to seize the huge
-machine called the Beef Trust, and use it to produce food for human beings and
-not to heap up fortunes for a band of pirates. It was long after midnight when
-Jurgis lay down upon the floor of Ostrinski&rsquo;s kitchen; and yet it was an
-hour before he could get to sleep, for the glory of that joyful vision of the
-people of Packingtown marching in and taking possession of the Union
-Stockyards!
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
-
-<p>
-Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then he went home to
-Elzbieta. He was no longer shy about it&mdash;when he went in, instead of
-saying all the things he had been planning to say, he started to tell Elzbieta
-about the revolution! At first she thought he was out of his mind, and it was
-hours before she could really feel certain that he was himself. When, however,
-she had satisfied herself that he was sane upon all subjects except politics,
-she troubled herself no further about it. Jurgis was destined to find that
-Elzbieta&rsquo;s armor was absolutely impervious to Socialism. Her soul had
-been baked hard in the fire of adversity, and there was no altering it now;
-life to her was the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only as
-they bore upon that. All that interested her in regard to this new frenzy which
-had seized hold of her son-in-law was whether or not it had a tendency to make
-him sober and industrious; and when she found he intended to look for work and
-to contribute his share to the family fund, she gave him full rein to convince
-her of anything. A wonderfully wise little woman was Elzbieta; she could think
-as quickly as a hunted rabbit, and in half an hour she had chosen her
-life-attitude to the Socialist movement. She agreed in everything with Jurgis,
-except the need of his paying his dues; and she would even go to a meeting with
-him now and then, and sit and plan her next day&rsquo;s dinner amid the storm.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wander about all day,
-looking for work; until at last he met with a strange fortune. He was passing
-one of Chicago&rsquo;s innumerable small hotels, and after some hesitation he
-concluded to go in. A man he took for the proprietor was standing in the lobby,
-and he went up to him and tackled him for a job.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What can you do?&rdquo; the man asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Anything, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis, and added quickly: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
-been out of work for a long time, sir. I&rsquo;m an honest man, and I&rsquo;m
-strong and willing&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The other was eying him narrowly. &ldquo;Do you drink?&rdquo; he asked.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; said Jurgis.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks.
-I&rsquo;ve discharged him seven times now, and I&rsquo;ve about made up my mind
-that&rsquo;s enough. Would you be a porter?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hard work. You&rsquo;ll have to clean floors and wash
-spittoons and fill lamps and handle trunks&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m willing, sir.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;All right. I&rsquo;ll pay you thirty a month and board, and you can
-begin now, if you feel like it. You can put on the other fellow&rsquo;s
-rig.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night. Then he went
-and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paid a visit to Ostrinski to
-let him know of his good fortune. Here he received a great surprise, for when
-he was describing the location of the hotel Ostrinski interrupted suddenly,
-&ldquo;Not Hinds&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jurgis, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the name.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To which the other replied, &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve got the best boss in
-Chicago&mdash;he&rsquo;s a state organizer of our party, and one of our
-best-known speakers!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him; and the man
-seized him by the hand and shook it. &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; he cried,
-&ldquo;that lets me out. I didn&rsquo;t sleep all last night because I had
-discharged a good Socialist!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So, after that, Jurgis was known to his &ldquo;boss&rdquo; as &ldquo;Comrade
-Jurgis,&rdquo; and in return he was expected to call him &ldquo;Comrade
-Hinds.&rdquo; &ldquo;Tommy&rdquo; Hinds, as he was known to his intimates, was
-a squat little man, with broad shoulders and a florid face, decorated with gray
-side whiskers. He was the kindest-hearted man that ever lived, and the
-liveliest&mdash;inexhaustible in his enthusiasm, and talking Socialism all day
-and all night. He was a great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and would keep a
-meeting in an uproar; when once he got really waked up, the torrent of his
-eloquence could be compared with nothing save Niagara.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith&rsquo;s helper, and had run away to
-join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with
-&ldquo;graft,&rdquo; in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a
-musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only
-brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old
-age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he
-would screw up his face and mutter: &ldquo;Capitalism, my boy, capitalism!
-&lsquo;<i>Écrasez l&rsquo;Infâme!</i>&rsquo;&rdquo; He had one unfailing remedy
-for all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one; no matter
-whether the person&rsquo;s trouble was failure in business, or dyspepsia, or a
-quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle would come into his eyes and he would say,
-&ldquo;You know what to do about it&mdash;vote the Socialist ticket!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon as the war was
-over. He had gone into business, and found himself in competition with the
-fortunes of those who had been stealing while he had been fighting. The city
-government was in their hands and the railroads were in league with them, and
-honest business was driven to the wall; and so Hinds had put all his savings
-into Chicago real estate, and set out singlehanded to dam the river of graft.
-He had been a reform member of the city council, he had been a Greenbacker, a
-Labor Unionist, a Populist, a Bryanite&mdash;and after thirty years of
-fighting, the year 1896 had served to convince him that the power of
-concentrated wealth could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He
-had published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his own,
-when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that others had been ahead
-of him. Now for eight years he had been fighting for the party, anywhere,
-everywhere&mdash;whether it was a G.A.R. reunion, or a hotel-keepers&rsquo;
-convention, or an Afro-American business-men&rsquo;s banquet, or a Bible
-society picnic, Tommy Hinds would manage to get himself invited to explain the
-relations of Socialism to the subject in hand. After that he would start off
-upon a tour of his own, ending at some place between New York and Oregon; and
-when he came back from there, he would go out to organize new locals for the
-state committee; and finally he would come home to rest&mdash;and talk
-Socialism in Chicago. Hinds&rsquo;s hotel was a very hot-bed of the propaganda;
-all the employees were party men, and if they were not when they came, they
-were quite certain to be before they went away. The proprietor would get into a
-discussion with some one in the lobby, and as the conversation grew animated,
-others would gather about to listen, until finally every one in the place would
-be crowded into a group, and a regular debate would be under way. This went on
-every night&mdash;when Tommy Hinds was not there to do it, his clerk did it;
-and when his clerk was away campaigning, the assistant attended to it, while
-Mrs. Hinds sat behind the desk and did the work. The clerk was an old crony of
-the proprietor&rsquo;s, an awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with a lean,
-sallow face, a broad mouth, and whiskers under his chin, the very type and body
-of a prairie farmer. He had been that all his life&mdash;he had fought the
-railroads in Kansas for fifty years, a Granger, a Farmers&rsquo; Alliance man,
-a &ldquo;middle-of-the-road&rdquo; Populist. Finally, Tommy Hinds had revealed
-to him the wonderful idea of using the trusts instead of destroying them, and
-he had sold his farm and come to Chicago.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, the assistant clerk, a
-pale, scholarly-looking man, who came from Massachusetts, of Pilgrim stock.
-Adams had been a cotton operative in Fall River, and the continued depression
-in the industry had worn him and his family out, and he had emigrated to South
-Carolina. In Massachusetts the percentage of white illiteracy is eight-tenths
-of one per cent, while in South Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per
-cent; also in South Carolina there is a property qualification for
-voters&mdash;and for these and other reasons child labor is the rule, and so
-the cotton mills were driving those of Massachusetts out of the business. Adams
-did not know this, he only knew that the Southern mills were running; but when
-he got there he found that if he was to live, all his family would have to
-work, and from six o&rsquo;clock at night to six o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
-So he had set to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion in
-Massachusetts, and had been discharged; but he had gotten other work, and stuck
-at it, and at last there had been a strike for shorter hours, and Harry Adams
-had attempted to address a street meeting, which was the end of him. In the
-states of the far South the labor of convicts is leased to contractors, and
-when there are not convicts enough they have to be supplied. Harry Adams was
-sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the mill owner with whose business he
-had interfered; and though the life had nearly killed him, he had been wise
-enough not to murmur, and at the end of his term he and his family had left the
-state of South Carolina&mdash;hell&rsquo;s back yard, as he called it. He had
-no money for carfare, but it was harvest-time, and they walked one day and
-worked the next; and so Adams got at last to Chicago, and joined the Socialist
-party. He was a studious man, reserved, and nothing of an orator; but he always
-had a pile of books under his desk in the hotel, and articles from his pen were
-beginning to attract attention in the party press.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Contrary to what one would have expected, all this radicalism did not hurt the
-hotel business; the radicals flocked to it, and the commercial travelers all
-found it diverting. Of late, also, the hotel had become a favorite stopping
-place for Western cattlemen. Now that the Beef Trust had adopted the trick of
-raising prices to induce enormous shipments of cattle, and then dropping them
-again and scooping in all they needed, a stock raiser was very apt to find
-himself in Chicago without money enough to pay his freight bill; and so he had
-to go to a cheap hotel, and it was no drawback to him if there was an agitator
-talking in the lobby. These Western fellows were just &ldquo;meat&rdquo; for
-Tommy Hinds&mdash;he would get a dozen of them around him and paint little
-pictures of &ldquo;the System.&rdquo; Of course, it was not a week before he
-had heard Jurgis&rsquo;s story, and after that he would not have let his new
-porter go for the world. &ldquo;See here,&rdquo; he would say, in the middle of
-an argument, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a fellow right here in my place who&rsquo;s
-worked there and seen every bit of it!&rdquo; And then Jurgis would drop his
-work, whatever it was, and come, and the other would say, &ldquo;Comrade
-Jurgis, just tell these gentlemen what you saw on the killing-beds.&rdquo; At
-first this request caused poor Jurgis the most acute agony, and it was like
-pulling teeth to get him to talk; but gradually he found out what was wanted,
-and in the end he learned to stand up and speak his piece with enthusiasm. His
-employer would sit by and encourage him with exclamations and shakes of the
-head; when Jurgis would give the formula for &ldquo;potted ham,&rdquo; or tell
-about the condemned hogs that were dropped into the &ldquo;destructors&rdquo;
-at the top and immediately taken out again at the bottom, to be shipped into
-another state and made into lard, Tommy Hinds would bang his knee and cry,
-&ldquo;Do you think a man could make up a thing like that out of his
-head?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialists had the only
-real remedy for such evils, how they alone &ldquo;meant business&rdquo; with
-the Beef Trust. And when, in answer to this, the victim would say that the
-whole country was getting stirred up, that the newspapers were full of
-denunciations of it, and the government taking action against it, Tommy Hinds
-had a knock-out blow all ready. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;all
-that is true&mdash;but what do you suppose is the reason for it? Are you
-foolish enough to believe that it&rsquo;s done for the public? There are other
-trusts in the country just as illegal and extortionate as the Beef Trust: there
-is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in winter&mdash;there is the Steel
-Trust, that doubles the price of every nail in your shoes&mdash;there is the
-Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading at night&mdash;and why do you suppose it
-is that all the fury of the press and the government is directed against the
-Beef Trust?&rdquo; And when to this the victim would reply that there was
-clamor enough over the Oil Trust, the other would continue: &ldquo;Ten years
-ago Henry D. Lloyd told all the truth about the Standard Oil Company in his
-Wealth versus Commonwealth; and the book was allowed to die, and you hardly
-ever hear of it. And now, at last, two magazines have the courage to tackle
-&lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; again, and what happens? The newspapers ridicule the
-authors, the churches defend the criminals, and the government&mdash;does
-nothing. And now, why is it all so different with the Beef Trust?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here the other would generally admit that he was &ldquo;stuck&rdquo;; and Tommy
-Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyes open. &ldquo;If you
-were a Socialist,&rdquo; the hotel-keeper would say, &ldquo;you would
-understand that the power which really governs the United States today is the
-Railroad Trust. It is the Railroad Trust that runs your state government,
-wherever you live, and that runs the United States Senate. And all of the
-trusts that I have named are railroad trusts&mdash;save only the Beef Trust!
-The Beef Trust has defied the railroads&mdash;it is plundering them day by day
-through the Private Car; and so the public is roused to fury, and the papers
-clamor for action, and the government goes on the war-path! And you poor common
-people watch and applaud the job, and think it&rsquo;s all done for you, and
-never dream that it is really the grand climax of the century-long battle of
-commercial competition&mdash;the final death grapple between the chiefs of the
-Beef Trust and &lsquo;Standard Oil,&rsquo; for the prize of the mastery and
-ownership of the United States of America!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and in which his
-education was completed. Perhaps you would imagine that he did not do much work
-there, but that would be a great mistake. He would have cut off one hand for
-Tommy Hinds; and to keep Hinds&rsquo;s hotel a thing of beauty was his joy in
-life. That he had a score of Socialist arguments chasing through his brain in
-the meantime did not interfere with this; on the contrary, Jurgis scrubbed the
-spittoons and polished the banisters all the more vehemently because at the
-same time he was wrestling inwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant. It would be
-pleasant to record that he swore off drinking immediately, and all the rest of
-his bad habits with it; but that would hardly be exact. These revolutionists
-were not angels; they were men, and men who had come up from the social pit,
-and with the mire of it smeared over them. Some of them drank, and some of them
-swore, and some of them ate pie with their knives; there was only one
-difference between them and all the rest of the populace&mdash;that they were
-men with a hope, with a cause to fight for and suffer for. There came times to
-Jurgis when the vision seemed far-off and pale, and a glass of beer loomed
-large in comparison; but if the glass led to another glass, and to too many
-glasses, he had something to spur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow.
-It was so evidently a wicked thing to spend one&rsquo;s pennies for drink, when
-the working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to be delivered; the
-price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies of a leaflet, and one could
-hand these out to the unregenerate, and then get drunk upon the thought of the
-good that was being accomplished. That was the way the movement had been made,
-and it was the only way it would progress; it availed nothing to know of it,
-without fighting for it&mdash;it was a thing for all, not for a few! A
-corollary of this proposition of course was, that any one who refused to
-receive the new gospel was personally responsible for keeping Jurgis from his
-heart&rsquo;s desire; and this, alas, made him uncomfortable as an
-acquaintance. He met some neighbors with whom Elzbieta had made friends in her
-neighborhood, and he set out to make Socialists of them by wholesale, and
-several times he all but got into a fight.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis! It was so incomprehensible how a man
-could fail to see it! Here were all the opportunities of the country, the land,
-and the buildings upon the land, the railroads, the mines, the factories, and
-the stores, all in the hands of a few private individuals, called capitalists,
-for whom the people were obliged to work for wages. The whole balance of what
-the people produced went to heap up the fortunes of these capitalists, to heap,
-and heap again, and yet again&mdash;and that in spite of the fact that they,
-and every one about them, lived in unthinkable luxury! And was it not plain
-that if the people cut off the share of those who merely &ldquo;owned,&rdquo;
-the share of those who worked would be much greater? That was as plain as two
-and two makes four; and it was the whole of it, absolutely the whole of it; and
-yet there were people who could not see it, who would argue about everything
-else in the world. They would tell you that governments could not manage things
-as economically as private individuals; they would repeat and repeat that, and
-think they were saying something! They could not see that
-&ldquo;economical&rdquo; management by masters meant simply that they, the
-people, were worked harder and ground closer and paid less! They were
-wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of exploiters whose one thought was to
-get as much out of them as possible; and they were taking an interest in the
-process, were anxious lest it should not be done thoroughly enough! Was it not
-honestly a trial to listen to an argument such as that?
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And yet there were things even worse. You would begin talking to some poor
-devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirty years, and had never been
-able to save a penny; who left home every morning at six o&rsquo;clock, to go
-and tend a machine, and come back at night too tired to take his clothes off;
-who had never had a week&rsquo;s vacation in his life, had never traveled,
-never had an adventure, never learned anything, never hoped anything&mdash;and
-when you started to tell him about Socialism he would sniff and say,
-&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not interested in that&mdash;I&rsquo;m an
-individualist!&rdquo; And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was
-&ldquo;paternalism,&rdquo; and that if it ever had its way the world would stop
-progressing. It was enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like that;
-and yet it was no laughing matter, as you found out&mdash;for how many millions
-of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose lives had been so stunted by
-capitalism that they no longer knew what freedom was! And they really thought
-that it was &ldquo;individualism&rdquo; for tens of thousands of them to herd
-together and obey the orders of a steel magnate, and produce hundreds of
-millions of dollars of wealth for him, and then let him give them libraries;
-while for them to take the industry, and run it to suit themselves, and build
-their own libraries&mdash;that would have been &ldquo;Paternalism&rdquo;!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Sometimes the agony of such things as this was almost more than Jurgis could
-bear; yet there was no way of escape from it, there was nothing to do but to
-dig away at the base of this mountain of ignorance and prejudice. You must keep
-at the poor fellow; you must hold your temper, and argue with him, and watch
-for your chance to stick an idea or two into his head. And the rest of the time
-you must sharpen up your weapons&mdash;you must think out new replies to his
-objections, and provide yourself with new facts to prove to him the folly of
-his ways.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-So Jurgis acquired the reading habit. He would carry in his pocket a tract or a
-pamphlet which some one had loaned him, and whenever he had an idle moment
-during the day he would plod through a paragraph, and then think about it while
-he worked. Also he read the newspapers, and asked questions about them. One of
-the other porters at Hinds&rsquo;s was a sharp little Irishman, who knew
-everything that Jurgis wanted to know; and while they were busy he would
-explain to him the geography of America, and its history, its constitution and
-its laws; also he gave him an idea of the business system of the country, the
-great railroads and corporations, and who owned them, and the labor unions, and
-the big strikes, and the men who had led them. Then at night, when he could get
-off, Jurgis would attend the Socialist meetings. During the campaign one was
-not dependent upon the street corner affairs, where the weather and the quality
-of the orator were equally uncertain; there were hall meetings every night, and
-one could hear speakers of national prominence. These discussed the political
-situation from every point of view, and all that troubled Jurgis was the
-impossibility of carrying off but a small part of the treasures they offered
-him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was a man who was known in the party as the &ldquo;Little Giant.&rdquo;
-The Lord had used up so much material in the making of his head that there had
-not been enough to complete his legs; but he got about on the platform, and
-when he shook his raven whiskers the pillars of capitalism rocked. He had
-written a veritable encyclopedia upon the subject, a book that was nearly as
-big as himself&mdash;And then there was a young author, who came from
-California, and had been a salmon fisher, an oyster-pirate, a longshoreman, a
-sailor; who had tramped the country and been sent to jail, had lived in the
-Whitechapel slums, and been to the Klondike in search of gold. All these things
-he pictured in his books, and because he was a man of genius he forced the
-world to hear him. Now he was famous, but wherever he went he still preached
-the gospel of the poor. And then there was one who was known at the
-&ldquo;millionaire Socialist.&rdquo; He had made a fortune in business, and
-spent nearly all of it in building up a magazine, which the post office
-department had tried to suppress, and had driven to Canada. He was a
-quiet-mannered man, whom you would have taken for anything in the world but a
-Socialist agitator. His speech was simple and informal&mdash;he could not
-understand why any one should get excited about these things. It was a process
-of economic evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws and methods. Life was
-a struggle for existence, and the strong overcame the weak, and in turn were
-overcome by the strongest. Those who lost in the struggle were generally
-exterminated; but now and then they had been known to save themselves by
-combination&mdash;which was a new and higher kind of strength. It was so that
-the gregarious animals had overcome the predaceous; it was so, in human
-history, that the people had mastered the kings. The workers were simply the
-citizens of industry, and the Socialist movement was the expression of their
-will to survive. The inevitability of the revolution depended upon this fact,
-that they had no choice but to unite or be exterminated; this fact, grim and
-inexorable, depended upon no human will, it was the law of the economic
-process, of which the editor showed the details with the most marvelous
-precision.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And later on came the evening of the great meeting of the campaign, when Jurgis
-heard the two standard-bearers of his party. Ten years before there had been in
-Chicago a strike of a hundred and fifty thousand railroad employees, and thugs
-had been hired by the railroads to commit violence, and the President of the
-United States had sent in troops to break the strike, by flinging the officers
-of the union into jail without trial. The president of the union came out of
-his cell a ruined man; but also he came out a Socialist; and now for just ten
-years he had been traveling up and down the country, standing face to face with
-the people, and pleading with them for justice. He was a man of electric
-presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thin by struggle and suffering. The
-fury of outraged manhood gleamed in it&mdash;and the tears of suffering little
-children pleaded in his voice. When he spoke he paced the stage, lithe and
-eager, like a panther. He leaned over, reaching out for his audience; he
-pointed into their souls with an insistent finger. His voice was husky from
-much speaking, but the great auditorium was as still as death, and every one
-heard him.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some one handed him a paper
-which he carried home with him and read; and so he became acquainted with the
-&ldquo;Appeal to Reason.&rdquo; About twelve years previously a Colorado
-real-estate speculator had made up his mind that it was wrong to gamble in the
-necessities of life of human beings: and so he had retired and begun the
-publication of a Socialist weekly. There had come a time when he had to set his
-own type, but he had held on and won out, and now his publication was an
-institution. It used a carload of paper every week, and the mail trains would
-be hours loading up at the depot of the little Kansas town. It was a four-page
-weekly, which sold for less than half a cent a copy; its regular subscription
-list was a quarter of a million, and it went to every crossroads post office in
-America.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The &ldquo;Appeal&rdquo; was a &ldquo;propaganda&rdquo; paper. It had a manner
-all its own&mdash;it was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang and hustle:
-It collected news of the doings of the &ldquo;plutes,&rdquo; and served it up
-for the benefit of the &ldquo;American working-mule.&rdquo; It would have
-columns of the deadly parallel&mdash;the million dollars&rsquo; worth of
-diamonds, or the fancy pet-poodle establishment of a society dame, beside the
-fate of Mrs. Murphy of San Francisco, who had starved to death on the streets,
-or of John Robinson, just out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New
-York because he could not find work. It collected the stories of graft and
-misery from the daily press, and made a little pungent paragraphs out of them.
-&ldquo;Three banks of Bungtown, South Dakota, failed, and more savings of the
-workers swallowed up!&rdquo; &ldquo;The mayor of Sandy Creek, Oklahoma, has
-skipped with a hundred thousand dollars. That&rsquo;s the kind of rulers the
-old partyites give you!&rdquo; &ldquo;The president of the Florida Flying
-Machine Company is in jail for bigamy. He was a prominent opponent of
-Socialism, which he said would break up the home!&rdquo; The
-&ldquo;Appeal&rdquo; had what it called its &ldquo;Army,&rdquo; about thirty
-thousand of the faithful, who did things for it; and it was always exhorting
-the &ldquo;Army&rdquo; to keep its dander up, and occasionally encouraging it
-with a prize competition, for anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or
-an eighty-acre farm. Its office helpers were all known to the
-&ldquo;Army&rdquo; by quaint titles&mdash;&ldquo;Inky Ike,&rdquo; &ldquo;the
-Bald-headed Man,&rdquo; &ldquo;the Redheaded Girl,&rdquo; &ldquo;the
-Bulldog,&rdquo; &ldquo;the Office Goat,&rdquo; and &ldquo;the One Hoss.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But sometimes, again, the &ldquo;Appeal&rdquo; would be desperately serious. It
-sent a correspondent to Colorado, and printed pages describing the overthrow of
-American institutions in that state. In a certain city of the country it had
-over forty of its &ldquo;Army&rdquo; in the headquarters of the Telegraph
-Trust, and no message of importance to Socialists ever went through that a copy
-of it did not go to the &ldquo;Appeal.&rdquo; It would print great broadsides
-during the campaign; one copy that came to Jurgis was a manifesto addressed to
-striking workingmen, of which nearly a million copies had been distributed in
-the industrial centers, wherever the employers&rsquo; associations had been
-carrying out their &ldquo;open shop&rdquo; program. &ldquo;You have lost the
-strike!&rdquo; it was headed. &ldquo;And now what are you going to do about
-it?&rdquo; It was what is called an &ldquo;incendiary&rdquo; appeal&mdash;it
-was written by a man into whose soul the iron had entered. When this edition
-appeared, twenty thousand copies were sent to the stockyards district; and they
-were taken out and stowed away in the rear of a little cigar store, and every
-evening, and on Sundays, the members of the Packingtown locals would get
-armfuls and distribute them on the streets and in the houses. The people of
-Packingtown had lost their strike, if ever a people had, and so they read these
-papers gladly, and twenty thousand were hardly enough to go round. Jurgis had
-resolved not to go near his old home again, but when he heard of this it was
-too much for him, and every night for a week he would get on the car and ride
-out to the stockyards, and help to undo his work of the previous year, when he
-had sent Mike Scully&rsquo;s ten-pin setter to the city Board of Aldermen.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-It was quite marvelous to see what a difference twelve months had made in
-Packingtown&mdash;the eyes of the people were getting opened! The Socialists
-were literally sweeping everything before them that election, and Scully and
-the Cook County machine were at their wits&rsquo; end for an
-&ldquo;issue.&rdquo; At the very close of the campaign they bethought
-themselves of the fact that the strike had been broken by Negroes, and so they
-sent for a South Carolina fire-eater, the &ldquo;pitchfork senator,&rdquo; as
-he was called, a man who took off his coat when he talked to workingmen, and
-damned and swore like a Hessian. This meeting they advertised extensively, and
-the Socialists advertised it too&mdash;with the result that about a thousand of
-them were on hand that evening. The &ldquo;pitchfork senator&rdquo; stood their
-fusillade of questions for about an hour, and then went home in disgust, and
-the balance of the meeting was a strictly party affair. Jurgis, who had
-insisted upon coming, had the time of his life that night; he danced about and
-waved his arms in his excitement&mdash;and at the very climax he broke loose
-from his friends, and got out into the aisle, and proceeded to make a speech
-himself! The senator had been denying that the Democratic party was corrupt; it
-was always the Republicans who bought the votes, he said&mdash;and here was
-Jurgis shouting furiously, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a lie! It&rsquo;s a lie!&rdquo;
-After which he went on to tell them how he knew it&mdash;that he knew it
-because he had bought them himself! And he would have told the &ldquo;pitchfork
-senator&rdquo; all his experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed
-him about the neck and shoved him into a seat.
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
-
-<p>
-One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to go and
-see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet him, and he
-stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got work
-now, and so you can leave here.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to do, she said,
-and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a secret&mdash;girls had
-tried it, and they were always found out. There were thousands of men who came
-to this place, and sooner or later she would meet one of them. &ldquo;And
-besides,&rdquo; Marija added, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do anything. I&rsquo;m no
-good&mdash;I take dope. What could you do with me?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you stop?&rdquo; Jurgis cried.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never stop. What&rsquo;s the
-use of talking about it&mdash;I&rsquo;ll stay here till I die, I guess.
-It&rsquo;s all I&rsquo;m fit for.&rdquo; And that was all that he could get her
-to say&mdash;there was no use trying. When he told her he would not let
-Elzbieta take her money, she answered indifferently: &ldquo;Then it&rsquo;ll be
-wasted here&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo; Her eyelids looked heavy and her
-face was red and swollen; he saw that he was annoying her, that she only wanted
-him to go away. So he went, disappointed and sad.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta was sick a good deal
-now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very much the worse for their life
-upon the streets. But he stuck by the family nevertheless, for they reminded
-him of his old happiness; and when things went wrong he could solace himself
-with a plunge into the Socialist movement. Since his life had been caught up
-into the current of this great stream, things which had before been the whole
-of life to him came to seem of relatively slight importance; his interests were
-elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and
-uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one while he
-lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a perpetual
-adventure. There was so much to know&mdash;so many wonders to be discovered!
-Never in all his life did Jurgis forget the day before election, when there
-came a telephone message from a friend of Harry Adams, asking him to bring
-Jurgis to see him that night; and Jurgis went, and met one of the minds of the
-movement.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire who had given
-up his life to settlement work, and had a little home in the heart of the
-city&rsquo;s slums. He did not belong to the party, but he was in sympathy with
-it; and he said that he was to have as his guest that night the editor of a big
-Eastern magazine, who wrote against Socialism, but really did not know what it
-was. The millionaire suggested that Adams bring Jurgis along, and then start up
-the subject of &ldquo;pure food,&rdquo; in which the editor was interested.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Young Fisher&rsquo;s home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and
-weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw was
-half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly visible in
-the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a log fire was crackling
-in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were gathered about it when Adams and
-his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to his dismay that three of them were
-ladies. He had never talked to people of this sort before, and he fell into an
-agony of embarrassment. He stood in the doorway clutching his hat tightly in
-his hands, and made a deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced;
-then, when he was asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner, and
-sat down upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with
-his sleeve. He was terrified lest they should expect him to talk.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in evening dress,
-as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking gentleman named Maynard. There was
-the former&rsquo;s frail young wife, and also an elderly lady, who taught
-kindergarten in the settlement, and a young college student, a beautiful girl
-with an intense and earnest face. She only spoke once or twice while Jurgis was
-there&mdash;the rest of the time she sat by the table in the center of the
-room, resting her chin in her hands and drinking in the conversation. There
-were two other men, whom young Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and
-Mr. Schliemann; he heard them address Adams as &ldquo;Comrade,&rdquo; and so he
-knew that they were Socialists.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman of clerical
-aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, it transpired, and had seen the
-light and become a prophet of the new dispensation. He traveled all over the
-country, living like the apostles of old, upon hospitality, and preaching upon
-street-corners when there was no hall. The other man had been in the midst of a
-discussion with the editor when Adams and Jurgis came in; and at the suggestion
-of the host they resumed it after the interruption. Jurgis was soon sitting
-spellbound, thinking that here was surely the strangest man that had ever lived
-in the world.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairy hands and
-bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, and had been a professor of
-philosophy&mdash;until, as he said, he had found that he was selling his
-character as well as his time. Instead he had come to America, where he lived
-in a garret room in this slum district, and made volcanic energy take the place
-of fire. He studied the composition of food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many
-proteids and carbohydrates his body needed; and by scientific chewing he said
-that he tripled the value of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a
-day. About the first of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot;
-and when he struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars and
-a half a day, and come home when he had another year&rsquo;s supply&mdash;a
-hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to independence
-a man could make &ldquo;under capitalism,&rdquo; he explained; he would never
-marry, for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the
-revolution.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head so far in the
-shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflected from the fire on the
-hearth. He spoke simply, and utterly without emotion; with the manner of a
-teacher setting forth to a group of scholars an axiom in geometry, he would
-enunciate such propositions as made the hair of an ordinary person rise on end.
-And when the auditor had asserted his non-comprehension, he would proceed to
-elucidate by some new proposition, yet more appalling. To Jurgis the Herr Dr.
-Schliemann assumed the proportions of a thunderstorm or an earthquake. And yet,
-strange as it might seem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he could
-follow the argument nearly all the time. He was carried over the difficult
-places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away in mad career&mdash;a
-very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse Speculation.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and with man as a small
-part of it. He understood human institutions, and blew them about like soap
-bubbles. It was surprising that so much destructiveness could be contained in
-one human mind. Was it government? The purpose of government was the guarding
-of property-rights, the perpetuation of ancient force and modern fraud. Or was
-it marriage? Marriage and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the
-predatory man&rsquo;s exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between
-them was a difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own
-terms: equality, a life contract, and the legitimacy&mdash;that is, the
-property-rights&mdash;of her children. If she had no money, she was a
-proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. And then the subject became
-Religion, which was the Archfiend&rsquo;s deadliest weapon. Government
-oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and
-poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The working-man was to fix his
-hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in this one; he was
-brought up to frugality, humility, obedience&mdash;in short to all the
-pseudo-virtues of capitalism. The destiny of civilization would be decided in
-one final death struggle between the Red International and the Black, between
-Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church; while here at home, &ldquo;the stygian
-midnight of American evangelicalism&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was a lively tussle.
-&ldquo;Comrade&rdquo; Lucas was not what is called an educated man; he knew
-only the Bible, but it was the Bible interpreted by real experience. And what
-was the use, he asked, of confusing Religion with men&rsquo;s perversions of
-it? That the church was in the hands of the merchants at the moment was obvious
-enough; but already there were signs of rebellion, and if Comrade Schliemann
-could come back a few years from now&mdash;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; said the other, &ldquo;of course, I have no doubt that
-in a hundred years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed Socialism,
-just as at present it denies that it ever tortured Galileo.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I am not defending the Vatican,&rdquo; exclaimed Lucas, vehemently.
-&ldquo;I am defending the word of God&mdash;which is one long cry of the human
-spirit for deliverance from the sway of oppression. Take the twenty-fourth
-chapter of the Book of Job, which I am accustomed to quote in my addresses as
-&lsquo;the Bible upon the Beef Trust&rsquo;; or take the words of
-Isaiah&mdash;or of the Master himself! Not the elegant prince of our debauched
-and vicious art, not the jeweled idol of our society churches&mdash;but the
-Jesus of the awful reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised
-of the world, who had nowhere to lay his head&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I will grant you Jesus,&rdquo; interrupted the other.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; cried Lucas, &ldquo;and why should Jesus have nothing
-to do with his church&mdash;why should his words and his life be of no
-authority among those who profess to adore him? Here is a man who was the
-world&rsquo;s first revolutionist, the true founder of the Socialist movement;
-a man whose whole being was one flame of hatred for wealth, and all that wealth
-stands for,&mdash;for the pride of wealth, and the luxury of wealth, and the
-tyranny of wealth; who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man of the people,
-an associate of saloon-keepers and women of the town; who again and again, in
-the most explicit language, denounced wealth and the holding of wealth:
-&lsquo;Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Sell
-that ye have and give alms!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Blessed are ye poor, for yours
-is the kingdom of Heaven!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Woe unto you that are rich, for
-ye have received your consolation!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Verily, I say unto you,
-that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven!&rsquo; Who
-denounced in unmeasured terms the exploiters of his own time: &lsquo;Woe unto
-you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Woe unto you also,
-you lawyers!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can
-ye escape the damnation of hell?&rsquo; Who drove out the business men and
-brokers from the temple with a whip! Who was crucified&mdash;think of
-it&mdash;for an incendiary and a disturber of the social order! And this man
-they have made into the high priest of property and smug respectability, a
-divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial
-civilization! Jeweled images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense to
-him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of
-helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned
-seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of dusty
-divinity&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; cried Schliemann, laughing. But the other was in full
-career&mdash;he had talked this subject every day for five years, and had never
-yet let himself be stopped. &ldquo;This Jesus of Nazareth!&rdquo; he cried.
-&ldquo;This class-conscious working-man! This union carpenter! This agitator,
-law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist! He, the sovereign lord and master of a world
-which grinds the bodies and souls of human beings into dollars&mdash;if he
-could come into the world this day and see the things that men have made in his
-name, would it not blast his soul with horror? Would he not go mad at the sight
-of it, he the Prince of Mercy and Love! That dreadful night when he lay in the
-Garden of Gethsemane and writhed in agony until he sweat blood&mdash;do you
-think that he saw anything worse than he might see tonight upon the plains of
-Manchuria, where men march out with a jeweled image of him before them, to do
-wholesale murder for the benefit of foul monsters of sensuality and cruelty? Do
-you not know that if he were in St. Petersburg now, he would take the whip with
-which he drove out the bankers from his temple&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Here the speaker paused an instant for breath. &ldquo;No, comrade,&rdquo; said
-the other, dryly, &ldquo;for he was a practical man. He would take pretty
-little imitation lemons, such as are now being shipped into Russia, handy for
-carrying in the pockets, and strong enough to blow a whole temple out of
-sight.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this; then he began
-again: &ldquo;But look at it from the point of view of practical politics,
-comrade. Here is an historical figure whom all men reverence and love, whom
-some regard as divine; and who was one of us&mdash;who lived our life, and
-taught our doctrine. And now shall we leave him in the hands of his
-enemies&mdash;shall we allow them to stifle and stultify his example? We have
-his words, which no one can deny; and shall we not quote them to the people,
-and prove to them what he was, and what he taught, and what he did? No, no, a
-thousand times no!&mdash;we shall use his authority to turn out the knaves and
-sluggards from his ministry, and we shall yet rouse the people to
-action!&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to a paper on the
-table. &ldquo;Here, comrade,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, &ldquo;here is a
-place for you to begin. A bishop whose wife has just been robbed of fifty
-thousand dollars&rsquo; worth of diamonds! And a most unctuous and oily of
-bishops! An eminent and scholarly bishop! A philanthropist and friend of labor
-bishop&mdash;a Civic Federation decoy duck for the chloroforming of the
-wage-working-man!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat as spectators. But
-now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion to remark, somewhat naïvely, that he
-had always understood that Socialists had a cut-and-dried program for the
-future of civilization; whereas here were two active members of the party, who,
-from what he could make out, were agreed about nothing at all. Would the two,
-for his enlightenment, try to ascertain just what they had in common, and why
-they belonged to the same party? This resulted, after much debating, in the
-formulating of two carefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist
-believes in the common ownership and democratic management of the means of
-producing the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialist believes that
-the means by which this is to be brought about is the class conscious political
-organization of the wage-earners. Thus far they were at one; but no farther. To
-Lucas, the religious zealot, the co-operative commonwealth was the New
-Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, which is &ldquo;within you.&rdquo; To the
-other, Socialism was simply a necessary step toward a far-distant goal, a step
-to be tolerated with impatience. Schliemann called himself a &ldquo;philosophic
-anarchist&rdquo;; and he explained that an anarchist was one who believed that
-the end of human existence was the free development of every personality,
-unrestricted by laws save those of its own being. Since the same kind of match
-would light every one&rsquo;s fire and the same-shaped loaf of bread would fill
-every one&rsquo;s stomach, it would be perfectly feasible to submit industry to
-the control of a majority vote. There was only one earth, and the quantity of
-material things was limited. Of intellectual and moral things, on the other
-hand, there was no limit, and one could have more without another&rsquo;s
-having less; hence &ldquo;Communism in material production, anarchism in
-intellectual,&rdquo; was the formula of modern proletarian thought. As soon as
-the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society had been healed, there
-would be established a simple system whereby each man was credited with his
-labor and debited with his purchases; and after that the processes of
-production, exchange, and consumption would go on automatically, and without
-our being conscious of them, any more than a man is conscious of the beating of
-his heart. And then, explained Schliemann, society would break up into
-independent, self-governing communities of mutually congenial persons; examples
-of which at present were clubs, churches, and political parties. After the
-revolution, all the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of men
-would be cared for by such &ldquo;free associations&rdquo;; romantic novelists
-would be supported by those who liked to read romantic novels, and
-impressionist painters would be supported by those who liked to look at
-impressionist pictures&mdash;and the same with preachers and scientists,
-editors and actors and musicians. If any one wanted to work or paint or pray,
-and could find no one to maintain him, he could support himself by working part
-of the time. That was the case at present, the only difference being that the
-competitive wage system compelled a man to work all the time to live, while,
-after the abolition of privilege and exploitation, any one would be able to
-support himself by an hour&rsquo;s work a day. Also the artist&rsquo;s audience
-of the present was a small minority of people, all debased and vulgarized by
-the effort it had cost them to win in the commercial battle, of the
-intellectual and artistic activities which would result when the whole of
-mankind was set free from the nightmare of competition, we could at present
-form no conception whatever.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr. Schliemann asserted
-that it might be possible for a society to exist upon an hour&rsquo;s toil by
-each of its members. &ldquo;Just what,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;would
-be the productive capacity of society if the present resources of science were
-utilized, we have no means of ascertaining; but we may be sure it would exceed
-anything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to the ferocious
-barbarities of capitalism. After the triumph of the international proletariat,
-war would of course be inconceivable; and who can figure the cost of war to
-humanity&mdash;not merely the value of the lives and the material that it
-destroys, not merely the cost of keeping millions of men in idleness, of arming
-and equipping them for battle and parade, but the drain upon the vital energies
-of society by the war attitude and the war terror, the brutality and ignorance,
-the drunkenness, prostitution, and crime it entails, the industrial impotence
-and the moral deadness? Do you think that it would be too much to say that two
-hours of the working time of every efficient member of a community goes to feed
-the red fiend of war?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of competition: the
-losses of industrial warfare; the ceaseless worry and friction; the
-vices&mdash;such as drink, for instance, the use of which had nearly doubled in
-twenty years, as a consequence of the intensification of the economic struggle;
-the idle and unproductive members of the community, the frivolous rich and the
-pauperized poor; the law and the whole machinery of repression; the wastes of
-social ostentation, the milliners and tailors, the hairdressers, dancing
-masters, chefs and lackeys. &ldquo;You understand,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that
-in a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is
-necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.
-So we have, at the present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the
-population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per cent occupied in
-destroying them. And this is not all; for the servants and panders of the
-parasites are also parasites, the milliners and the jewelers and the lackeys
-have also to be supported by the useful members of the community. And bear in
-mind also that this monstrous disease affects not merely the idlers and their
-menials, its poison penetrates the whole social body. Beneath the hundred
-thousand women of the elite are a million middle-class women, miserable because
-they are not of the elite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath
-them, in turn, are five million farmers&rsquo; wives reading &lsquo;fashion
-papers&rsquo; and trimming bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids selling
-themselves into brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-skin robes. And
-then consider that, added to this competition in display, you have, like oil on
-the flames, a whole system of competition in selling! You have manufacturers
-contriving tens of thousands of catchpenny devices, storekeepers displaying
-them, and newspapers and magazines filled up with advertisements of
-them!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And don&rsquo;t forget the wastes of fraud,&rdquo; put in young Fisher.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,&rdquo;
-responded Schliemann&mdash;&ldquo;the science of persuading people to buy what
-they do not want&mdash;he is in the very center of the ghastly charnel house of
-capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely knows which of a dozen horrors to
-point out first. But consider the waste in time and energy incidental to making
-ten thousand varieties of a thing for purposes of ostentation and snobbishness,
-where one variety would do for use! Consider all the waste incidental to the
-manufacture of cheap qualities of goods, of goods made to sell and deceive the
-ignorant; consider the wastes of adulteration,&mdash;the shoddy clothing, the
-cotton blankets, the unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the
-adulterated milk, the aniline soda water, the potato-flour
-sausages&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And consider the moral aspects of the thing,&rdquo; put in the
-ex-preacher.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Precisely,&rdquo; said Schliemann; &ldquo;the low knavery and the
-ferocious cruelty incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and the
-bribing, the blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, the hurrying and
-worrying. Of course, imitation and adulteration are the essence of
-competition&mdash;they are but another form of the phrase &lsquo;to buy in the
-cheapest market and sell in the dearest.&rsquo; A government official has
-stated that the nation suffers a loss of a billion and a quarter dollars a year
-through adulterated foods; which means, of course, not only materials wasted
-that might have been useful outside of the human stomach, but doctors and
-nurses for people who would otherwise have been well, and undertakers for the
-whole human race ten or twenty years before the proper time. Then again,
-consider the waste of time and energy required to sell these things in a dozen
-stores, where one would do. There are a million or two of business firms in the
-country, and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and
-rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and worrying, the
-balancing of petty profit and loss. Consider the whole machinery of the civil
-law made necessary by these processes; the libraries of ponderous tomes, the
-courts and juries to interpret them, the lawyers studying to circumvent them,
-the pettifogging and chicanery, the hatreds and lies! Consider the wastes
-incidental to the blind and haphazard production of commodities&mdash;the
-factories closed, the workers idle, the goods spoiling in storage; consider the
-activities of the stock manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, the
-overstimulation of others, for speculative purposes; the assignments and bank
-failures, the crises and panics, the deserted towns and the starving
-populations! Consider the energies wasted in the seeking of markets, the
-sterile trades, such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster, advertising agent.
-Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into cities, made necessary by
-competition and by monopoly railroad rates; consider the slums, the bad air,
-the disease and the waste of vital energies; consider the office buildings, the
-waste of time and material in the piling of story upon story, and the burrowing
-underground! Then take the whole business of insurance, the enormous mass of
-administrative and clerical labor it involves, and all utter
-waste&mdash;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I do not follow that,&rdquo; said the editor. &ldquo;The Cooperative
-Commonwealth is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for
-all its members. Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared by
-all and made up by all. The bank is the universal government credit-account,
-the ledger in which every individual&rsquo;s earnings and spendings are
-balanced. There is also a universal government bulletin, in which are listed
-and precisely described everything which the commonwealth has for sale. As no
-one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longer any stimulus to
-extravagance, and no misrepresentation; no cheating, no adulteration or
-imitation, no bribery or &lsquo;grafting.&rsquo;&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How is the price of an article determined?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is
-determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers in the
-nation&rsquo;s wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total
-product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is
-the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary symbol, and pay,
-say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of a bushel of wheat is
-fifty cents.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;You say &lsquo;for farm work,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Mr. Maynard.
-&ldquo;Then labor is not to be paid alike?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should
-have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. Of course the wages
-may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will have to be
-varied continually, according as a greater or less number of workers is needed
-in any particular industry. That is precisely what is done at present, except
-that the transfer of the workers is accomplished blindly and imperfectly, by
-rumors and advertisements, instead of instantly and completely, by a universal
-government bulletin.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How about those occupations in which time is difficult to calculate?
-What is the labor cost of a book?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and binding of
-it&mdash;about a fifth of its present cost.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;And the author?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have already said that the state could not control intellectual
-production. The state might say that it had taken a year to write the book, and
-the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that every <i>bon mot</i>
-of his had cost a purse of gold. What I outline here is a national, or rather
-international, system for the providing of the material needs of men. Since a
-man has intellectual needs also, he will work longer, earn more, and provide
-for them to his own taste and in his own way. I live on the same earth as the
-majority, I wear the same kind of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but
-I do not think the same kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such
-thinkers as the majority selects. I wish such things to be left to free effort,
-as at present. If people want to listen to a certain preacher, they get
-together and contribute what they please, and pay for a church and support the
-preacher, and then listen to him; I, who do not want to listen to him, stay
-away, and it costs me nothing. In the same way there are magazines about
-Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and flying machines, and athletic records,
-and I know nothing about any of them. On the other hand, if wage slavery were
-abolished, and I could earn some spare money without paying tribute to an
-exploiting capitalist, then there would be a magazine for the purpose of
-interpreting and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche, the prophet of
-Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, the inventor of the noble science of
-clean eating; and incidentally, perhaps, for the discouraging of long skirts,
-and the scientific breeding of men and women, and the establishing of divorce
-by mutual consent.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dr. Schliemann paused for a moment. &ldquo;That was a lecture,&rdquo; he said
-with a laugh, &ldquo;and yet I am only begun!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;What else is there?&rdquo; asked Maynard.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,&rdquo;
-answered the other. &ldquo;I have hardly mentioned the positive economies of
-co-operation. Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million families in
-this country; and at least ten million of these live separately, the domestic
-drudge being either the wife or a wage slave. Now set aside the modern system
-of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operative cooking; and
-consider one single item, the washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say
-that the dish-washing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten
-hours as a day&rsquo;s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied
-persons&mdash;mostly women to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that
-this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of
-anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and
-insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children&mdash;for all of which
-things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my
-little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the
-dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but
-scientifically&mdash;sterilizing them&mdash;and do it at a saving of all the
-drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may find in the
-books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take Kropotkin&rsquo;s Fields, Factories, and
-Workshops, and read about the new science of agriculture, which has been built
-up in the last ten years; by which, with made soils and intensive culture, a
-gardener can raise ten or twelve crops in a season, and two hundred tons of
-vegetables upon a single acre; by which the population of the whole globe could
-be supported on the soil now cultivated in the United States alone! It is
-impossible to apply such methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of our
-scattered farming population; but imagine the problem of providing the food
-supply of our nation once taken in hand systematically and rationally, by
-scientists! All the poor and rocky land set apart for a national timber
-reserve, in which our children play, and our young men hunt, and our poets
-dwell! The most favorable climate and soil for each product selected; the exact
-requirements of the community known, and the acreage figured accordingly; the
-most improved machinery employed, under the direction of expert agricultural
-chemists! I was brought up on a farm, and I know the awful deadliness of farm
-work; and I like to picture it all as it will be after the revolution. To
-picture the great potato-planting machine, drawn by four horses, or an electric
-motor, ploughing the furrow, cutting and dropping and covering the potatoes,
-and planting a score of acres a day! To picture the great potato-digging
-machine, run by electricity, perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field,
-scooping up earth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks! To every
-other kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way&mdash;apples and
-oranges picked by machinery, cows milked by electricity&mdash;things which are
-already done, as you may know. To picture the harvest fields of the future, to
-which millions of happy men and women come for a summer holiday, brought by
-special trains, the exactly needful number to each place! And to contrast all
-this with our present agonizing system of independent small farming,&mdash;a
-stunted, haggard, ignorant man, mated with a yellow, lean, and sad-eyed drudge,
-and toiling from four o&rsquo;clock in the morning until nine at night, working
-the children as soon as they are able to walk, scratching the soil with its
-primitive tools, and shut out from all knowledge and hope, from all their
-benefits of science and invention, and all the joys of the spirit&mdash;held to
-a bare existence by competition in labor, and boasting of his freedom because
-he is too blind to see his chains!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-Dr. Schliemann paused a moment. &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; he continued,
-&ldquo;place beside this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newest discovery
-of physiologists, that most of the ills of the human system are due to
-overfeeding! And then again, it has been proven that meat is unnecessary as a
-food; and meat is obviously more difficult to produce than vegetable food, less
-pleasant to prepare and handle, and more likely to be unclean. But what of
-that, so long as it tickles the palate more strongly?&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;How would Socialism change that?&rdquo; asked the girl-student, quickly.
-It was the first time she had spoken.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&ldquo;So long as we have wage slavery,&rdquo; answered Schliemann, &ldquo;it
-matters not in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may be, it is easy
-to find people to perform it. But just as soon as labor is set free, then the
-price of such work will begin to rise. So one by one the old, dingy, and
-unsanitary factories will come down&mdash;it will be cheaper to build new; and
-so the steamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and so the dangerous
-trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found for their products. In
-exactly the same way, as the citizens of our Industrial Republic become
-refined, year by year the cost of slaughterhouse products will increase; until
-eventually those who want to eat meat will have to do their own
-killing&mdash;and how long do you think the custom would survive then?&mdash;To
-go on to another item&mdash;one of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism
-in a democracy is political corruption; and one of the consequences of civic
-administration by ignorant and vicious politicians, is that preventable
-diseases kill off half our population. And even if science were allowed to try,
-it could do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human
-beings at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They
-are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and the
-conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors in the world
-could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers of contagion,
-poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness impossible for even the
-most selfish. For this reason I would seriously maintain that all the medical
-and surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be of less
-importance than the application of the knowledge we already possess, when the
-disinherited of the earth have established their right to a human
-existence.&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis had noticed that
-the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-table was listening with
-something of the same look that he himself had worn, the time when he had first
-discovered Socialism. Jurgis would have liked to talk to her, he felt sure that
-she would have understood him. Later on in the evening, when the group broke
-up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in a low voice, &ldquo;I wonder if Mr.
-Maynard will still write the same things about Socialism&rdquo;; to which she
-answered, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;but if he does we shall know that he
-is a knave!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p>
-And only a few hours after this came election day&mdash;when the long campaign
-was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold its breath,
-awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of Hinds&rsquo;s Hotel
-could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they hurried off to the big
-hall which the party had hired for that evening.
-</p>
-
-<p>
-But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph instrument on
-the stage had begun clicking off the returns. When the final accounts were made
-up, the Socialist vote proved to be over four hundred thousand&mdash;an
-increase of something like three hundred and fifty per cent in four years. And
-that was doing well; but the party was dependent for its early returns upon
-messages from the locals, and naturally those locals which had been most
-successful were the ones which felt most like reporting; and so that night
-every one in the hall believed that the vote was going to be six, or seven, or
-even eight hundred thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually been
-made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been 6,700 in 1900,
-and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been 9,600, and now it was 69,000!
-So, as the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in, the meeting was a sight to be
-seen. Bulletins would be read, and the people would shout themselves
-hoarse&mdash;and then some one would make a speech, and there would be more
-shouting; and then a brief silence, and more bulletins. There would come
-messages from the secretaries of neighboring states, reporting their
-achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from 2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin
-from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from 4,800 to 36,000! There were telegrams to the
-national office from enthusiastic individuals in little towns which had made
-amazing and unprecedented increases in a single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26
-to 260; Henderson, Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208;
-Cleo, Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin&rsquo;s Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to
-296&mdash;and many more of the same kind. There were literally hundreds of such
-towns; there would be reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch of
-telegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to the audience were old
-campaigners, who had been to the places and helped to make the vote, and could
-make appropriate comments: Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to 831&mdash;that was
-where the mayor had arrested a Socialist speaker! Crawford County, Kansas, from
-285 to 1,975; that was the home of the &ldquo;Appeal to Reason&rdquo;! Battle
-Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the answer of labor to the
-Citizens&rsquo; Alliance Movement!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-And then there were official returns from the various precincts and wards of
-the city itself! Whether it was a factory district or one of the
-&ldquo;silk-stocking&rdquo; wards seemed to make no particular difference in
-the increase; but one of the things which surprised the party leaders most was
-the tremendous vote that came rolling in from the stockyards. Packingtown
-comprised three wards of the city, and the vote in the spring of 1903 had been
-500, and in the fall of the same year, 1,600. Now, only one year later, it was
-over 6,300&mdash;and the Democratic vote only 8,800! There were other wards in
-which the Democratic vote had been actually surpassed, and in two districts,
-members of the state legislature had been elected. Thus Chicago now led the
-country; it had set a new standard for the party, it had shown the workingmen
-the way!
-</p>
-
-<p>
-&mdash;So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs of eyes
-were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheering his every sentence.
-The orator had been the head of the city&rsquo;s relief bureau in the
-stockyards, until the sight of misery and corruption had made him sick. He was
-young, hungry-looking, full of fire; and as he swung his long arms and beat up
-the crowd, to Jurgis he seemed the very spirit of the revolution.
-&ldquo;Organize! Organize! Organize!&rdquo;&mdash;that was his cry. He was
-afraid of this tremendous vote, which his party had not expected, and which it
-had not earned. &ldquo;These men are not Socialists!&rdquo; he cried.
-&ldquo;This election will pass, and the excitement will die, and people will
-forget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink back and rest
-upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that we have polled to-day, and our
-enemies will laugh us to scorn! It rests with you to take your
-resolution&mdash;now, in the flush of victory, to find these men who have voted
-for us, and bring them to our meetings, and organize them and bind them to us!
-We shall not find all our campaigns as easy as this one. Everywhere in the
-country tonight the old party politicians are studying this vote, and setting
-their sails by it; and nowhere will they be quicker or more cunning than here
-in our own city. Fifty thousand Socialist votes in Chicago means a
-municipal-ownership Democracy in the spring! And then they will fool the voters
-once more, and all the powers of plunder and corruption will be swept into
-office again! But whatever they may do when they get in, there is one thing
-they will not do, and that will be the thing for which they were elected! They
-will not give the people of our city municipal ownership&mdash;they will not
-mean to do it, they will not try to do it; all that they will do is give our
-party in Chicago the greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialism in
-America! We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified and self-convicted;
-we shall have the radical Democracy left without a lie with which to cover its
-nakedness! And then will begin the rush that will never be checked, the tide
-that will never turn till it has reached its flood&mdash;that will be
-irresistible, overwhelming&mdash;the rallying of the outraged workingmen of
-Chicago to our standard! And we shall organize them, we shall drill them, we
-shall marshal them for the victory! We shall bear down the opposition, we shall
-sweep if before us&mdash;and <i>Chicago will be ours!</i> Chicago will be ours!
-CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!&rdquo;
-</p>
-
-</div><!--end chapter-->
-
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diff --git a/old/140-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/140-h/images/cover.jpg
deleted file mode 100644
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--- a/old/140-h/images/cover.jpg
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--- a/old/old/140.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,14240 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Jungle
-
-Author: Upton Sinclair
-
-Release Date: March 11, 2006 [EBook #140]
-[This file last updated on September 26, 2010]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUNGLE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Meltzer, Christy Phillips, Scott Coulter,
-Leroy Smith and David Widger
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE JUNGLE
-
-by Upton Sinclair
-
-
-(1906)
-
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 1
-
-
-It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began
-to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the
-exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon
-Marija's broad shoulders--it was her task to see that all things went in
-due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly
-hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and
-exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to see
-that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself. She
-had left the church last of all, and, desiring to arrive first at the
-hall, had issued orders to the coachman to drive faster. When that
-personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Marija had
-flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out, proceeded to
-tell him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not
-understand, and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of
-her in altitude, the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to
-attempt to speak; and the result had been a furious altercation, which,
-continuing all the way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of
-urchins to the cortege at each side street for half a mile.
-
-This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door.
-The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull
-"broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied
-with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing
-the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the
-ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage,
-plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once within, she
-turned and began to push the other way, roaring, meantime, "Eik! Eik!
-Uzdaryk-duris!" in tones which made the orchestral uproar sound like
-fairy music.
-
-"Z. Graiczunas, Pasilinksminimams darzas. Vynas. Sznapsas. Wines and
-Liquors. Union Headquarters"--that was the way the signs ran. The
-reader, who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of
-far-off Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was
-the rear room of a saloon in that part of Chicago known as "back of the
-yards." This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact;
-but how pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood
-that it was also the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of
-God's gentlest creatures, the scene of the wedding feast and the
-joy-transfiguration of little Ona Lukoszaite!
-
-She stood in the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from
-pushing through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon.
-There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and
-her otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress,
-conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders.
-There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright
-green rose leaves. There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands,
-and as she stood staring about her she twisted them together feverishly.
-It was almost too much for her--you could see the pain of too great
-emotion in her face, and all the tremor of her form. She was so
-young--not quite sixteen--and small for her age, a mere child; and she
-had just been married--and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of
-all men, to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of
-his new black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands.
-
-Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Jurgis had great black eyes with
-beetling brows, and thick black hair that curled in waves about his
-ears--in short, they were one of those incongruous and impossible
-married couples with which Mother Nature so often wills to
-confound all prophets, before and after. Jurgis could take up a
-two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and carry it into a car
-without a stagger, or even a thought; and now he stood in a far corner,
-frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his lips with
-his tongue each time before he could answer the congratulations of his
-friends.
-
-Gradually there was effected a separation between the spectators and
-the guests--a separation at least sufficiently complete for working
-purposes. There was no time during the festivities which ensued when
-there were not groups of onlookers in the doorways and the corners;
-and if any one of these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked
-sufficiently hungry, a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the
-feast. It was one of the laws of the veselija that no one goes hungry;
-and, while a rule made in the forests of Lithuania is hard to apply
-in the stockyards district of Chicago, with its quarter of a million
-inhabitants, still they did their best, and the children who ran in
-from the street, and even the dogs, went out again happier. A charming
-informality was one of the characteristics of this celebration. The men
-wore their hats, or, if they wished, they took them off, and their coats
-with them; they ate when and where they pleased, and moved as often as
-they pleased. There were to be speeches and singing, but no one had to
-listen who did not care to; if he wished, meantime, to speak or sing
-himself, he was perfectly free. The resulting medley of sound distracted
-no one, save possibly alone the babies, of which there were present a
-number equal to the total possessed by all the guests invited. There was
-no other place for the babies to be, and so part of the preparations
-for the evening consisted of a collection of cribs and carriages in one
-corner. In these the babies slept, three or four together, or wakened
-together, as the case might be. Those who were still older, and could
-reach the tables, marched about munching contentedly at meat bones and
-bologna sausages.
-
-
-The room is about thirty feet square, with whitewashed walls, bare save
-for a calendar, a picture of a race horse, and a family tree in a gilded
-frame. To the right there is a door from the saloon, with a few loafers
-in the doorway, and in the corner beyond it a bar, with a presiding
-genius clad in soiled white, with waxed black mustaches and a carefully
-oiled curl plastered against one side of his forehead. In the opposite
-corner are two tables, filling a third of the room and laden with
-dishes and cold viands, which a few of the hungrier guests are already
-munching. At the head, where sits the bride, is a snow-white cake, with
-an Eiffel tower of constructed decoration, with sugar roses and two
-angels upon it, and a generous sprinkling of pink and green and yellow
-candies. Beyond opens a door into the kitchen, where there is a glimpse
-to be had of a range with much steam ascending from it, and many women,
-old and young, rushing hither and thither. In the corner to the left are
-the three musicians, upon a little platform, toiling heroically to make
-some impression upon the hubbub; also the babies, similarly occupied,
-and an open window whence the populace imbibes the sights and sounds and
-odors.
-
-Suddenly some of the steam begins to advance, and, peering through it,
-you discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona's stepmother--Teta Elzbieta, as they
-call her--bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is
-Kotrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden;
-and half a minute later there appears old Grandmother Majauszkiene, with
-a big yellow bowl of smoking potatoes, nearly as big as herself. So, bit
-by bit, the feast takes form--there is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut,
-boiled rice, macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of penny buns,
-bowls of milk, and foaming pitchers of beer. There is also, not six feet
-from your back, the bar, where you may order all you please and do not
-have to pay for it. "Eiksz! Graicziau!" screams Marija Berczynskas, and
-falls to work herself--for there is more upon the stove inside that will
-be spoiled if it be not eaten.
-
-So, with laughter and shouts and endless badinage and merriment, the
-guests take their places. The young men, who for the most part have
-been huddled near the door, summon their resolution and advance; and the
-shrinking Jurgis is poked and scolded by the old folks until he consents
-to seat himself at the right hand of the bride. The two bridesmaids,
-whose insignia of office are paper wreaths, come next, and after them
-the rest of the guests, old and young, boys and girls. The spirit of the
-occasion takes hold of the stately bartender, who condescends to a plate
-of stewed duck; even the fat policeman--whose duty it will be, later in
-the evening, to break up the fights--draws up a chair to the foot of the
-table. And the children shout and the babies yell, and every one laughs
-and sings and chatters--while above all the deafening clamor Cousin
-Marija shouts orders to the musicians.
-
-The musicians--how shall one begin to describe them? All this time they
-have been there, playing in a mad frenzy--all of this scene must be
-read, or said, or sung, to music. It is the music which makes it what
-it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of
-a saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little
-corner of the high mansions of the sky.
-
-The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle
-is out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an
-inspired man--the hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays
-like one possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can
-feel them in the air round about him, capering frenetically; with their
-invisible feet they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the
-orchestra rises on end, and his eyeballs start from their sockets, as he
-toils to keep up with them.
-
-Tamoszius Kuszleika is his name, and he has taught himself to play the
-violin by practicing all night, after working all day on the "killing
-beds." He is in his shirt sleeves, with a vest figured with faded gold
-horseshoes, and a pink-striped shirt, suggestive of peppermint candy.
-A pair of military trousers, light blue with a yellow stripe, serve to
-give that suggestion of authority proper to the leader of a band. He is
-only about five feet high, but even so these trousers are about eight
-inches short of the ground. You wonder where he can have gotten them or
-rather you would wonder, if the excitement of being in his presence left
-you time to think of such things.
-
-For he is an inspired man. Every inch of him is inspired--you might
-almost say inspired separately. He stamps with his feet, he tosses his
-head, he sways and swings to and fro; he has a wizened-up little face,
-irresistibly comical; and, when he executes a turn or a flourish, his
-brows knit and his lips work and his eyelids wink--the very ends of
-his necktie bristle out. And every now and then he turns upon his
-companions, nodding, signaling, beckoning frantically--with every inch
-of him appealing, imploring, in behalf of the muses and their call.
-
-For they are hardly worthy of Tamoszius, the other two members of
-the orchestra. The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with
-black-rimmed spectacles and the mute and patient look of an overdriven
-mule; he responds to the whip but feebly, and then always falls
-back into his old rut. The third man is very fat, with a round, red,
-sentimental nose, and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a
-look of infinite yearning. He is playing a bass part upon his cello,
-and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the
-treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note
-after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same
-hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one dollar per
-hour.
-
-Before the feast has been five minutes under way, Tamoszius Kuszleika
-has risen in his excitement; a minute or two more and you see that he is
-beginning to edge over toward the tables. His nostrils are dilated and
-his breath comes fast--his demons are driving him. He nods and shakes
-his head at his companions, jerking at them with his violin, until at
-last the long form of the second violinist also rises up. In the end
-all three of them begin advancing, step by step, upon the banqueters,
-Valentinavyczia, the cellist, bumping along with his instrument between
-notes. Finally all three are gathered at the foot of the tables, and
-there Tamoszius mounts upon a stool.
-
-Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene. Some of the people are
-eating, some are laughing and talking--but you will make a great mistake
-if you think there is one of them who does not hear him. His notes
-are never true, and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and
-scratches on the high; but these things they heed no more than they heed
-the dirt and noise and squalor about them--it is out of this material
-that they have to build their lives, with it that they have to utter
-their souls. And this is their utterance; merry and boisterous, or
-mournful and wailing, or passionate and rebellious, this music is their
-music, music of home. It stretches out its arms to them, they have
-only to give themselves up. Chicago and its saloons and its slums fade
-away--there are green meadows and sunlit rivers, mighty forests and
-snow-clad hills. They behold home landscapes and childhood scenes
-returning; old loves and friendships begin to waken, old joys and griefs
-to laugh and weep. Some fall back and close their eyes, some beat upon
-the table. Now and then one leaps up with a cry and calls for this song
-or that; and then the fire leaps brighter in Tamoszius' eyes, and he
-flings up his fiddle and shouts to his companions, and away they go in
-mad career. The company takes up the choruses, and men and women cry out
-like all possessed; some leap to their feet and stamp upon the floor,
-lifting their glasses and pledging each other. Before long it occurs to
-some one to demand an old wedding song, which celebrates the beauty of
-the bride and the joys of love. In the excitement of this masterpiece
-Tamoszius Kuszleika begins to edge in between the tables, making his
-way toward the head, where sits the bride. There is not a foot of space
-between the chairs of the guests, and Tamoszius is so short that he
-pokes them with his bow whenever he reaches over for the low notes; but
-still he presses in, and insists relentlessly that his companions must
-follow. During their progress, needless to say, the sounds of the cello
-are pretty well extinguished; but at last the three are at the head, and
-Tamoszius takes his station at the right hand of the bride and begins to
-pour out his soul in melting strains.
-
-Little Ona is too excited to eat. Once in a while she tastes a little
-something, when Cousin Marija pinches her elbow and reminds her; but,
-for the most part, she sits gazing with the same fearful eyes of wonder.
-Teta Elzbieta is all in a flutter, like a hummingbird; her sisters,
-too, keep running up behind her, whispering, breathless. But Ona seems
-scarcely to hear them--the music keeps calling, and the far-off look
-comes back, and she sits with her hands pressed together over her heart.
-Then the tears begin to come into her eyes; and as she is ashamed to
-wipe them away, and ashamed to let them run down her cheeks, she turns
-and shakes her head a little, and then flushes red when she sees that
-Jurgis is watching her. When in the end Tamoszius Kuszleika has reached
-her side, and is waving his magic wand above her, Ona's cheeks are
-scarlet, and she looks as if she would have to get up and run away.
-
-In this crisis, however, she is saved by Marija Berczynskas, whom
-the muses suddenly visit. Marija is fond of a song, a song of lovers'
-parting; she wishes to hear it, and, as the musicians do not know it,
-she has risen, and is proceeding to teach them. Marija is short, but
-powerful in build. She works in a canning factory, and all day long she
-handles cans of beef that weigh fourteen pounds. She has a broad
-Slavic face, with prominent red cheeks. When she opens her mouth, it
-is tragical, but you cannot help thinking of a horse. She wears a blue
-flannel shirt-waist, which is now rolled up at the sleeves, disclosing
-her brawny arms; she has a carving fork in her hand, with which she
-pounds on the table to mark the time. As she roars her song, in a voice
-of which it is enough to say that it leaves no portion of the room
-vacant, the three musicians follow her, laboriously and note by note,
-but averaging one note behind; thus they toil through stanza after
-stanza of a lovesick swain's lamentation:--
-
-     "Sudiev' kvietkeli, tu brangiausis;
-     Sudiev' ir laime, man biednam,
-     Matau--paskyre teip Aukszcziausis,
-     Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!"
-
-When the song is over, it is time for the speech, and old Dede Antanas
-rises to his feet. Grandfather Anthony, Jurgis' father, is not more than
-sixty years of age, but you would think that he was eighty. He has been
-only six months in America, and the change has not done him good. In his
-manhood he worked in a cotton mill, but then a coughing fell upon him,
-and he had to leave; out in the country the trouble disappeared, but he
-has been working in the pickle rooms at Durham's, and the breathing of
-the cold, damp air all day has brought it back. Now as he rises he is
-seized with a coughing fit, and holds himself by his chair and turns
-away his wan and battered face until it passes.
-
-Generally it is the custom for the speech at a veselija to be taken out
-of one of the books and learned by heart; but in his youthful days Dede
-Antanas used to be a scholar, and really make up all the love letters
-of his friends. Now it is understood that he has composed an original
-speech of congratulation and benediction, and this is one of the events
-of the day. Even the boys, who are romping about the room, draw near and
-listen, and some of the women sob and wipe their aprons in their eyes.
-It is very solemn, for Antanas Rudkus has become possessed of the idea
-that he has not much longer to stay with his children. His speech leaves
-them all so tearful that one of the guests, Jokubas Szedvilas, who keeps
-a delicatessen store on Halsted Street, and is fat and hearty, is moved
-to rise and say that things may not be as bad as that, and then to go on
-and make a little speech of his own, in which he showers congratulations
-and prophecies of happiness upon the bride and groom, proceeding to
-particulars which greatly delight the young men, but which cause Ona
-to blush more furiously than ever. Jokubas possesses what his
-wife complacently describes as "poetiszka vaidintuve"--a poetical
-imagination.
-
-Now a good many of the guests have finished, and, since there is no
-pretense of ceremony, the banquet begins to break up. Some of the men
-gather about the bar; some wander about, laughing and singing; here
-and there will be a little group, chanting merrily, and in sublime
-indifference to the others and to the orchestra as well. Everybody is
-more or less restless--one would guess that something is on their minds.
-And so it proves. The last tardy diners are scarcely given time to
-finish, before the tables and the debris are shoved into the corner, and
-the chairs and the babies piled out of the way, and the real celebration
-of the evening begins. Then Tamoszius Kuszleika, after replenishing
-himself with a pot of beer, returns to his platform, and, standing up,
-reviews the scene; he taps authoritatively upon the side of his violin,
-then tucks it carefully under his chin, then waves his bow in an
-elaborate flourish, and finally smites the sounding strings and closes
-his eyes, and floats away in spirit upon the wings of a dreamy waltz.
-His companion follows, but with his eyes open, watching where he treads,
-so to speak; and finally Valentinavyczia, after waiting for a little and
-beating with his foot to get the time, casts up his eyes to the ceiling
-and begins to saw--"Broom! broom! broom!"
-
-The company pairs off quickly, and the whole room is soon in motion.
-Apparently nobody knows how to waltz, but that is nothing of any
-consequence--there is music, and they dance, each as he pleases, just
-as before they sang. Most of them prefer the "two-step," especially the
-young, with whom it is the fashion. The older people have dances from
-home, strange and complicated steps which they execute with grave
-solemnity. Some do not dance anything at all, but simply hold each
-other's hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express
-itself with their feet. Among these are Jokubas Szedvilas and his wife,
-Lucija, who together keep the delicatessen store, and consume nearly
-as much as they sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the
-middle of the floor, holding each other fast in their arms, rocking
-slowly from side to side and grinning seraphically, a picture of
-toothless and perspiring ecstasy.
-
-Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail
-of home--an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily colored
-handkerchief, or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons. All these
-things are carefully avoided by the young, most of whom have learned to
-speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing. The girls wear
-ready-made dresses or shirt waists, and some of them look quite pretty.
-Some of the young men you would take to be Americans, of the type of
-clerks, but for the fact that they wear their hats in the room. Each of
-these younger couples affects a style of its own in dancing. Some hold
-each other tightly, some at a cautious distance. Some hold their
-hands out stiffly, some drop them loosely at their sides. Some dance
-springily, some glide softly, some move with grave dignity. There are
-boisterous couples, who tear wildly about the room, knocking every one
-out of their way. There are nervous couples, whom these frighten, and
-who cry, "Nusfok! Kas yra?" at them as they pass. Each couple is paired
-for the evening--you will never see them change about. There is Alena
-Jasaityte, for instance, who has danced unending hours with Juozas
-Raczius, to whom she is engaged. Alena is the beauty of the evening,
-and she would be really beautiful if she were not so proud. She wears
-a white shirtwaist, which represents, perhaps, half a week's labor
-painting cans. She holds her skirt with her hand as she dances, with
-stately precision, after the manner of the grandes dames. Juozas is
-driving one of Durham's wagons, and is making big wages. He affects a
-"tough" aspect, wearing his hat on one side and keeping a cigarette in
-his mouth all the evening. Then there is Jadvyga Marcinkus, who is also
-beautiful, but humble. Jadvyga likewise paints cans, but then she has
-an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by it, and so she
-does not spend her wages for shirtwaists. Jadvyga is small and delicate,
-with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter twisted into a little knot and
-tied on the top of her head. She wears an old white dress which she
-has made herself and worn to parties for the past five years; it is
-high-waisted--almost under her arms, and not very becoming,--but that
-does not trouble Jadvyga, who is dancing with her Mikolas. She is small,
-while he is big and powerful; she nestles in his arms as if she would
-hide herself from view, and leans her head upon his shoulder. He in turn
-has clasped his arms tightly around her, as if he would carry her away;
-and so she dances, and will dance the entire evening, and would dance
-forever, in ecstasy of bliss. You would smile, perhaps, to see them--but
-you would not smile if you knew all the story. This is the fifth year,
-now, that Jadvyga has been engaged to Mikolas, and her heart is sick.
-They would have been married in the beginning, only Mikolas has a father
-who is drunk all day, and he is the only other man in a large family.
-Even so they might have managed it (for Mikolas is a skilled man) but
-for cruel accidents which have almost taken the heart out of them. He is
-a beef-boner, and that is a dangerous trade, especially when you are on
-piecework and trying to earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your
-knife is slippery, and you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens
-to speak to you, or you strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the
-blade, and there is a fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only
-for the deadly contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell.
-Twice now; within the last three years, Mikolas has been lying at home
-with blood poisoning--once for three months and once for nearly seven.
-The last time, too, he lost his job, and that meant six weeks more of
-standing at the doors of the packing houses, at six o'clock on bitter
-winter mornings, with a foot of snow on the ground and more in the air.
-There are learned people who can tell you out of the statistics that
-beef-boners make forty cents an hour, but, perhaps, these people have
-never looked into a beef-boner's hands.
-
-When Tamoszius and his companions stop for a rest, as perforce they
-must, now and then, the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently.
-They never seem to tire; and there is no place for them to sit down
-if they did. It is only for a minute, anyway, for the leader starts up
-again, in spite of all the protests of the other two. This time it is
-another sort of a dance, a Lithuanian dance. Those who prefer to, go on
-with the two-step, but the majority go through an intricate series of
-motions, resembling more fancy skating than a dance. The climax of it is
-a furious prestissimo, at which the couples seize hands and begin a mad
-whirling. This is quite irresistible, and every one in the room joins
-in, until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies quite
-dazzling to look upon. But the sight of sights at this moment is
-Tamoszius Kuszleika. The old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest, but
-Tamoszius has no mercy. The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he
-bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race. His body shakes and
-throbs like a runaway steam engine, and the ear cannot follow the flying
-showers of notes--there is a pale blue mist where you look to see his
-bowing arm. With a most wonderful rush he comes to the end of the tune,
-and flings up his hands and staggers back exhausted; and with a final
-shout of delight the dancers fly apart, reeling here and there, bringing
-up against the walls of the room.
-
-After this there is beer for every one, the musicians included, and
-the revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the
-evening, which is the acziavimas. The acziavimas is a ceremony which,
-once begun, will continue for three or four hours, and it involves one
-uninterrupted dance. The guests form a great ring, locking hands, and,
-when the music starts up, begin to move around in a circle. In the
-center stands the bride, and, one by one, the men step into the
-enclosure and dance with her. Each dances for several minutes--as long
-as he pleases; it is a very merry proceeding, with laughter and singing,
-and when the guest has finished, he finds himself face to face with Teta
-Elzbieta, who holds the hat. Into it he drops a sum of money--a dollar,
-or perhaps five dollars, according to his power, and his estimate of
-the value of the privilege. The guests are expected to pay for this
-entertainment; if they be proper guests, they will see that there is a
-neat sum left over for the bride and bridegroom to start life upon.
-
-Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of this
-entertainment. They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe
-three hundred; and three hundred dollars is more than the year's income
-of many a person in this room. There are able-bodied men here who work
-from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold cellars with a
-quarter of an inch of water on the floor--men who for six or seven
-months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till
-the next Sunday morning--and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in
-a year. There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who can
-hardly see the top of the work benches--whose parents have lied to get
-them their places--and who do not make the half of three hundred dollars
-a year, and perhaps not even the third of it. And then to spend such
-a sum, all in a single day of your life, at a wedding feast! (For
-obviously it is the same thing, whether you spend it at once for your
-own wedding, or in a long time, at the weddings of all your friends.)
-
-It is very imprudent, it is tragic--but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by
-bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this
-they cling with all the power of their souls--they cannot give up the
-veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
-acknowledge defeat--and the difference between these two things is what
-keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off
-time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave
-and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could
-break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that
-once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all
-its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely
-a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about
-and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may
-quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for
-the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the
-memory all his days.
-
-
-Endlessly the dancers swung round and round--when they were dizzy they
-swung the other way. Hour after hour this had continued--the darkness
-had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
-The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only
-one tune, wearily, ploddingly. There were twenty bars or so of it, and
-when they came to the end they began again. Once every ten minutes or so
-they would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back exhausted; a
-circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and terrifying scene,
-that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his sleeping place behind
-the door.
-
-It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who
-cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day
-long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was
-leaving--and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of
-Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or
-by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she would
-go back to the chase of it--and no sooner be fairly started than her
-chariot would be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the stupidity of
-those thrice accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would emit a howl and
-fly at them, shaking her fists in their faces, stamping upon the floor,
-purple and incoherent with rage. In vain the frightened Tamoszius would
-attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would
-the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta
-Elzbieta implore. "Szalin!" Marija would scream. "Palauk! isz kelio!
-What are you paid for, children of hell?" And so, in sheer terror, the
-orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would return to her place
-and take up her task.
-
-She bore all the burden of the festivities now. Ona was kept up by her
-excitement, but all of the women and most of the men were tired--the
-soul of Marija was alone unconquered. She drove on the dancers--what had
-once been the ring had now the shape of a pear, with Marija at the stem,
-pulling one way and pushing the other, shouting, stamping, singing, a
-very volcano of energy. Now and then some one coming in or out would
-leave the door open, and the night air was chill; Marija as she passed
-would stretch out her foot and kick the doorknob, and slam would go
-the door! Once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of which
-Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim. Little Sebastijonas, aged
-three, had been wandering about oblivious to all things, holding turned
-up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as "pop," pink-colored,
-ice-cold, and delicious. Passing through the doorway the door smote
-him full, and the shriek which followed brought the dancing to a halt.
-Marija, who threatened horrid murder a hundred times a day, and would
-weep over the injury of a fly, seized little Sebastijonas in her arms
-and bid fair to smother him with kisses. There was a long rest for the
-orchestra, and plenty of refreshments, while Marija was making her peace
-with her victim, seating him upon the bar, and standing beside him and
-holding to his lips a foaming schooner of beer.
-
-In the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an
-anxious conference between Teta Elzbieta and Dede Antanas, and a few of
-the more intimate friends of the family. A trouble was come upon them.
-The veselija is a compact, a compact not expressed, but therefore only
-the more binding upon all. Every one's share was different--and yet
-every one knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a
-little more. Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all
-this was changing; it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in
-the air that one breathed here--it was affecting all the young men at
-once. They would come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner,
-and then sneak off. One would throw another's hat out of the window, and
-both would go out to get it, and neither could be seen again. Or now
-and then half a dozen of them would get together and march out openly,
-staring at you, and making fun of you to your face. Still others, worse
-yet, would crowd about the bar, and at the expense of the host drink
-themselves sodden, paying not the least attention to any one, and
-leaving it to be thought that either they had danced with the bride
-already, or meant to later on.
-
-All these things were going on now, and the family was helpless with
-dismay. So long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made! Ona
-stood by, her eyes wide with terror. Those frightful bills--how they had
-haunted her, each item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her rest
-at night. How often she had named them over one by one and figured
-on them as she went to work--fifteen dollars for the hall, twenty-two
-dollars and a quarter for the ducks, twelve dollars for the musicians,
-five dollars at the church, and a blessing of the Virgin besides--and so
-on without an end! Worst of all was the frightful bill that was still to
-come from Graiczunas for the beer and liquor that might be consumed.
-One could never get in advance more than a guess as to this from
-a saloon-keeper--and then, when the time came he always came to you
-scratching his head and saying that he had guessed too low, but that he
-had done his best--your guests had gotten so very drunk. By him you
-were sure to be cheated unmercifully, and that even though you thought
-yourself the dearest of the hundreds of friends he had. He would begin
-to serve your guests out of a keg that was half full, and finish with
-one that was half empty, and then you would be charged for two kegs of
-beer. He would agree to serve a certain quality at a certain price, and
-when the time came you and your friends would be drinking some horrible
-poison that could not be described. You might complain, but you would
-get nothing for your pains but a ruined evening; while, as for going to
-law about it, you might as well go to heaven at once. The saloon-keeper
-stood in with all the big politics men in the district; and when you had
-once found out what it meant to get into trouble with such people, you
-would know enough to pay what you were told to pay and shut up.
-
-What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few
-that had really done their best. There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for
-instance--he had already given five dollars, and did not every one know
-that Jokubas Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for two
-hundred dollars to meet several months' overdue rent? And then there was
-withered old poni Aniele--who was a widow, and had three children, and
-the rheumatism besides, and did washing for the tradespeople on Halsted
-Street at prices it would break your heart to hear named. Aniele had
-given the entire profit of her chickens for several months. Eight of
-them she owned, and she kept them in a little place fenced around on her
-backstairs. All day long the children of Aniele were raking in the dump
-for food for these chickens; and sometimes, when the competition there
-was too fierce, you might see them on Halsted Street walking close to
-the gutters, and with their mother following to see that no one robbed
-them of their finds. Money could not tell the value of these chickens
-to old Mrs. Jukniene--she valued them differently, for she had a feeling
-that she was getting something for nothing by means of them--that with
-them she was getting the better of a world that was getting the better
-of her in so many other ways. So she watched them every hour of the day,
-and had learned to see like an owl at night to watch them then. One of
-them had been stolen long ago, and not a month passed that some one
-did not try to steal another. As the frustrating of this one attempt
-involved a score of false alarms, it will be understood what a tribute
-old Mrs. Jukniene brought, just because Teta Elzbieta had once loaned
-her some money for a few days and saved her from being turned out of her
-house.
-
-More and more friends gathered round while the lamentation about
-these things was going on. Some drew nearer, hoping to overhear the
-conversation, who were themselves among the guilty--and surely that was
-a thing to try the patience of a saint. Finally there came Jurgis,
-urged by some one, and the story was retold to him. Jurgis listened in
-silence, with his great black eyebrows knitted. Now and then there would
-come a gleam underneath them and he would glance about the room. Perhaps
-he would have liked to go at some of those fellows with his big clenched
-fists; but then, doubtless, he realized how little good it would do him.
-No bill would be any less for turning out any one at this time; and then
-there would be the scandal--and Jurgis wanted nothing except to get away
-with Ona and to let the world go its own way. So his hands relaxed and
-he merely said quietly: "It is done, and there is no use in weeping,
-Teta Elzbieta." Then his look turned toward Ona, who stood close to his
-side, and he saw the wide look of terror in her eyes. "Little one," he
-said, in a low voice, "do not worry--it will not matter to us. We will
-pay them all somehow. I will work harder." That was always what Jurgis
-said. Ona had grown used to it as the solution of all difficulties--"I
-will work harder!" He had said that in Lithuania when one official had
-taken his passport from him, and another had arrested him for being
-without it, and the two had divided a third of his belongings. He had
-said it again in New York, when the smooth-spoken agent had taken them
-in hand and made them pay such high prices, and almost prevented their
-leaving his place, in spite of their paying. Now he said it a third
-time, and Ona drew a deep breath; it was so wonderful to have a husband,
-just like a grown woman--and a husband who could solve all problems, and
-who was so big and strong!
-
-The last sob of little Sebastijonas has been stifled, and the orchestra
-has once more been reminded of its duty. The ceremony begins again--but
-there are few now left to dance with, and so very soon the collection is
-over and promiscuous dances once more begin. It is now after midnight,
-however, and things are not as they were before. The dancers are dull
-and heavy--most of them have been drinking hard, and have long ago
-passed the stage of exhilaration. They dance in monotonous measure,
-round after round, hour after hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if
-they were only half conscious, in a constantly growing stupor. The men
-grasp the women very tightly, but there will be half an hour together
-when neither will see the other's face. Some couples do not care to
-dance, and have retired to the corners, where they sit with their arms
-enlaced. Others, who have been drinking still more, wander about the
-room, bumping into everything; some are in groups of two or three,
-singing, each group its own song. As time goes on there is a variety
-of drunkenness, among the younger men especially. Some stagger about in
-each other's arms, whispering maudlin words--others start quarrels upon
-the slightest pretext, and come to blows and have to be pulled apart.
-Now the fat policeman wakens definitely, and feels of his club to
-see that it is ready for business. He has to be prompt--for these
-two-o'clock-in-the-morning fights, if they once get out of hand, are
-like a forest fire, and may mean the whole reserves at the station. The
-thing to do is to crack every fighting head that you see, before there
-are so many fighting heads that you cannot crack any of them. There is
-but scant account kept of cracked heads in back of the yards, for men
-who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the
-habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families,
-between times. This makes it a cause for congratulation that by
-modern methods a very few men can do the painfully necessary work of
-head-cracking for the whole of the cultured world.
-
-There is no fight that night--perhaps because Jurgis, too, is
-watchful--even more so than the policeman. Jurgis has drunk a great
-deal, as any one naturally would on an occasion when it all has to be
-paid for, whether it is drunk or not; but he is a very steady man, and
-does not easily lose his temper. Only once there is a tight shave--and
-that is the fault of Marija Berczynskas. Marija has apparently concluded
-about two hours ago that if the altar in the corner, with the deity in
-soiled white, be not the true home of the muses, it is, at any rate,
-the nearest substitute on earth attainable. And Marija is just fighting
-drunk when there come to her ears the facts about the villains who have
-not paid that night. Marija goes on the warpath straight off, without
-even the preliminary of a good cursing, and when she is pulled off it
-is with the coat collars of two villains in her hands. Fortunately, the
-policeman is disposed to be reasonable, and so it is not Marija who is
-flung out of the place.
-
-All this interrupts the music for not more than a minute or two. Then
-again the merciless tune begins--the tune that has been played for the
-last half-hour without one single change. It is an American tune this
-time, one which they have picked up on the streets; all seem to know the
-words of it--or, at any rate, the first line of it, which they hum
-to themselves, over and over again without rest: "In the good old
-summertime--in the good old summertime! In the good old summertime--in
-the good old summertime!" There seems to be something hypnotic about
-this, with its endlessly recurring dominant. It has put a stupor upon
-every one who hears it, as well as upon the men who are playing it. No
-one can get away from it, or even think of getting away from it; it is
-three o'clock in the morning, and they have danced out all their joy,
-and danced out all their strength, and all the strength that unlimited
-drink can lend them--and still there is no one among them who has the
-power to think of stopping. Promptly at seven o'clock this same Monday
-morning they will every one of them have to be in their places at
-Durham's or Brown's or Jones's, each in his working clothes. If one of
-them be a minute late, he will be docked an hour's pay, and if he be
-many minutes late, he will be apt to find his brass check turned to the
-wall, which will send him out to join the hungry mob that waits every
-morning at the gates of the packing houses, from six o'clock until
-nearly half-past eight. There is no exception to this rule, not even
-little Ona--who has asked for a holiday the day after her wedding day,
-a holiday without pay, and been refused. While there are so many who
-are anxious to work as you wish, there is no occasion for incommoding
-yourself with those who must work otherwise.
-
-Little Ona is nearly ready to faint--and half in a stupor herself,
-because of the heavy scent in the room. She has not taken a drop, but
-every one else there is literally burning alcohol, as the lamps are
-burning oil; some of the men who are sound asleep in their chairs or
-on the floor are reeking of it so that you cannot go near them. Now
-and then Jurgis gazes at her hungrily--he has long since forgotten his
-shyness; but then the crowd is there, and he still waits and watches the
-door, where a carriage is supposed to come. It does not, and finally he
-will wait no longer, but comes up to Ona, who turns white and trembles.
-He puts her shawl about her and then his own coat. They live only two
-blocks away, and Jurgis does not care about the carriage.
-
-There is almost no farewell--the dancers do not notice them, and all
-of the children and many of the old folks have fallen asleep of sheer
-exhaustion. Dede Antanas is asleep, and so are the Szedvilases, husband
-and wife, the former snoring in octaves. There is Teta Elzbieta, and
-Marija, sobbing loudly; and then there is only the silent night, with
-the stars beginning to pale a little in the east. Jurgis, without a
-word, lifts Ona in his arms, and strides out with her, and she sinks her
-head upon his shoulder with a moan. When he reaches home he is not sure
-whether she has fainted or is asleep, but when he has to hold her with
-one hand while he unlocks the door, he sees that she has opened her
-eyes.
-
-"You shall not go to Brown's today, little one," he whispers, as he
-climbs the stairs; and she catches his arm in terror, gasping: "No! No!
-I dare not! It will ruin us!"
-
-But he answers her again: "Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn
-more money--I will work harder."
-
-
-
-Chapter 2
-
-
-Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young. They told him
-stories about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of
-Chicago, and of what had happened to them afterward--stories to make
-your flesh creep, but Jurgis would only laugh. He had only been there
-four months, and he was young, and a giant besides. There was too much
-health in him. He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten.
-"That is well enough for men like you," he would say, "silpnas, puny
-fellows--but my back is broad."
-
-Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country. He was the sort of man
-the bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they
-cannot get hold of. When he was told to go to a certain place, he would
-go there on the run. When he had nothing to do for the moment, he would
-stand round fidgeting, dancing, with the overflow of energy that was
-in him. If he were working in a line of men, the line always moved
-too slowly for him, and you could pick him out by his impatience and
-restlessness. That was why he had been picked out on one important
-occasion; for Jurgis had stood outside of Brown and Company's "Central
-Time Station" not more than half an hour, the second day of his arrival
-in Chicago, before he had been beckoned by one of the bosses. Of this he
-was very proud, and it made him more disposed than ever to laugh at the
-pessimists. In vain would they all tell him that there were men in that
-crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a month--yes,
-many months--and not been chosen yet. "Yes," he would say, "but what
-sort of men? Broken-down tramps and good-for-nothings, fellows who have
-spent all their money drinking, and want to get more for it. Do you want
-me to believe that with these arms"--and he would clench his fists and
-hold them up in the air, so that you might see the rolling muscles--"that
-with these arms people will ever let me starve?"
-
-"It is plain," they would answer to this, "that you have come from the
-country, and from very far in the country." And this was the fact, for
-Jurgis had never seen a city, and scarcely even a fair-sized town, until
-he had set out to make his fortune in the world and earn his right
-to Ona. His father, and his father's father before him, and as many
-ancestors back as legend could go, had lived in that part of Lithuania
-known as Brelovicz, the Imperial Forest. This is a great tract of a
-hundred thousand acres, which from time immemorial has been a hunting
-preserve of the nobility. There are a very few peasants settled in it,
-holding title from ancient times; and one of these was Antanas Rudkus,
-who had been reared himself, and had reared his children in turn, upon
-half a dozen acres of cleared land in the midst of a wilderness. There
-had been one son besides Jurgis, and one sister. The former had been
-drafted into the army; that had been over ten years ago, but since that
-day nothing had ever been heard of him. The sister was married, and her
-husband had bought the place when old Antanas had decided to go with his
-son.
-
-It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a
-horse fair a hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get
-married--he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into;
-but here, without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than
-the exchange of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the
-face with embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to
-him for his wife--and offering his father's two horses he had been sent
-to the fair to sell. But Ona's father proved as a rock--the girl was yet
-a child, and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in
-that way. So Jurgis went home with a heavy heart, and that spring and
-summer toiled and tried hard to forget. In the fall, after the harvest
-was over, he saw that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight's
-journey that lay between him and Ona.
-
-He found an unexpected state of affairs--for the girl's father had died,
-and his estate was tied up with creditors; Jurgis' heart leaped as he
-realized that now the prize was within his reach. There was Elzbieta
-Lukoszaite, Teta, or Aunt, as they called her, Ona's stepmother, and
-there were her six children, of all ages. There was also her brother
-Jonas, a dried-up little man who had worked upon the farm. They were
-people of great consequence, as it seemed to Jurgis, fresh out of the
-woods; Ona knew how to read, and knew many other things that he did
-not know, and now the farm had been sold, and the whole family was
-adrift--all they owned in the world being about seven hundred rubles
-which is half as many dollars. They would have had three times that, but
-it had gone to court, and the judge had decided against them, and it had
-cost the balance to get him to change his decision.
-
-Ona might have married and left them, but she would not, for she loved
-Teta Elzbieta. It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America,
-where a friend of his had gotten rich. He would work, for his part, and
-the women would work, and some of the children, doubtless--they would
-live somehow. Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country
-where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day; and Jurgis
-figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as they were
-where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and
-marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor,
-a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did
-not have to pay out his money to rascally officials--he might do as he
-pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. So America was a
-place of which lovers and young people dreamed. If one could only manage
-to get the price of a passage, he could count his troubles at an end.
-
-It was arranged that they should leave the following spring, and
-meantime Jurgis sold himself to a contractor for a certain time, and
-tramped nearly four hundred miles from home with a gang of men to work
-upon a railroad in Smolensk. This was a fearful experience, with filth
-and bad food and cruelty and overwork; but Jurgis stood it and came out
-in fine trim, and with eighty rubles sewed up in his coat. He did not
-drink or fight, because he was thinking all the time of Ona; and for the
-rest, he was a quiet, steady man, who did what he was told to, did not
-lose his temper often, and when he did lose it made the offender anxious
-that he should not lose it again. When they paid him off he dodged the
-company gamblers and dramshops, and so they tried to kill him; but he
-escaped, and tramped it home, working at odd jobs, and sleeping always
-with one eye open.
-
-So in the summer time they had all set out for America. At the last
-moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona's.
-Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer
-of Vilna, who beat her regularly. It was only at the age of twenty that
-it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen up and
-nearly murdered the man, and then come away.
-
-There were twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children--and
-Ona, who was a little of both. They had a hard time on the passage;
-there was an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got
-them into a trap with some officials, and cost them a good deal of
-their precious money, which they clung to with such horrible fear. This
-happened to them again in New York--for, of course, they knew nothing
-about the country, and had no one to tell them, and it was easy for a
-man in a blue uniform to lead them away, and to take them to a hotel and
-keep them there, and make them pay enormous charges to get away. The law
-says that the rate card shall be on the door of a hotel, but it does not
-say that it shall be in Lithuanian.
-
-
-It was in the stockyards that Jonas' friend had gotten rich, and so to
-Chicago the party was bound. They knew that one word, Chicago and that
-was all they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city.
-Then, tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off
-than before; they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with
-its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize that
-they had arrived, and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer
-pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed,
-or went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in their
-helplessness; above all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort
-of person in official uniform, and so whenever they saw a policeman they
-would cross the street and hurry by. For the whole of the first day they
-wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion, utterly lost; and
-it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a house, they
-were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station. In the
-morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon a
-car, and taught a new word--"stockyards." Their delight at discovering
-that they were to get out of this adventure without losing another share
-of their possessions it would not be possible to describe.
-
-They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which
-seemed to run on forever, mile after mile--thirty-four of them, if they
-had known it--and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched
-little two-story frame buildings. Down every side street they could see,
-it was the same--never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same
-endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there
-would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores
-and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a railroad
-crossing, with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing, and
-rattling freight cars filing by; here and there would be a great
-factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows in it, and immense
-volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys, darkening the air above and
-making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these interruptions,
-the desolate procession would begin again--the procession of dreary
-little buildings.
-
-A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the
-perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time, and
-upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as
-the train sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields were
-grown parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and bare. And along
-with the thickening smoke they began to notice another circumstance, a
-strange, pungent odor. They were not sure that it was unpleasant, this
-odor; some might have called it sickening, but their taste in odors was
-not developed, and they were only sure that it was curious. Now, sitting
-in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the
-home of it--that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it.
-It was now no longer something far off and faint, that you caught in
-whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell it--you could
-take hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure. They were
-divided in their opinions about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and
-crude; it was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There were some
-who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant; there were others who put
-their handkerchiefs to their faces. The new emigrants were still tasting
-it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came to a halt, and the door
-was flung open, and a voice shouted--"Stockyards!"
-
-They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street
-there were two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half
-a dozen chimneys, tall as the tallest of buildings, touching the very
-sky--and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily,
-and black as night. It might have come from the center of the world,
-this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder. It came as if
-self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was
-inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great
-streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing,
-curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the
-sky, stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach.
-
-Then the party became aware of another strange thing. This, too, like
-the color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of ten
-thousand little sounds. You scarcely noticed it at first--it sunk into
-your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble. It was like the
-murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it
-suggested endless activity, the rumblings of a world in motion. It was
-only by an effort that one could realize that it was made by animals,
-that it was the distant lowing of ten thousand cattle, the distant
-grunting of ten thousand swine.
-
-They would have liked to follow it up, but, alas, they had no time for
-adventures just then. The policeman on the corner was beginning to watch
-them; and so, as usual, they started up the street. Scarcely had they
-gone a block, however, before Jonas was heard to give a cry, and began
-pointing excitedly across the street. Before they could gather the
-meaning of his breathless ejaculations he had bounded away, and they saw
-him enter a shop, over which was a sign: "J. Szedvilas, Delicatessen."
-When he came out again it was in company with a very stout gentleman in
-shirt sleeves and an apron, clasping Jonas by both hands and laughing
-hilariously. Then Teta Elzbieta recollected suddenly that Szedvilas
-had been the name of the mythical friend who had made his fortune in
-America. To find that he had been making it in the delicatessen business
-was an extraordinary piece of good fortune at this juncture; though it
-was well on in the morning, they had not breakfasted, and the children
-were beginning to whimper.
-
-Thus was the happy ending to a woeful voyage. The two families literally
-fell upon each other's necks--for it had been years since Jokubas
-Szedvilas had met a man from his part of Lithuania. Before half the day
-they were lifelong friends. Jokubas understood all the pitfalls of this
-new world, and could explain all of its mysteries; he could tell them
-the things they ought to have done in the different emergencies--and
-what was still more to the point, he could tell them what to do now. He
-would take them to poni Aniele, who kept a boardinghouse the other side
-of the yards; old Mrs. Jukniene, he explained, had not what one would
-call choice accommodations, but they might do for the moment. To this
-Teta Elzbieta hastened to respond that nothing could be too cheap to
-suit them just then; for they were quite terrified over the sums they
-had had to expend. A very few days of practical experience in this land
-of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact
-that it was also a land of high prices, and that in it the poor man
-was almost as poor as in any other corner of the earth; and so there
-vanished in a night all the wonderful dreams of wealth that had been
-haunting Jurgis. What had made the discovery all the more painful was
-that they were spending, at American prices, money which they had earned
-at home rates of wages--and so were really being cheated by the world!
-The last two days they had all but starved themselves--it made them
-quite sick to pay the prices that the railroad people asked them for
-food.
-
-Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but
-recoil, even so, in all their journey they had seen nothing so bad as
-this. Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of
-two-story frame tenements that lie "back of the yards." There were four
-such flats in each building, and each of the four was a "boardinghouse"
-for the occupancy of foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or
-Bohemians. Some of these places were kept by private persons, some were
-cooperative. There would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each
-room--sometimes there were thirteen or fourteen to one room, fifty
-or sixty to a flat. Each one of the occupants furnished his own
-accommodations--that is, a mattress and some bedding. The mattresses
-would be spread upon the floor in rows--and there would be nothing else
-in the place except a stove. It was by no means unusual for two men
-to own the same mattress in common, one working by day and using it by
-night, and the other working at night and using it in the daytime. Very
-frequently a lodging house keeper would rent the same beds to double
-shifts of men.
-
-Mrs. Jukniene was a wizened-up little woman, with a wrinkled face. Her
-home was unthinkably filthy; you could not enter by the front door at
-all, owing to the mattresses, and when you tried to go up the backstairs
-you found that she had walled up most of the porch with old boards
-to make a place to keep her chickens. It was a standing jest of the
-boarders that Aniele cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in
-the rooms. Undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin, but it seemed
-probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old lady regarded
-it rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms. The truth
-was that she had definitely given up the idea of cleaning anything,
-under pressure of an attack of rheumatism, which had kept her doubled up
-in one corner of her room for over a week; during which time eleven of
-her boarders, heavily in her debt, had concluded to try their chances of
-employment in Kansas City. This was July, and the fields were green. One
-never saw the fields, nor any green thing whatever, in Packingtown; but
-one could go out on the road and "hobo it," as the men phrased it, and
-see the country, and have a long rest, and an easy time riding on the
-freight cars.
-
-
-Such was the home to which the new arrivals were welcomed. There was
-nothing better to be had--they might not do so well by looking further,
-for Mrs. Jukniene had at least kept one room for herself and her three
-little children, and now offered to share this with the women and the
-girls of the party. They could get bedding at a secondhand store,
-she explained; and they would not need any, while the weather was so
-hot--doubtless they would all sleep on the sidewalk such nights as this,
-as did nearly all of her guests. "Tomorrow," Jurgis said, when they were
-left alone, "tomorrow I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get one
-also; and then we can get a place of our own."
-
-Later that afternoon he and Ona went out to take a walk and look about
-them, to see more of this district which was to be their home. In back
-of the yards the dreary two-story frame houses were scattered farther
-apart, and there were great spaces bare--that seemingly had been
-overlooked by the great sore of a city as it spread itself over the
-surface of the prairie. These bare places were grown up with dingy,
-yellow weeds, hiding innumerable tomato cans; innumerable children
-played upon them, chasing one another here and there, screaming and
-fighting. The most uncanny thing about this neighborhood was the number
-of the children; you thought there must be a school just out, and it was
-only after long acquaintance that you were able to realize that
-there was no school, but that these were the children of the
-neighborhood--that there were so many children to the block in
-Packingtown that nowhere on its streets could a horse and buggy move
-faster than a walk!
-
-It could not move faster anyhow, on account of the state of the streets.
-Those through which Jurgis and Ona were walking resembled streets less
-than they did a miniature topographical map. The roadway was commonly
-several feet lower than the level of the houses, which were sometimes
-joined by high board walks; there were no pavements--there were
-mountains and valleys and rivers, gullies and ditches, and great hollows
-full of stinking green water. In these pools the children played, and
-rolled about in the mud of the streets; here and there one noticed them
-digging in it, after trophies which they had stumbled on. One wondered
-about this, as also about the swarms of flies which hung about the
-scene, literally blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor which
-assailed one's nostrils, a ghastly odor, of all the dead things of the
-universe. It impelled the visitor to questions and then the residents
-would explain, quietly, that all this was "made" land, and that it had
-been "made" by using it as a dumping ground for the city garbage. After
-a few years the unpleasant effect of this would pass away, it was said;
-but meantime, in hot weather--and especially when it rained--the flies
-were apt to be annoying. Was it not unhealthful? the stranger would ask,
-and the residents would answer, "Perhaps; but there is no telling."
-
-A little way farther on, and Jurgis and Ona, staring open-eyed and
-wondering, came to the place where this "made" ground was in process of
-making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square, and with
-long files of garbage wagons creeping into it. The place had an odor
-for which there are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over with
-children, who raked in it from dawn till dark. Sometimes visitors from
-the packing houses would wander out to see this "dump," and they would
-stand by and debate as to whether the children were eating the food they
-got, or merely collecting it for the chickens at home. Apparently none
-of them ever went down to find out.
-
-Beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys.
-First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it
-up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous
-arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America. A
-little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and not
-yet filled up. This held water, and all summer it stood there, with the
-near-by soil draining into it, festering and stewing in the sun; and
-then, when winter came, somebody cut the ice on it, and sold it to the
-people of the city. This, too, seemed to the newcomers an economical
-arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and their heads were
-not full of troublesome thoughts about "germs."
-
-They stood there while the sun went down upon this scene, and the sky in
-the west turned blood-red, and the tops of the houses shone like fire.
-Jurgis and Ona were not thinking of the sunset, however--their backs
-were turned to it, and all their thoughts were of Packingtown, which
-they could see so plainly in the distance. 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. It was a study in colors now, this smoke; in the
-sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple. All the sordid
-suggestions of the place were gone--in the twilight it was a vision of
-power. To the two who stood watching while the darkness swallowed it up,
-it seemed a dream of wonder, with its talc of human energy, of things
-being done, of employment for thousands upon thousands of men, of
-opportunity and freedom, of life and love and joy. When they came away,
-arm in arm, Jurgis was saying, "Tomorrow I shall go there and get a
-job!"
-
-
-
-Chapter 3
-
-
-In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many
-acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed
-by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment.
-Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could
-get some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, after
-consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and with
-Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself,
-unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in
-this. He had gone to Brown's and stood there not more than half an hour
-before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and
-signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the point:
-
-"Speak English?"
-
-"No; Lit-uanian." (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.)
-
-"Job?"
-
-"Je." (A nod.)
-
-"Worked here before?"
-
-"No 'stand."
-
-(Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorous shakes of
-the head by Jurgis.)
-
-"Shovel guts?"
-
-"No 'stand." (More shakes of the head.)
-
-"Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!" (Imitative motions.)
-
-"Je."
-
-"See door. Durys?" (Pointing.)
-
-"Je."
-
-"To-morrow, seven o'clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys! Septyni!"
-
-"Dekui, tamistai!" (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis turned
-away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph
-swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a
-run. He had a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if
-upon wings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the
-numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep.
-
-Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received
-encouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be done
-that day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband
-sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas did
-this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors
-over his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these wonders
-had grown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in them. The
-packers might own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and there was
-no one to say nay to this.
-
-
-They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was still
-early morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity. A steady
-stream of employees was pouring through the gate--employees of the
-higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such. For the
-women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set off at a gallop
-as fast as they were filled. In the distance there was heard again
-the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling. They
-followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circus
-menagerie--which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled. They crossed
-the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pens
-full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurried
-them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from which
-everything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with
-wonder.
-
-There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half
-of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can
-reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled--so many
-cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black,
-white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing
-bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and
-fierce, long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all
-the barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them--it would have
-taken all day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys,
-blocked at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of
-these gates was twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently been reading
-a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that, and he
-was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with
-wonder. Jurgis too had a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just
-gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this
-marvelous machine? Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon
-horseback, booted, and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling
-to each other, and to those who were driving the cattle. They were
-drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and
-commission merchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses.
-
-Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there
-would be a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drop
-his whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his
-little book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning.
-Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be
-weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds
-at once and record it automatically. It was near to the east entrance
-that they stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the
-railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle.
-All night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by
-tonight they would all be empty, and the same thing would be done again.
-
-"And what will become of all these creatures?" cried Teta Elzbieta.
-
-"By tonight," Jokubas answered, "they will all be killed and cut up;
-and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more railroad
-tracks, where the cars come to take them away."
-
-There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their
-guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of
-cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep--which meant
-some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year.
-One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the
-tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were
-groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about
-fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the
-stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them,
-pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our
-friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors
-of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it
-all. The chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up--to the very
-top of the distant buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went
-up by the power of their own legs, and then their weight carried them
-back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork.
-
-"They don't waste anything here," said the guide, and then he laughed
-and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated
-friends should take to be his own: "They use everything about the hog
-except the squeal." In front of Brown's General Office building there
-grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit
-of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his
-squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor
-that you will find there.
-
-After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street,
-to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These
-buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of
-Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from
-which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many
-of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those products
-with the wonders of which they pestered him so--by placards that defaced
-the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the
-newspapers and magazines--by silly little jingles that he could not get
-out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every
-street corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and
-Bacon, Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was the
-headquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast Bacon,
-Durham's Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!
-
-Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other
-visitors waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them
-through the place. They make a great feature of showing strangers
-through the packing plants, for it is a good advertisement. But Ponas
-Jokubas whispered maliciously that the visitors did not see any more
-than the packers wanted them to. They climbed a long series of stairways
-outside of the building, to the top of its five or six stories. Here was
-the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there
-was a place for them to rest to cool off, and then through another
-passageway they went into a room from which there is no returning for
-hogs.
-
-It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At the
-head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference,
-with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel
-there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their
-journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and
-bare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stopped
-while men were cleaning up. In a minute or two, however, it began slowly
-to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They
-had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the
-other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel.
-So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and
-borne aloft.
-
-At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek;
-the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back.
-The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for
-once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of
-the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the
-room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another,
-until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and
-kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous
-to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to
-hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high
-squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a
-momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up
-to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men
-would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand
-with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears
-starting in their eyes.
-
-Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were
-going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors
-made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and
-one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long
-line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at
-last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of
-boiling water.
-
-It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was
-porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet
-somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the
-hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were
-so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights!
-They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury,
-as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded,
-impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of
-a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering
-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime
-committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and
-of memory.
-
-One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical,
-without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog
-squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was
-nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where
-they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was
-a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were
-brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and
-lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his
-own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full
-of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And
-trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a
-black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway.
-Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg.
-Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were
-nothing to it--it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his
-feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched
-him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere
-a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these
-hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his
-arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him
-the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all this was in
-the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on with the
-rest of the party, and muttered: "Dieve--but I'm glad I'm not a hog!"
-
-The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it
-fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine
-with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape
-of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its
-bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent
-upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men,
-who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to
-the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a leg; another
-scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift stroke cut the
-throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fell
-to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit down
-the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the
-breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out--and
-they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrape
-each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the
-carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one saw,
-creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and
-for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him. At
-the end of this hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone
-over several times; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where
-it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself
-in a forest of freezing hogs.
-
-Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a
-government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in
-the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the
-manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted
-by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his
-testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter
-into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature
-of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was
-talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a
-dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue
-uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to
-the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the
-things which were done in Durham's.
-
-Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring
-open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest
-of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed
-by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he
-took it all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding
-immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the
-cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering
-to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be
-doctored.
-
-The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials
-were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for
-sausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening
-stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another room
-came all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping off
-the grease to make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and
-this, too, was a region in which the visitors did not linger. In still
-other places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been
-through the chilling rooms. First there were the "splitters," the most
-expert workmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour,
-and did not a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle. Then there
-were "cleaver men," great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men
-to attend him--to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table,
-and hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he
-might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long,
-and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his
-implement did not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough
-force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning
-holes there slipped to the floor below--to one room hams, to another
-forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go down to this floor
-and see the pickling rooms, where the hams were put into vats, and the
-great smoke rooms, with their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they
-prepared salt pork--there were whole cellars full of it, built up in
-great towers to the ceiling. In yet other rooms they were putting up
-meats in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper,
-sealing and labeling and sewing them. From the doors of these rooms went
-men with loaded trucks, to the platform where freight cars were waiting
-to be filled; and one went out there and realized with a start that he
-had come at last to the ground floor of this enormous building.
-
-Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing
-of beef--where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into
-meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one
-floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to
-the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved
-from one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a
-picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great room,
-like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the
-center.
-
-Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the
-floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads which
-gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were
-prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no
-room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging, over
-the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with a
-sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed
-with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the
-steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed on to
-another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was
-raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out to
-the "killing bed." Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed
-another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There were
-fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of
-minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then once
-more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of
-each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon
-the killing beds had to get out of the way.
-
-The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never
-forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the
-run--at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a
-football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his
-task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific
-cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses,
-making these cuts upon each. First there came the "butcher," to bleed
-them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see
-it--only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the
-man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was
-pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with blood,
-in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes;
-it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this
-by watching the men at work.
-
-The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost,
-however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always
-ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the "headsman,"
-whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes.
-Then came the "floorsman," to make the first cut in the skin; and then
-another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a
-dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning. After they were
-through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick
-examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another
-rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the
-floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and
-men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There
-were some with hose which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and
-others who removed the feet and added the final touches. In the end, as
-with the hogs, the finished beef was run into the chilling room, to hang
-its appointed time.
-
-The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows,
-labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors--and
-some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the
-sign of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the
-orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the
-building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material
-that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the
-salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice
-meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be
-eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went
-outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done
-the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a
-thing needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for
-themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity
-plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was a
-building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard; and
-then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for making
-soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were cleaned
-and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things; there was a
-building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was another where
-heads and feet were made into glue, and another where bones were made
-into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in
-Durham's. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs, buttons,
-hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones
-they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of
-the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into
-glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews
-came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass,
-and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had
-curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the
-sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and albumen
-from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails. When
-there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they first put it into a
-tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease, and then they made it
-into fertilizer. All these industries were gathered into buildings near
-by, connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment;
-and it was estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a
-billion of animals since the founding of the plant by the elder Durham
-a generation and more ago. If you counted with it the other big
-plants--and they were now really all one--it was, so Jokubas informed
-them, the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in
-one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it supported directly two
-hundred and fifty thousand people in its neighborhood, and indirectly it
-supported half a million. It sent its products to every country in
-the civilized world, and it furnished the food for no less than thirty
-million people!
-
-To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed--it seemed
-to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been
-devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity
-to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing
-as tremendous as the universe--the laws and ways of its working no more
-than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere man
-could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found
-it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in
-its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was
-grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad that he had
-not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for he felt that the
-size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had been admitted--he
-was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this whole huge
-establishment had taken him under its protection, and had become
-responsible for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant of the
-nature of business, that he did not even realize that he had become an
-employee of Brown's, and that Brown and Durham were supposed by all the
-world to be deadly rivals--were even required to be deadly rivals by the
-law of the land, and ordered to try to ruin each other under penalty of
-fine and imprisonment!
-
-
-
-Chapter 4
-
-
-Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work. He came
-to the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for
-nearly two hours. The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said
-this, and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that
-he came upon Jurgis. He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not
-understand a word of it he did not object. He followed the boss, who
-showed him where to put his street clothes, and waited while he donned
-the working clothes he had bought in a secondhand shop and brought with
-him in a bundle; then he led him to the "killing beds." The work which
-Jurgis was to do here was very simple, and it took him but a few minutes
-to learn it. He was provided with a stiff besom, such as is used by
-street sweepers, and it was his place to follow down the line the man
-who drew out the smoking entrails from the carcass of the steer; this
-mass was to be swept into a trap, which was then closed, so that no one
-might slip into it. As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of the morning
-were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look
-about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work. It was a
-sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot blood--one
-waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering, but to
-Jurgis it was nothing. His whole soul was dancing with joy--he was at
-work at last! He was at work and earning money! All day long he was
-figuring to himself. He was paid the fabulous sum of seventeen and a
-half cents an hour; and as it proved a rush day and he worked until
-nearly seven o'clock in the evening, he went home to the family with
-the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar and a half in a single
-day!
-
-At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that
-there was quite a celebration in Aniele's hall bedroom. Jonas had been
-to have an interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had
-introduced him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with
-the result that one had promised him a job the beginning of the next
-week. And then there was Marija Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy by
-the success of Jurgis, had set out upon her own responsibility to get a
-place. Marija had nothing to take with her save her two brawny arms
-and the word "job," laboriously learned; but with these she had marched
-about Packingtown all day, entering every door where there were signs of
-activity. Out of some she had been ordered with curses; but Marija was
-not afraid of man or devil, and asked every one she saw--visitors and
-strangers, or work-people like herself, and once or twice even high and
-lofty office personages, who stared at her as if they thought she was
-crazy. In the end, however, she had reaped her reward. In one of the
-smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room where scores of women and
-girls were sitting at long tables preparing smoked beef in cans; and
-wandering through room after room, Marija came at last to the place
-where the sealed cans were being painted and labeled, and here she had
-the good fortune to encounter the "forelady." Marija did not understand
-then, as she was destined to understand later, what there was attractive
-to a "forelady" about the combination of a face full of boundless good
-nature and the muscles of a dray horse; but the woman had told her to
-come the next day and she would perhaps give her a chance to learn the
-trade of painting cans. The painting of cans being skilled piecework,
-and paying as much as two dollars a day, Marija burst in upon the family
-with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell to capering about the room
-so as to frighten the baby almost into convulsions.
-
-Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was
-only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta
-Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help
-her. He would not have Ona working--he was not that sort of a man, he
-said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing
-if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of
-the board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the
-children go to work--there were schools here in America for children,
-Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. That the priest
-would object to these schools was something of which he had as yet no
-idea, and for the present his mind was made up that the children of Teta
-Elzbieta should have as fair a chance as any other children. The oldest
-of them, little Stanislovas, was but thirteen, and small for his age
-at that; and while the oldest son of Szedvilas was only twelve, and had
-worked for over a year at Jones's, Jurgis would have it that Stanislovas
-should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled man.
-
-So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest
-too, but he was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and,
-besides, the old man would not hear it spoken of--it was his whim to
-insist that he was as lively as any boy. He had come to America as
-full of hope as the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that
-worried his son. For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it
-was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown.
-Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had
-grown old in their own service--to say nothing of taking on new ones.
-And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in
-America, so far as he knew. To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the
-policeman, and brought back the message that the thing was not to be
-thought of. They had not told this to old Anthony, who had consequently
-spent the two days wandering about from one part of the yards to
-another, and had now come home to hear about the triumph of the others,
-smiling bravely and saying that it would be his turn another day.
-
-Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a
-home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held
-consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty
-subject. Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two
-boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that there
-were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled it up
-and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had been
-talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with the
-result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.
-
-He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was nearly
-two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors
-so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of the
-placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling.
-The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house
-itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a two-story
-building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork around the
-edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the doorknob, and
-there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains in the windows.
-Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and wife
-in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a cradle, with
-fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub hovering upon
-silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of all this should
-be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and German--"Dom.
-Namai. Heim." "Why pay rent?" the linguistic circular went on to demand.
-"Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for less
-than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied
-by happy families."--So it became eloquent, picturing the blissfulness
-of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It even quoted "Home,
-Sweet Home," and made bold to translate it into Polish--though for some
-reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this. Perhaps the translator found
-it a difficult matter to be sentimental in a language in which a sob is
-known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.
-
-Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its
-contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a
-basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the
-lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down,
-the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These were
-frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked about
-such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a
-rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was no way of doing
-better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two rooms, as
-at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever, and be
-no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra expense in the
-beginning, there would at last come a time when they would not have any
-rent to pay for the rest of their lives.
-
-They figured it up. There was a little left of the money belonging to
-Teta Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis. Marija had about
-fifty dollars pinned up somewhere in her stockings, and Grandfather
-Anthony had part of the money he had gotten for his farm. If they all
-combined, they would have enough to make the first payment; and if
-they had employment, so that they could be sure of the future, it might
-really prove the best plan. It was, of course, not a thing even to be
-talked of lightly; it was a thing they would have to sift to the bottom.
-And yet, on the other hand, if they were going to make the venture, the
-sooner they did it the better, for were they not paying rent all the
-time, and living in a most horrible way besides? Jurgis was used to
-dirt--there was nothing could scare a man who had been with a railroad
-gang, where one could gather up the fleas off the floor of the sleeping
-room by the handful. But that sort of thing would not do for Ona. They
-must have a better place of some sort soon--Jurgis said it with all the
-assurance of a man who had just made a dollar and fifty-seven cents in
-a single day. Jurgis was at a loss to understand why, with wages as they
-were, so many of the people of this district should live the way they
-did.
-
-The next day Marija went to see her "forelady," and was told to report
-the first of the week, and learn the business of can-painter. Marija
-went home, singing out loud all the way, and was just in time to join
-Ona and her stepmother as they were setting out to go and make inquiry
-concerning the house. That evening the three made their report to the
-men--the thing was altogether as represented in the circular, or at any
-rate so the agent had said. The houses lay to the south, about a mile
-and a half from the yards; they were wonderful bargains, the gentleman
-had assured them--personally, and for their own good. He could do this,
-so he explained to them, for the reason that he had himself no interest
-in their sale--he was merely the agent for a company that had built
-them. These were the last, and the company was going out of business, so
-if any one wished to take advantage of this wonderful no-rent plan, he
-would have to be very quick. As a matter of fact there was just a little
-uncertainty as to whether there was a single house left; for the agent
-had taken so many people to see them, and for all he knew the company
-might have parted with the last. Seeing Teta Elzbieta's evident grief at
-this news, he added, after some hesitation, that if they really intended
-to make a purchase, he would send a telephone message at his own
-expense, and have one of the houses kept. So it had finally been
-arranged--and they were to go and make an inspection the following
-Sunday morning.
-
-That was Thursday; and all the rest of the week the killing gang
-at Brown's worked at full pressure, and Jurgis cleared a dollar
-seventy-five every day. That was at the rate of ten and one-half dollars
-a week, or forty-five a month. Jurgis was not able to figure, except it
-was a very simple sum, but Ona was like lightning at such things, and
-she worked out the problem for the family. Marija and Jonas were each
-to pay sixteen dollars a month board, and the old man insisted that he
-could do the same as soon as he got a place--which might be any day now.
-That would make ninety-three dollars. Then Marija and Jonas were between
-them to take a third share in the house, which would leave only eight
-dollars a month for Jurgis to contribute to the payment. So they would
-have eighty-five dollars a month--or, supposing that Dede Antanas did
-not get work at once, seventy dollars a month--which ought surely to be
-sufficient for the support of a family of twelve.
-
-An hour before the time on Sunday morning the entire party set out. They
-had the address written on a piece of paper, which they showed to some
-one now and then. It proved to be a long mile and a half, but they
-walked it, and half an hour or so later the agent put in an appearance.
-He was a smooth and florid personage, elegantly dressed, and he spoke
-their language freely, which gave him a great advantage in dealing with
-them. He escorted them to the house, which was one of a long row of the
-typical frame dwellings of the neighborhood, where architecture is a
-luxury that is dispensed with. Ona's heart sank, for the house was not
-as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was different, for
-one thing, and then it did not seem quite so big. Still, it was freshly
-painted, and made a considerable show. It was all brand-new, so the
-agent told them, but he talked so incessantly that they were quite
-confused, and did not have time to ask many questions. There were all
-sorts of things they had made up their minds to inquire about, but when
-the time came, they either forgot them or lacked the courage. The other
-houses in the row did not seem to be new, and few of them seemed to be
-occupied. When they ventured to hint at this, the agent's reply was that
-the purchasers would be moving in shortly. To press the matter would
-have seemed to be doubting his word, and never in their lives had any
-one of them ever spoken to a person of the class called "gentleman"
-except with deference and humility.
-
-The house had a basement, about two feet below the street line, and a
-single story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps. In
-addition there was an attic, made by the peak of the roof, and having
-one small window in each end. The street in front of the house was
-unpaved and unlighted, and the view from it consisted of a few exactly
-similar houses, scattered here and there upon lots grown up with dingy
-brown weeds. The house inside contained four rooms, plastered white; the
-basement was but a frame, the walls being unplastered and the floor not
-laid. The agent explained that the houses were built that way, as the
-purchasers generally preferred to finish the basements to suit their own
-taste. The attic was also unfinished--the family had been figuring that
-in case of an emergency they could rent this attic, but they found that
-there was not even a floor, nothing but joists, and beneath them the
-lath and plaster of the ceiling below. All of this, however, did not
-chill their ardor as much as might have been expected, because of the
-volubility of the agent. There was no end to the advantages of the
-house, as he set them forth, and he was not silent for an instant; he
-showed them everything, down to the locks on the doors and the catches
-on the windows, and how to work them. He showed them the sink in the
-kitchen, with running water and a faucet, something which Teta Elzbieta
-had never in her wildest dreams hoped to possess. After a discovery such
-as that it would have seemed ungrateful to find any fault, and so they
-tried to shut their eyes to other defects.
-
-Still, they were peasant people, and they hung on to their money by
-instinct; it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness--they
-would see, they would see, they told him, they could not decide until
-they had had more time. And so they went home again, and all day and
-evening there was figuring and debating. It was an agony to them to have
-to make up their minds in a matter such as this. They never could agree
-all together; there were so many arguments upon each side, and one would
-be obstinate, and no sooner would the rest have convinced him than it
-would transpire that his arguments had caused another to waver. Once, in
-the evening, when they were all in harmony, and the house was as good as
-bought, Szedvilas came in and upset them again. Szedvilas had no use for
-property owning. He told them cruel stories of people who had been done
-to death in this "buying a home" swindle. They would be almost sure to
-get into a tight place and lose all their money; and there was no end
-of expense that one could never foresee; and the house might be
-good-for-nothing from top to bottom--how was a poor man to know? Then,
-too, they would swindle you with the contract--and how was a poor man
-to understand anything about a contract? It was all nothing but robbery,
-and there was no safety but in keeping out of it. And pay rent? asked
-Jurgis. Ah, yes, to be sure, the other answered, that too was robbery.
-It was all robbery, for a poor man. After half an hour of such
-depressing conversation, they had their minds quite made up that they
-had been saved at the brink of a precipice; but then Szedvilas went
-away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little man, reminded them that the
-delicatessen business was a failure, according to its proprietor, and
-that this might account for his pessimistic views. Which, of course,
-reopened the subject!
-
-The controlling factor was that they could not stay where they
-were--they had to go somewhere. And when they gave up the house plan and
-decided to rent, the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month forever
-they found just as hard to face. All day and all night for nearly a
-whole week they wrestled with the problem, and then in the end Jurgis
-took the responsibility. Brother Jonas had gotten his job, and was
-pushing a truck in Durham's; and the killing gang at Brown's continued
-to work early and late, so that Jurgis grew more confident every hour,
-more certain of his mastership. It was the kind of thing the man of the
-family had to decide and carry through, he told himself. Others might
-have failed at it, but he was not the failing kind--he would show them
-how to do it. He would work all day, and all night, too, if need be; he
-would never rest until the house was paid for and his people had a home.
-So he told them, and so in the end the decision was made.
-
-They had talked about looking at more houses before they made the
-purchase; but then they did not know where any more were, and they did
-not know any way of finding out. The one they had seen held the sway in
-their thoughts; whenever they thought of themselves in a house, it was
-this house that they thought of. And so they went and told the agent
-that they were ready to make the agreement. They knew, as an abstract
-proposition, that in matters of business all men are to be accounted
-liars; but they could not but have been influenced by all they had heard
-from the eloquent agent, and were quite persuaded that the house was
-something they had run a risk of losing by their delay. They drew a deep
-breath when he told them that they were still in time.
-
-They were to come on the morrow, and he would have the papers all drawn
-up. This matter of papers was one in which Jurgis understood to the full
-the need of caution; yet he could not go himself--every one told him
-that he could not get a holiday, and that he might lose his job by
-asking. So there was nothing to be done but to trust it to the women,
-with Szedvilas, who promised to go with them. Jurgis spent a whole
-evening impressing upon them the seriousness of the occasion--and then
-finally, out of innumerable hiding places about their persons and in
-their baggage, came forth the precious wads of money, to be done up
-tightly in a little bag and sewed fast in the lining of Teta Elzbieta's
-dress.
-
-Early in the morning they sallied forth. Jurgis had given them so many
-instructions and warned them against so many perils, that the women were
-quite pale with fright, and even the imperturbable delicatessen vender,
-who prided himself upon being a businessman, was ill at ease. The agent
-had the deed all ready, and invited them to sit down and read it; this
-Szedvilas proceeded to do--a painful and laborious process, during which
-the agent drummed upon the desk. Teta Elzbieta was so embarrassed that
-the perspiration came out upon her forehead in beads; for was not this
-reading as much as to say plainly to the gentleman's face that they
-doubted his honesty? Yet Jokubas Szedvilas read on and on; and presently
-there developed that he had good reason for doing so. For a horrible
-suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his brows more and
-more as he read. This was not a deed of sale at all, so far as he could
-see--it provided only for the renting of the property! It was hard
-to tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had never heard
-before; but was not this plain--"the party of the first part hereby
-covenants and agrees to rent to the said party of the second part!" And
-then again--"a monthly rental of twelve dollars, for a period of eight
-years and four months!" Then Szedvilas took off his spectacles, and
-looked at the agent, and stammered a question.
-
-The agent was most polite, and explained that that was the usual
-formula; that it was always arranged that the property should be merely
-rented. He kept trying to show them something in the next paragraph; but
-Szedvilas could not get by the word "rental"--and when he translated it
-to Teta Elzbieta, she too was thrown into a fright. They would not own
-the home at all, then, for nearly nine years! The agent, with infinite
-patience, began to explain again; but no explanation would do now.
-Elzbieta had firmly fixed in her mind the last solemn warning of Jurgis:
-"If there is anything wrong, do not give him the money, but go out and
-get a lawyer." It was an agonizing moment, but she sat in the chair, her
-hands clenched like death, and made a fearful effort, summoning all her
-powers, and gasped out her purpose.
-
-Jokubas translated her words. She expected the agent to fly into a
-passion, but he was, to her bewilderment, as ever imperturbable; he even
-offered to go and get a lawyer for her, but she declined this. They went
-a long way, on purpose to find a man who would not be a confederate.
-Then let any one imagine their dismay, when, after half an hour, they
-came in with a lawyer, and heard him greet the agent by his first name!
-They felt that all was lost; they sat like prisoners summoned to hear
-the reading of their death warrant. There was nothing more that they
-could do--they were trapped! The lawyer read over the deed, and when
-he had read it he informed Szedvilas that it was all perfectly regular,
-that the deed was a blank deed such as was often used in these sales.
-And was the price as agreed? the old man asked--three hundred dollars
-down, and the balance at twelve dollars a month, till the total of
-fifteen hundred dollars had been paid? Yes, that was correct. And it was
-for the sale of such and such a house--the house and lot and everything?
-Yes,--and the lawyer showed him where that was all written. And it was
-all perfectly regular--there were no tricks about it of any sort? They
-were poor people, and this was all they had in the world, and if there
-was anything wrong they would be ruined. And so Szedvilas went on,
-asking one trembling question after another, while the eyes of the women
-folks were fixed upon him in mute agony. They could not understand what
-he was saying, but they knew that upon it their fate depended. And when
-at last he had questioned until there was no more questioning to be
-done, and the time came for them to make up their minds, and either
-close the bargain or reject it, it was all that poor Teta Elzbieta could
-do to keep from bursting into tears. Jokubas had asked her if she wished
-to sign; he had asked her twice--and what could she say? How did she
-know if this lawyer were telling the truth--that he was not in the
-conspiracy? And yet, how could she say so--what excuse could she give?
-The eyes of every one in the room were upon her, awaiting her decision;
-and at last, half blind with her tears, she began fumbling in her
-jacket, where she had pinned the precious money. And she brought it out
-and unwrapped it before the men. All of this Ona sat watching, from a
-corner of the room, twisting her hands together, meantime, in a fever of
-fright. Ona longed to cry out and tell her stepmother to stop, that it
-was all a trap; but there seemed to be something clutching her by the
-throat, and she could not make a sound. And so Teta Elzbieta laid the
-money on the table, and the agent picked it up and counted it, and then
-wrote them a receipt for it and passed them the deed. Then he gave a
-sigh of satisfaction, and rose and shook hands with them all, still as
-smooth and polite as at the beginning. Ona had a dim recollection of the
-lawyer telling Szedvilas that his charge was a dollar, which occasioned
-some debate, and more agony; and then, after they had paid that, too,
-they went out into the street, her stepmother clutching the deed in her
-hand. They were so weak from fright that they could not walk, but had to
-sit down on the way.
-
-So they went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that
-evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end.
-Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he
-tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill the
-agent that very night. In the end he seized the paper and rushed out
-of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street. He
-dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together they rushed to
-consult another lawyer. When they entered his office the lawyer
-sprang up, for Jurgis looked like a crazy person, with flying hair and
-bloodshot eyes. His companion explained the situation, and the lawyer
-took the paper and began to read it, while Jurgis stood clutching the
-desk with knotted hands, trembling in every nerve.
-
-Once or twice the lawyer looked up and asked a question of Szedvilas;
-the other did not know a word that he was saying, but his eyes were
-fixed upon the lawyer's face, striving in an agony of dread to read his
-mind. He saw the lawyer look up and laugh, and he gave a gasp; the man
-said something to Szedvilas, and Jurgis turned upon his friend, his
-heart almost stopping.
-
-"Well?" he panted.
-
-"He says it is all right," said Szedvilas.
-
-"All right!"
-
-"Yes, he says it is just as it should be." And Jurgis, in his relief,
-sank down into a chair.
-
-"Are you sure of it?" he gasped, and made Szedvilas translate question
-after question. He could not hear it often enough; he could not ask
-with enough variations. Yes, they had bought the house, they had really
-bought it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it
-would be all right. Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for
-there were tears in his eyes, and he felt like a fool. But he had had
-such a horrible fright; strong man as he was, it left him almost too
-weak to stand up.
-
-The lawyer explained that the rental was a form--the property was said
-to be merely rented until the last payment had been made, the purpose
-being to make it easier to turn the party out if he did not make the
-payments. So long as they paid, however, they had nothing to fear, the
-house was all theirs.
-
-Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked
-without winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to the
-family. He found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the whole
-house in an uproar--for it had been believed by all that he had gone to
-murder the agent. It was hours before the excitement could be calmed;
-and all through that cruel night Jurgis would wake up now and then
-and hear Ona and her stepmother in the next room, sobbing softly to
-themselves.
-
-
-
-Chapter 5
-
-
-They had bought their home. It was hard for them to realize that the
-wonderful house was theirs to move into whenever they chose. They spent
-all their time thinking about it, and what they were going to put into
-it. As their week with Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time
-in getting ready. They had to make some shift to furnish it, and every
-instant of their leisure was given to discussing this.
-
-A person who had such a task before him would not need to look very far
-in Packingtown--he had only to walk up the avenue and read the signs,
-or get into a streetcar, to obtain full information as to pretty much
-everything a human creature could need. It was quite touching, the zeal
-of people to see that his health and happiness were provided for. Did
-the person wish to smoke? There was a little discourse about cigars,
-showing him exactly why the Thomas Jefferson Five-cent Perfecto was the
-only cigar worthy of the name. Had he, on the other hand, smoked too
-much? Here was a remedy for the smoking habit, twenty-five doses for a
-quarter, and a cure absolutely guaranteed in ten doses. In innumerable
-ways such as this, the traveler found that somebody had been busied to
-make smooth his paths through the world, and to let him know what had
-been done for him. In Packingtown the advertisements had a style all
-of their own, adapted to the peculiar population. One would be tenderly
-solicitous. "Is your wife pale?" it would inquire. "Is she discouraged,
-does she drag herself about the house and find fault with everything?
-Why do you not tell her to try Dr. Lanahan's Life Preservers?" Another
-would be jocular in tone, slapping you on the back, so to speak. "Don't
-be a chump!" it would exclaim. "Go and get the Goliath Bunion Cure."
-"Get a move on you!" would chime in another. "It's easy, if you wear the
-Eureka Two-fifty Shoe."
-
-Among these importunate signs was one that had caught the attention
-of the family by its pictures. It showed two very pretty little birds
-building themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to read
-it to her, and told them that it related to the furnishing of a house.
-"Feather your nest," it ran--and went on to say that it could furnish
-all the necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the ludicrously
-small sum of seventy-five dollars. The particularly important thing
-about this offer was that only a small part of the money need be had at
-once--the rest one might pay a few dollars every month. Our friends had
-to have some furniture, there was no getting away from that; but their
-little fund of money had sunk so low that they could hardly get to sleep
-at night, and so they fled to this as their deliverance. There was more
-agony and another paper for Elzbieta to sign, and then one night when
-Jurgis came home, he was told the breathless tidings that the furniture
-had arrived and was safely stowed in the house: a parlor set of four
-pieces, a bedroom set of three pieces, a dining room table and four
-chairs, a toilet set with beautiful pink roses painted all over it,
-an assortment of crockery, also with pink roses--and so on. One of the
-plates in the set had been found broken when they unpacked it, and
-Ona was going to the store the first thing in the morning to make them
-change it; also they had promised three saucepans, and there had only
-two come, and did Jurgis think that they were trying to cheat them?
-
-The next day they went to the house; and when the men came from work
-they ate a few hurried mouthfuls at Aniele's, and then set to work at
-the task of carrying their belongings to their new home. The distance
-was in reality over two miles, but Jurgis made two trips that night,
-each time with a huge pile of mattresses and bedding on his head, with
-bundles of clothing and bags and things tied up inside. Anywhere else
-in Chicago he would have stood a good chance of being arrested; but the
-policemen in Packingtown were apparently used to these informal movings,
-and contented themselves with a cursory examination now and then. It was
-quite wonderful to see how fine the house looked, with all the things in
-it, even by the dim light of a lamp: it was really home, and almost as
-exciting as the placard had described it. Ona was fairly dancing, and
-she and Cousin Marija took Jurgis by the arm and escorted him from room
-to room, sitting in each chair by turns, and then insisting that he
-should do the same. One chair squeaked with his great weight, and they
-screamed with fright, and woke the baby and brought everybody running.
-Altogether it was a great day; and tired as they were, Jurgis and Ona
-sat up late, contented simply to hold each other and gaze in rapture
-about the room. They were going to be married as soon as they could get
-everything settled, and a little spare money put by; and this was to be
-their home--that little room yonder would be theirs!
-
-It was in truth a never-ending delight, the fixing up of this house.
-They had no money to spend for the pleasure of spending, but there
-were a few absolutely necessary things, and the buying of these was a
-perpetual adventure for Ona. It must always be done at night, so that
-Jurgis could go along; and even if it were only a pepper cruet, or half
-a dozen glasses for ten cents, that was enough for an expedition. On
-Saturday night they came home with a great basketful of things, and
-spread them out on the table, while every one stood round, and the
-children climbed up on the chairs, or howled to be lifted up to see.
-There were sugar and salt and tea and crackers, and a can of lard and
-a milk pail, and a scrubbing brush, and a pair of shoes for the second
-oldest boy, and a can of oil, and a tack hammer, and a pound of nails.
-These last were to be driven into the walls of the kitchen and the
-bedrooms, to hang things on; and there was a family discussion as to the
-place where each one was to be driven. Then Jurgis would try to hammer,
-and hit his fingers because the hammer was too small, and get mad
-because Ona had refused to let him pay fifteen cents more and get a
-bigger hammer; and Ona would be invited to try it herself, and hurt
-her thumb, and cry out, which necessitated the thumb's being kissed
-by Jurgis. Finally, after every one had had a try, the nails would be
-driven, and something hung up. Jurgis had come home with a big packing
-box on his head, and he sent Jonas to get another that he had bought. He
-meant to take one side out of these tomorrow, and put shelves in them,
-and make them into bureaus and places to keep things for the bedrooms.
-The nest which had been advertised had not included feathers for quite
-so many birds as there were in this family.
-
-They had, of course, put their dining table in the kitchen, and the
-dining room was used as the bedroom of Teta Elzbieta and five of her
-children. She and the two youngest slept in the only bed, and the other
-three had a mattress on the floor. Ona and her cousin dragged a mattress
-into the parlor and slept at night, and the three men and the oldest boy
-slept in the other room, having nothing but the very level floor to
-rest on for the present. Even so, however, they slept soundly--it was
-necessary for Teta Elzbieta to pound more than once on the door at a quarter
-past five every morning. She would have ready a great pot full of
-steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and smoked sausages; and
-then she would fix them their dinner pails with more thick slices of
-bread with lard between them--they could not afford butter--and some
-onions and a piece of cheese, and so they would tramp away to work.
-
-This was the first time in his life that he had ever really worked, it
-seemed to Jurgis; it was the first time that he had ever had anything
-to do which took all he had in him. Jurgis had stood with the rest up in
-the gallery and watched the men on the killing beds, marveling at their
-speed and power as if they had been wonderful machines; it somehow never
-occurred to one to think of the flesh-and-blood side of it--that is, not
-until he actually got down into the pit and took off his coat. Then he
-saw things in a different light, he got at the inside of them. The pace
-they set here, it was one that called for every faculty of a man--from
-the instant the first steer fell till the sounding of the noon whistle,
-and again from half-past twelve till heaven only knew what hour in the
-late afternoon or evening, there was never one instant's rest for a man,
-for his hand or his eye or his brain. Jurgis saw how they managed it;
-there were portions of the work which determined the pace of the rest,
-and for these they had picked men whom they paid high wages, and whom
-they changed frequently. You might easily pick out these pacemakers,
-for they worked under the eye of the bosses, and they worked like men
-possessed. This was called "speeding up the gang," and if any man could
-not keep up with the pace, there were hundreds outside begging to try.
-
-Yet Jurgis did not mind it; he rather enjoyed it. It saved him the
-necessity of flinging his arms about and fidgeting as he did in most
-work. He would laugh to himself as he ran down the line, darting a
-glance now and then at the man ahead of him. It was not the pleasantest
-work one could think of, but it was necessary work; and what more had
-a man the right to ask than a chance to do something useful, and to get
-good pay for doing it?
-
-So Jurgis thought, and so he spoke, in his bold, free way; very much to
-his surprise, he found that it had a tendency to get him into trouble.
-For most of the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing.
-He was quite dismayed when he first began to find it out--that most of
-the men hated their work. It seemed strange, it was even terrible,
-when you came to find out the universality of the sentiment; but it was
-certainly the fact--they hated their work. They hated the bosses
-and they hated the owners; they hated the whole place, the whole
-neighborhood--even the whole city, with an all-inclusive hatred, bitter
-and fierce. Women and little children would fall to cursing about it; it
-was rotten, rotten as hell--everything was rotten. When Jurgis would ask
-them what they meant, they would begin to get suspicious, and content
-themselves with saying, "Never mind, you stay here and see for
-yourself."
-
-One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions.
-He had had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained
-to him that the men were banded together for the purpose of fighting
-for their rights. Jurgis asked them what they meant by their rights, a
-question in which he was quite sincere, for he had not any idea of any
-rights that he had, except the right to hunt for a job, and do as he was
-told when he got it. Generally, however, this harmless question would
-only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and call him a fool.
-There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers' union who came to see
-Jurgis to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he
-would have to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and the
-delegate, who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of Lithuanian,
-lost his temper and began to threaten him. In the end Jurgis got into a
-fine rage, and made it sufficiently plain that it would take more than
-one Irishman to scare him into a union. Little by little he gathered
-that the main thing the men wanted was to put a stop to the habit of
-"speeding-up"; they were trying their best to force a lessening of the
-pace, for there were some, they said, who could not keep up with it,
-whom it was killing. But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as
-this--he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he
-declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn't do it, let
-them go somewhere else. Jurgis had not studied the books, and he would
-not have known how to pronounce "laissez faire"; 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.
-
-Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore
-by Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief
-fund in time of a famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the
-unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart because
-of his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the yards begging
-for a chance to earn his bread. Old Antanas had been a worker ever since
-he was a child; he had run away from home when he was twelve, because
-his father beat him for trying to learn to read. And he was a faithful
-man, too; he was a man you might leave alone for a month, if only you
-had made him understand what you wanted him to do in the meantime. And
-now here he was, worn out in soul and body, and with no more place in
-the world than a sick dog. He had his home, as it happened, and some one
-who would care for him if he never got a job; but his son could not help
-thinking, suppose this had not been the case. Antanas Rudkus had been
-into every building in Packingtown by this time, and into nearly every
-room; he had stood mornings among the crowd of applicants till the very
-policemen had come to know his face and to tell him to go home and give
-it up. He had been likewise to all the stores and saloons for a mile
-about, begging for some little thing to do; and everywhere they had
-ordered him out, sometimes with curses, and not once even stopping to
-ask him a question.
-
-So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis' faith
-in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting
-a job--and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one evening the
-old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he
-had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms
-of Durham's, and asked what he would pay to get a job. He had not
-known what to make of this at first; but the man had gone on with
-matter-of-fact frankness to say that he could get him a job, provided
-that he were willing to pay one-third of his wages for it. Was he a
-boss? Antanas had asked; to which the man had replied that that was
-nobody's business, but that he could do what he said.
-
-Jurgis had made some friends by this time, and he sought one of them and
-asked what this meant. The friend, who was named Tamoszius Kuszleika,
-was a sharp little man who folded hides on the killing beds, and he
-listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all surprised.
-They were common enough, he said, such cases of petty graft. It was
-simply some boss who proposed to add a little to his income. After
-Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants were simply
-honeycombed with rottenness of that sort--the bosses grafted off the
-men, and they grafted off each other; and some day the superintendent
-would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.
-Warming to the subject, Tamoszius went on to explain the situation. Here
-was Durham's, for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as
-much money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he
-did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army,
-were managers and superintendents and foremen, each one driving the
-man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as
-possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each
-other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived
-in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he. So
-from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies
-and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there
-was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar.
-And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty.
-The reason for that? Who could say? It must have been old Durham in the
-beginning; it was a heritage which the self-made merchant had left to
-his son, along with his millions.
-
-Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
-enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
-was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
-like all the rest. 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. That man who had been sent to
-Jurgis' father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales
-and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own
-business and did his work--why, they would "speed him up" till they had
-worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.
-
-Jurgis went home with his head buzzing. Yet he could not bring himself
-to believe such things--no, it could not be so. Tamoszius was simply
-another of the grumblers. He was a man who spent all his time fiddling;
-and he would go to parties at night and not get home till sunrise, and
-so of course he did not feel like work. Then, too, he was a puny little
-chap; and so he had been left behind in the race, and that was why he
-was sore. And yet so many strange things kept coming to Jurgis' notice
-every day!
-
-He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer.
-But old Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage
-was gone; he wanted a job, any sort of a job. So the next day he went
-and found the man who had spoken to him, and promised to bring him a
-third of all he earned; and that same day he was put to work in Durham's
-cellars. It was a "pickle room," where there was never a dry spot to
-stand upon, and so he had to take nearly the whole of his first week's
-earnings to buy him a pair of heavy-soled boots. He was a "squeedgie"
-man; his job was to go about all day with a long-handled mop, swabbing
-up the floor. Except that it was damp and dark, it was not an unpleasant
-job, in summer.
-
-Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and
-so Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said,
-that his father had been at work only two days before he came home as
-bitter as any of them, and cursing Durham's with all the power of his
-soul. For they had set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family
-sat round and listened in wonder while he told them what that meant. It
-seemed that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef
-for canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men
-with great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken
-to the cooking room. When they had speared out all they could reach,
-they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the
-balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet
-they set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that
-connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever;
-and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the
-scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few
-days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their
-contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!
-
-This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and
-Marija with tales to tell. Marija was working for one of the independent
-packers, and was quite beside herself and outrageous with triumph over
-the sums of money she was making as a painter of cans. But one day she
-walked home with a pale-faced little woman who worked opposite to her,
-Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga told her how she, Marija, had
-chanced to get her job. She had taken the place of an Irishwoman who had
-been working in that factory ever since any one could remember. For over
-fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis was her name, and a long
-time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was a cripple,
-and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the world to
-love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back of
-Halsted Street, where the Irish were. Mary had had consumption, and all
-day long you might hear her coughing as she worked; of late she had been
-going all to pieces, and when Marija came, the "forelady" had suddenly
-decided to turn her off. The forelady had to come up to a certain
-standard herself, and could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga explained.
-The fact that Mary had been there so long had not made any difference
-to her--it was doubtful if she even knew that, for both the forelady and
-the superintendent were new people, having only been there two or three
-years themselves. Jadvyga did not know what had become of the poor
-creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been sick herself. She
-had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained, and feared
-that she had womb trouble. It was not fit work for a woman, handling
-fourteen-pound cans all day.
-
-It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by
-the misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with
-hams from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing
-rooms. The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about
-threescore hams on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a
-ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a man to start one of these
-trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once started he naturally
-tried his best to keep it going. There was always the boss prowling
-about, and if there was a second's delay he would fall to cursing;
-Lithuanians and Slovaks and such, who could not understand what was said
-to them, the bosses were wont to kick about the place like so many
-dogs. Therefore these trucks went for the most part on the run; and the
-predecessor of Jonas had been jammed against the wall by one and crushed
-in a horrible and nameless manner.
-
-All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to
-what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he
-had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts;
-which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to
-come a "slunk" calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows
-that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is
-not fit for food. A good many of these came every day to the packing
-houses--and, of course, if they had chosen, it would have been an easy
-matter for the packers to keep them till they were fit for food. But
-for the saving of time and fodder, it was the law that cows of that sort
-came along with the others, and whoever noticed it would tell the
-boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government
-inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice the carcass of
-the cow would be cleaned out, and entrails would have vanished; it was
-Jurgis' task to slide them into the trap, calves and all, and on the
-floor below they took out these "slunk" calves, and butchered them for
-meat, and used even the skins of them.
-
-One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the
-last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving,
-Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work which this injured
-man had usually done. It was late, almost dark, and the government
-inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two of men on
-the floor. That day they had killed about four thousand cattle, and
-these cattle had come in freight trains from far states, and some of
-them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and some with gored
-sides; there were some that had died, from what cause no one could
-say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence.
-"Downers," the men called them; and the packing house had a special
-elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang
-proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which
-said plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday routine. It
-took a couple of hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis
-saw them go into the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being
-carefully scattered here and there so that they could not be identified.
-When he came home that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun
-to see at last how those might be right who had laughed at him for his
-faith in America.
-
-
-
-Chapter 6
-
-
-Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time--it
-was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the
-criterion of its helping or hindering their union. All his thoughts were
-there; he accepted the family because it was a part of Ona. And he was
-interested in the house because it was to be Ona's home. Even the tricks
-and cruelties he saw at Durham's had little meaning for him just then,
-save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.
-
-The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but
-this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast,
-and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the old
-people. To Teta Elzbieta especially the very suggestion was an
-affliction. What! she would cry. To be married on the roadside like a
-parcel of beggars! No! No!--Elzbieta had some traditions behind her;
-she had been a person of importance in her girlhood--had lived on a big
-estate and had servants, and might have married well and been a lady,
-but for the fact that there had been nine daughters and no sons in the
-family. Even so, however, she knew what was decent, and clung to her
-traditions with desperation. They were not going to lose all caste, even
-if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown; and that Ona
-had even talked of omitting a _veselija_ was enough to keep her stepmother
-lying awake all night. It was in vain for them to say that they had
-so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and then the
-friends would talk about it. They must not give up what was right for a
-little money--if they did, the money would never do them any good, they
-could depend upon that. And Elzbieta would call upon Dede Antanas to
-support her; there was a fear in the souls of these two, lest this
-journey to a new country might somehow undermine the old home virtues of
-their children. The very first Sunday they had all been taken to mass;
-and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to invest a little
-of her resources in a representation of the babe of Bethlehem, made
-in plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though it was only a foot
-high, there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and the Virgin
-standing with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and
-wise men bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta
-had a feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too
-closely, it would come back in hidden ways. The piece was beautiful on
-the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home without some sort of
-ornament.
-
-The cost of the wedding feast would, of course, be returned to them;
-but the problem was to raise it even temporarily. They had been in the
-neighborhood so short a time that they could not get much credit, and
-there was no one except Szedvilas from whom they could borrow even a
-little. Evening after evening Jurgis and Ona would sit and figure the
-expenses, calculating the term of their separation. They could not
-possibly manage it decently for less than two hundred dollars, and even
-though they were welcome to count in the whole of the earnings of Marija
-and Jonas, as a loan, they could not hope to raise this sum in less
-than four or five months. So Ona began thinking of seeking employment
-herself, saying that if she had even ordinarily good luck, she might be
-able to take two months off the time. They were just beginning to adjust
-themselves to this necessity, when out of the clear sky there fell a
-thunderbolt upon them--a calamity that scattered all their hopes to the
-four winds.
-
-About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family,
-consisting of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was
-Majauszkis, and our friends struck up an acquaintance with them before
-long. One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first
-subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its
-history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called,
-proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their
-blood. She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage--she must have been
-eighty--and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums,
-she seemed a very old witch to them. Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived
-in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element,
-and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people
-might about weddings and holidays.
-
-The thing came gradually. In the first place as to the house they
-had bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about
-fifteen years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint,
-which was so bad that it needed to be put on new every year or two. The
-house was one of a whole row that was built by a company which existed
-to make money by swindling poor people. The family had paid fifteen
-hundred dollars for it, and it had not cost the builders five hundred,
-when it was new. Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that because her son
-belonged to a political organization with a contractor who put up
-exactly such houses. They used the very flimsiest and cheapest material;
-they built the houses a dozen at a time, and they cared about nothing at
-all except the outside shine. The family could take her word as to the
-trouble they would have, for she had been through it all--she and her
-son had bought their house in exactly the same way. They had fooled the
-company, however, for her son was a skilled man, who made as high as a
-hundred dollars a month, and as he had had sense enough not to marry,
-they had been able to pay for the house.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this
-remark; they did not quite see how paying for the house was "fooling the
-company." Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the houses
-were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would
-not be able to pay for them. When they failed--if it were only by a
-single month--they would lose the house and all that they had paid on
-it, and then the company would sell it over again. And did they often
-get a chance to do that? Dieve! (Grandmother Majauszkiene raised her
-hands.) They did it--how often no one could say, but certainly more than
-half of the time. They might ask any one who knew anything at all about
-Packingtown as to that; she had been living here ever since this house
-was built, and she could tell them all about it. And had it ever been
-sold before? Susimilkie! Why, since it had been built, no less than four
-families that their informant could name had tried to buy it and failed.
-She would tell them a little about it.
-
-The first family had been Germans. The families had all been of
-different nationalities--there had been a representative of several
-races that had displaced each other in the stockyards. Grandmother
-Majauszkiene had come to America with her son at a time when so far as
-she knew there was only one other Lithuanian family in the district;
-the workers had all been Germans then--skilled cattle butchers that the
-packers had brought from abroad to start the business. Afterward, as
-cheaper labor had come, these Germans had moved away. The next were the
-Irish--there had been six or eight years when Packingtown had been a
-regular Irish city. There were a few colonies of them still here, enough
-to run all the unions and the police force and get all the graft; but
-most of those who were working in the packing houses had gone away at
-the next drop in wages--after the big strike. The Bohemians had come
-then, and after them the Poles. People said that old man Durham himself
-was responsible for these immigrations; he had sworn that he would fix
-the people of Packingtown so that they would never again call a strike
-on him, and so he had sent his agents into every city and village in
-Europe to spread the tale of the chances of work and high wages at the
-stockyards. The people had come in hordes; and old Durham had squeezed
-them tighter and tighter, speeding them up and grinding them to pieces
-and sending for new ones. The Poles, who had come by tens of thousands,
-had been driven to the wall by the Lithuanians, and now the Lithuanians
-were giving way to the Slovaks. Who there was poorer and more miserable
-than the Slovaks, Grandmother Majauszkiene had no idea, but the packers
-would find them, never fear. It was easy to bring them, for wages were
-really much higher, and it was only when it was too late that the poor
-people found out that everything else was higher too. They were like
-rats in a trap, that was the truth; and more of them were piling in
-every day. By and by they would have their revenge, though, for the
-thing was getting beyond human endurance, and the people would rise and
-murder the packers. Grandmother Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some
-such strange thing; another son of hers was working in the mines of
-Siberia, and the old lady herself had made speeches in her time--which
-made her seem all the more terrible to her present auditors.
-
-They called her back to the story of the house. The German family had
-been a good sort. To be sure there had been a great many of them, which
-was a common failing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard, and the
-father had been a steady man, and they had a good deal more than half
-paid for the house. But he had been killed in an elevator accident in
-Durham's.
-
-Then there had come the Irish, and there had been lots of them, too;
-the husband drank and beat the children--the neighbors could hear them
-shrieking any night. They were behind with their rent all the time,
-but the company was good to them; there was some politics back of that,
-Grandmother Majauszkiene could not say just what, but the Laffertys had
-belonged to the "War Whoop League," which was a sort of political club
-of all the thugs and rowdies in the district; and if you belonged to
-that, you could never be arrested for anything. Once upon a time old
-Lafferty had been caught with a gang that had stolen cows from several
-of the poor people of the neighborhood and butchered them in an old
-shanty back of the yards and sold them. He had been in jail only three
-days for it, and had come out laughing, and had not even lost his place
-in the packing house. He had gone all to ruin with the drink, however,
-and lost his power; one of his sons, who was a good man, had kept him
-and the family up for a year or two, but then he had got sick with
-consumption.
-
-That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted
-herself--this house was unlucky. Every family that lived in it, some one
-was sure to get consumption. Nobody could tell why that was; there must
-be something about the house, or the way it was built--some folks said
-it was because the building had been begun in the dark of the moon.
-There were dozens of houses that way in Packingtown. Sometimes there
-would be a particular room that you could point out--if anybody slept in
-that room he was just as good as dead. With this house it had been the
-Irish first; and then a Bohemian family had lost a child of it--though,
-to be sure, that was uncertain, since it was hard to tell what was the
-matter with children who worked in the yards. In those days there had
-been no law about the age of children--the packers had worked all but
-the babies. At this remark the family looked puzzled, and Grandmother
-Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation--that it was against the
-law for children to work before they were sixteen. What was the sense of
-that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little Stanislovas
-go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother Majauszkiene
-said--the law made no difference except that it forced people to lie
-about the ages of their children. One would like to know what the
-lawmakers expected them to do; there were families that had no possible
-means of support except the children, and the law provided them no
-other way of getting a living. Very often a man could get no work in
-Packingtown for months, while a child could go and get a place easily;
-there was always some new machine, by which the packers could get as
-much work out of a child as they had been able to get out of a man, and
-for a third of the pay.
-
-To come back to the house again, it was the woman of the next family
-that had died. That was after they had been there nearly four years, and
-this woman had had twins regularly every year--and there had been more
-than you could count when they moved in. After she died the man would
-go to work all day and leave them to shift for themselves--the neighbors
-would help them now and then, for they would almost freeze to death. At
-the end there were three days that they were alone, before it was found
-out that the father was dead. He was a "floorsman" at Jones's, and a
-wounded steer had broken loose and mashed him against a pillar. Then the
-children had been taken away, and the company had sold the house that
-very same week to a party of emigrants.
-
-So this grim old women went on with her tale of horrors. How much of it
-was exaggeration--who could tell? It was only too plausible. There
-was that about consumption, for instance. They knew nothing about
-consumption whatever, except that it made people cough; and for two
-weeks they had been worrying about a coughing-spell of Antanas. It
-seemed to shake him all over, and it never stopped; you could see a red
-stain wherever he had spit upon the floor.
-
-And yet all these things were as nothing to what came a little later.
-They had begun to question the old lady as to why one family had been
-unable to pay, trying to show her by figures that it ought to have been
-possible; and Grandmother Majauszkiene had disputed their figures--"You
-say twelve dollars a month; but that does not include the interest."
-
-Then they stared at her. "Interest!" they cried.
-
-"Interest on the money you still owe," she answered.
-
-"But we don't have to pay any interest!" they exclaimed, three or four
-at once. "We only have to pay twelve dollars each month."
-
-And for this she laughed at them. "You are like all the rest," she said;
-"they trick you and eat you alive. They never sell the houses without
-interest. Get your deed, and see."
-
-Then, with a horrible sinking of the heart, Teta Elzbieta unlocked her
-bureau and brought out the paper that had already caused them so many
-agonies. Now they sat round, scarcely breathing, while the old lady, who
-could read English, ran over it. "Yes," she said, finally, "here it is,
-of course: 'With interest thereon monthly, at the rate of seven per cent
-per annum.'"
-
-And there followed a dead silence. "What does that mean?" asked Jurgis
-finally, almost in a whisper.
-
-"That means," replied the other, "that you have to pay them seven
-dollars next month, as well as the twelve dollars."
-
-Then again there was not a sound. It was sickening, like a nightmare,
-in which suddenly something gives way beneath you, and you feel yourself
-sinking, sinking, down into bottomless abysses. As if in a flash of
-lightning they saw themselves--victims of a relentless fate, cornered,
-trapped, in the grip of destruction. All the fair structure of their
-hopes came crashing about their ears.--And all the time the old woman
-was going on talking. They wished that she would be still; her voice
-sounded like the croaking of some dismal raven. Jurgis sat with his
-hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his forehead, and there was
-a great lump in Ona's throat, choking her. Then suddenly Teta Elzbieta
-broke the silence with a wail, and Marija began to wring her hands and
-sob, "Ai! Ai! Beda man!"
-
-All their outcry did them no good, of course. There sat Grandmother
-Majauszkiene, unrelenting, typifying fate. No, of course it was not
-fair, but then fairness had nothing to do with it. And of course they
-had not known it. They had not been intended to know it. But it was in
-the deed, and that was all that was necessary, as they would find when
-the time came.
-
-Somehow or other they got rid of their guest, and then they passed a
-night of lamentation. The children woke up and found out that something
-was wrong, and they wailed and would not be comforted. In the morning,
-of course, most of them had to go to work, the packing houses would not
-stop for their sorrows; but by seven o'clock Ona and her stepmother were
-standing at the door of the office of the agent. Yes, he told them, when
-he came, it was quite true that they would have to pay interest. And
-then Teta Elzbieta broke forth into protestations and reproaches, so
-that the people outside stopped and peered in at the window. The agent
-was as bland as ever. He was deeply pained, he said. He had not told
-them, simply because he had supposed they would understand that they had
-to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter of course.
-
-So they came away, and Ona went down to the yards, and at noontime saw
-Jurgis and told him. Jurgis took it stolidly--he had made up his mind to
-it by this time. It was part of fate; they would manage it somehow--he
-made his usual answer, "I will work harder." It would upset their plans
-for a time; and it would perhaps be necessary for Ona to get work
-after all. Then Ona added that Teta Elzbieta had decided that little
-Stanislovas would have to work too. It was not fair to let Jurgis and
-her support the family--the family would have to help as it could.
-Previously Jurgis had scouted this idea, but now knit his brows and
-nodded his head slowly--yes, perhaps it would be best; they would all
-have to make some sacrifices now.
-
-So Ona set out that day to hunt for work; and at night Marija came home
-saying that she had met a girl named Jasaityte who had a friend that
-worked in one of the wrapping rooms in Brown's, and might get a place
-for Ona there; only the forelady was the kind that takes presents--it
-was no use for any one to ask her for a place unless at the same time
-they slipped a ten-dollar bill into her hand. Jurgis was not in the
-least surprised at this now--he merely asked what the wages of the place
-would be. So negotiations were opened, and after an interview Ona came
-home and reported that the forelady seemed to like her, and had said
-that, while she was not sure, she thought she might be able to put her
-at work sewing covers on hams, a job at which she would earn as much as
-eight or ten dollars a week. That was a bid, so Marija reported, after
-consulting her friend; and then there was an anxious conference at home.
-The work was done in one of the cellars, and Jurgis did not want Ona to
-work in such a place; but then it was easy work, and one could not have
-everything. So in the end Ona, with a ten-dollar bill burning a hole in
-her palm, had another interview with the forelady.
-
-Meantime Teta Elzbieta had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten a
-certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was; and
-with it the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in the
-world. It chanced that Durham had just put in a wonderful new lard
-machine, and when the special policeman in front of the time station
-saw Stanislovas and his document, he smiled to himself and told him to
-go--"Czia! Czia!" pointing. And so Stanislovas went down a long stone
-corridor, and up a flight of stairs, which took him into a room lighted
-by electricity, with the new machines for filling lard cans at work
-in it. The lard was finished on the floor above, and it came in little
-jets, like beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of unpleasant odor.
-There were several kinds and sizes of jets, and after a certain precise
-quantity had come out, each stopped automatically, and the wonderful
-machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet, and so on,
-until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly, and
-smoothed off. To attend to all this and fill several hundred cans of
-lard per hour, there were necessary two human creatures, one of whom
-knew how to place an empty lard can on a certain spot every few seconds,
-and the other of whom knew how to take a full lard can off a certain
-spot every few seconds and set it upon a tray.
-
-And so, after little Stanislovas had stood gazing timidly about him for
-a few minutes, a man approached him, and asked what he wanted, to which
-Stanislovas said, "Job." Then the man said "How old?" and Stanislovas
-answered, "Sixtin." Once or twice every year a state inspector would
-come wandering through the packing plants, asking a child here and there
-how old he was; and so the packers were very careful to comply with the
-law, which cost them as much trouble as was now involved in the boss's
-taking the document from the little boy, and glancing at it, and then
-sending it to the office to be filed away. Then he set some one else at
-a different job, and showed the lad how to place a lard can every time
-the empty arm of the remorseless machine came to him; and so was decided
-the place in the universe of little Stanislovas, and his destiny till
-the end of his days. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, it
-was fated that he should stand upon a certain square foot of floor from
-seven in the morning until noon, and again from half-past twelve till
-half-past five, making never a motion and thinking never a thought,
-save for the setting of lard cans. In summer the stench of the warm lard
-would be nauseating, and in winter the cans would all but freeze to his
-naked little fingers in the unheated cellar. Half the year it would be
-dark as night when he went in to work, and dark as night again when
-he came out, and so he would never know what the sun looked like on
-weekdays. And for this, at the end of the week, he would carry home
-three dollars to his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per
-hour--just about his proper share of the total earnings of the million
-and three-quarters of children who are now engaged in earning their
-livings in the United States.
-
-And meantime, because they were young, and hope is not to be stifled
-before its time, Jurgis and Ona were again calculating; for they had
-discovered that the wages of Stanislovas would a little more than pay
-the interest, which left them just about as they had been before! It
-would be but fair to them to say that the little boy was delighted with
-his work, and at the idea of earning a lot of money; and also that the
-two were very much in love with each other.
-
-
-
-Chapter 7
-
-
-All summer long the family toiled, and in the fall they had money
-enough for Jurgis and Ona to be married according to home traditions of
-decency. In the latter part of November they hired a hall, and invited
-all their new acquaintances, who came and left them over a hundred
-dollars in debt.
-
-It was a bitter and cruel experience, and it plunged them into an agony
-of despair. Such a time, of all times, for them to have it, when their
-hearts were made tender! Such a pitiful beginning it was for their
-married life; they loved each other so, and they could not have the
-briefest respite! It was a time when everything cried out to them that
-they ought to be happy; when wonder burned in their hearts, and leaped
-into flame at the slightest breath. They were shaken to the depths of
-them, with the awe of love realized--and was it so very weak of them
-that they cried out for a little peace? They had opened their hearts,
-like flowers to the springtime, and the merciless winter had fallen upon
-them. They wondered if ever any love that had blossomed in the world had
-been so crushed and trampled!
-
-Over them, relentless and savage, there cracked the lash of want; the
-morning after the wedding it sought them as they slept, and drove
-them out before daybreak to work. Ona was scarcely able to stand with
-exhaustion; but if she were to lose her place they would be ruined, and
-she would surely lose it if she were not on time that day. They all
-had to go, even little Stanislovas, who was ill from overindulgence in
-sausages and sarsaparilla. All that day he stood at his lard machine,
-rocking unsteadily, his eyes closing in spite of him; and he all but
-lost his place even so, for the foreman booted him twice to waken him.
-
-It was fully a week before they were all normal again, and meantime,
-with whining children and cross adults, the house was not a pleasant
-place to live in. Jurgis lost his temper very little, however, all
-things considered. It was because of Ona; the least glance at her was
-always enough to make him control himself. She was so sensitive--she was
-not fitted for such a life as this; and a hundred times a day, when he
-thought of her, he would clench his hands and fling himself again at the
-task before him. She was too good for him, he told himself, and he was
-afraid, because she was his. So long he had hungered to possess her,
-but now that the time had come he knew that he had not earned the right;
-that she trusted him so was all her own simple goodness, and no virtue
-of his. But he was resolved that she should never find this out, and so
-was always on the watch to see that he did not betray any of his ugly
-self; he would take care even in little matters, such as his manners,
-and his habit of swearing when things went wrong. The tears came so
-easily into Ona's eyes, and she would look at him so appealingly--it
-kept Jurgis quite busy making resolutions, in addition to all the other
-things he had on his mind. It was true that more things were going on at
-this time in the mind of Jurgis than ever had in all his life before.
-
-He had to protect her, to do battle for her against the horror he saw
-about them. He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she
-would be lost; he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her
-from the world. He had learned the ways of things about him now. It was
-a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost. You did not
-give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to
-you. You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you
-understood that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to
-get your money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with.
-The store-keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to
-entice you; the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph
-poles, were pasted over with lies. The great corporation which employed
-you lied to you, and lied to the whole country--from top to bottom it
-was nothing but one gigantic lie.
-
-So Jurgis said that he understood it; and yet it was really pitiful, for
-the struggle was so unfair--some had so much the advantage! Here he was,
-for instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save Ona from harm,
-and only a week later she was suffering atrociously, and from the blow
-of an enemy that he could not possibly have thwarted. There came a day
-when the rain fell in torrents; and it being December, to be wet with it
-and have to sit all day long in one of the cold cellars of Brown's was
-no laughing matter. Ona was a working girl, and did not own waterproofs
-and such things, and so Jurgis took her and put her on the streetcar.
-Now it chanced that this car line was owned by gentlemen who were trying
-to make money. And the city having passed an ordinance requiring them to
-give transfers, they had fallen into a rage; and first they had made a
-rule that transfers could be had only when the fare was paid; and later,
-growing still uglier, they had made another--that the passenger must ask
-for the transfer, the conductor was not allowed to offer it. Now Ona
-had been told that she was to get a transfer; but it was not her way to
-speak up, and so she merely waited, following the conductor about with
-her eyes, wondering when he would think of her. When at last the time
-came for her to get out, she asked for the transfer, and was refused.
-Not knowing what to make of this, she began to argue with the conductor,
-in a language of which he did not understand a word. After warning her
-several times, he pulled the bell and the car went on--at which Ona
-burst into tears. At the next corner she got out, of course; and as she
-had no more money, she had to walk the rest of the way to the yards in
-the pouring rain. And so all day long she sat shivering, and came home
-at night with her teeth chattering and pains in her head and back. For
-two weeks afterward she suffered cruelly--and yet every day she had to
-drag herself to her work. The forewoman was especially severe with Ona,
-because she believed that she was obstinate on account of having been
-refused a holiday the day after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her
-"forelady" did not like to have her girls marry--perhaps because she was
-old and ugly and unmarried herself.
-
-There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.
-Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could
-they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage
-of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that
-the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and
-doctored with formaldehyde besides? When the children were not well
-at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was
-obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts--and how was she to know
-that they were all adulterated? How could they find out that their tea
-and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned
-peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with
-aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it have
-done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other
-sort was to be had? The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save
-money to get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in the
-least how much they saved, they could not get anything to keep them
-warm. All the clothing that was to be had in the stores was made of
-cotton and shoddy, which is made by tearing old clothes to pieces and
-weaving the fiber again. If they paid higher prices, they might get
-frills and fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not
-obtain for love nor money. A young friend of Szedvilas', recently come
-from abroad, had become a clerk in a store on Ashland Avenue, and he
-narrated with glee a trick that had been played upon an unsuspecting
-countryman by his boss. The customer had desired to purchase an alarm
-clock, and the boss had shown him two exactly similar, telling him that
-the price of one was a dollar and of the other a dollar seventy-five.
-Upon being asked what the difference was, the man had wound up the first
-halfway and the second all the way, and showed the customer how the
-latter made twice as much noise; upon which the customer remarked that
-he was a sound sleeper, and had better take the more expensive clock!
-
-There is a poet who sings that
-
-     "Deeper their heart grows and nobler their bearing,
-     Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died."
-
-But it was not likely that he had reference to the kind of anguish that
-comes with destitution, that is so endlessly bitter and cruel, and
-yet so sordid and petty, so ugly, so humiliating--unredeemed by the
-slightest touch of dignity or even of pathos. It is a kind of anguish
-that poets have not commonly dealt with; its very words are not admitted
-into the vocabulary of poets--the details of it cannot be told in
-polite society at all. How, for instance, could any one expect to excite
-sympathy among lovers of good literature by telling how a family found
-their home alive with vermin, and of all the suffering and inconvenience
-and humiliation they were put to, and the hard-earned money they spent,
-in efforts to get rid of them? After long hesitation and uncertainty
-they paid twenty-five cents for a big package of insect powder--a patent
-preparation which chanced to be ninety-five per cent gypsum, a harmless
-earth which had cost about two cents to prepare. Of course it had not
-the least effect, except upon a few roaches which had the misfortune to
-drink water after eating it, and so got their inwards set in a coating
-of plaster of Paris. The family, having no idea of this, and no more
-money to throw away, had nothing to do but give up and submit to one
-more misery for the rest of their days.
-
-Then there was old Antanas. The winter came, and the place where he
-worked was a dark, unheated cellar, where you could see your breath all
-day, and where your fingers sometimes tried to freeze. So the old man's
-cough grew every day worse, until there came a time when it hardly ever
-stopped, and he had become a nuisance about the place. Then, too, a
-still more dreadful thing happened to him; he worked in a place where
-his feet were soaked in chemicals, and it was not long before they had
-eaten through his new boots. Then sores began to break out on his feet,
-and grow worse and worse. Whether it was that his blood was bad, or
-there had been a cut, he could not say; but he asked the men about it,
-and learned that it was a regular thing--it was the saltpeter. Every one
-felt it, sooner or later, and then it was all up with him, at least for
-that sort of work. The sores would never heal--in the end his toes would
-drop off, if he did not quit. Yet old Antanas would not quit; he saw the
-suffering of his family, and he remembered what it had cost him to get
-a job. So he tied up his feet, and went on limping about and coughing,
-until at last he fell to pieces, all at once and in a heap, like the
-One-Horse Shay. They carried him to a dry place and laid him on the
-floor, and that night two of the men helped him home. The poor old man
-was put to bed, and though he tried it every morning until the end, he
-never could get up again. He would lie there and cough and cough, day
-and night, wasting away to a mere skeleton. There came a time when there
-was so little flesh on him that the bones began to poke through--which
-was a horrible thing to see or even to think of. And one night he had
-a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his mouth. The
-family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a dollar to
-be told that there was nothing to be done. Mercifully the doctor did not
-say this so that the old man could hear, for he was still clinging to
-the faith that tomorrow or next day he would be better, and could go
-back to his job. The company had sent word to him that they would keep
-it for him--or rather Jurgis had bribed one of the men to come one
-Sunday afternoon and say they had. Dede Antanas continued to believe
-it, while three more hemorrhages came; and then at last one morning they
-found him stiff and cold. Things were not going well with them then,
-and though it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were forced to
-dispense with nearly all the decencies of a funeral; they had only a
-hearse, and one hack for the women and children; and Jurgis, who was
-learning things fast, spent all Sunday making a bargain for these, and
-he made it in the presence of witnesses, so that when the man tried to
-charge him for all sorts of incidentals, he did not have to pay. For
-twenty-five years old Antanas Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest
-together, and it was hard to part in this way; perhaps it was just as
-well that Jurgis had to give all his attention to the task of having
-a funeral without being bankrupted, and so had no time to indulge in
-memories and grief.
-
-
-Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests, all summer
-long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them
-lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow
-and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches. Just so it
-was in Packingtown; the whole district braced itself for the struggle
-that was an agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes.
-All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing
-machine; and now was the time for the renovating of it, and the
-replacing of damaged parts. There came pneumonia and grippe, stalking
-among them, seeking for weakened constitutions; there was the annual
-harvest of those whom tuberculosis had been dragging down. There came
-cruel, cold, and biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing
-relentlessly for failing muscles and impoverished blood. Sooner or later
-came the day when the unfit one did not report for work; and then, with
-no time lost in waiting, and no inquiries or regrets, there was a chance
-for a new hand.
-
-The new hands were here by the thousands. All day long the gates of the
-packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came,
-literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each
-other for a chance for life. Blizzards and cold made no difference to
-them, they were always on hand; they were on hand two hours before the
-sun rose, an hour before the work began. Sometimes their faces
-froze, sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all
-together--but still they came, for they had no other place to go. One
-day Durham advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice; and
-all that day the homeless and starving of the city came trudging through
-the snow from all over its two hundred square miles. That night
-forty score of them crowded into the station house of the stockyards
-district--they filled the rooms, sleeping in each other's laps, toboggan
-fashion, and they piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the
-police shut the doors and left some to freeze outside. On the morrow,
-before daybreak, there were three thousand at Durham's, and the police
-reserves had to be sent for to quell the riot. Then Durham's bosses
-picked out twenty of the biggest; the "two hundred" proved to have been
-a printer's error.
-
-Four or five miles to the eastward lay the lake, and over this the
-bitter winds came raging. Sometimes the thermometer would fall to ten or
-twenty degrees below zero at night, and in the morning the streets would
-be piled with snowdrifts up to the first-floor windows. The streets
-through which our friends had to go to their work were all unpaved and
-full of deep holes and gullies; in summer, when it rained hard, a man
-might have to wade to his waist to get to his house; and now in winter
-it was no joke getting through these places, before light in the morning
-and after dark at night. They would wrap up in all they owned, but they
-could not wrap up against exhaustion; and many a man gave out in these
-battles with the snowdrifts, and lay down and fell asleep.
-
-And if it was bad for the men, one may imagine how the women and
-children fared. Some would ride in the cars, if the cars were running;
-but when you are making only five cents an hour, as was little
-Stanislovas, you do not like to spend that much to ride two miles. The
-children would come to the yards with great shawls about their ears,
-and so tied up that you could hardly find them--and still there would be
-accidents. One bitter morning in February the little boy who worked at
-the lard machine with Stanislovas came about an hour late, and screaming
-with pain. They unwrapped him, and a man began vigorously rubbing his
-ears; and as they were frozen stiff, it took only two or three rubs to
-break them short off. As a result of this, little Stanislovas conceived
-a terror of the cold that was almost a mania. Every morning, when it
-came time to start for the yards, he would begin to cry and protest.
-Nobody knew quite how to manage him, for threats did no good--it seemed
-to be something that he could not control, and they feared sometimes
-that he would go into convulsions. In the end it had to be arranged that
-he always went with Jurgis, and came home with him again; and often,
-when the snow was deep, the man would carry him the whole way on his
-shoulders. Sometimes Jurgis would be working until late at night, and
-then it was pitiful, for there was no place for the little fellow to
-wait, save in the doorways or in a corner of the killing beds, and he
-would all but fall asleep there, and freeze to death.
-
-There was no heat upon the killing beds; the men might exactly as well
-have worked out of doors all winter. For that matter, there was very
-little heat anywhere in the building, except in the cooking rooms and
-such places--and it was the men who worked in these who ran the most
-risk of all, because whenever they had to pass to another room they had
-to go through ice-cold corridors, and sometimes with nothing on above
-the waist except a sleeveless undershirt. On the killing beds you were
-apt to be covered with blood, and it would freeze solid; if you leaned
-against a pillar, you would freeze to that, and if you put your hand
-upon the blade of your knife, you would run a chance of leaving your
-skin on it. The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old sacks,
-and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked again,
-and so on, until by nighttime a man would be walking on great lumps the
-size of the feet of an elephant. Now and then, when the bosses were
-not looking, you would see them plunging their feet and ankles into the
-steaming hot carcass of the steer, or darting across the room to
-the hot-water jets. The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of
-them--all of those who used knives--were unable to wear gloves, and
-their arms would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb,
-and then of course there would be accidents. Also the air would be full
-of steam, from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not
-see five feet before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed
-they kept up on the killing beds, and all with butcher knives, like
-razors, in their hands--well, it was to be counted as a wonder that
-there were not more men slaughtered than cattle.
-
-And yet all this inconvenience they might have put up with, if only it
-had not been for one thing--if only there had been some place where they
-might eat. Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which
-he had worked, or else to rush, as did all his companions, to any one of
-the hundreds of liquor stores which stretched out their arms to him. To
-the west of the yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken
-line of saloons--"Whiskey Row," they called it; to the north was
-Forty-seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and at
-the angle of the two was "Whiskey Point," a space of fifteen or twenty
-acres, and containing one glue factory and about two hundred saloons.
-
-One might walk among these and take his choice: "Hot pea-soup and boiled
-cabbage today." "Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Walk in." "Bean soup
-and stewed lamb. Welcome." All of these things were printed in many
-languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were infinite
-in their variety and appeal. There was the "Home Circle" and the
-"Cosey Corner"; there were "Firesides" and "Hearthstones" and "Pleasure
-Palaces" and "Wonderlands" and "Dream Castles" and "Love's Delights."
-Whatever else they were called, they were sure to be called "Union
-Headquarters," and to hold out a welcome to workingmen; and there was
-always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some friends to laugh and
-talk with. There was only one condition attached,--you must drink. If
-you went in not intending to drink, you would be put out in no time, and
-if you were slow about going, like as not you would get your head split
-open with a beer bottle in the bargain. But all of the men understood
-the convention and drank; they believed that by it they were getting
-something for nothing--for they did not need to take more than one
-drink, and upon the strength of it they might fill themselves up with a
-good hot dinner. This did not always work out in practice, however, for
-there was pretty sure to be a friend who would treat you, and then you
-would have to treat him. Then some one else would come in--and, anyhow,
-a few drinks were good for a man who worked hard. As he went back he did
-not shiver so, he had more courage for his task; the deadly brutalizing
-monotony of it did not afflict him so,--he had ideas while he worked,
-and took a more cheerful view of his circumstances. On the way home,
-however, the shivering was apt to come on him again; and so he would
-have to stop once or twice to warm up against the cruel cold. As there
-were hot things to eat in this saloon too, he might get home late to his
-supper, or he might not get home at all. And then his wife might set out
-to look for him, and she too would feel the cold; and perhaps she would
-have some of the children with her--and so a whole family would drift
-into drinking, as the current of a river drifts downstream. As if to
-complete the chain, the packers all paid their men in checks, refusing
-all requests to pay in coin; and where in Packingtown could a man go to
-have his check cashed but to a saloon, where he could pay for the favor
-by spending a part of the money?
-
-From all of these things Jurgis was saved because of Ona. He never would
-take but the one drink at noontime; and so he got the reputation of
-being a surly fellow, and was not quite welcome at the saloons, and had
-to drift about from one to another. Then at night he would go straight
-home, helping Ona and Stanislovas, or often putting the former on a car.
-And when he got home perhaps he would have to trudge several blocks, and
-come staggering back through the snowdrifts with a bag of coal upon
-his shoulder. Home was not a very attractive place--at least not this
-winter. They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small
-one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the bitterest
-weather. This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta all day, and for the
-children when they could not get to school. At night they would sit
-huddled round this stove, while they ate their supper off their laps;
-and then Jurgis and Jonas would smoke a pipe, after which they would all
-crawl into their beds to get warm, after putting out the fire to save
-the coal. Then they would have some frightful experiences with the cold.
-They would sleep with all their clothes on, including their overcoats,
-and put over them all the bedding and spare clothing they owned; the
-children would sleep all crowded into one bed, and yet even so they
-could not keep warm. The outside ones would be shivering and sobbing,
-crawling over the others and trying to get down into the center, and
-causing a fight. This old house with the leaky weatherboards was a
-very different thing from their cabins at home, with great thick walls
-plastered inside and outside with mud; and the cold which came upon them
-was a living thing, a demon-presence in the room. They would waken in
-the midnight hours, when everything was black; perhaps they would hear
-it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness--and
-that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through
-the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers;
-and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain.
-It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter born in
-the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing the
-tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction. It was
-cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp,
-alone, alone. There would be no one to hear them if they cried out;
-there would be no help, no mercy. And so on until morning--when they
-would go out to another day of toil, a little weaker, a little nearer to
-the time when it would be their turn to be shaken from the tree.
-
-
-
-Chapter 8
-
-
-Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept
-from sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that the great
-adventure befell Marija.
-
-The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, who played the violin. Everybody
-laughed at them, for Tamoszius was petite and frail, and Marija could
-have picked him up and carried him off under one arm. But perhaps that
-was why she fascinated him; the sheer volume of Marija's energy was
-overwhelming. That first night at the wedding Tamoszius had hardly taken
-his eyes off her; and later on, when he came to find that she had really
-the heart of a baby, her voice and her violence ceased to terrify him,
-and he got the habit of coming to pay her visits on Sunday afternoons.
-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 a 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, crying, "Come
-now, brother, give us a tune." And then Tamoszius' face would light up
-and he would get out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin, and play. And
-forthwith the soul of him would flame up and become eloquent--it was
-almost an impropriety, for all the while his gaze would be fixed upon
-Marija's face, until she would begin to turn red and lower her eyes.
-There was no resisting the music of Tamoszius, however; even the
-children would sit awed and wondering, and the tears would run down Teta
-Elzbieta's cheeks. A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into
-the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and
-the agonies of his inmost life.
-
-Then 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; and also they
-would invite him to parties and festivals, knowing well that he was too
-good-natured to come without his fiddle, and that having brought it,
-he could be made to play while others danced. Once he made bold to ask
-Marija to accompany him to such a party, and Marija accepted, to his
-great delight--after which he never went anywhere without her, while if
-the celebration were given by friends of his, he would invite the rest
-of the family also. In any case Marija would bring back a huge pocketful
-of cakes and sandwiches for the children, and stories of all the good
-things she herself had managed to consume. She was compelled, at these
-parties, to spend most of her time at the refreshment table, for she
-could not dance with anybody except other women and very old men;
-Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament, and afflicted with a frantic
-jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured to put his arm about the
-ample waist of Marija would be certain to throw the orchestra out of
-tune.
-
-It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be able
-to look forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights. The
-family was too poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances;
-in Packingtown, as a rule, people know only their near neighbors and
-shopmates, and so the place is like a myriad of little country villages.
-But now there was a member of the family who was permitted to travel and
-widen her horizon; and so each week there would be new personalities to
-talk about,--how so-and-so was dressed, and where she worked, and what
-she got, and whom she was in love with; and how this man had jilted his
-girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had passed
-between them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her
-earnings upon drink, and pawned her very clothes. Some people would have
-scorned this talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about what one
-knows.
-
-It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding, that
-Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the street and
-spoke his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms. She told them
-all about it the next day, and fairly cried with happiness, for she said
-that Tamoszius was a lovely man. After that he no longer made love
-to her with his fiddle, but they would sit for hours in the kitchen,
-blissfully happy in each other's arms; it was the tacit convention of
-the family to know nothing of what was going on in that corner.
-
-They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garret
-of the house fixed up, and live there. Tamoszius made good wages; and
-little by little the family were paying back their debt to Marija,
-so she ought soon to have enough to start life upon--only, with her
-preposterous softheartedness, she would insist upon spending a good part
-of her money every week for things which she saw they needed. Marija
-was really the capitalist of the party, for she had become an expert can
-painter by this time--she was getting fourteen cents for every hundred
-and ten cans, and she could paint more than two cans every minute.
-Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the throttle, and the
-neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.
-
-Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one
-could not count upon such good fortune forever--there were accidents
-that always happened. But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went
-on planning and dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for
-her home; and so, when the crash did come, her grief was painful to see.
-
-For her canning factory shut down! Marija would about as soon have
-expected to see the sun shut down--the huge establishment had been to
-her a thing akin to the planets and the seasons. But now it was shut!
-And they had not given her any explanation, they had not even given her
-a day's warning; they had simply posted a notice one Saturday that all
-hands would be paid off that afternoon, and would not resume work for at
-least a month! And that was all that there was to it--her job was gone!
-
-It was the holiday rush that was over, the girls said in answer to
-Marija's inquiries; after that there was always a slack. Sometimes the
-factory would start up on half time after a while, but there was no
-telling--it had been known to stay closed until way into the summer. The
-prospects were bad at present, for truckmen who worked in the storerooms
-said that these were piled up to the ceilings, so that the firm could
-not have found room for another week's output of cans. And they had
-turned off three-quarters of these men, which was a still worse sign,
-since it meant that there were no orders to be filled. It was all a
-swindle, can-painting, said the girls--you were crazy with delight
-because you were making twelve or fourteen dollars a week, and saving
-half of it; but you had to spend it all keeping alive while you were
-out, and so your pay was really only half what you thought.
-
-
-Marija came home, and because she was a person who could not rest
-without danger of explosion, they first had a great house cleaning, and
-then she set out to search Packingtown for a job to fill up the gap. As
-nearly all the canning establishments were shut down, and all the girls
-hunting work, it will be readily understood that Marija did not find
-any. Then she took to trying the stores and saloons, and when this
-failed she even traveled over into the far-distant regions near the lake
-front, where lived the rich people in great palaces, and begged there
-for some sort of work that could be done by a person who did not know
-English.
-
-The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which
-had turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way
-which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness. The big
-packers did not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning
-factories; but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours. They had
-always required the men to be on the killing beds and ready for work at
-seven o'clock, although there was almost never any work to be done till
-the buyers out in the yards had gotten to work, and some cattle had come
-over the chutes. That would often be ten or eleven o'clock, which was
-bad enough, in all conscience; but now, in the slack season, they would
-perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late in the afternoon.
-And so they would have to loaf around, in a place where the thermometer
-might be twenty degrees below zero! At first one would see them running
-about, or skylarking with each other, trying to keep warm; but before
-the day was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted,
-and, when the cattle finally came, so near frozen that to move was an
-agony. And then suddenly the place would spring into activity, and the
-merciless "speeding-up" would begin!
-
-There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day as
-this with not more than two hours' work to his credit--which meant about
-thirty-five cents. There were many days when the total was less than
-half an hour, and others when there was none at all. The general average
-was six hours a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a week;
-and this six hours of work would be done after standing on the killing
-bed till one o'clock, or perhaps even three or four o'clock, in the
-afternoon. Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very
-end of the day, which the men would have to dispose of before they went
-home, often working by electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve
-or one o'clock, and without a single instant for a bite of supper. The
-men were at the mercy of the cattle. Perhaps the buyers would be holding
-off for better prices--if they could scare the shippers into thinking
-that they meant to buy nothing that day, they could get their own terms.
-For some reason the cost of fodder for cattle in the yards was much
-above the market price--and you were not allowed to bring your own
-fodder! Then, too, a number of cars were apt to arrive late in the day,
-now that the roads were blocked with snow, and the packers would buy
-their cattle that night, to get them cheaper, and then would come into
-play their ironclad rule, that all cattle must be killed the same day
-they were bought. There was no use kicking about this--there had been
-one delegation after another to see the packers about it, only to be
-told that it was the rule, and that there was not the slightest chance
-of its ever being altered. And so on Christmas Eve Jurgis worked till
-nearly one o'clock in the morning, and on Christmas Day he was on the
-killing bed at seven o'clock.
-
-All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst. For after all the hard
-work a man did, he was paid for only part of it. Jurgis had once been
-among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;
-and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it was
-precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity. One of
-the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute late
-was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to work the
-balance of the hour--he was not allowed to stand round and wait. And on
-the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that--though
-often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutes before
-the whistle. And this same custom they carried over to the end of the
-day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour--for "broken time." A
-man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no work to fill out
-the hour, there was no pay for him. Thus the end of every day was a
-sort of lottery--a struggle, all but breaking into open war between
-the bosses and the men, the former trying to rush a job through and
-the latter trying to stretch it out. Jurgis blamed the bosses for this,
-though the truth to be told it was not always their fault; for the
-packers kept them frightened for their lives--and when one was in danger
-of falling behind the standard, what was easier than to catch up
-by making the gang work awhile "for the church"? This was a savage
-witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old
-man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they
-were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at
-each other and say, "Now we're working for the church!"
-
-One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no
-longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.
-He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the
-butcher-helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him in a
-far different spirit. A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis, this
-of the men--that by combining they might be able to make a stand and
-conquer the packers! Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it; and
-when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America, he
-got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase "a free country." The
-delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to get
-every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis signified
-that he was willing to do his share. Before another month was by, all
-the working members of his family had union cards, and wore their union
-buttons conspicuously and with pride. For fully a week they were quite
-blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an end to all
-their troubles.
-
-But only ten days after she had joined, Marija's canning factory closed
-down, and that blow quite staggered them. They could not understand why
-the union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended
-a meeting Marija got up and made a speech about it. It was a business
-meeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference to
-Marija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the chairman's
-gavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.
-Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a general
-sense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of the
-packers, and what she thought of a world where such things were allowed
-to happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the shock
-of her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and the
-meeting gathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the election
-of a recording secretary.
-
-Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting,
-but it was not of his own seeking. Jurgis had gone with the desire
-to get into an inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this
-attitude of silent and open-eyed attention had marked him out for a
-victim. Tommy Finnegan was a little Irishman, with big staring eyes and
-a wild aspect, a "hoister" by trade, and badly cracked. Somewhere back
-in the far-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange experience,
-and the burden of it rested upon him. All the balance of his life he had
-done nothing but try to make it understood. When he talked he caught
-his victim by the buttonhole, and his face kept coming closer and
-closer--which was trying, because his teeth were so bad. Jurgis did not
-mind that, only he was frightened. The method of operation of the higher
-intelligences was Tom Finnegan's theme, and he desired to find out if
-Jurgis had ever considered that the representation of things in their
-present similarity might be altogether unintelligible upon a more
-elevated plane. There were assuredly wonderful mysteries about the
-developing of these things; and then, becoming confidential, Mr.
-Finnegan proceeded to tell of some discoveries of his own. "If ye have
-iver had onything to do wid shperrits," said he, and looked inquiringly
-at Jurgis, who kept shaking his head. "Niver mind, niver mind,"
-continued the other, "but their influences may be operatin' upon ye;
-it's shure as I'm tellin' ye, it's them that has the reference to the
-immejit surroundin's that has the most of power. It was vouchsafed to
-me in me youthful days to be acquainted with shperrits" and so
-Tommy Finnegan went on, expounding a system of philosophy, while the
-perspiration came out on Jurgis' forehead, so great was his agitation
-and embarrassment. In the end one of the men, seeing his plight, came
-over and rescued him; but it was some time before he was able to find
-any one to explain things to him, and meanwhile his fear lest the
-strange little Irishman should get him cornered again was enough to keep
-him dodging about the room the whole evening.
-
-He never missed a meeting, however. He had picked up a few words of
-English by this time, and friends would help him to understand. They
-were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming
-at once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all
-desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he understood
-that a fight was on, and that it was his fight. Since the time of his
-disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except in his own
-family; but here he discovered that he had brothers in affliction, and
-allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so the struggle
-became a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member of the church,
-because it was the right thing to be, but the church had never
-touched him, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a new
-religion--one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of him;
-and with all the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a missionary.
-There were many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and with these
-he would labor and wrestle in prayer, trying to show them the right.
-Sometimes they would be obstinate and refuse to see it, and Jurgis,
-alas, was not always patient! 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.
-
-
-
-Chapter 9
-
-
-One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that
-Jurgis became desirous of learning English. He wanted to know what was
-going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in them, and so he
-began to look about him, and to try to pick up words. The children, who
-were at school, and learning fast, would teach him a few; and a friend
-loaned him a little book that had some in it, and Ona would read them to
-him. Then Jurgis became sorry that he could not read himself; and later
-on in the winter, when some one told him that there was a night school
-that was free, he went and enrolled. After that, every evening that he
-got home from the yards in time, he would go to the school; he would go
-even if he were in time for only half an hour. They were teaching him
-both to read and to speak English--and they would have taught him other
-things, if only he had had a little time.
-
-Also the union made another great difference with him--it made him begin
-to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracy with
-him. It was a little state, the union, a miniature republic; its affairs
-were every man's affairs, and every man had a real say about them. In
-other words, in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics. In the place
-where he had come from there had not been any politics--in Russia one
-thought of the government as an affliction like the lightning and the
-hail. "Duck, little brother, duck," the wise old peasants would whisper;
-"everything passes away." And when Jurgis had first come to America he
-had supposed that it was the same. He had heard people say that it was
-a free country--but what did that mean? He found that here, precisely
-as in Russia, there were rich men who owned everything; and if one could
-not find any work, was not the hunger he began to feel the same sort of
-hunger?
-
-When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had
-come to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and
-who asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers
-and become a citizen. Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man
-explained the advantages. In the first place, it would not cost him
-anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the
-same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote--and
-there was something in that. Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so
-the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused for
-the rest of the day. When, later on, he wanted a holiday to get married
-he could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just the same--what
-power had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However, he went with
-the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants, Poles,
-Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood a great
-four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in it. It
-was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had a
-merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside. So they drove
-downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which they
-interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the
-names to be filled in. So each man in turn took an oath of which he did
-not understand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamented
-document with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon
-it, and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and the
-equal of the President himself.
-
-A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,
-who told him where to go to "register." And then finally, when election
-day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to
-vote might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night
-watchman took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a
-saloon, and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and then
-gave each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where there
-was a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through all
-right. Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home and
-met Jonas, who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him, offering
-to vote three times for four dollars, which offer had been accepted.
-
-And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery
-to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its
-government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who
-ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there
-were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one
-got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election
-was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the
-stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local
-elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The ruler of
-the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little Irishman named
-Mike Scully. Scully held an important party office in the state, and
-bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boast that he
-carried the stockyards in his pocket. He was an enormously rich man--he
-had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood. It was Scully, for
-instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seen the first
-day of their arrival. Not only did he own the dump, but he owned the
-brick factory as well, and first he took out the clay and made it into
-bricks, and then he had the city bring garbage to fill up the hole, so
-that he could build houses to sell to the people. Then, too, he sold the
-bricks to the city, at his own price, and the city came and got them
-in its own wagons. And also he owned the other hole near by, where the
-stagnant water was; and it was he who cut the ice and sold it; and what
-was more, if the men told truth, he had not had to pay any taxes for the
-water, and he had built the ice-house out of city lumber, and had not had
-to pay anything for that. The newspapers had got hold of that story, and
-there had been a scandal; but Scully had hired somebody to confess and
-take all the blame, and then skip the country. It was said, too, that he
-had built his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmen were on
-the city payroll while they did it; however, one had to press closely to
-get these things out of the men, for it was not their business, and Mike
-Scully was a good man to stand in with. A note signed by him was equal
-to a job any time at the packing houses; and also he employed a good
-many men himself, and worked them only eight hours a day, and paid them
-the highest wages. This gave him many friends--all of whom he had gotten
-together into the "War Whoop League," whose clubhouse you might see
-just outside of the yards. It was the biggest clubhouse, and the biggest
-club, in all Chicago; and they had prizefights every now and then,
-and cockfights and even dogfights. The policemen in the district all
-belonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they sold
-tickets for them. The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized was
-one of these "Indians," as they were called; and on election day there
-would be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in their
-pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district. That was
-another thing, the men said--all the saloon-keepers had to be "Indians,"
-and to put up on demand, otherwise they could not do business on
-Sundays, nor have any gambling at all. In the same way Scully had all
-the jobs in the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of the
-city graft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of flats
-somewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it for
-him was drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers. The city inspector of
-water pipes had been dead and buried for over a year, but somebody was
-still drawing his pay. The city inspector of sidewalks was a barkeeper
-at the War Whoop Cafe--and maybe he could make it uncomfortable for any
-tradesman who did not stand in with Scully!
-
-Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said. It gave them
-pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people's man, and
-boasted of it boldly when election day came. The packers had wanted a
-bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till they
-had seen Scully; and it was the same with "Bubbly Creek," which the city
-had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scully had come to
-their aid. "Bubbly Creek" is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the
-southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of
-packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer
-a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth
-stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured
-into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the
-cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were
-feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths.
-Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and
-make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth
-have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk
-about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to
-stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the
-creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire
-and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put
-it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather
-this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the
-cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it
-themselves. The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs,
-and this also the packers gather and clean.
-
-And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip
-of the men. The packers had secret mains, through which they stole
-billions of gallons of the city's water. The newspapers had been full of
-this scandal--once there had even been an investigation, and an actual
-uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thing
-went right on. And then there was the condemned meat industry, with its
-endless horrors. The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors
-in Packingtown, and they all took that to mean that they were protected
-from diseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and
-sixty-three inspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers,
-and that they were paid by the United States government to certify
-that all the diseased meat was kept in the state. They had no authority
-beyond that; for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state
-the whole force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local
-political machine!*
-
-     (*Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and
-     Their Products. United States Department of Agriculture,
-     Bureau of Animal Industries, Order No. 125:--
-
-     Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting,
-     packing, or rendering establishments engaged in the
-     slaughtering of cattle, sheep, or swine, or the packing of
-     any of their products, the carcasses or products of which
-     are to become subjects of interstate or foreign commerce,
-     shall make application to the Secretary of Agriculture for
-     inspection of said animals and their products....
-
-     Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once
-     be removed by the owners from the pens containing animals
-     which have been inspected and found to be free from disease
-     and fit for human food, and shall be disposed of in
-     accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations of the
-     state and municipality in which said rejected or condemned
-     animals are located....
-
-     Section 25. A microscopic examination for trichinae shall be
-     made of all swine products exported to countries requiring
-     such examination. No microscopic examination will be made of
-     hogs slaughtered for interstate trade, but this examination
-     shall be confined to those intended for the export trade.)
-
-And shortly afterward one of these, a physician, made the discovery that
-the carcasses of steers which had been condemned as tubercular by the
-government inspectors, and which therefore contained ptomaines, which
-are deadly poisons, were left upon an open platform and carted away to
-be sold in the city; and so he insisted that these carcasses be treated
-with an injection of kerosene--and was ordered to resign the same week!
-So indignant were the packers that they went farther, and compelled
-the mayor to abolish the whole bureau of inspection; so that since then
-there has not been even a pretense of any interference with the graft.
-There was said to be two thousand dollars a week hush money from the
-tubercular steers alone; and as much again from the hogs which had died
-of cholera on the trains, and which you might see any day being loaded
-into boxcars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana, where
-they made a fancy grade of lard.
-
-Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of those
-who were obliged to perpetrate them. It seemed as if every time you
-met a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new
-crimes. There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher
-for the plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning
-only; and to hear this man describe the animals which came to his place
-would have been worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola. It seemed that they
-must have agencies all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled
-and diseased cattle to be canned. There were cattle which had been fed
-on "whisky-malt," the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the
-men called "steerly"--which means covered with boils. It was a nasty
-job killing these, for when you plunged your knife into them they would
-burst and splash foul-smelling stuff into your face; and when a man's
-sleeves were smeared with blood, and his hands steeped in it, how was he
-ever to wipe his face, or to clear his eyes so that he could see? It was
-stuff such as this that made the "embalmed beef" that had killed
-several times as many United States soldiers as all the bullets of the
-Spaniards; only the army beef, besides, was not fresh canned, it was old
-stuff that had been lying for years in the cellars.
-
-Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen
-stove, and talking with an old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and
-who worked in the canning rooms at Durham's; and so Jurgis learned a few
-things about the great and only Durham canned goods, which had become
-a national institution. They were regular alchemists at Durham's; they
-advertised a mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what
-a mushroom looked like. They advertised "potted chicken,"--and it was
-like the boardinghouse soup of the comic papers, through which a chicken
-had walked with rubbers on. Perhaps they had a secret process for making
-chickens chemically--who knows? said Jurgis' friend; the things that
-went into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet,
-and hearts of beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had
-any. They put these up in several grades, and sold them at several
-prices; but the contents of the cans all came out of the same hopper.
-And then there was "potted game" and "potted grouse," "potted ham," and
-"deviled ham"--de-vyled, as the men called it. "De-vyled" ham was made
-out of the waste ends of smoked beef that were too small to be sliced by
-the machines; and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would not
-show white; and trimmings of hams and corned beef; and potatoes, skins
-and all; and finally the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the
-tongues had been cut out. All this ingenious mixture was ground up and
-flavored with spices to make it taste like something. Anybody who could
-invent a new imitation had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said
-Jurgis' informant; but it was hard to think of anything new in a
-place where so many sharp wits had been at work for so long; where men
-welcomed tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding, because it made
-them fatten more quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid
-butter left over in the grocery stores of a continent, and "oxidized" it
-by a forced-air process, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim
-milk, and sold it in bricks in the cities! Up to a year or two ago
-it had been the custom to kill horses in the yards--ostensibly for
-fertilizer; but after long agitation the newspapers had been able to
-make the public realize that the horses were being canned. Now it was
-against the law to kill horses in Packingtown, and the law was really
-complied with--for the present, at any rate. Any day, however, one might
-see sharp-horned and shaggy-haired creatures running with the sheep and
-yet what a job you would have to get the public to believe that a good
-part of what it buys for lamb and mutton is really goat's flesh!
-
-There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might
-have gathered in Packingtown--those of the various afflictions of
-the workers. When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with
-Szedvilas, he had marveled while he listened to the tale of all the
-things that were made out of the carcasses of animals, and of all the
-lesser industries that were maintained there; now 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.
-The workers in each of them had their own peculiar diseases. And the
-wandering visitor might be skeptical about all the swindles, but he
-could not be skeptical about these, for the worker bore the evidence
-of them about on his own person--generally he had only to hold out his
-hand.
-
-There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas
-had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of
-horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing a
-truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him
-out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the
-acid, one by one. Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners and
-trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a
-person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it
-had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the
-man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of these men would be
-criss-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count
-them or to trace them. They would have no nails,--they had worn them off
-pulling hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread
-out like a fan. There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the
-midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms
-the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply
-was renewed every hour. There were the beef-luggers, who carried
-two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of
-work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the
-most powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the
-chilling rooms, and whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit
-that a man could work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years.
-There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner
-than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be
-painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to
-pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their
-fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and
-their hands, too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance
-for blood poisoning. Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was
-very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that was set, and
-not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off.
-There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to
-press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran
-along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and
-as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the
-convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop
-under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them
-into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking
-like chimpanzees. 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!
-
-
-
-Chapter 10
-
-
-During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough to
-live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the earnings of
-Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six, there was
-no longer anything to spare. The winter went, and the spring came, and
-found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by day,
-with literally not a month's wages between them and starvation. Marija
-was in despair, for there was still no word about the reopening of the
-canning factory, and her savings were almost entirely gone. She had had
-to give up all idea of marrying then; the family could not get along
-without her--though for that matter she was likely soon to become a
-burden even upon them, for when her money was all gone, they would have
-to pay back what they owed her in board. So Jurgis and Ona and Teta
-Elzbieta would hold anxious conferences until late at night, trying to
-figure how they could manage this too without starving.
-
-Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible, that they
-might never have nor expect a single instant's respite from worry, a
-single instant in which they were not haunted by the thought of money.
-They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle, from one difficulty,
-than a new one would come into view. In addition to all their physical
-hardships, there was thus a constant strain upon their minds; they were
-harried all day and nearly all night by worry and fear. This was in
-truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it
-was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all
-the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to
-keep alive?
-
-There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to the
-unforeseen contingencies. Once their water pipes froze and burst; and
-when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a terrifying
-flood in their house. It happened while the men were away, and poor
-Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help, for she did
-not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether they were
-ruined for life. It was nearly as bad as the latter, they found in
-the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents an hour, and
-seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and watched him, and
-included all the time the two had been going and coming, and also a
-charge for all sorts of material and extras. And then again, when
-they went to pay their January's installment on the house, the agent
-terrified them by asking them if they had had the insurance attended
-to yet. In answer to their inquiry he showed them a clause in the deed
-which provided that they were to keep the house insured for one thousand
-dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out, which would happen in
-a few days. Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell the blow, demanded how
-much it would cost them. Seven dollars, the man said; and that night
-came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that the agent would be
-good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all the expenses they
-were liable for. The deed was signed now, he said, with sarcasm proper
-to the new way of life he had learned--the deed was signed, and so the
-agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping quiet. And Jurgis looked
-the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the fellow wasted no time in
-conventional protests, but read him the deed. They would have to renew
-the insurance every year; they would have to pay the taxes, about ten
-dollars a year; they would have to pay the water tax, about six dollars
-a year--(Jurgis silently resolved to shut off the hydrant). This,
-besides the interest and the monthly installments, would be all--unless
-by chance the city should happen to decide to put in a sewer or to lay
-a sidewalk. Yes, said the agent, they would have to have these, whether
-they wanted them or not, if the city said so. The sewer would cost them
-about twenty-two dollars, and the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood,
-twenty-five if it were cement.
-
-So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any
-rate, so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands. He saw
-now how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was
-no turning back. They could only go on and make the fight and win--for
-defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.
-
-When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
-and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the money
-they would not have to pay for coal--and it was just at this time that
-Marija's board began to fail. Then, too, the warm weather brought trials
-of its own; each season had its trials, as they found. In the spring
-there were cold rains, that turned the streets into canals and bogs; the
-mud would be so deep that wagons would sink up to the hubs, so that half
-a dozen horses could not move them. Then, of course, it was impossible
-for any one to get to work with dry feet; and this was bad for men that
-were poorly clad and shod, and still worse for women and children. 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. All day long the rivers of hot blood poured
-forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless,
-the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old smells of a
-generation would be drawn out by this heat--for there was never any
-washing of the walls and rafters and pillars, and they were caked with
-the filth of a lifetime. The men who worked on the killing beds would
-come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of them fifty
-feet away; there was simply no such thing as keeping decent, the most
-careful man gave it up in the end, and wallowed in uncleanness. There
-was not even a place where a man could wash his hands, and the men ate
-as much raw blood as food at dinnertime. When they were at work they
-could not even wipe off their faces--they were as helpless as newly born
-babes in that respect; and it may seem like a small matter, but when the
-sweat began to run down their necks and tickle them, or a fly to bother
-them, it was a torture like being burned alive. Whether it was the
-slaughterhouses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say,
-but with the hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable
-Egyptian plague of flies; there could be no describing this--the houses
-would be black with them. There was no escaping; you might provide all
-your doors and windows with screens, but their buzzing outside would be
-like the swarming of bees, and whenever you opened the door they would
-rush in as if a storm of wind were driving them.
-
-Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country, visions
-of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes. It had no such
-suggestion for the people in the yards. The great packing machine ground
-on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men and
-women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing, not
-even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue
-waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have
-been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and
-then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing
-machine, and tied to it for life. The managers and superintendents and
-clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never
-from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A
-poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham's for twenty
-years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty
-more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far
-removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds;
-he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and
-come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure
-that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to
-the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with
-their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.
-
-In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so once
-more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius took on
-a less melancholy tone. It was not for long, however; for a month or two
-later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija. Just one year and three days
-after she had begun work as a can-painter, she lost her job.
-
-It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her activity
-in the union. The packers, of course, had spies in all the unions, and
-in addition they made a practice of buying up a certain number of the
-union officials, as many as they thought they needed. So every week they
-received reports as to what was going on, and often they knew things
-before the members of the union knew them. Any one who was considered
-to be dangerous by them would find that he was not a favorite with
-his boss; and Marija had been a great hand for going after the foreign
-people and preaching to them. However that might be, the known facts
-were that a few weeks before the factory closed, Marija had been cheated
-out of her pay for three hundred cans. The girls worked at a long table,
-and behind them walked a woman with pencil and notebook, keeping count
-of the number they finished. This woman was, of course, only human, and
-sometimes made mistakes; when this happened, there was no redress--if
-on Saturday you got less money than you had earned, you had to make the
-best of it. But Marija did not understand this, and made a disturbance.
-Marija's disturbances did not mean anything, and while she had known
-only Lithuanian and Polish, they had done no harm, for people only
-laughed at her and made her cry. But now Marija was able to call names
-in English, and so she got the woman who made the mistake to disliking
-her. Probably, as Marija claimed, she made mistakes on purpose after
-that; at any rate, she made them, and the third time it happened Marija
-went on the warpath and took the matter first to the forelady, and
-when she got no satisfaction there, to the superintendent. This was
-unheard-of presumption, but the superintendent said he would see about
-it, which Marija took to mean that she was going to get her money; after
-waiting three days, she went to see the superintendent again. This time
-the man frowned, and said that he had not had time to attend to it; and
-when Marija, against the advice and warning of every one, tried it once
-more, he ordered her back to her work in a passion. Just how things
-happened after that Marija was not sure, but that afternoon the forelady
-told her that her services would not be any longer required. Poor Marija
-could not have been more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the
-head; at first she could not believe what she heard, and then she grew
-furious and swore that she would come anyway, that her place belonged
-to her. In the end she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and
-wailed.
-
-It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong--she should have
-listened to those who had had experience. The next time she would know
-her place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija went out, and the
-family faced the problem of an existence again.
-
-It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before
-long, and Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this. He had
-heard dreadful stories of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas
-in Packingtown; and he had made up his mind that Ona must have a
-man-doctor. Jurgis could be very obstinate when he wanted to, and he
-was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who felt that a
-man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really belonged to
-them. The cheapest doctor they could find would charge them fifteen
-dollars, and perhaps more when the bill came in; and here was Jurgis,
-declaring that he would pay it, even if he had to stop eating in the
-meantime!
-
-Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left. Day after day she
-wandered about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope of
-finding it. Marija could do the work of an able-bodied man, when she
-was cheerful, but discouragement wore her out easily, and she would come
-home at night a pitiable object. She learned her lesson this time, poor
-creature; she learned it ten times over. All the family learned it along
-with her--that when you have once got a job in Packingtown, you hang on
-to it, come what will.
-
-Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she
-stopped paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the
-union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged
-into one. She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul,
-when somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place as
-a "beef-trimmer." She got this because the boss saw that she had the
-muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and put Marija to do his
-work, paying her a little more than half what he had been paying before.
-
-When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such work
-as this. She was in another canning factory, and her work was to trim
-the meat of those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been told about not
-long before. She was shut up in one of the rooms where the people seldom
-saw the daylight; beneath her were the chilling rooms, where the meat
-was frozen, and above her were the cooking rooms; and so she stood on an
-ice-cold floor, while her head was often so hot that she could scarcely
-breathe. Trimming beef off the bones by the hundred-weight, while
-standing up from early morning till late at night, with heavy boots on
-and the floor always damp and full of puddles, liable to be thrown out
-of work indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade, liable again
-to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till she trembled
-in every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and gave herself
-a poisoned wound--that was the new life that unfolded itself before
-Marija. But because Marija was a human horse she merely laughed and went
-at it; it would enable her to pay her board again, and keep the family
-going. And as for Tamoszius--well, they had waited a long time, and they
-could wait a little longer. They could not possibly get along upon his
-wages alone, and the family could not live without hers. He could come
-and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her hand, and he must
-manage to be content with that. But day by day the music of Tamoszius'
-violin became more passionate and heartbreaking; and Marija would sit
-with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and all her body a-tremble,
-hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the unborn generations
-which cried out in her for life.
-
-
-Marija's lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate.
-Ona, too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason than
-Marija. She did not tell half of her story at home, because she saw it
-was a torment to Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do. For
-a long time Ona had seen that Miss Henderson, the forelady in her
-department, did not like her. At first she thought it was the old-time
-mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to get married. Then she
-concluded it must be because she did not give the forelady a present
-occasionally--she was the kind that took presents from the girls, Ona
-learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor of those who
-gave them. In the end, however, Ona discovered that it was even worse
-than that. Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was some time before
-rumor made her out; but finally it transpired that she was a kept woman,
-the former mistress of the superintendent of a department in the same
-building. He had put her there to keep her quiet, it seemed--and that
-not altogether with success, for once or twice they had been heard
-quarreling. She had the temper of a hyena, and soon the place she ran
-was a witch's caldron. There were some of the girls who were of her own
-sort, who were willing to toady to her and flatter her; and these would
-carry tales about the rest, and so the furies were unchained in the
-place. Worse than this, the woman lived in a bawdy-house downtown, with
-a coarse, red-faced Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the
-loading-gang outside, and would make free with the girls as they went
-to and from their work. In the slack seasons some of them would go with
-Miss Henderson to this house downtown--in fact, it would not be too much
-to say that she managed her department at Brown's in conjunction with
-it. Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of
-decent girls, and after other decent girls had been turned off to make
-room for them. When you worked in this woman's department the house
-downtown was never out of your thoughts all day--there were always
-whiffs of it to be caught, like the odor of the Packingtown rendering
-plants at night, when the wind shifted suddenly. There would be stories
-about it going the rounds; the girls opposite you would be telling them
-and winking at you. In such a place Ona would not have stayed a day, but
-for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that she could
-stay the next day. She understood now that the real reason that Miss
-Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she knew
-that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same reason, and
-were doing their best to make her life miserable.
-
-But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was
-particular about things of this sort; there was no place in it where
-a prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl. Here was 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 was exactly as inevitable, and as
-prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things that
-were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time,
-and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in
-the old slavery times, because there was no difference in color between
-master and slave.
-
-
-One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor, according
-to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby. It was an
-enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself, that it
-seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the stranger by
-the hour, unable to believe that it had really happened.
-
-The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis. It made him
-irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse that he
-might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk with the men
-in the saloons. There was nothing he cared for now so much as to sit
-and look at the baby. This was very curious, for Jurgis had never been
-interested in babies before. But then, this was a very unusual sort of a
-baby. He had the brightest little black eyes, and little black ringlets
-all over his head; he was the living image of his father, everybody
-said--and Jurgis found this a fascinating circumstance. It was
-sufficiently perplexing that this tiny mite of life should have come
-into the world at all in the manner that it had; that it should have
-come with a comical imitation of its father's nose was simply uncanny.
-
-Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was his
-baby; that it was his and Ona's, to care for all its life. Jurgis had
-never possessed anything nearly so interesting--a baby was, when you
-came to think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession. It would grow
-up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all its own, a will of
-its own! Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis, filling him with
-all sorts of strange and almost painful excitements. He was wonderfully
-proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all the details of
-him--the washing and the dressing and the eating and the sleeping of
-him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions. It took him quite a
-while to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness of the little
-creature's legs.
-
-Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt the
-chains about him more than just then. When he came home at night, the
-baby would be asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke
-before Jurgis had to go to sleep himself. Then in the morning there was
-no time to look at him, so really the only chance the father had was on
-Sundays. This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought to have stayed
-home and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own health as well as the
-baby's; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him for Teta Elzbieta
-to feed upon the pale blue poison that was called milk at the corner
-grocery. Ona's confinement lost her only a week's wages--she would go to
-the factory the second Monday, and the best that Jurgis could persuade
-her was to ride in the car, and let him run along behind and help her to
-Brown's when she alighted. After that it would be all right, said Ona,
-it was no strain sitting still sewing hams all day; and if she waited
-longer she might find that her dreadful forelady had put some one
-else in her place. That would be a greater calamity than ever now, Ona
-continued, on account of the baby. They would all have to work harder
-now on his account. It was such a responsibility--they must not have the
-baby grow up to suffer as they had. And this indeed had been the first
-thing that Jurgis had thought of himself--he had clenched his hands and
-braced himself anew for the struggle, for the sake of that tiny mite of
-human possibility.
-
-And so Ona went back to Brown's and saved her place and a week's wages;
-and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
-group under the title of "womb trouble," and was never again a well
-person as long as she lived. It is difficult to convey in words all that
-this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the punishment
-was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one else ever
-connected the two. "Womb trouble" to Ona did not mean a specialist's
-diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps an operation or two;
-it meant simply headaches and pains in the back, and depression and
-heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to work in the rain. The
-great majority of the women who worked in Packingtown suffered in the
-same way, and from the same cause, so it was not deemed a thing to see
-the doctor about; instead Ona would try patent medicines, one after
-another, as her friends told her about them. As these all contained
-alcohol, or some other stimulant, she found that they all did her good
-while she took them; and so she was always chasing the phantom of good
-health, and losing it because she was too poor to continue.
-
-
-
-Chapter 11
-
-
-During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again, and
-Jurgis made more money. He did not make so much, however, as he had the
-previous summer, for the packers took on more hands. There were new men
-every week, it seemed--it was a regular system; and this number they
-would keep over to the next slack season, so that every one would have
-less than ever. Sooner or later, by this plan, they would have all the
-floating labor of Chicago trained to do their work. And how very cunning
-a trick was that! The men were to teach new hands, who would some day
-come and break their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that
-they could not prepare for the trial!
-
-But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant easier
-work for any one! On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to be growing
-more savage all the time; they were continually inventing new devices to
-crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the thumbscrew of the
-medieval torture chamber. They would get new pacemakers and pay them
-more; they would drive the men on with new machinery--it was said
-that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at which the hogs moved was
-determined by clockwork, and that it was increased a little every day.
-In piecework they would reduce the time, requiring the same work in a
-shorter time, and paying the same wages; and then, after the workers had
-accustomed themselves to this new speed, they would reduce the rate of
-payment to correspond with the reduction in time! They had done this
-so often in the canning establishments that the girls were fairly
-desperate; their wages had gone down by a full third in the past two
-years, and a storm of discontent was brewing that was likely to break
-any day. Only a month after Marija had become a beef-trimmer the canning
-factory that she had left posted a cut that would divide the girls'
-earnings almost squarely in half; and so great was the indignation at
-this that they marched out without even a parley, and organized in the
-street outside. One of the girls had read somewhere that a red flag was
-the proper symbol for oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and
-paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the
-result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in
-three days, owing to the rush of new labor. At the end of it the girl
-who had carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great
-department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week.
-
-Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling
-when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors
-that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen
-cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would
-come soon. He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really not
-a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust. And every
-week the managers of it got together and compared notes, and there
-was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one standard of
-efficiency. Jurgis was told that they also fixed the price they would
-pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all dressed meat in the
-country; but that was something he did not understand or care about.
-
-The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who congratulated
-herself, somewhat naively, that there had been one in her place only
-a short time before she came. Marija was getting to be a skilled
-beef-trimmer, and was mounting to the heights again. During the summer
-and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her back the last penny they
-owed her, and so she began to have a bank account. Tamoszius had a bank
-account also, and they ran a race, and began to figure upon household
-expenses once more.
-
-The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities,
-however, as poor Marija found out. She had taken the advice of a friend
-and invested her savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue. Of course she knew
-nothing about it, except that it was big and imposing--what possible
-chance has a poor foreign working girl to understand the banking
-business, as it is conducted in this land of frenzied finance? So Marija
-lived in a continual dread lest something should happen to her bank, and
-would go out of her way mornings to make sure that it was still there.
-Her principal thought was of fire, for she had deposited her money in
-bills, and was afraid that if they were burned up the bank would not
-give her any others. Jurgis made fun of her for this, for he was a man
-and was proud of his superior knowledge, telling her that the bank had
-fireproof vaults, and all its millions of dollars hidden safely away in
-them.
-
-However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror
-and dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the
-avenue solid for half a block. All the blood went out of her face for
-terror. She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what was the
-matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had come
-to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance. There
-was a "run on the bank," they told her then, but she did not know what
-that was, and turned from one person to another, trying in an agony
-of fear to make out what they meant. Had something gone wrong with the
-bank? Nobody was sure, but they thought so. Couldn't she get her money?
-There was no telling; the people were afraid not, and they were all
-trying to get it. It was too early yet to tell anything--the bank would
-not open for nearly three hours. So in a frenzy of despair Marija began
-to claw her way toward the doors of this building, through a throng of
-men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was a scene of
-wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and fainting,
-and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way. In
-the midst of the melee Marija recollected that she did not have her
-bankbook, and could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out
-and started on a run for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few
-minutes later the police reserves arrived.
-
-In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
-breathless with running and sick with fear. The crowd was now formed
-in a line, extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen
-keeping guard, and so there was nothing for them to do but to take their
-places at the end of it. At nine o'clock the bank opened and began to
-pay the waiting throng; but then, what good did that do Marija, who saw
-three thousand people before her--enough to take out the last penny of a
-dozen banks?
-
-To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them to the
-skin; yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly toward the
-goal--all the afternoon they stood there, heartsick, seeing that the
-hour of closing was coming, and that they were going to be left out.
-Marija made up her mind that, come what might, she would stay there and
-keep her place; but as nearly all did the same, all through the long,
-cold night, she got very little closer to the bank for that. Toward
-evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the children, and he
-brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little easier.
-
-The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever, and
-more policemen from downtown. Marija held on like grim death, and toward
-afternoon she got into the bank and got her money--all in big silver
-dollars, a handkerchief full. When she had once got her hands on them
-her fear vanished, and she wanted to put them back again; but the man
-at the window was savage, and said that the bank would receive no more
-deposits from those who had taken part in the run. So Marija was forced
-to take her dollars home with her, watching to right and left, expecting
-every instant that some one would try to rob her; and when she got home
-she was not much better off. Until she could find another bank there was
-nothing to do but sew them up in her clothes, and so Marija went about
-for a week or more, loaded down with bullion, and afraid to cross the
-street in front of the house, because Jurgis told her she would sink out
-of sight in the mud. Weighted this way she made her way to the
-yards, again in fear, this time to see if she had lost her place; but
-fortunately about ten per cent of the working people of Packingtown had
-been depositors in that bank, and it was not convenient to discharge
-that many at once. The cause of the panic had been the attempt of a
-policeman to arrest a drunken man in a saloon next door, which had drawn
-a crowd at the hour the people were on their way to work, and so started
-the "run."
-
-About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account. Besides having
-paid Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture, and
-could have that little sum to count on. So long as each of them could
-bring home nine or ten dollars a week, they were able to get along
-finely. Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half a
-week's wages out of that, all net profit. It was a very close election
-that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to Packingtown. The
-two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set off fireworks and made
-speeches, to try to get the people interested in the matter. Although
-Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by this time to realize
-that it was not supposed to be right to sell your vote. However, as
-every one did it, and his refusal to join would not have made the
-slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing would have
-seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.
-
-
-Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter
-was coming again. It seemed as if the respite had been too short--they
-had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came,
-inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes of
-little Stanislovas. The prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis
-also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and the
-snowdrifts this year. And suppose that some day when a blizzard struck
-them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to give up, and
-should come the next day to find that her place had been given to some
-one who lived nearer and could be depended on?
-
-It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then the
-soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion. There were four
-days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days,
-for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really
-opposed. He had faced difficulties before, but they had been child's
-play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies were unchained
-within him. The first morning they set out two hours before dawn, Ona
-wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder like a sack of
-meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight, hanging by
-his coat-tails. There was a raging blast beating in his face, and the
-thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his knees, and
-in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits. It would catch
-his feet and try to trip him; it would build itself into a wall before
-him to beat him back; and he would fling himself into it, plunging like
-a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage. So foot by foot he
-drove his way, and when at last he came to Durham's he was staggering
-and almost blind, and leaned against a pillar, gasping, and thanking God
-that the cattle came late to the killing beds that day. In the evening
-the same thing had to be done again; and because Jurgis could not tell
-what hour of the night he would get off, he got a saloon-keeper to let
-Ona sit and wait for him in a corner. Once it was eleven o'clock at
-night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.
-
-That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for
-work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any
-one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met
-the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.--So it
-might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes in
-fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the night-time.
-
-A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose.
-Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the
-animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it would get
-upon its feet and run amuck. Then there would be a yell of warning--the
-men would drop everything and dash for the nearest pillar, slipping
-here and there on the floor, and tumbling over each other. This was bad
-enough in the summer, when a man could see; in wintertime it was enough
-to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that
-you could not make anything out five feet in front of you. To be sure,
-the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent on
-hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife, while
-nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the climax, the
-floor boss would come rushing up with a rifle and begin blazing away!
-
-It was in one of these melees that Jurgis fell into his trap. That is
-the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to
-be foreseen. At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight
-accident--simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.
-There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not
-coddle himself. When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it
-was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen
-out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his shoe.
-Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and wrapped
-his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car. It chanced to be
-a rush day at Durham's, and all the long morning he limped about with
-his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great that it made him
-faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he was fairly
-beaten, and had to tell the boss. They sent for the company doctor, and
-he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he
-had probably laid himself up for months by his folly. The injury was not
-one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that
-was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned.
-
-Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an
-awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged
-his injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her
-dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and told
-them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only be for
-a week or two, and that they would pull him through.
-
-When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen fire
-and talked it over in frightened whispers. They were in for a siege,
-that was plainly to be seen. Jurgis had only about sixty dollars in the
-bank, and the slack season was upon them. Both Jonas and Marija might
-soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and besides that
-there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy.
-There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was
-the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack
-of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face
-privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her
-work now? She might lose her place--she was almost certain to lose it.
-And then little Stanislovas began to whimper--who would take care of
-him?
-
-It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help,
-should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily
-food and drink of Jurgis. It was of no use for them to try to deceive
-him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he knew that
-the family might literally starve to death. The worry of it fairly ate
-him up--he began to look haggard the first two or three days of it. In
-truth, it was almost maddening for a strong man like him, a fighter, to
-have to lie there helpless on his back. It was for all the world the
-old story of Prometheus bound. As Jurgis lay on his bed, hour after hour
-there came to him emotions that he had never known before. Before this
-he had met life with a welcome--it had its trials, but none that a man
-could not face. But now, in the nighttime, when he lay tossing about,
-there would come stalking into his chamber a grisly phantom, the sight
-of which made his flesh curl and his hair to bristle up. It was like
-seeing the world fall away from underneath his feet; like plunging down
-into a bottomless abyss into yawning caverns of despair. It might be
-true, then, after all, what others had told him about life, that the
-best powers of a man might not be equal to it! It might be true that,
-strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be
-destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the
-thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those
-who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and
-there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was
-true, it was true,--that here in this huge city, with its stores of
-heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and destroyed by
-the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever they were in the
-days of the cave men!
-
-Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas about
-thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and Marija,
-about forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent, interest,
-and installments on the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and
-deducting the coal, they had fifty. They did without everything that
-human beings could do without; they went in old and ragged clothing,
-that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the children's shoes
-wore out, they tied them up with string. Half invalid as she was, Ona
-would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold when she ought
-to have ridden; they bought literally nothing but food--and still they
-could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month. They might have done it,
-if only they could have gotten pure food, and at fair prices; or if only
-they had known what to get--if they had not been so pitifully ignorant!
-But they had come to a new country, where everything was different,
-including the food. They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal
-of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in
-America was not the same--that its color was made by chemicals, and its
-smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full of "potato flour"
-besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after the starch and
-alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value than so much
-wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal offense in Europe,
-thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every year. It was
-amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed every day, by
-eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was simply not enough
-to feed them, and there was no use trying; and so each week they made an
-inroad upon the pitiful little bank account that Ona had begun. Because
-the account was in her name, it was possible for her to keep this a
-secret from her husband, and to keep the heartsickness of it for her
-own.
-
-It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had not
-been able to think. For he had no resources such as most invalids have;
-all he could do was to lie there and toss about from side to side. Now
-and then he would break into cursing, regardless of everything; and now
-and then his impatience would get the better of him, and he would try to
-get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta would have to plead with him in a frenzy.
-Elzbieta was all alone with him the greater part of the time. She would
-sit and smooth his forehead by the hour, and talk to him and try to make
-him forget. Sometimes it would be too cold for the children to go to
-school, and they would have to play in the kitchen, where Jurgis was,
-because it was the only room that was half warm. These were dreadful
-times, for Jurgis would get as cross as any bear; he was scarcely to
-be blamed, for he had enough to worry him, and it was hard when he was
-trying to take a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish children.
-
-Elzbieta's only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed, it
-would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if it had
-not been for little Antanas. It was the one consolation of Jurgis' long
-imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby. Teta Elzbieta
-would put the clothes-basket in which the baby slept alongside of his
-mattress, and Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and watch him by the
-hour, imagining things. Then little Antanas would open his eyes--he was
-beginning to take notice of things now; and he would smile--how he would
-smile! So Jurgis would begin to forget and be happy because he was in
-a world where there was a thing so beautiful as the smile of little
-Antanas, and because such a world could not but be good at the heart of
-it. He looked more like his father every hour, Elzbieta would say, and
-said it many times a day, because she saw that it pleased Jurgis; the
-poor little terror-stricken woman was planning all day and all night
-to soothe the prisoned giant who was intrusted to her care. Jurgis, who
-knew nothing about the age-long and everlasting hypocrisy of woman, would
-take the bait and grin with delight; and then he would hold his finger
-in front of little Antanas' eyes, and move it this way and that, and
-laugh with glee to see the baby follow it. There is no pet quite so
-fascinating as a baby; he would look into Jurgis' face with such uncanny
-seriousness, and Jurgis would start and cry: "Palauk! Look, Muma, he
-knows his papa! He does, he does! Tu mano szirdele, the little rascal!"
-
-
-
-Chapter 12
-
-
-For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was
-a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
-still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could contain
-himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day, laboring
-to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments could stop him, and
-three or four days later he declared that he was going back to work. He
-limped to the cars and got to Brown's, where he found that the boss had
-kept his place--that is, was willing to turn out into the snow the poor
-devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now and then the pain would
-force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till nearly an hour
-before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that he could not go
-on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do it, and he stood
-leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two of the men had to
-help him to the car, and when he got out he had to sit down and wait in
-the snow till some one came along.
-
-So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to
-have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon
-out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention. Then
-he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and turned
-white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at his
-swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him that he would
-have to lie quiet for two months, and that if he went to work before
-that time he might lame himself for life.
-
-Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and
-Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour
-before daybreak, to try to get to the yards. About noon the last two
-came back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers were all frosted,
-it seemed. They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and had
-nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to do was to hold the
-frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas spent most of
-the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a passion
-of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he would
-kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the family was
-half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places; and in
-the morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little fellow had
-been beaten with a stick by Jurgis. There could be no trifling in a case
-like this, it was a matter of life and death; little Stanislovas could
-not be expected to realize that he might a great deal better freeze
-in the snowdrift than lose his job at the lard machine. Ona was quite
-certain that she would find her place gone, and was all unnerved when
-she finally got to Brown's, and found that the forelady herself had
-failed to come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient.
-
-One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of
-three of the little boy's fingers were permanently disabled, and another
-that thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to work,
-whenever there was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called upon to
-do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a vengeance; but
-it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper. They say that the
-best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it
-was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and
-curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.
-
-This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry, Jurgis
-could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless ghost, with
-his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling into his eyes;
-he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his appearance. His
-muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft and flabby. He
-had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him with delicacies.
-It was better, he said, that he should not eat, it was a saving. About
-the end of March he had got hold of Ona's bankbook, and learned that
-there was only three dollars left to them in the world.
-
-But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that
-they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One
-Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to
-get trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham's that
-he had gotten his week's money and left there. That might not be true,
-of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed;
-it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance,
-a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made into
-pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use letting the
-fact out and making his family unhappy. More probable, however, was
-the theory that Jonas had deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking
-happiness. He had been discontented for a long time, and not without
-some cause. He paid good board, and was yet obliged to live in a family
-where nobody had enough to eat. And Marija would keep giving them all
-her money, and of course he could not but feel that he was called upon
-to do the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sorts of misery;
-a man would have had to be a good deal of a hero to stand it all without
-grumbling, and Jonas was not in the least a hero--he was simply a
-weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have a good supper and sit in the
-corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in peace before he went to bed.
-Here there was not room by the fire, and through the winter the kitchen
-had seldom been warm enough for comfort. So, with the springtime, what
-was more likely than that the wild idea of escaping had come to him?
-Two years he had been yoked like a horse to a half-ton truck in Durham's
-dark cellars, with never a rest, save on Sundays and four holidays in
-the year, and with never a word of thanks--only kicks and blows and
-curses, such as no decent dog would have stood. And now the winter was
-over, and the spring winds were blowing--and with a day's walk a man
-might put the smoke of Packingtown behind him forever, and be where the
-grass was green and the flowers all the colors of the rainbow!
-
-But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and
-the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off
-than ever. Also they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up
-her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and
-happiness. And they were even going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika
-and letting him impoverish himself. Poor Tamoszius was a man without
-any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides, and he ought to
-have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love, and so given
-hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too.
-
-So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to
-leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a
-girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys,
-Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last
-were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should starve
-when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their own
-livings. So one morning they were given a quarter apiece and a roll with
-a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy with good advice, were
-sent out to make their way to the city and learn to sell newspapers.
-They came back late at night in tears, having walked for the five or
-six miles to report that a man had offered to take them to a place where
-they sold newspapers, and had taken their money and gone into a store to
-get them, and nevermore been seen. So they both received a whipping, and
-the next morning set out again. This time they found the newspaper
-place, and procured their stock; and after wandering about till nearly
-noontime, saying "Paper?" to every one they saw, they had all their
-stock taken away and received a thrashing besides from a big newsman
-upon whose territory they had trespassed. Fortunately, however, they
-had already sold some papers, and came back with nearly as much as they
-started with.
-
-After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to
-learn the ways of the trade--the names of the different papers, and how
-many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to, and where
-to go and where to stay away from. After this, leaving home at four
-o'clock in the morning, and running about the streets, first with
-morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late at night
-with twenty or thirty cents apiece--possibly as much as forty cents.
-From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the distance was so
-great; but after a while they made friends, and learned still more, and
-then they would save their carfare. They would get on a car when the
-conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd; and three times out
-of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing them,
-or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask, they would hunt
-through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either have their
-fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on a new
-car. All this was fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that at the
-hours when workingmen were going to their work and back, the cars were
-so crowded that the conductors could not collect all the fares? And
-besides, the companies were thieves, people said--had stolen all their
-franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians!
-
-Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and no
-more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children into
-when they cried, and enough money to get along from week to week
-with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been. A man can get used
-to anything in the course of time, and Jurgis had gotten used to lying
-about the house. Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his
-peace of mind, by letting him know how very much pain she was suffering.
-It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often to ride to
-her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler every day, and
-sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis
-did not notice it. She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if
-all this misery was not wearing out his love. She had to be away from
-him all the time, and bear her own troubles while he was bearing his;
-and then, when she came home, she was so worn out; and whenever they
-talked they had only their worries to talk of--truly it was hard, in
-such a life, to keep any sentiment alive. The woe of this would flame up
-in Ona sometimes--at night she would suddenly clasp her big husband
-in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if
-he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more
-matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know
-what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when
-he had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob
-herself to sleep.
-
-The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a
-bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to work.
-It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for when he
-showed up on the killing floor of Brown's, he was told by the foreman
-that it had not been possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis knew that
-this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to do the
-work as well and did not want to bother to make a change. He stood in
-the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and companions at
-work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and took his place
-with the mob of the unemployed.
-
-This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor
-the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the
-throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard,
-and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were
-hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering
-about Packingtown for months begging for work. This was a critical time
-in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weaker man he would have gone
-the way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the
-packing houses every morning till the police drove them away, and then
-they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the nerve
-to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the
-buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the
-morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the
-rest of the day and night. Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to
-be sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to
-be indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful
-little face of his wife. He must get work, he told himself, fighting
-the battle with despair every hour of the day. He must get work! He must
-have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter came.
-
-But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his
-union--Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this--and begged them
-to speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a
-chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings;
-and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into
-every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not a job
-anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been a change in
-the places he had first visited, and began the round all over; till
-finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of the companies came to know
-him by sight and to order him out with threats. Then there was nothing
-more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep in
-the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and play
-with little Kotrina and the baby.
-
-The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the
-meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he
-had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged
-article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the
-best of him--they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their
-carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make
-the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they
-had all had the same experience. There were some, of course, who had
-wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills;
-there were others who were out from their own fault--some, for instance,
-who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast
-majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless
-packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some
-of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when
-they could not keep up with it any more. Some had been frankly told
-that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed; others had given
-occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence; with most,
-however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis. They had been
-overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid them
-on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood poisoning, or
-met with some other accident. When a man came back after that, he would
-get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss. To this there was
-no exception, save when the accident was one for which the firm was
-liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first
-to try to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was too smart for
-that, to promise him that he and his should always be provided with
-work. This promise they would keep, strictly and to the letter--for two
-years. Two years was the "statute of limitations," and after that the
-victim could not sue.
-
-What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon
-the circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would
-probably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men,
-the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six
-dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A
-man could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen
-splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family
-of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their
-father. For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the rush
-seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the
-number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried man could save, if he did
-not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish--that is, if he paid no
-heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and
-sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the
-members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be
-starving to death next door.
-
-
-
-Chapter 13
-
-
-During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death
-of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta. Both
-Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having
-lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital
-dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever to walk.
-He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and perhaps he had been
-intended by nature to let her know that she had had enough. At any rate
-he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though
-he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child
-of one. All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little
-dress, whining and fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was
-always catching cold, and snuffling because his nose ran. This made
-him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family. For his
-mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children,
-and made a perpetual fuss over him--would let him do anything
-undisturbed, and would burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis
-wild.
-
-And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that
-morning--which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork
-that was condemned as unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after
-eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he
-was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little Kotrina, who was
-all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a while a
-doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one
-was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable.
-Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have
-to be buried by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at
-this the poor woman almost went out of her senses, wringing her hands
-and screaming with grief and despair. Her child to be buried in a
-pauper's grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by and hear it said
-without protesting! It was enough to make Ona's father rise up out of
-his grave to rebuke her! If it had come to this, they might as well give
-up at once, and be buried all of them together! . . . In the end Marija
-said that she would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis being still
-obdurate, Elzbieta went in tears and begged the money from the
-neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a mass and a hearse with white
-plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to mark
-the place. The poor mother was not the same for months after that; the
-mere sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled about would
-make her weep. He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow, she
-would say. He had been handicapped from his birth. If only she had heard
-about it in time, so that she might have had that great doctor to cure
-him of his lameness! . . . Some time ago, Elzbieta was told, a Chicago
-billionaire had paid a fortune to bring a great European surgeon over to
-cure his little daughter of the same disease from which Kristoforas had
-suffered. And because this surgeon had to have bodies to demonstrate
-upon, he announced that he would treat the children of the poor, a piece
-of magnanimity over which the papers became quite eloquent. Elzbieta,
-alas, did not read the papers, and no one had told her; but perhaps it
-was as well, for just then they would not have had the carfare to spare
-to go every day to wait upon the surgeon, nor for that matter anybody
-with the time to take the child.
-
-
-All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow
-hanging over Jurgis; as if a savage beast were lurking somewhere in the
-pathway of his life, and he knew it, and yet could not help approaching
-the place. There are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown, and
-he faced in dread the prospect of reaching the lowest. There is a place
-that waits for the lowest man--the fertilizer plant!
-
-The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers. Not more than one
-in ten had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented themselves
-with hearsay evidence and a peep through the door. There were some
-things worse than even starving to death. They would ask Jurgis if he
-had worked there yet, and if he meant to; and Jurgis would debate the
-matter with himself. As poor as they were, and making all the sacrifices
-that they were, would he dare to refuse any sort of work that was
-offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could? Would he dare to go
-home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona, weak and complaining as
-she was, knowing that he had been given a chance, and had not had the
-nerve to take it?--And yet he might argue that way with himself all
-day, and one glimpse into the fertilizer works would send him away again
-shuddering. He was a man, and he would do his duty; he went and made
-application--but surely he was not also required to hope for success!
-
-The fertilizer works of Durham's lay away from the rest of the plant.
-Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking
-like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell. To
-this part of the yards came all the "tankage" and the waste products of
-all sorts; here they dried out the bones,--and in suffocating cellars
-where the daylight never came you might see men and women and children
-bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of
-shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die,
-every one of them, within a certain definite time. Here they made the
-blood into albumen, and made other foul-smelling things into things
-still more foul-smelling. In the corridors and caverns where it was done
-you might lose yourself as in the great caves of Kentucky. In the dust
-and the steam the electric lights would shine like far-off twinkling
-stars--red and blue-green and purple stars, according to the color of
-the mist and the brew from which it came. For the odors of these ghastly
-charnel houses there may be words in Lithuanian, but there are none in
-English. The person entering would have to summon his courage as for a
-cold-water plunge. He would go in like a man swimming under water; he
-would put his handkerchief over his face, and begin to cough and choke;
-and then, if he were still obstinate, he would find his head beginning
-to ring, and the veins in his forehead to throb, until finally he would
-be assailed by an overpowering blast of ammonia fumes, and would turn
-and run for his life, and come out half-dazed.
-
-On top of this were the rooms where they dried the "tankage," the mass
-of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the
-carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried
-material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had
-mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they
-brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that purpose,
-the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out to the world
-as any one of a hundred different brands of standard bone phosphate. And
-then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas would buy this, at say
-twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with his corn; and for several
-days after the operation the fields would have a strong odor, and the
-farmer and his wagon and the very horses that had hauled it would all
-have it too. In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of being a
-flavoring, and instead of a ton or so spread out on several acres under
-the open sky, there are hundreds and thousands of tons of it in one
-building, heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor
-several inches deep, and filling the air with a choking dust that
-becomes a blinding sandstorm when the wind stirs.
-
-It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an
-unseen hand. The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and
-his secret prayers were granted; but early in June there came a
-record-breaking hot spell, and after that there were men wanted in the
-fertilizer mill.
-
-The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and
-had marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about
-two o'clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm of pain
-shoot through him--the boss beckoned to him! In ten minutes more Jurgis
-had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth together and
-gone to work. Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer!
-
-His labor took him about one minute to learn. Before him was one of
-the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground--rushing
-forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung
-forth in clouds. Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen
-others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer into carts. That others
-were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes
-collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there,
-for in the blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of
-his face. When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until
-another came, and if there was none on hand he continued to grope till
-one arrived. In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer
-from head to feet; they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that
-he could breathe, but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids
-from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid. He looked like
-a brown ghost at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color of the
-building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards
-outside it. The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew
-Durham and Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.
-
-Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a
-hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin,
-and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed.
-The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing; there
-was a frightful pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly
-control his hands. Still, with the memory of his four months' siege
-behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of determination; and half an hour
-later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed as if his inwards
-must be torn into shreds. A man could get used to the fertilizer mill,
-the boss had said, if he would make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now
-began to see that it was a question of making up his stomach.
-
-At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand. He had to
-catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his
-bearings. Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a
-saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one
-class. But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could only make
-his way to the street and stagger on to a car. He had a sense of humor,
-and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it fun to
-board a streetcar and see what happened. Now, however, he was too ill to
-notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp and sputter, to
-put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious
-glances. Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up
-and gave him a seat; and that half a minute later the two people on each
-side of him got up; and that in a full minute the crowded car was nearly
-empty--those passengers who could not get room on the platform having
-gotten out to walk.
-
-Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute
-after entering. The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--his whole
-system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not merely of
-scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him. As it was, he
-could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest discovery
-of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited time,
-without being itself in the least diminished in power. He smelled so
-that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family
-to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything
-upon his stomach--he might wash his hands, and use a knife and fork, but
-were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?
-
-And still Jurgis stuck it out! In spite of splitting headaches he would
-stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to
-shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he
-was a fertilizer man for life--he was able to eat again, and though
-his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not
-work.
-
-
-So there passed another summer. It was a summer of prosperity, all over
-the country, and the country ate generously of packing house products,
-and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite of the
-packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. They were again able to
-pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there were one or
-two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long--it was
-too bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age. It was
-utterly useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without
-knowing it, they were taking on the tone of their new environment. They
-were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up
-cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with
-pennies and dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the location
-of all the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of
-the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state
-banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
-attended. If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them, they could
-show him which was "Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could even point out
-to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who
-made the place their headquarters. And worse yet, the boys were getting
-out of the habit of coming home at night. What was the use, they would
-ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible carfare riding out to
-the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and they could
-crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well?
-So long as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered
-it when they brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing
-to come at all would not be a very long step, and so it was decided
-that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to school in the fall, and
-that instead Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home
-being taken by her younger daughter.
-
-Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old;
-she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also
-of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean
-house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening.
-She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all this
-without a murmur; and her mother went out, and after trudging a couple
-of days about the yards, settled down as a servant of a "sausage
-machine."
-
-Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for
-the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven
-o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from one till
-half-past five. For the first few days it seemed to her that she
-could not stand it--she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the
-fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling.
-Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric
-light, and the dampness, too, was deadly--there were always puddles of
-water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room. The
-people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby
-the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the
-winter, and the chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and
-turns green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who worked in
-this department were precisely the color of the "fresh country sausage"
-they made.
-
-The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three
-minutes, and provided that you did not look at the people; the machines
-were perhaps the most wonderful things in the entire plant. Presumably
-sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would
-be interesting to know how many workers had been displaced by these
-inventions. On one side of the room were the hoppers, into which men
-shoveled loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of spices; in these great
-bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand revolutions a minute,
-and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated with potato flour,
-and well mixed with water, it was forced to the stuffing machines on
-the other side of the room. The latter were tended by women; there was
-a sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose, and one of the women would
-take a long string of "casing" and put the end over the nozzle and then
-work the whole thing on, as one works on the finger of a tight glove.
-This string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would
-have it all on in a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press
-a lever, and a stream of sausage meat would be shot out, taking
-the casing with it as it came. Thus one might stand and see appear,
-miraculously born from the machine, a wriggling snake of sausage of
-incredible length. In front was a big pan which caught these creatures,
-and two more women who seized them as fast as they appeared and twisted
-them into links. This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work
-of all; for all that the woman had to give was a single turn of the
-wrist; and in some way she contrived to give it so that instead of an
-endless chain of sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands
-a bunch of strings, all dangling from a single center. It was quite like
-the feat of a prestidigitator--for the woman worked so fast that the eye
-could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist of motion,
-and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing. In the midst of the mist,
-however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set face, with
-the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the
-cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect that it was time he was
-going on. The woman did not go on; she stayed right there--hour after
-hour, day after day, year after year, twisting sausage links and racing
-with death. It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep
-alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she
-could only do this by working just as she did, with all her soul upon
-her work, and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed
-ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in
-a menagerie.
-
-
-
-Chapter 14
-
-
-With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a
-sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great
-majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found,
-whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything
-else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had
-been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could
-now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read
-a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest--that they use
-everything of the pig except the squeal.
-
-Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
-often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away
-the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all
-the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of
-meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and
-any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious
-apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the
-plant--a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by
-plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man
-could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of
-this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so
-bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump
-into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which
-destroyed the odor--a process known to the workers as "giving them
-thirty per cent." Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be
-found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as
-"Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon
-a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad
-part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this
-invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there
-was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such
-schemes--they had what they called "boneless hams," which were all the
-odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which
-were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut
-out; and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose
-skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them--that is,
-until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!"
-
-It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
-department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute
-flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was
-in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention
-paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back
-from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and
-white--it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the
-hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat
-that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the
-workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
-There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from
-leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about
-on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man
-could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of
-the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would
-put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread,
-and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and
-no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did
-the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw
-one--there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with
-which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men
-to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a
-practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
-sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of
-corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that
-would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the
-system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs
-that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the
-cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in
-the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water--and
-cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the
-hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of
-it they would make into "smoked" sausage--but as the smoking took
-time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry
-department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to
-make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when
-they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this
-they would charge two cents more a pound.
-
-
-Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such
-was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing
-work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was
-part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed
-for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was
-only one mercy about the cruel grind--that it gave her the gift of
-insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor--she fell silent.
-She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk
-home together, often without saying a word. Ona, too, was falling into a
-habit of silence--Ona, who had once gone about singing like a bird. She
-was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength enough
-to drag herself home. And there they would eat what they had to eat, and
-afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of, they would
-crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it was time
-to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines.
-They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now;
-only the children continued to fret when the food ran short.
-
-Yet the soul of Ona was not dead--the souls of none of them were dead,
-but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were
-cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open--old joys would stretch
-out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and
-they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its
-forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but
-anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It was
-a thing scarcely to be spoken--a thing never spoken by all the world,
-that will not know its own defeat.
-
-They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It
-was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with
-wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a
-chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean,
-to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone--it
-would never be! They had played the game and they had lost. Six years
-more of toil they had to face before they could expect the least
-respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how cruelly
-certain it was that they could never stand six years of such a life as
-they were living! They were lost, they were going down--and there was
-no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it gave them the vast
-city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a wilderness, a
-desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the nighttime,
-when something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the beating of her
-own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of the old primeval terror of
-life. Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross.
-After that she learned to weep silently--their moods so seldom came
-together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves.
-
-Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter
-following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one
-else to speak of it--he had never acknowledged its existence to himself.
-Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--and once or
-twice, alas, a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
-
-He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
-week--until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work
-without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day
-and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went
-down the street. And from all the unending horror of this there was a
-respite, a deliverance--he could drink! He could forget the pain, he
-could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be
-master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would
-stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with
-his companions--he would be a man again, and master of his life.
-
-It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three
-drinks. With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade
-himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another
-meal--but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then
-to pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the
-age-long instincts of his hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he took
-the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went home
-half "piped," as the men phrase it. He was happier than he had been in a
-year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would not last, he was
-savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the world, and with
-his life; and then again, beneath this, he was sick with the shame of
-himself. Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned
-up the money he had spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began
-the long battle with the specter.
-
-It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one. But Jurgis
-did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for
-reflection. He simply knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in
-misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was to be
-put upon the rack. There was surely a saloon on the corner--perhaps on
-all four corners, and some in the middle of the block as well; and each
-one stretched out a hand to him each one had a personality of its own,
-allurements unlike any other. Going and coming--before sunrise and
-after dark--there was warmth and a glow of light, and the steam of hot
-food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of good cheer.
-Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went
-out on the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast. It was
-pitiful to have Ona know of this--it drove him wild to think of it; the
-thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not
-understand. Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing
-that she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her
-presence. They might drink together, and escape from the horror--escape
-for a while, come what would.
-
-So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis
-consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor. He would have ugly
-moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in his
-way. He was a fool to have married; he had tied himself down, had made
-himself a slave. It was all because he was a married man that he was
-compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not been for that he might
-have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers. There were few
-single men in the fertilizer mill--and those few were working only for a
-chance to escape. Meantime, too, they had something to think about while
-they worked,--they had the memory of the last time they had been drunk,
-and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again. As for Jurgis,
-he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with
-the men at noontime--he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a
-pile of fertilizer dust.
-
-This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family. But
-just now was a time of trial. Poor little Antanas, for instance--who
-had never failed to win him with a smile--little Antanas was not smiling
-just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples. He had had all the diseases
-that babies are heir to, in quick succession, scarlet fever, mumps, and
-whooping cough in the first year, and now he was down with the measles.
-There was no one to attend him but Kotrina; there was no doctor to
-help him, because they were too poor, and children did not die of the
-measles--at least not often. Now and then Kotrina would find time to sob
-over his woes, but for the greater part of the time he had to be left
-alone, barricaded upon the bed. The floor was full of drafts, and if he
-caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down, lest he should kick
-the covers off him, while the family lay in their stupor of exhaustion.
-He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when
-he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment.
-He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in
-the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of
-pimples and sweat, a great purple lump of misery.
-
-Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was,
-little Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family. He
-was quite able to bear his sufferings--it was as if he had all these
-complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of
-his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's rosebush, and
-all the world was his oyster. In general, he toddled around the kitchen
-all day with a lean and hungry look--the portion of the family's
-allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was unrestrainable in
-his demand for more. Antanas was but little over a year old, and already
-no one but his father could manage him.
-
-It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left
-nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again
-now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and
-despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies
-were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.
-
-For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was
-developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She
-had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
-streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
-beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than
-that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would have
-frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would
-come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down
-upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside
-herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright.
-Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman
-was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to
-be persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had happened. She
-had never been like this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and
-unthinkable. It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had
-to do, that was killing her by inches. She was not fitted for it--no
-woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work;
-if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill
-them at once and be done with it. They ought not to marry, to have
-children; no workingman ought to marry--if he, Jurgis, had known what a
-woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first. So he would
-carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an unbearable
-thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together and fling
-herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be still, that she would
-be better, it would be all right. So she would lie and sob out her
-grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless as a wounded
-animal, the target of unseen enemies.
-
-
-
-Chapter 15
-
-
-The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each
-time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not
-happen again--but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more
-frightened, more disposed to distrust Elzbieta's consolations, and to
-believe that there was some terrible thing about all this that he was
-not allowed to know. Once or twice in these outbreaks he caught Ona's
-eye, and it seemed to him like the eye of a hunted animal; there were
-broken phrases of anguish and despair now and then, amid her frantic
-weeping. It was only because he was so numb and beaten himself that
-Jurgis did not worry more about this. But he never thought of it, except
-when he was dragged to it--he lived like a dumb beast of burden, knowing
-only the moment in which he was.
-
-The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever. It
-was October, and the holiday rush had begun. It was necessary for the
-packing machines to grind till late at night to provide food that would
-be eaten at Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta and Ona, as
-part of the machine, began working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. There
-was no choice about this--whatever work there was to be done they had to
-do, if they wished to keep their places; besides that, it added another
-pittance to their incomes. So they staggered on with the awful load.
-They would start work every morning at seven, and eat their dinners
-at noon, and then work until ten or eleven at night without another
-mouthful of food. Jurgis wanted to wait for them, to help them home at
-night, but they would not think of this; the fertilizer mill was not
-running overtime, and there was no place for him to wait save in a
-saloon. Each would stagger out into the darkness, and make her way to
-the corner, where they met; or if the others had already gone, would get
-into a car, and begin a painful struggle to keep awake. When they got
-home they were always too tired either to eat or to undress; they would
-crawl into bed with their shoes on, and lie like logs. If they should
-fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held out, they might have
-enough coal for the winter.
-
-A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm. It began
-in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen. Jurgis tried
-to wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took two
-drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon; there he
-lay down to wait for them, and instantly fell asleep. When he opened
-his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare, and found Elzbieta
-shaking him and crying out. At first he could not realize what she
-was saying--Ona had not come home. What time was it, he asked. It was
-morning--time to be up. Ona had not been home that night! And it was
-bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.
-
-Jurgis sat up with a start. Marija was crying with fright and the
-children were wailing in sympathy--little Stanislovas in addition,
-because the terror of the snow was upon him. Jurgis had nothing to put
-on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was out of the
-door. Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that
-he had no idea where to go. It was still dark as midnight, and the thick
-snowflakes were sifting down--everything was so silent that he could
-hear the rustle of them as they fell. In the few seconds that he stood
-there hesitating he was covered white.
-
-He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in the
-saloons that were open. Ona might have been overcome on the way; or else
-she might have met with an accident in the machines. When he got to the
-place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen--there had
-not been any accident, so far as the man had heard. At the time office,
-which he found already open, the clerk told him that Ona's check had
-been turned in the night before, showing that she had left her work.
-
-After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and
-forth in the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing. Already the yards
-were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in the
-distance, and across the way the "beef-luggers" were toiling in the
-darkness, carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the
-refrigerator cars. Before the first streaks of daylight there came the
-crowding throngs of workingmen, shivering, and swinging their dinner
-pails as they hurried by. Jurgis took up his stand by the time-office
-window, where alone there was light enough for him to see; the snow fell
-so quick that it was only by peering closely that he could make sure
-that Ona did not pass him.
-
-Seven o'clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to
-move. Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill;
-but instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona. It was fifteen
-minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow mist,
-and sprang toward it with a cry. It was she, running swiftly; as she saw
-him, she staggered forward, and half fell into his outstretched arms.
-
-"What has been the matter?" he cried, anxiously. "Where have you been?"
-
-It was several seconds before she could get breath to answer him. "I
-couldn't get home," she exclaimed. "The snow--the cars had stopped."
-
-"But where were you then?" he demanded.
-
-"I had to go home with a friend," she panted--"with Jadvyga."
-
-Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing and
-trembling--as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so. "But
-what's the matter?" he cried. "What has happened?"
-
-"Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!" she said, clinging to him wildly. "I
-have been so worried!"
-
-They were near the time station window, and people were staring at them.
-Jurgis led her away. "How do you mean?" he asked, in perplexity.
-
-"I was afraid--I was just afraid!" sobbed Ona. "I knew you wouldn't know
-where I was, and I didn't know what you might do. I tried to get home,
-but I was so tired. Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!"
-
-He was so glad to get her back that he could not think clearly about
-anything else. It did not seem strange to him that she should be so very
-much upset; all her fright and incoherent protestations did not matter
-since he had her back. He let her cry away her tears; and then, because
-it was nearly eight o'clock, and they would lose another hour if they
-delayed, he left her at the packing house door, with her ghastly white
-face and her haunted eyes of terror.
-
-There was another brief interval. Christmas was almost come; and because
-the snow still held, and the searching cold, morning after morning
-Jurgis half carried his wife to her post, staggering with her through
-the darkness; until at last, one night, came the end.
-
-It lacked but three days of the holidays. About midnight Marija and
-Elzbieta came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found that Ona had not
-come. The two had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting, had gone to
-the room where she worked; only to find that the ham-wrapping girls had
-quit work an hour before, and left. There was no snow that night, nor
-was it especially cold; and still Ona had not come! Something more
-serious must be wrong this time.
-
-They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story.
-She must have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived only
-two blocks from the yards, and perhaps she had been tired. Nothing could
-have happened to her--and even if there had, there was nothing could
-be done about it until morning. Jurgis turned over in his bed, and was
-snoring again before the two had closed the door.
-
-In the morning, however, he was up and out nearly an hour before the
-usual time. Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards,
-beyond Halsted Street, with her mother and sisters, in a single basement
-room--for Mikolas had recently lost one hand from blood poisoning, and
-their marriage had been put off forever. The door of the room was in the
-rear, reached by a narrow court, and Jurgis saw a light in the window
-and heard something frying as he passed; he knocked, half expecting that
-Ona would answer.
-
-Instead there was one of Jadvyga's little sisters, who gazed at him
-through a crack in the door. "Where's Ona?" he demanded; and the child
-looked at him in perplexity. "Ona?" she said.
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "isn't she here?"
-
-"No," said the child, and Jurgis gave a start. A moment later came
-Jadvyga, peering over the child's head. When she saw who it was, she
-slid around out of sight, for she was not quite dressed. Jurgis must
-excuse her, she began, her mother was very ill--
-
-"Ona isn't here?" Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for her to
-finish.
-
-"Why, no," said Jadvyga. "What made you think she would be here? Had she
-said she was coming?"
-
-"No," he answered. "But she hasn't come home--and I thought she would be
-here the same as before."
-
-"As before?" echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity.
-
-"The time she spent the night here," said Jurgis.
-
-"There must be some mistake," she answered, quickly. "Ona has never
-spent the night here."
-
-He was only half able to realize the words. "Why--why--" he exclaimed.
-"Two weeks ago. Jadvyga! She told me so the night it snowed, and she
-could not get home."
-
-"There must be some mistake," declared the girl, again; "she didn't come
-here."
-
-He steadied himself by the door-sill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety--for
-she was fond of Ona--opened the door wide, holding her jacket across
-her throat. "Are you sure you didn't misunderstand her?" she cried. "She
-must have meant somewhere else. She--"
-
-"She said here," insisted Jurgis. "She told me all about you, and how
-you were, and what you said. Are you sure? You haven't forgotten? You
-weren't away?"
-
-"No, no!" she exclaimed--and then came a peevish voice--"Jadvyga, you
-are giving the baby a cold. Shut the door!" Jurgis stood for half a
-minute more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth of an inch of
-crack; and then, as there was really nothing more to be said, he excused
-himself and went away.
-
-He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went. Ona had deceived
-him! She had lied to him! And what could it mean--where had she been?
-Where was she now? He could hardly grasp the thing--much less try to
-solve it; but a hundred wild surmises came to him, a sense of impending
-calamity overwhelmed him.
-
-Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office to
-watch again. He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then went
-to the room where Ona worked to make inquiries of Ona's "forelady." The
-"forelady," he found, had not yet come; all the lines of cars that
-came from downtown were stalled--there had been an accident in the
-powerhouse, and no cars had been running since last night. Meantime,
-however, the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one else in
-charge of them. The girl who answered Jurgis was busy, and as she
-talked she looked to see if she were being watched. Then a man came
-up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for Ona's husband, and was curious
-about the mystery.
-
-"Maybe the cars had something to do with it," he suggested--"maybe she
-had gone down-town."
-
-"No," said Jurgis, "she never went down-town."
-
-"Perhaps not," said the man. Jurgis thought he saw him exchange a swift
-glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly. "What do you
-know about it?"
-
-But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on
-again, pushing his truck. "I don't know anything about it," he said,
-over his shoulder. "How should I know where your wife goes?"
-
-Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and down before the building.
-All the morning he stayed there, with no thought of his work. About
-noon he went to the police station to make inquiries, and then came
-back again for another anxious vigil. Finally, toward the middle of the
-afternoon, he set out for home once more.
-
-He was walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running
-again, and several passed him, packed to the steps with people. The
-sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man's sarcastic
-remark; and half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars--with
-the result that he gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped short
-in his tracks.
-
-Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car, only
-a little ways behind. That rusty black hat with the drooping red flower,
-it might not be Ona's, but there was very little likelihood of it.
-He would know for certain very soon, for she would get out two blocks
-ahead. He slowed down, and let the car go on.
-
-She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street
-Jurgis broke into a run. Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was not
-ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home, and
-then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch steps of the
-house. After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced up and
-down, his hands clenched tightly and his lips set, his mind in a
-turmoil. Then he went home and entered.
-
-As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for
-Ona, and had come home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger on
-her lips. Jurgis waited until she was close to him.
-
-"Don't make any noise," she whispered, hurriedly.
-
-"What's the matter'?" he asked. "Ona is asleep," she panted. "She's been
-very ill. I'm afraid her mind's been wandering, Jurgis. She was lost
-on the street all night, and I've only just succeeded in getting her
-quiet."
-
-"When did she come in?" he asked.
-
-"Soon after you left this morning," said Elzbieta.
-
-"And has she been out since?"
-
-"No, of course not. She's so weak, Jurgis, she--"
-
-And he set his teeth hard together. "You are lying to me," he said.
-
-Elzbieta started, and turned pale. "Why!" she gasped. "What do you
-mean?"
-
-But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the
-bedroom door and opened it.
-
-Ona was sitting on the bed. She turned a startled look upon him as he
-entered. He closed the door in Elzbieta's face, and went toward his
-wife. "Where have you been?" he demanded.
-
-She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her face
-was as white as paper, and drawn with pain. She gasped once or twice
-as she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low, and swiftly.
-"Jurgis, I--I think I have been out of my mind. I started to come last
-night, and I could not find the way. I walked--I walked all night, I
-think, and--and I only got home--this morning."
-
-"You needed a rest," he said, in a hard tone. "Why did you go out
-again?"
-
-He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden fear
-and wild uncertainty that leaped into her eyes. "I--I had to go to--to
-the store," she gasped, almost in a whisper, "I had to go--"
-
-"You are lying to me," said Jurgis. Then he clenched his hands and took
-a step toward her. "Why do you lie to me?" he cried, fiercely. "What are
-you doing that you have to lie to me?"
-
-"Jurgis!" she exclaimed, starting up in fright. "Oh, Jurgis, how can
-you?"
-
-"You have lied to me, I say!" he cried. "You told me you had been to
-Jadvyga's house that other night, and you hadn't. You had been where
-you were last night--somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off the car.
-Where were you?"
-
-It was as if he had struck a knife into her. She seemed to go all to
-pieces. For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying, staring at
-him with horror in her eyes; then, with a cry of anguish, she tottered
-forward, stretching out her arms to him. But he stepped aside,
-deliberately, and let her fall. She caught herself at the side of the
-bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her hands and bursting into
-frantic weeping.
-
-There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often dismayed
-him. Ona sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building themselves up
-into long climaxes. Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over
-her, shaking her as the tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all her
-frame would quiver and throb with them--it was as if some dreadful thing
-rose up within her and took possession of her, torturing her, tearing
-her. This thing had been wont to set Jurgis quite beside himself; but
-now he stood with his lips set tightly and his hands clenched--she might
-weep till she killed herself, but she should not move him this time--not
-an inch, not an inch. Because the sounds she made set his blood to
-running cold and his lips to quivering in spite of himself, he was glad
-of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta, pale with fright, opened the door
-and rushed in; yet he turned upon her with an oath. "Go out!" he cried,
-"go out!" And then, as she stood hesitating, about to speak, he seized
-her by the arm, and half flung her from the room, slamming the door
-and barring it with a table. Then he turned again and faced Ona,
-crying--"Now, answer me!"
-
-Yet she did not hear him--she was still in the grip of the fiend. Jurgis
-could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching, roaming
-here and there over the bed at will, like living things; he could see
-convulsive shudderings start in her body and run through her limbs. She
-was sobbing and choking--it was as if there were too many sounds for one
-throat, they came chasing each other, like waves upon the sea. Then her
-voice would begin to rise into screams, louder and louder until it broke
-in wild, horrible peals of laughter. Jurgis bore it until he could bear
-it no longer, and then he sprang at her, seizing her by the shoulders
-and shaking her, shouting into her ear: "Stop it, I say! Stop it!"
-
-She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at his
-feet. She caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts to step
-aside, and with her face upon the floor lay writhing. It made a choking
-in Jurgis' throat to hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than
-before: "Stop it, I say!"
-
-This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent, save for
-the gasping sobs that wrenched all her frame. For a long minute she
-lay there, perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized her husband,
-thinking that she was dying. Suddenly, however, he heard her voice,
-faintly: "Jurgis! Jurgis!"
-
-"What is it?" he said.
-
-He had to bend down to her, she was so weak. She was pleading with him,
-in broken phrases, painfully uttered: "Have faith in me! Believe me!"
-
-"Believe what?" he cried.
-
-"Believe that I--that I know best--that I love you! And do not ask
-me--what you did. Oh, Jurgis, please, please! It is for the best--it
-is--"
-
-He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading him
-off. "If you will only do it! If you will only--only believe me!
-It wasn't my fault--I couldn't help it--it will be all right--it is
-nothing--it is no harm. Oh, Jurgis--please, please!"
-
-She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him; he
-could feel the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the
-bosom she pressed against him. She managed to catch one of his hands and
-gripped it convulsively, drawing it to her face, and bathing it in her
-tears. "Oh, believe me, believe me!" she wailed again; and he shouted in
-fury, "I will not!"
-
-But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: "Oh, Jurgis,
-think what you are doing! It will ruin us--it will ruin us! Oh, no,
-you must not do it! No, don't, don't do it. You must not do it! It
-will drive me mad--it will kill me--no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy--it is
-nothing. You do not really need to know. We can be happy--we can love
-each other just the same. Oh, please, please, believe me!"
-
-Her words fairly drove him wild. He tore his hands loose, and flung her
-off. "Answer me," he cried. "God damn it, I say--answer me!"
-
-She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again. It was like
-listening to the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it.
-He smote his fist upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her,
-"Answer me!"
-
-She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast:
-"Ah! Ah! I can't! I can't do it!"
-
-"Why can't you do it?" he shouted.
-
-"I don't know how!"
-
-He sprang and caught her by the arm, lifting her up, and glaring into
-her face. "Tell me where you were last night!" he panted. "Quick, out
-with it!"
-
-Then she began to whisper, one word at a time: "I--was in--a
-house--downtown--"
-
-"What house? What do you mean?"
-
-She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her. "Miss Henderson's
-house," she gasped. He did not understand at first. "Miss Henderson's
-house," he echoed. And then suddenly, as in an explosion, the horrible
-truth burst over him, and he reeled and staggered back with a scream.
-He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his forehead,
-staring about him, and whispering, "Jesus! Jesus!"
-
-An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet.
-He seized her by the throat. "Tell me!" he gasped, hoarsely. "Quick!
-Who took you to that place?"
-
-She tried to get away, making him furious; he thought it was fear, of
-the pain of his clutch--he did not understand that it was the agony of
-her shame. Still she answered him, "Connor."
-
-"Connor," he gasped. "Who is Connor?"
-
-"The boss," she answered. "The man--"
-
-He tightened his grip, in his frenzy, and only when he saw her eyes
-closing did he realize that he was choking her. Then he relaxed his
-fingers, and crouched, waiting, until she opened her lids again. His
-breath beat hot into her face.
-
-"Tell me," he whispered, at last, "tell me about it."
-
-She lay perfectly motionless, and he had to hold his breath to catch her
-words. "I did not want--to do it," she said; "I tried--I tried not to do
-it. I only did it--to save us. It was our only chance."
-
-Again, for a space, there was no sound but his panting. Ona's eyes
-closed and when she spoke again she did not open them. "He told me--he
-would have me turned off. He told me he would--we would all of us lose
-our places. We could never get anything to do--here--again. He--he meant
-it--he would have ruined us."
-
-Jurgis' arms were shaking so that he could scarcely hold himself up,
-and lurched forward now and then as he listened. "When--when did this
-begin?" he gasped.
-
-"At the very first," she said. She spoke as if in a trance. "It was
-all--it was their plot--Miss Henderson's plot. She hated me. And he--he
-wanted me. He used to speak to me--out on the platform. Then he began
-to--to make love to me. He offered me money. He begged me--he said he
-loved me. Then he threatened me. He knew all about us, he knew we would
-starve. He knew your boss--he knew Marija's. He would hound us to death,
-he said--then he said if I would--if I--we would all of us be sure
-of work--always. Then one day he caught hold of me--he would not let
-go--he--he--"
-
-"Where was this?"
-
-"In the hallway--at night--after every one had gone. I could not help
-it. I thought of you--of the baby--of mother and the children. I was
-afraid of him--afraid to cry out."
-
-A moment ago her face had been ashen gray, now it was scarlet. She was
-beginning to breathe hard again. Jurgis made not a sound.
-
-"That was two months ago. Then he wanted me to come--to that house. He
-wanted me to stay there. He said all of us--that we would not have to
-work. He made me come there--in the evenings. I told you--you thought I
-was at the factory. Then--one night it snowed, and I couldn't get back.
-And last night--the cars were stopped. It was such a little thing--to
-ruin us all. I tried to walk, but I couldn't. I didn't want you to know.
-It would have--it would have been all right. We could have gone on--just
-the same--you need never have known about it. He was getting tired of
-me--he would have let me alone soon. I am going to have a baby--I am
-getting ugly. He told me that--twice, he told me, last night. He kicked
-me--last night--too. And now you will kill him--you--you will kill
-him--and we shall die."
-
-All this she had said without a quiver; she lay still as death, not an
-eyelid moving. And Jurgis, too, said not a word. He lifted himself by
-the bed, and stood up. He did not stop for another glance at her, but
-went to the door and opened it. He did not see Elzbieta, crouching
-terrified in the corner. He went out, hatless, leaving the street door
-open behind him. The instant his feet were on the sidewalk he broke into
-a run.
-
-
-He ran like one possessed, blindly, furiously, looking neither to the
-right nor left. He was on Ashland Avenue before exhaustion compelled him
-to slow down, and then, noticing a car, he made a dart for it and drew
-himself aboard. His eyes were wild and his hair flying, and he was
-breathing hoarsely, like a wounded bull; but the people on the car did
-not notice this particularly--perhaps it seemed natural to them that
-a man who smelled as Jurgis smelled should exhibit an aspect to
-correspond. They began to give way before him as usual. The conductor
-took his nickel gingerly, with the tips of his fingers, and then left
-him with the platform to himself. Jurgis did not even notice it--his
-thoughts were far away. Within his soul it was like a roaring furnace;
-he stood waiting, waiting, crouching as if for a spring.
-
-He had some of his breath back when the car came to the entrance of the
-yards, and so he leaped off and started again, racing at full speed.
-People turned and stared at him, but he saw no one--there was the
-factory, and he bounded through the doorway and down the corridor. He
-knew the room where Ona worked, and he knew Connor, the boss of the
-loading-gang outside. He looked for the man as he sprang into the room.
-
-The truckmen were hard at work, loading the freshly packed boxes and
-barrels upon the cars. Jurgis shot one swift glance up and down the
-platform--the man was not on it. But then suddenly he heard a voice in
-the corridor, and started for it with a bound. In an instant more he
-fronted the boss.
-
-He was a big, red-faced Irishman, coarse-featured, and smelling of
-liquor. He saw Jurgis as he crossed the threshold, and turned white.
-He hesitated one second, as if meaning to run; and in the next his
-assailant was upon him. He put up his hands to protect his face, but
-Jurgis, lunging with all the power of his arm and body, struck him
-fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward. The next moment he was
-on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.
-
-To Jurgis this man's whole presence reeked of the crime he had
-committed; the touch of his body was madness to him--it set every nerve
-of him a-tremble, it aroused all the demon in his soul. It had worked its
-will upon Ona, this great beast--and now he had it, he had it! It was
-his turn now! Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud in his
-fury, lifting his victim and smashing his head upon the floor.
-
-The place, of course, was in an uproar; women fainting and shrieking,
-and men rushing in. Jurgis was so bent upon his task that he knew
-nothing of this, and scarcely realized that people were trying to
-interfere with him; it was only when half a dozen men had seized him by
-the legs and shoulders and were pulling at him, that he understood that
-he was losing his prey. In a flash he had bent down and sunk his teeth
-into the man's cheek; and when they tore him away he was dripping with
-blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his mouth.
-
-They got him down upon the floor, clinging to him by his arms and legs,
-and still they could hardly hold him. He fought like a tiger,
-writhing and twisting, half flinging them off, and starting toward his
-unconscious enemy. But yet others rushed in, until there was a little
-mountain of twisted limbs and bodies, heaving and tossing, and working
-its way about the room. In the end, by their sheer weight, they choked
-the breath out of him, and then they carried him to the company police
-station, where he lay still until they had summoned a patrol wagon to
-take him away.
-
-
-
-Chapter 16
-
-
-When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough. He was exhausted and
-half-dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the policemen. He
-drove in a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching him; keeping
-as far away as possible, however, on account of the fertilizer. Then he
-stood before the sergeant's desk and gave his name and address, and saw
-a charge of assault and battery entered against him. On his way to his
-cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down the
-wrong corridor, and then added a kick when he was not quick enough;
-nevertheless, Jurgis did not even lift his eyes--he had lived two years
-and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were. It was as
-much as a man's very life was worth to anger them, here in their inmost
-lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at once, and pound
-his face into a pulp. It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull
-cracked in the melee--in which case they would report that he had
-been drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to know the
-difference or to care.
-
-So a barred door clanged upon Jurgis and he sat down upon a bench and
-buried his face in his hands. He was alone; he had the afternoon and all
-of the night to himself.
-
-At first he was like a wild beast that has glutted itself; he was in
-a dull stupor of satisfaction. He had done up the scoundrel pretty
-well--not as well as he would have if they had given him a minute
-more, but pretty well, all the same; the ends of his fingers were still
-tingling from their contact with the fellow's throat. But then, little
-by little, as his strength came back and his senses cleared, he began
-to see beyond his momentary gratification; that he had nearly killed
-the boss would not help Ona--not the horrors that she had borne, nor the
-memory that would haunt her all her days. It would not help to feed her
-and her child; she would certainly lose her place, while he--what was to
-happen to him God only knew.
-
-Half the night he paced the floor, wrestling with this nightmare; and
-when he was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding instead,
-for the first time in his life, that his brain was too much for him. In
-the cell next to him was a drunken wife-beater and in the one beyond
-a yelling maniac. At midnight they opened the station house to the
-homeless wanderers who were crowded about the door, shivering in the
-winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor outside of the cells.
-Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare stone floor and fell
-to snoring, others sat up, laughing and talking, cursing and quarreling.
-The air was fetid with their breath, yet in spite of this some of them
-smelled Jurgis and called down the torments of hell upon him, while he
-lay in a far corner of his cell, counting the throbbings of the blood in
-his forehead.
-
-They had brought him his supper, which was "duffers and dope"--being
-hunks of dry bread on a tin plate, and coffee, called "dope" because it
-was drugged to keep the prisoners quiet. Jurgis had not known this, or
-he would have swallowed the stuff in desperation; as it was, every nerve
-of him was a-quiver with shame and rage. Toward morning the place fell
-silent, and he got up and began to pace his cell; and then within the
-soul of him there rose up a fiend, red-eyed and cruel, and tore out the
-strings of his heart.
-
-It was not for himself that he suffered--what did a man who worked in
-Durham's fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do
-to him! What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny of the
-past, of the thing that had happened and could not be recalled, of the
-memory that could never be effaced! The horror of it drove him mad;
-he stretched out his arms to heaven, crying out for deliverance from
-it--and there was no deliverance, there was no power even in heaven that
-could undo the past. It was a ghost that would not drown; it followed
-him, it seized upon him and beat him to the ground. Ah, if only he could
-have foreseen it--but then, he would have foreseen it, if he had not
-been a fool! He smote his hands upon his forehead, cursing himself
-because he had ever allowed Ona to work where she had, because he had
-not stood between her and a fate which every one knew to be so common.
-He should have taken her away, even if it were to lie down and die of
-starvation in the gutters of Chicago's streets! And now--oh, it could
-not be true; it was too monstrous, too horrible.
-
-It was a thing that could not be faced; a new shuddering seized him
-every time he tried to think of it. No, there was no bearing the load of
-it, there was no living under it. There would be none for her--he knew
-that he might pardon her, might plead with her on his knees, but she
-would never look him in the face again, she would never be his
-wife again. The shame of it would kill her--there could be no other
-deliverance, and it was best that she should die.
-
-This was simple and clear, and yet, with cruel inconsistency, whenever
-he escaped from this nightmare it was to suffer and cry out at the
-vision of Ona starving. They had put him in jail, and they would keep
-him here a long time, years maybe. And Ona would surely not go to work
-again, broken and crushed as she was. And Elzbieta and Marija, too,
-might lose their places--if that hell fiend Connor chose to set to work
-to ruin them, they would all be turned out. And even if he did not, they
-could not live--even if the boys left school again, they could surely
-not pay all the bills without him and Ona. They had only a few dollars
-now--they had just paid the rent of the house a week ago, and that after
-it was two weeks overdue. So it would be due again in a week! They would
-have no money to pay it then--and they would lose the house, after all
-their long, heartbreaking struggle. Three times now the agent had warned
-him that he would not tolerate another delay. Perhaps it was very
-base of Jurgis to be thinking about the house when he had the other
-unspeakable thing to fill his mind; yet, how much he had suffered for
-this house, how much they had all of them suffered! It was their one
-hope of respite, as long as they lived; they had put all their money
-into it--and they were working people, poor people, whose money was
-their strength, the very substance of them, body and soul, the thing by
-which they lived and for lack of which they died.
-
-And they would lose it all; they would be turned out into the streets,
-and have to hide in some icy garret, and live or die as best they could!
-Jurgis had all the night--and all of many more nights--to think about
-this, and he saw the thing in its details; he lived it all, as if he
-were there. They would sell their furniture, and then run into debt at
-the stores, and then be refused credit; they would borrow a little from
-the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen store was tottering on the brink
-of ruin; the neighbors would come and help them a little--poor, sick
-Jadvyga would bring a few spare pennies, as she always did when people
-were starving, and Tamoszius Kuszleika would bring them the proceeds of
-a night's fiddling. So they would struggle to hang on until he got out
-of jail--or would they know that he was in jail, would they be able to
-find out anything about him? Would they be allowed to see him--or was it
-to be part of his punishment to be kept in ignorance about their fate?
-
-His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and
-tortured, Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get
-to work for the snow, the whole family turned out on the street. God
-Almighty! would they actually let them lie down in the street and die?
-Would there be no help even then--would they wander about in the snow
-till they froze? Jurgis had never seen any dead bodies in the streets,
-but he had seen people evicted and disappear, no one knew where;
-and though the city had a relief bureau, though there was a charity
-organization society in the stockyards district, in all his life there
-he had never heard of either of them. They did not advertise their
-activities, having more calls than they could attend to without that.
-
---So on until morning. Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon,
-along with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several "plain
-drunks" and "saloon fighters," a burglar, and two men who had been
-arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses. Along with them he
-was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and
-crowded. In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a stout,
-florid-faced personage, with a nose broken out in purple blotches.
-
-Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried. He wondered
-what for--whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they
-would do with him. Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death--nothing
-would have surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws. Yet he had
-picked up gossip enough to have it occur to him that the loud-voiced man
-upon the bench might be the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom the
-people of Packingtown spoke with bated breath.
-
-"Pat" Callahan--"Growler" Pat, as he had been known before he ascended
-the bench--had begun life as a butcher boy and a bruiser of local
-reputation; he had gone into politics almost as soon as he had learned
-to talk, and had held two offices at once before he was old enough to
-vote. If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan was the first finger of the
-unseen hand whereby the packers held down the people of the district. No
-politician in Chicago ranked higher in their confidence; he had been at
-it a long time--had been the business agent in the city council of old
-Durham, the self-made merchant, way back in the early days, when the
-whole city of Chicago had been up at auction. "Growler" Pat had given
-up holding city offices very early in his career--caring only for party
-power, and giving the rest of his time to superintending his dives and
-brothels. Of late years, however, since his children were growing up,
-he had begun to value respectability, and had had himself made a
-magistrate; a position for which he was admirably fitted, because of his
-strong conservatism and his contempt for "foreigners."
-
-Jurgis sat gazing about the room for an hour or two; he was in hopes
-that some one of the family would come, but in this he was disappointed.
-Finally, he was led before the bar, and a lawyer for the company
-appeared against him. Connor was under the doctor's care, the lawyer
-explained briefly, and if his Honor would hold the prisoner for a
-week--"Three hundred dollars," said his Honor, promptly.
-
-Jurgis was staring from the judge to the lawyer in perplexity. "Have you
-any one to go on your bond?" demanded the judge, and then a clerk who
-stood at Jurgis' elbow explained to him what this meant. The latter
-shook his head, and before he realized what had happened the policemen
-were leading him away again. They took him to a room where other
-prisoners were waiting and here he stayed until court adjourned, when he
-had another long and bitterly cold ride in a patrol wagon to the county
-jail, which is on the north side of the city, and nine or ten miles from
-the stockyards.
-
-Here they searched Jurgis, leaving him only his money, which consisted
-of fifteen cents. Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for
-a bath; after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated
-cell doors of the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the
-latter--the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many
-and diverting were the comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the bath
-longer than any one, in the vain hope of getting out of him a few of his
-phosphates and acids. The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day
-there was one left over, and he was the one.
-
-The cells were in tiers, opening upon galleries. His cell was about five
-feet by seven in size, with a stone floor and a heavy wooden bench built
-into it. There was no window--the only light came from windows near the
-roof at one end of the court outside. There were two bunks, one above
-the other, each with a straw mattress and a pair of gray blankets--the
-latter stiff as boards with filth, and alive with fleas, bedbugs, and
-lice. When Jurgis lifted up the mattress he discovered beneath it a
-layer of scurrying roaches, almost as badly frightened as himself.
-
-Here they brought him more "duffers and dope," with the addition of a
-bowl of soup. Many of the prisoners had their meals brought in from a
-restaurant, but Jurgis had no money for that. Some had books to read and
-cards to play, with candles to burn by night, but Jurgis was all alone
-in darkness and silence. He could not sleep again; there was the same
-maddening procession of thoughts that lashed him like whips upon his
-naked back. When night fell he was pacing up and down his cell like a
-wild beast that breaks its teeth upon the bars of its cage. Now and then
-in his frenzy he would fling himself against the walls of the place,
-beating his hands upon them. They cut him and bruised him--they were
-cold and merciless as the men who had built them.
-
-In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the hours one
-by one. When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor with
-his head in his arms, listening. Instead of falling silent at the end,
-the bell broke into a sudden clangor. Jurgis raised his head; what could
-that mean--a fire? God! Suppose there were to be a fire in this jail!
-But then he made out a melody in the ringing; there were chimes. And
-they seemed to waken the city--all around, far and near, there were
-bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute Jurgis lay lost in wonder,
-before, all at once, the meaning of it broke over him--that this was
-Christmas Eve!
-
-Christmas Eve--he had forgotten it entirely! There was a breaking of
-floodgates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into his
-mind. In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to
-him as if it had been yesterday--himself a little child, with his lost
-brother and his dead father in the cabin--in the deep black forest,
-where the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the
-world. It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania, but it was not
-too far for peace and good will to men, for the wonder-bearing vision
-of the Christ Child. And even in Packingtown they had not forgotten
-it--some gleam of it had never failed to break their darkness. Last
-Christmas Eve and all Christmas Day Jurgis had toiled on the killing
-beds, and Ona at wrapping hams, and still they had found strength
-enough to take the children for a walk upon the avenue, to see the store
-windows all decorated with Christmas trees and ablaze with electric
-lights. In one window there would be live geese, in another marvels in
-sugar--pink and white canes big enough for ogres, and cakes with
-cherubs upon them; in a third there would be rows of fat yellow turkeys,
-decorated with rosettes, and rabbits and squirrels hanging; in a fourth
-would be a fairyland of toys--lovely dolls with pink dresses, and woolly
-sheep and drums and soldier hats. Nor did they have to go without their
-share of all this, either. The last time they had had a big basket with
-them and all their Christmas marketing to do--a roast of pork and a
-cabbage and some rye bread, and a pair of mittens for Ona, and a rubber
-doll that squeaked, and a little green cornucopia full of candy to be
-hung from the gas jet and gazed at by half a dozen pairs of longing
-eyes.
-
-Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had not
-been able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was a choking
-in Jurgis' throat as he recalled that the very night Ona had not come
-home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him an old valentine
-that she had picked up in a paper store for three cents--dingy and
-shopworn, but with bright colors, and figures of angels and doves.
-She had wiped all the specks off this, and was going to set it on the
-mantel, where the children could see it. Great sobs shook Jurgis at this
-memory--they would spend their Christmas in misery and despair, with
-him in prison and Ona ill and their home in desolation. Ah, it was too
-cruel! Why at least had they not left him alone--why, after they had
-shut him in jail, must they be ringing Christmas chimes in his ears!
-
-But no, their bells were not ringing for him--their Christmas was not
-meant for him, they were simply not counting him at all. He was of no
-consequence--he was flung aside, like a bit of trash, the carcass of
-some animal. It was horrible, horrible! His wife might be dying, his
-baby might be starving, his whole family might be perishing in the
-cold--and all the while they were ringing their Christmas chimes! And
-the bitter mockery of it--all this was punishment for him! They put him
-in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not
-eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink--why, in the name
-of heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in jail
-and leave him outside--why could they find no better way to punish him
-than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and
-freeze? That was their law, that was their justice!
-
-Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and
-his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten
-thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice--it was a lie, it
-was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any
-world but a world of nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery.
-There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it--it was
-only force, it was tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and
-unrestrained! They had ground him beneath their heel, they had devoured
-all his substance; they had murdered his old father, they had broken and
-wrecked his wife, they had crushed and cowed his whole family; and now
-they were through with him, they had no further use for him--and because
-he had interfered with them, had gotten in their way, this was what they
-had done to him! They had put him behind bars, as if he had been a
-wild beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights, without
-affections, without feelings. Nay, they would not even have treated a
-beast as they had treated him! Would any man in his senses have trapped
-a wild thing in its lair, and left its young behind to die?
-
-These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the
-beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief. He had no
-wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources--he could not say
-that it was the thing men have called "the system" that was crushing him
-to the earth; that it was the packers, his masters, who had bought up
-the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the
-seat of justice. He only knew that he was wronged, and that the world
-had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its powers, had
-declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul grew blacker, every
-hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance, of raging,
-frenzied hate.
-
-          The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
-            Bloom well in prison air;
-          It is only what is good in Man
-            That wastes and withers there;
-          Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
-            And the Warder is Despair.
-
-So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice--
-
-           I know not whether Laws be right,
-            Or whether Laws be wrong;
-          All that we know who lie in gaol
-            Is that the wall is strong.
-          And they do well to hide their hell,
-            For in it things are done
-          That Son of God nor son of Man
-            Ever should look upon!
-
-
-
-Chapter 17
-
-
-At seven o'clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to
-wash his cell--a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most
-of the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells became so
-filthy that the guards interposed. Then he had more "duffers and
-dope," and afterward was allowed three hours for exercise, in a long,
-cement-walked court roofed with glass. Here were all the inmates of
-the jail crowded together. At one side of the court was a place for
-visitors, cut off by two heavy wire screens, a foot apart, so that
-nothing could be passed in to the prisoners; here Jurgis watched
-anxiously, but there came no one to see him.
-
-Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let
-in another prisoner. He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown
-mustache and blue eyes, and a graceful figure. He nodded to Jurgis, and
-then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began gazing critically
-about him.
-
-"Well, pal," he said, as his glance encountered Jurgis again, "good
-morning."
-
-"Good morning," said Jurgis.
-
-"A rum go for Christmas, eh?" added the other.
-
-Jurgis nodded.
-
-The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted
-up the mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation. "My God!" he
-said, "that's the worst yet."
-
-He glanced at Jurgis again. "Looks as if it hadn't been slept in last
-night. Couldn't stand it, eh?"
-
-"I didn't want to sleep last night," said Jurgis.
-
-"When did you come in?"
-
-"Yesterday."
-
-The other had another look around, and then wrinkled up his nose.
-"There's the devil of a stink in here," he said, suddenly. "What is it?"
-
-"It's me," said Jurgis.
-
-"You?"
-
-"Yes, me."
-
-"Didn't they make you wash?"
-
-"Yes, but this don't wash."
-
-"What is it?"
-
-"Fertilizer."
-
-"Fertilizer! The deuce! What are you?"
-
-"I work in the stockyards--at least I did until the other day. It's in
-my clothes."
-
-"That's a new one on me," said the newcomer. "I thought I'd been up
-against 'em all. What are you in for?"
-
-"I hit my boss."
-
-"Oh--that's it. What did he do?"
-
-"He--he treated me mean."
-
-"I see. You're what's called an honest workingman!"
-
-"What are you?" Jurgis asked.
-
-"I?" The other laughed. "They say I'm a cracksman," he said.
-
-"What's that?" asked Jurgis.
-
-"Safes, and such things," answered the other.
-
-"Oh," said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stared at the speaker in awe. "You
-mean you break into them--you--you--"
-
-"Yes," laughed the other, "that's what they say."
-
-He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis found
-afterward, he was thirty. He spoke like a man of education, like what
-the world calls a "gentleman."
-
-"Is that what you're here for?" Jurgis inquired.
-
-"No," was the answer. "I'm here for disorderly conduct. They were mad
-because they couldn't get any evidence.
-
-"What's your name?" the young fellow continued after a pause. "My name's
-Duane--Jack Duane. I've more than a dozen, but that's my company one."
-He seated himself on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs
-crossed, and went on talking easily; he soon put Jurgis on a friendly
-footing--he was evidently a man of the world, used to getting on, and
-not too proud to hold conversation with a mere laboring man. He drew
-Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one unmentionable
-thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He was a great
-one for stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to jail had
-apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done time" twice
-before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with
-women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to
-rest now and then.
-
-Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for Jurgis by the
-arrival of a cell mate. He could not turn his face to the wall and
-sulk, he had to speak when he was spoken to; nor could he help being
-interested in the conversation of Duane--the first educated man with
-whom he had ever talked. How could he help listening with wonder while
-the other told of midnight ventures and perilous escapes, of feastings
-and orgies, of fortunes squandered in a night? The young fellow had an
-amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too, had
-felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had
-struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time--there was
-war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter, living off the
-enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but then
-defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break his spirit.
-
-Withal he was a goodhearted fellow--too much so, it appeared. His story
-came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the long hours
-that dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk and nothing
-to talk of but themselves. Jack Duane was from the East; he was a
-college-bred man--had been studying electrical engineering. Then his
-father had met with misfortune in business and killed himself; and there
-had been his mother and a younger brother and sister. Also, there was an
-invention of Duane's; Jurgis could not understand it clearly, but it had
-to do with telegraphing, and it was a very important thing--there were
-fortunes in it, millions upon millions of dollars. And Duane had been
-robbed of it by a great company, and got tangled up in lawsuits and lost
-all his money. Then somebody had given him a tip on a horse race, and he
-had tried to retrieve his fortune with another person's money, and had
-to run away, and all the rest had come from that. The other asked
-him what had led him to safe-breaking--to Jurgis a wild and appalling
-occupation to think about. A man he had met, his cell mate had
-replied--one thing leads to another. Didn't he ever wonder about his
-family, Jurgis asked. Sometimes, the other answered, but not often--he
-didn't allow it. Thinking about it would make it no better. This wasn't
-a world in which a man had any business with a family; sooner or later
-Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight and shift for
-himself.
-
-Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate
-was as open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him adventures,
-he was so full of wonder and admiration, he was so new to the ways of
-the country. Duane did not even bother to keep back names and places--he
-told all his triumphs and his failures, his loves and his griefs. Also
-he introduced Jurgis to many of the other prisoners, nearly half of whom
-he knew by name. The crowd had already given Jurgis a name--they called
-him "the stinker." This was cruel, but they meant no harm by it, and he
-took it with a good-natured grin.
-
-Our friend had caught now and then a whiff from the sewers over which
-he lived, but this was the first time that he had ever been splashed by
-their filth. This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime--there were
-murderers, "hold-up men" and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and
-forgers, bigamists, "shoplifters," "confidence men," petty thieves
-and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps
-and drunkards; they were black and white, old and young, Americans and
-natives of every nation under the sun. There were hardened criminals and
-innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and boys literally not yet
-in their teens. They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of
-society; they were hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to. All life
-had turned to rottenness and stench in them--love was a beastliness, joy
-was a snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled here and there
-about the courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them. He was ignorant and
-they were wise; they had been everywhere and tried everything. They
-could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of
-a city in which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were
-for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and
-fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging
-fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and
-wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men
-had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because
-they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to
-them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were
-swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped
-and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of
-dollars.
-
-
-To most of this Jurgis tried not to listen. They frightened him with
-their savage mockery; and all the while his heart was far away, where
-his loved ones were calling. Now and then in the midst of it his
-thoughts would take flight; and then the tears would come into his
-eyes--and he would be called back by the jeering laughter of his
-companions.
-
-He spent a week in this company, and during all that time he had no word
-from his home. He paid one of his fifteen cents for a postal card, and
-his companion wrote a note to the family, telling them where he was
-and when he would be tried. There came no answer to it, however, and at
-last, the day before New Year's, Jurgis bade good-by to Jack Duane. The
-latter gave him his address, or rather the address of his mistress, and
-made Jurgis promise to look him up. "Maybe I could help you out of a
-hole some day," he said, and added that he was sorry to have him go.
-Jurgis rode in the patrol wagon back to Justice Callahan's court for
-trial.
-
-One of the first things he made out as he entered the room was Teta
-Elzbieta and little Kotrina, looking pale and frightened, seated far in
-the rear. His heart began to pound, but he did not dare to try to signal
-to them, and neither did Elzbieta. He took his seat in the prisoners'
-pen and sat gazing at them in helpless agony. He saw that Ona was not
-with them, and was full of foreboding as to what that might mean. He
-spent half an hour brooding over this--and then suddenly he straightened
-up and the blood rushed into his face. A man had come in--Jurgis could
-not see his features for the bandages that swathed him, but he knew the
-burly figure. It was Connor! A trembling seized him, and his limbs bent
-as if for a spring. Then suddenly he felt a hand on his collar, and
-heard a voice behind him: "Sit down, you son of a--!"
-
-He subsided, but he never took his eyes off his enemy. The fellow was
-still alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it was
-pleasant to see him, all in penitential plasters. He and the company
-lawyer, who was with him, came and took seats within the judge's
-railing; and a minute later the clerk called Jurgis' name, and the
-policeman jerked him to his feet and led him before the bar, gripping
-him tightly by the arm, lest he should spring upon the boss.
-
-Jurgis listened while the man entered the witness chair, took the oath,
-and told his story. The wife of the prisoner had been employed in a
-department near him, and had been discharged for impudence to him. Half
-an hour later he had been violently attacked, knocked down, and almost
-choked to death. He had brought witnesses--
-
-"They will probably not be necessary," observed the judge and he turned
-to Jurgis. "You admit attacking the plaintiff?" he asked.
-
-"Him?" inquired Jurgis, pointing at the boss.
-
-"Yes," said the judge. "I hit him, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Say 'your Honor,'" said the officer, pinching his arm hard.
-
-"Your Honor," said Jurgis, obediently.
-
-"You tried to choke him?"
-
-"Yes, sir, your Honor."
-
-"Ever been arrested before?"
-
-"No, sir, your Honor."
-
-"What have you to say for yourself?"
-
-Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had
-learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had never
-included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his
-wife. He tried once or twice, stammering and balking, to the annoyance
-of the judge, who was gasping from the odor of fertilizer. Finally,
-the prisoner made it understood that his vocabulary was inadequate, and
-there stepped up a dapper young man with waxed mustaches, bidding him
-speak in any language he knew.
-
-Jurgis began; supposing that he would be given time, he explained how
-the boss had taken advantage of his wife's position to make advances
-to her and had threatened her with the loss of her place. When the
-interpreter had translated this, the judge, whose calendar was crowded,
-and whose automobile was ordered for a certain hour, interrupted with
-the remark: "Oh, I see. Well, if he made love to your wife, why didn't
-she complain to the superintendent or leave the place?"
-
-Jurgis hesitated, somewhat taken aback; he began to explain that they
-were very poor--that work was hard to get--
-
-"I see," said Justice Callahan; "so instead you thought you would knock
-him down." He turned to the plaintiff, inquiring, "Is there any truth in
-this story, Mr. Connor?"
-
-"Not a particle, your Honor," said the boss. "It is very
-unpleasant--they tell some such tale every time you have to discharge a
-woman--"
-
-"Yes, I know," said the judge. "I hear it often enough. The fellow seems
-to have handled you pretty roughly. Thirty days and costs. Next case."
-
-Jurgis had been listening in perplexity. It was only when the policeman
-who had him by the arm turned and started to lead him away that he
-realized that sentence had been passed. He gazed round him wildly.
-"Thirty days!" he panted and then he whirled upon the judge. "What will
-my family do?" he cried frantically. "I have a wife and baby, sir, and
-they have no money--my God, they will starve to death!"
-
-"You would have done well to think about them before you committed
-the assault," said the judge dryly, as he turned to look at the next
-prisoner.
-
-Jurgis would have spoken again, but the policeman had seized him by the
-collar and was twisting it, and a second policeman was making for him
-with evidently hostile intentions. So he let them lead him away. Far
-down the room he saw Elzbieta and Kotrina, risen from their seats,
-staring in fright; he made one effort to go to them, and then, brought
-back by another twist at his throat, he bowed his head and gave up the
-struggle. They thrust him into a cell room, where other prisoners were
-waiting; and as soon as court had adjourned they led him down with them
-into the "Black Maria," and drove him away.
-
-This time Jurgis was bound for the "Bridewell," a petty jail where Cook
-County prisoners serve their time. It was even filthier and more crowded
-than the county jail; all the smaller fry out of the latter had been
-sifted into it--the petty thieves and swindlers, the brawlers and
-vagrants. For his cell mate Jurgis had an Italian fruit seller who
-had refused to pay his graft to the policeman, and been arrested for
-carrying a large pocketknife; as he did not understand a word of English
-our friend was glad when he left. He gave place to a Norwegian sailor,
-who had lost half an ear in a drunken brawl, and who proved to be
-quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis because he moved in his bunk and caused
-the roaches to drop upon the lower one. It would have been quite
-intolerable, staying in a cell with this wild beast, but for the fact
-that all day long the prisoners were put at work breaking stone.
-
-Ten days of his thirty Jurgis spent thus, without hearing a word from
-his family; then one day a keeper came and informed him that there was
-a visitor to see him. Jurgis turned white, and so weak at the knees that
-he could hardly leave his cell.
-
-The man led him down the corridor and a flight of steps to the visitors'
-room, which was barred like a cell. Through the grating Jurgis could
-see some one sitting in a chair; and as he came into the room the person
-started up, and he saw that it was little Stanislovas. At the sight
-of some one from home the big fellow nearly went to pieces--he had to
-steady himself by a chair, and he put his other hand to his forehead, as
-if to clear away a mist. "Well?" he said, weakly.
-
-Little Stanislovas was also trembling, and all but too frightened to
-speak. "They--they sent me to tell you--" he said, with a gulp.
-
-"Well?" Jurgis repeated. He followed the boy's glance to where the
-keeper was standing watching them. "Never mind that," Jurgis cried,
-wildly. "How are they?"
-
-"Ona is very sick," Stanislovas said; "and we are almost starving. We
-can't get along; we thought you might be able to help us."
-
-Jurgis gripped the chair tighter; there were beads of perspiration on
-his forehead, and his hand shook. "I--can't help you," he said.
-
-"Ona lies in her room all day," the boy went on, breathlessly. "She
-won't eat anything, and she cries all the time. She won't tell what is
-the matter and she won't go to work at all. Then a long time ago the man
-came for the rent. He was very cross. He came again last week. He said
-he would turn us out of the house. And then Marija--"
-
-A sob choked Stanislovas, and he stopped. "What's the matter with
-Marija?" cried Jurgis.
-
-"She's cut her hand!" said the boy. "She's cut it bad, this time, worse
-than before. She can't work and it's all turning green, and the company
-doctor says she may--she may have to have it cut off. And Marija cries
-all the time--her money is nearly all gone, too, and we can't pay the
-rent and the interest on the house; and we have no coal and nothing more
-to eat, and the man at the store, he says--"
-
-The little fellow stopped again, beginning to whimper. "Go on!" the
-other panted in frenzy--"Go on!"
-
-"I--I will," sobbed Stanislovas. "It's so--so cold all the time. And
-last Sunday it snowed again--a deep, deep snow--and I couldn't--couldn't
-get to work."
-
-"God!" Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child. There
-was an old hatred between them because of the snow--ever since that
-dreadful morning when the boy had had his fingers frozen and Jurgis had
-had to beat him to send him to work. Now he clenched his hands, looking
-as if he would try to break through the grating. "You little villain,"
-he cried, "you didn't try!"
-
-"I did--I did!" wailed Stanislovas, shrinking from him in terror. "I
-tried all day--two days. Elzbieta was with me, and she couldn't either.
-We couldn't walk at all, it was so deep. And we had nothing to eat, and
-oh, it was so cold! I tried, and then the third day Ona went with me--"
-
-"Ona!"
-
-"Yes. She tried to get to work, too. She had to. We were all starving.
-But she had lost her place--"
-
-Jurgis reeled, and gave a gasp. "She went back to that place?" he
-screamed. "She tried to," said Stanislovas, gazing at him in perplexity.
-"Why not, Jurgis?"
-
-The man breathed hard, three or four times. "Go--on," he panted,
-finally.
-
-"I went with her," said Stanislovas, "but Miss Henderson wouldn't take
-her back. And Connor saw her and cursed her. He was still bandaged
-up--why did you hit him, Jurgis?" (There was some fascinating mystery
-about this, the little fellow knew; but he could get no satisfaction.)
-
-Jurgis could not speak; he could only stare, his eyes starting out. "She
-has been trying to get other work," the boy went on; "but she's so weak
-she can't keep up. And my boss would not take me back, either--Ona says
-he knows Connor, and that's the reason; they've all got a grudge against
-us now. So I've got to go downtown and sell papers with the rest of the
-boys and Kotrina--"
-
-"Kotrina!"
-
-"Yes, she's been selling papers, too. She does best, because she's
-a girl. Only the cold is so bad--it's terrible coming home at night,
-Jurgis. Sometimes they can't come home at all--I'm going to try to find
-them tonight and sleep where they do, it's so late and it's such a long
-ways home. I've had to walk, and I didn't know where it was--I don't
-know how to get back, either. Only mother said I must come, because you
-would want to know, and maybe somebody would help your family when they
-had put you in jail so you couldn't work. And I walked all day to get
-here--and I only had a piece of bread for breakfast, Jurgis. Mother
-hasn't any work either, because the sausage department is shut down;
-and she goes and begs at houses with a basket, and people give her food.
-Only she didn't get much yesterday; it was too cold for her fingers, and
-today she was crying--"
-
-So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood,
-gripping the table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his
-head would burst; it was like having weights piled upon him, one after
-another, crushing the life out of him. He struggled and fought within
-himself--as if in some terrible nightmare, in which a man suffers an
-agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry out, but feels that he is going
-mad, that his brain is on fire--
-
-Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would kill
-him, little Stanislovas stopped. "You cannot help us?" he said weakly.
-
-Jurgis shook his head.
-
-"They won't give you anything here?"
-
-He shook it again.
-
-"When are you coming out?"
-
-"Three weeks yet," Jurgis answered.
-
-And the boy gazed around him uncertainly. "Then I might as well go," he
-said.
-
-Jurgis nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into his
-pocket and drew it out, shaking. "Here," he said, holding out the
-fourteen cents. "Take this to them."
-
-And Stanislovas took it, and after a little more hesitation, started
-for the door. "Good-by, Jurgis," he said, and the other noticed that he
-walked unsteadily as he passed out of sight.
-
-For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to his chair, reeling and
-swaying; then the keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and went
-back to breaking stone.
-
-
-
-Chapter 18
-
-
-Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had
-expected. To his sentence there were added "court costs" of a dollar and
-a half--he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him in jail,
-and not having the money, was obliged to work it off by three days
-more of toil. Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him this--only
-after counting the days and looking forward to the end in an agony of
-impatience, when the hour came that he expected to be free he found
-himself still set at the stone heap, and laughed at when he ventured to
-protest. Then he concluded he must have counted wrong; but as another
-day passed, he gave up all hope--and was sunk in the depths of despair,
-when one morning after breakfast a keeper came to him with the word that
-his time was up at last. So he doffed his prison garb, and put on his
-old fertilizer clothing, and heard the door of the prison clang behind
-him.
-
-He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it was
-true,--that the sky was above him again and the open street before him;
-that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through his
-clothes, and he started quickly away.
-
-There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety rain
-was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone. He had
-not stopped for his-overcoat when he set out to "do up" Connor, and so
-his rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences; his clothing
-was old and worn thin, and it never had been very warm. Now as he
-trudged on the rain soon wet it through; there were six inches of watery
-slush on the sidewalks, so that his feet would soon have been soaked,
-even had there been no holes in his shoes.
-
-Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been the
-least trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago; but even
-so, he had not grown strong--the fear and grief that had preyed upon his
-mind had worn him thin. Now he shivered and shrunk from the rain,
-hiding his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders together.
-The Bridewell grounds were on the outskirts of the city and the country
-around them was unsettled and wild--on one side was the big drainage
-canal, and on the other a maze of railroad tracks, and so the wind had
-full sweep.
-
-After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
-"Hey, sonny!" The boy cocked one eye at him--he knew that Jurgis was a
-"jailbird" by his shaven head. "Wot yer want?" he queried.
-
-"How do you go to the stockyards?" Jurgis demanded.
-
-"I don't go," replied the boy.
-
-Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, "I mean which is
-the way?"
-
-"Why don't yer say so then?" was the response, and the boy pointed to
-the northwest, across the tracks. "That way."
-
-"How far is it?" Jurgis asked. "I dunno," said the other. "Mebbe twenty
-miles or so."
-
-"Twenty miles!" Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk every
-foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his
-pockets.
-
-Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking,
-he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful
-imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind
-at once. The agony was almost over--he was going to find out; and he
-clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his flying
-desire, almost at a run. Ona--the baby--the family--the house--he would
-know the truth about them all! And he was coming to the rescue--he was
-free again! His hands were his own, and he could help them, he could do
-battle for them against the world.
-
-For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him.
-He seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning into
-a country road, leading out to the westward; there were snow-covered
-fields on either side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving a two-horse
-wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.
-
-"Is this the way to the stockyards?" he asked.
-
-The farmer scratched his head. "I dunno jest where they be," he said.
-"But they're in the city somewhere, and you're going dead away from it
-now."
-
-Jurgis looked dazed. "I was told this was the way," he said.
-
-"Who told you?"
-
-"A boy."
-
-"Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye. The best thing ye kin do is to
-go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman. I'd take ye in, only
-I've come a long ways an' I'm loaded heavy. Git up!"
-
-So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning he
-began to see Chicago again. Past endless blocks of two-story shanties
-he walked, along wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways treacherous with
-deep slush holes. Every few blocks there would be a railroad crossing
-on the level with the sidewalk, a deathtrap for the unwary; long freight
-trains would be passing, the cars clanking and crashing together, and
-Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up with a fever of impatience.
-Occasionally the cars would stop for some minutes, and wagons and
-streetcars would crowd together waiting, the drivers swearing at each
-other, or hiding beneath umbrellas out of the rain; at such times Jurgis
-would dodge under the gates and run across the tracks and between the
-cars, taking his life into his hands.
-
-He crossed a long bridge over a river frozen solid and covered with
-slush. Not even on the river bank was the snow white--the rain which
-fell was a diluted solution of smoke, and Jurgis' hands and face were
-streaked with black. Then he came into the business part of the city,
-where the streets were sewers of inky blackness, with horses sleeping
-and plunging, and women and children flying across in panic-stricken
-droves. These streets were huge canyons formed by towering black
-buildings, echoing with the clang of car gongs and the shouts of
-drivers; the people who swarmed in them were as busy as ants--all
-hurrying breathlessly, never stopping to look at anything nor at each
-other. The solitary trampish-looking foreigner, with water-soaked
-clothing and haggard face and anxious eyes, was as much alone as he
-hurried past them, as much unheeded and as lost, as if he had been a
-thousand miles deep in a wilderness.
-
-A policeman gave him his direction and told him that he had five miles
-to go. He came again to the slum districts, to avenues of saloons and
-cheap stores, with long dingy red factory buildings, and coal-yards and
-railroad tracks; and then Jurgis lifted up his head and began to sniff
-the air like a startled animal--scenting the far-off odor of home. It
-was late afternoon then, and he was hungry, but the dinner invitations
-hung out of the saloons were not for him.
-
-So he came at last to the stockyards, to the black volcanoes of smoke
-and the lowing cattle and the stench. Then, seeing a crowded car, his
-impatience got the better of him and he jumped aboard, hiding behind
-another man, unnoticed by the conductor. In ten minutes more he had
-reached his street, and home.
-
-He was half running as he came round the corner. There was the house, at
-any rate--and then suddenly he stopped and stared. What was the matter
-with the house?
-
-Jurgis looked twice, bewildered; then he glanced at the house next door
-and at the one beyond--then at the saloon on the corner. Yes, it was
-the right place, quite certainly--he had not made any mistake. But the
-house--the house was a different color!
-
-He came a couple of steps nearer. Yes; it had been gray and now it was
-yellow! The trimmings around the windows had been red, and now they were
-green! It was all newly painted! How strange it made it seem!
-
-Jurgis went closer yet, but keeping on the other side of the street.
-A sudden and horrible spasm of fear had come over him. His knees were
-shaking beneath him, and his mind was in a whirl. New paint on the
-house, and new weatherboards, where the old had begun to rot off, and
-the agent had got after them! New shingles over the hole in the roof,
-too, the hole that had for six months been the bane of his soul--he
-having no money to have it fixed and no time to fix it himself, and the
-rain leaking in, and overflowing the pots and pans he put to catch it,
-and flooding the attic and loosening the plaster. And now it was fixed!
-And the broken windowpane replaced! And curtains in the windows! New,
-white curtains, stiff and shiny!
-
-Then suddenly the front door opened. Jurgis stood, his chest heaving as
-he struggled to catch his breath. A boy had come out, a stranger to him;
-a big, fat, rosy-cheeked youngster, such as had never been seen in his
-home before.
-
-Jurgis stared at the boy, fascinated. He came down the steps whistling,
-kicking off the snow. He stopped at the foot, and picked up some, and
-then leaned against the railing, making a snowball. A moment later
-he looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met; it was a hostile
-glance, the boy evidently thinking that the other had suspicions of the
-snowball. When Jurgis started slowly across the street toward him, he
-gave a quick glance about, meditating retreat, but then he concluded to
-stand his ground.
-
-Jurgis took hold of the railing of the steps, for he was a little
-unsteady. "What--what are you doing here?" he managed to gasp.
-
-"Go on!" said the boy.
-
-"You--" Jurgis tried again. "What do you want here?"
-
-"Me?" answered the boy, angrily. "I live here."
-
-"You live here!" Jurgis panted. He turned white and clung more tightly
-to the railing. "You live here! Then where's my family?"
-
-The boy looked surprised. "Your family!" he echoed.
-
-And Jurgis started toward him. "I--this is my house!" he cried.
-
-"Come off!" said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened, and he
-called: "Hey, ma! Here's a fellow says he owns this house."
-
-A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. "What's that?" she
-demanded.
-
-Jurgis turned toward her. "Where is my family?" he cried, wildly. "I
-left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?"
-
-The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought
-she was dealing with a maniac--Jurgis looked like one. "Your home!" she
-echoed.
-
-"My home!" he half shrieked. "I lived here, I tell you."
-
-"You must be mistaken," she answered him. "No one ever lived here. This
-is a new house. They told us so. They--"
-
-"What have they done with my family?" shouted Jurgis, frantically.
-
-A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts of
-what "they" had told her. "I don't know where your family is," she said.
-"I bought the house only three days ago, and there was nobody here, and
-they told me it was all new. Do you really mean you had ever rented it?"
-
-"Rented it!" panted Jurgis. "I bought it! I paid for it! I own it! And
-they--my God, can't you tell me where my people went?"
-
-She made him understand at last that she knew nothing. Jurgis' brain
-was so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his
-family had been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving to be
-dream people, who never had existed at all. He was quite lost--but then
-suddenly he thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next
-block. She would know! He turned and started at a run.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She cried out when
-she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes, yes, she could tell him. The
-family had moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they had
-been turned out into the snow, and the house had been repainted and sold
-again the next week. No, she had not heard how they were, but she could
-tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene, with whom they had
-stayed when they first came to the yards. Wouldn't Jurgis come in and
-rest? It was certainly too bad--if only he had not got into jail--
-
-And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go very far round
-the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a
-saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry,
-racking sobs.
-
-Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage,
-overwhelmed him--what was any imagination of the thing to this
-heartbreaking, crushing reality of it--to the sight of strange people
-living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring at
-him with hostile eyes! It was monstrous, it was unthinkable--they could
-not do it--it could not be true! Only think what he had suffered for
-that house--what miseries they had all suffered for it--the price they
-had paid for it!
-
-The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the
-beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together,
-all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and starvation!
-And then their toil, month by month, to get together the twelve dollars,
-and the interest as well, and now and then the taxes, and the other
-charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why, they had put their very
-souls into their payments on that house, they had paid for it with their
-sweat and tears--yes, more, with their very lifeblood. Dede Antanas had
-died of the struggle to earn that money--he would have been alive and
-strong today if he had not had to work in Durham's dark cellars to earn
-his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and strength to pay for
-it--she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so was he, who had
-been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat here shivering,
-broken, cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah! they had cast their
-all into the fight; and they had lost, they had lost! All that they had
-paid was gone--every cent of it. And their house was gone--they were
-back where they had started from, flung out into the cold to starve and
-freeze!
-
-Jurgis could see all the truth now--could see himself, through the whole
-long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn
-into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and tortured
-him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the horror
-of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He and his
-family, helpless women and children, struggling to live, ignorant and
-defenseless and forlorn as they were--and the enemies that had been
-lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for their
-blood! That first lying circular, that smooth-tongued slippery agent!
-That trap of the extra payments, the interest, and all the other charges
-that they had not the means to pay, and would never have attempted to
-pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their masters, the tyrants
-who ruled them--the shutdowns and the scarcity of work, the irregular
-hours and the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of wages, the raising of
-prices! The mercilessness of nature about them, of heat and cold, rain
-and snow; the mercilessness of the city, of the country in which they
-lived, of its laws and customs that they did not understand! All of
-these things had worked together for the company that had marked them
-for its prey and was waiting for its chance. And now, with this last
-hideous injustice, its time had come, and it had turned them out bag
-and baggage, and taken their house and sold it again! And they could
-do nothing, they were tied hand and foot--the law was against them, the
-whole machinery of society was at their oppressors' command! If Jurgis
-so much as raised a hand against them, back he would go into that
-wild-beast pen from which he had just escaped!
-
-To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave
-the strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering
-in the rain for hours before he could do that, had it not been for
-the thought of his family. It might be that he had worse things yet to
-learn--and so he got to his feet and started away, walking on, wearily,
-half-dazed.
-
-To Aniele's house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles; the
-distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the familiar
-dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the steps and
-began to hammer upon the door.
-
-The old woman herself came to open it. She had shrunk all up with her
-rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow parchment face
-stared up at him from a little above the level of the doorknob. She gave
-a start when she saw him. "Is Ona here?" he cried, breathlessly.
-
-"Yes," was the answer, "she's here."
-
-"How--" Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching convulsively at
-the side of the door. From somewhere within the house had come a sudden
-cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish. And the voice was Ona's. For a
-moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright; then he bounded past the
-old woman and into the room.
-
-It was Aniele's kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a dozen
-women, pale and frightened. One of them started to her feet as Jurgis
-entered; she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one arm tied up in
-bandages--he hardly realized that it was Marija. He looked first for
-Ona; then, not seeing her, he stared at the women, expecting them to
-speak. But they sat dumb, gazing back at him, panic-stricken; and a
-second later came another piercing scream.
-
-It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs. Jurgis bounded to a
-door of the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading through
-a trap door to the garret, and he was at the foot of it when suddenly he
-heard a voice behind him, and saw Marija at his heels. She seized him by
-the sleeve with her good hand, panting wildly, "No, no, Jurgis! Stop!"
-
-"What do you mean?" he gasped.
-
-"You mustn't go up," she cried.
-
-Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright. "What's the
-matter?" he shouted. "What is it?"
-
-Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning
-above, and he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for her
-reply. "No, no," she rushed on. "Jurgis! You mustn't go up! It's--it's
-the child!"
-
-"The child?" he echoed in perplexity. "Antanas?"
-
-Marija answered him, in a whisper: "The new one!"
-
-And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder. He stared
-at her as if she were a ghost. "The new one!" he gasped. "But it isn't
-time," he added, wildly.
-
-Marija nodded. "I know," she said; "but it's come."
-
-And then again came Ona's scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
-making him wince and turn white. Her voice died away into a wail--then
-he heard her sobbing again, "My God--let me die, let me die!" And Marija
-hung her arms about him, crying: "Come out! Come away!"
-
-
-She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had
-gone all to pieces. It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen
-in--he was blasted with horror. In the room he sank into a chair,
-trembling like a leaf, Marija still holding him, and the women staring
-at him in dumb, helpless fright.
-
-And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here,
-and he staggered to his feet. "How long has this been going on?" he
-panted.
-
-"Not very long," Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele, she
-rushed on: "You go away, Jurgis you can't help--go away and come back
-later. It's all right--it's--"
-
-"Who's with her?" Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating,
-he cried again, "Who's with her?"
-
-"She's--she's all right," she answered. "Elzbieta's with her."
-
-"But the doctor!" he panted. "Some one who knows!"
-
-He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath a
-whisper as she replied, "We--we have no money." Then, frightened at
-the look on his face, she exclaimed: "It's all right, Jurgis! You don't
-understand--go away--go away! Ah, if you only had waited!"
-
-Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of his
-mind. It was all new to him, raw and horrible--it had fallen upon him
-like a lightning stroke. When little Antanas was born he had been at
-work, and had known nothing about it until it was over; and now he was
-not to be controlled. The frightened women were at their wits' end; one
-after another they tried to reason with him, to make him understand that
-this was the lot of woman. In the end they half drove him out into
-the rain, where he began to pace up and down, bareheaded and frantic.
-Because he could hear Ona from the street, he would first go away to
-escape the sounds, and then come back because he could not help it. At
-the end of a quarter of an hour he rushed up the steps again, and for
-fear that he would break in the door they had to open it and let him in.
-
-There was no arguing with him. They could not tell him that all was
-going well--how could they know, he cried--why, she was dying, she was
-being torn to pieces! Listen to her--listen! Why, it was monstrous--it
-could not be allowed--there must be some help for it! Had they tried to
-get a doctor? They might pay him afterward--they could promise--
-
-"We couldn't promise, Jurgis," protested Marija. "We had no money--we
-have scarcely been able to keep alive."
-
-"But I can work," Jurgis exclaimed. "I can earn money!"
-
-"Yes," she answered--"but we thought you were in jail. How could we know
-when you would return? They will not work for nothing."
-
-Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how they
-had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in cash.
-"And I had only a quarter," she said. "I have spent every cent of my
-money--all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been
-coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don't mean
-to pay him. And we owe Aniele for two weeks' rent, and she is nearly
-starving, and is afraid of being turned out. We have been borrowing and
-begging to keep alive, and there is nothing more we can do--"
-
-"And the children?" cried Jurgis.
-
-"The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been so
-bad. They could not know what is happening--it came suddenly, two months
-before we expected it."
-
-Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand;
-his head sank and his arms shook--it looked as if he were going to
-collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him,
-fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner of
-which she had something tied.
-
-"Here, Jurgis!" she said, "I have some money. Palauk! See!"
-
-She unwrapped it and counted it out--thirty-four cents. "You go, now,"
-she said, "and try and get somebody yourself. And maybe the rest can
-help--give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day, and it
-will do him good to have something to think about, even if he doesn't
-succeed. When he comes back, maybe it will be over."
-
-And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks;
-most of them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all. Mrs.
-Olszewski, who lived next door, and had a husband who was a skilled
-cattle butcher, but a drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar, enough
-to raise the whole sum to a dollar and a quarter. Then Jurgis thrust it
-into his pocket, still holding it tightly in his fist, and started away
-at a run.
-
-
-
-Chapter 19
-
-
-"Madame Haupt Hebamme", ran a sign, swinging from a second-story window
-over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign, with a
-hand pointing up a dingy flight of stairs. Jurgis went up them, three at
-a time.
-
-Madame Haupt was frying pork and onions, and had her door half open to
-let out the smoke. When he tried to knock upon it, it swung open the
-rest of the way, and he had a glimpse of her, with a black bottle turned
-up to her lips. Then he knocked louder, and she started and put it away.
-She was a Dutchwoman, enormously fat--when she walked she rolled like
-a small boat on the ocean, and the dishes in the cupboard jostled each
-other. She wore a filthy blue wrapper, and her teeth were black.
-
-"Vot is it?" she said, when she saw Jurgis.
-
-He had run like mad all the way and was so out of breath he could hardly
-speak. His hair was flying and his eyes wild--he looked like a man that
-had risen from the tomb. "My wife!" he panted. "Come quickly!" Madame
-Haupt set the frying pan to one side and wiped her hands on her wrapper.
-
-"You vant me to come for a case?" she inquired.
-
-"Yes," gasped Jurgis.
-
-"I haf yust come back from a case," she said. "I haf had no time to eat
-my dinner. Still--if it is so bad--"
-
-"Yes--it is!" cried he.
-
-"Vell, den, perhaps--vot you pay?"
-
-"I--I--how much do you want?" Jurgis stammered.
-
-"Tventy-five dollars." His face fell. "I can't pay that," he said.
-
-The woman was watching him narrowly. "How much do you pay?" she
-demanded.
-
-"Must I pay now--right away?"
-
-"Yes; all my customers do."
-
-"I--I haven't much money," Jurgis began in an agony of dread. "I've been
-in--in trouble--and my money is gone. But I'll pay you--every cent--just
-as soon as I can; I can work--"
-
-"Vot is your work?"
-
-"I have no place now. I must get one. But I--"
-
-"How much haf you got now?"
-
-He could hardly bring himself to reply. When he said "A dollar and a
-quarter," the woman laughed in his face.
-
-"I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter," she said.
-
-"It's all I've got," he pleaded, his voice breaking. "I must get some
-one--my wife will die. I can't help it--I--"
-
-Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove. She turned
-to him and answered, out of the steam and noise: "Git me ten dollars
-cash, und so you can pay me the rest next mont'."
-
-"I can't do it--I haven't got it!" Jurgis protested. "I tell you I have
-only a dollar and a quarter."
-
-The woman turned to her work. "I don't believe you," she said. "Dot is
-all to try to sheat me. Vot is de reason a big man like you has got only
-a dollar und a quarter?"
-
-"I've just been in jail," Jurgis cried--he was ready to get down upon
-his knees to the woman--"and I had no money before, and my family has
-almost starved."
-
-"Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?"
-
-"They are all poor," he answered. "They gave me this. I have done
-everything I can--"
-
-"Haven't you got notting you can sell?"
-
-"I have nothing, I tell you--I have nothing," he cried, frantically.
-
-"Can't you borrow it, den? Don't your store people trust you?" Then, as
-he shook his head, she went on: "Listen to me--if you git me you vill be
-glad of it. I vill save your wife und baby for you, and it vill not seem
-like mooch to you in de end. If you loose dem now how you tink you feel
-den? Und here is a lady dot knows her business--I could send you to
-people in dis block, und dey vould tell you--"
-
-Madame Haupt was pointing her cooking-fork at Jurgis persuasively; but
-her words were more than he could bear. He flung up his hands with
-a gesture of despair and turned and started away. "It's no use," he
-exclaimed--but suddenly he heard the woman's voice behind him again--
-
-"I vill make it five dollars for you."
-
-She followed behind him, arguing with him. "You vill be foolish not to
-take such an offer," she said. "You von't find nobody go out on a rainy
-day like dis for less. Vy, I haf never took a case in my life so sheap
-as dot. I couldn't pay mine room rent--"
-
-Jurgis interrupted her with an oath of rage. "If I haven't got it," he
-shouted, "how can I pay it? Damn it, I would pay you if I could, but I
-tell you I haven't got it. I haven't got it! Do you hear me I haven't
-got it!"
-
-He turned and started away again. He was halfway down the stairs before
-Madame Haupt could shout to him: "Vait! I vill go mit you! Come back!"
-
-He went back into the room again.
-
-"It is not goot to tink of anybody suffering," she said, in a melancholy
-voice. "I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot you offer me, but
-I vill try to help you. How far is it?"
-
-"Three or four blocks from here."
-
-"Tree or four! Und so I shall get soaked! Gott in Himmel, it ought to
-be vorth more! Vun dollar und a quarter, und a day like dis!--But you
-understand now--you vill pay me de rest of twenty-five dollars soon?"
-
-"As soon as I can."
-
-"Some time dis mont'?"
-
-"Yes, within a month," said poor Jurgis. "Anything! Hurry up!"
-
-"Vere is de dollar und a quarter?" persisted Madame Haupt, relentlessly.
-
-Jurgis put the money on the table and the woman counted it and stowed it
-away. Then she wiped her greasy hands again and proceeded to get ready,
-complaining all the time; she was so fat that it was painful for her to
-move, and she grunted and gasped at every step. She took off her wrapper
-without even taking the trouble to turn her back to Jurgis, and put on
-her corsets and dress. Then there was a black bonnet which had to be
-adjusted carefully, and an umbrella which was mislaid, and a bag full of
-necessaries which had to be collected from here and there--the man being
-nearly crazy with anxiety in the meantime. When they were on the street
-he kept about four paces ahead of her, turning now and then, as if he
-could hurry her on by the force of his desire. But Madame Haupt could
-only go so far at a step, and it took all her attention to get the
-needed breath for that.
-
-They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women in
-the kitchen. It was not over yet, Jurgis learned--he heard Ona crying
-still; and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid it on
-the mantelpiece, and got out of her bag, first an old dress and then a
-saucer of goose grease, which she proceeded to rub upon her hands. The
-more cases this goose grease is used in, the better luck it brings to
-the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her kitchen mantelpiece or stowed
-away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes, for months, and sometimes
-even for years.
-
-Then they escorted her to the ladder, and Jurgis heard her give an
-exclamation of dismay. "Gott in Himmel, vot for haf you brought me to a
-place like dis? I could not climb up dot ladder. I could not git troo a
-trap door! I vill not try it--vy, I might kill myself already. Vot sort
-of a place is dot for a woman to bear a child in--up in a garret, mit
-only a ladder to it? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" Jurgis
-stood in the doorway and listened to her scolding, half drowning out the
-horrible moans and screams of Ona.
-
-At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent;
-then, however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned her
-about the floor of the garret. They had no real floor--they had laid old
-boards in one part to make a place for the family to live; it was all
-right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had only the
-joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and
-if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe. As it was half dark
-up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up first with a candle.
-Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last Jurgis had
-a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through the trap
-door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt started to walk. Then
-suddenly Aniele came to him and took him by the arm.
-
-"Now," she said, "you go away. Do as I tell you--you have done all you
-can, and you are only in the way. Go away and stay away."
-
-"But where shall I go?" Jurgis asked, helplessly.
-
-"I don't know where," she answered. "Go on the street, if there is no
-other place--only go! And stay all night!"
-
-In the end she and Marija pushed him out of the door and shut it behind
-him. It was just about sundown, and it was turning cold--the rain had
-changed to snow, and the slush was freezing. Jurgis shivered in his thin
-clothing, and put his hands into his pockets and started away. He had
-not eaten since morning, and he felt weak and ill; with a sudden throb
-of hope he recollected he was only a few blocks from the saloon where he
-had been wont to eat his dinner. They might have mercy on him there,
-or he might meet a friend. He set out for the place as fast as he could
-walk.
-
-"Hello, Jack," said the saloon-keeper, when he entered--they call all
-foreigners and unskilled men "Jack" in Packingtown. "Where've you been?"
-
-Jurgis went straight to the bar. "I've been in jail," he said, "and I've
-just got out. I walked home all the way, and I've not a cent, and had
-nothing to eat since this morning. And I've lost my home, and my wife's
-ill, and I'm done up."
-
-The saloon-keeper gazed at him, with his haggard white face and his blue
-trembling lips. Then he pushed a big bottle toward him. "Fill her up!"
-he said.
-
-Jurgis could hardly hold the bottle, his hands shook so.
-
-"Don't be afraid," said the saloon-keeper, "fill her up!"
-
-So Jurgis drank a large glass of whisky, and then turned to the lunch
-counter, in obedience to the other's suggestion. He ate all he dared,
-stuffing it in as fast as he could; and then, after trying to speak his
-gratitude, he went and sat down by the big red stove in the middle of
-the room.
-
-It was too good to last, however--like all things in this hard
-world. His soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of
-fertilizer to fill the room. In an hour or so the packing houses would
-be closing and the men coming in from their work; and they would not
-come into a place that smelt of Jurgis. Also it was Saturday night, and
-in a couple of hours would come a violin and a cornet, and in the rear
-part of the saloon the families of the neighborhood would dance and
-feast upon wienerwurst and lager, until two or three o'clock in the
-morning. The saloon-keeper coughed once or twice, and then remarked,
-"Say, Jack, I'm afraid you'll have to quit."
-
-He was used to the sight of human wrecks, this saloon-keeper; he "fired"
-dozens of them every night, just as haggard and cold and forlorn as this
-one. But they were all men who had given up and been counted out, while
-Jurgis was still in the fight, and had reminders of decency about him.
-As he got up meekly, the other reflected that he had always been a
-steady man, and might soon be a good customer again. "You've been up
-against it, I see," he said. "Come this way."
-
-In the rear of the saloon were the cellar stairs. There was a door above
-and another below, both safely padlocked, making the stairs an admirable
-place to stow away a customer who might still chance to have money, or a
-political light whom it was not advisable to kick out of doors.
-
-So Jurgis spent the night. The whisky had only half warmed him, and he
-could not sleep, exhausted as he was; he would nod forward, and then
-start up, shivering with the cold, and begin to remember again. Hour
-after hour passed, until he could only persuade himself that it was not
-morning by the sounds of music and laughter and singing that were to
-be heard from the room. When at last these ceased, he expected that he
-would be turned out into the street; as this did not happen, he fell to
-wondering whether the man had forgotten him.
-
-In the end, when the silence and suspense were no longer to be borne,
-he got up and hammered on the door; and the proprietor came, yawning
-and rubbing his eyes. He was keeping open all night, and dozing between
-customers.
-
-"I want to go home," Jurgis said. "I'm worried about my wife--I can't
-wait any longer."
-
-"Why the hell didn't you say so before?" said the man. "I thought you
-didn't have any home to go to." Jurgis went outside. It was four o'clock
-in the morning, and as black as night. There were three or four inches
-of fresh snow on the ground, and the flakes were falling thick and fast.
-He turned toward Aniele's and started at a run.
-
-
-There was a light burning in the kitchen window and the blinds were
-drawn. The door was unlocked and Jurgis rushed in.
-
-Aniele, Marija, and the rest of the women were huddled about the
-stove, exactly as before; with them were several newcomers, Jurgis
-noticed--also he noticed that the house was silent.
-
-"Well?" he said.
-
-No one answered him, they sat staring at him with their pale faces. He
-cried again: "Well?"
-
-And then, by the light of the smoky lamp, he saw Marija who sat nearest
-him, shaking her head slowly. "Not yet," she said.
-
-And Jurgis gave a cry of dismay. "Not yet?"
-
-Again Marija's head shook. The poor fellow stood dumfounded. "I don't
-hear her," he gasped.
-
-"She's been quiet a long time," replied the other.
-
-There was another pause--broken suddenly by a voice from the attic:
-"Hello, there!"
-
-Several of the women ran into the next room, while Marija sprang toward
-Jurgis. "Wait here!" she cried, and the two stood, pale and trembling,
-listening. In a few moments it became clear that Madame Haupt was
-engaged in descending the ladder, scolding and exhorting again, while
-the ladder creaked in protest. In a moment or two she reached the
-ground, angry and breathless, and they heard her coming into the room.
-Jurgis gave one glance at her, and then turned white and reeled. She had
-her jacket off, like one of the workers on the killing beds. Her hands
-and arms were smeared with blood, and blood was splashed upon her
-clothing and her face.
-
-She stood breathing hard, and gazing about her; no one made a sound. "I
-haf done my best," she began suddenly. "I can do noffing more--dere is
-no use to try."
-
-Again there was silence.
-
-"It ain't my fault," she said. "You had ought to haf had a doctor, und
-not vaited so long--it vas too late already ven I come." Once more there
-was deathlike stillness. Marija was clutching Jurgis with all the power
-of her one well arm.
-
-Then suddenly Madame Haupt turned to Aniele. "You haf not got something
-to drink, hey?" she queried. "Some brandy?"
-
-Aniele shook her head.
-
-"Herr Gott!" exclaimed Madame Haupt. "Such people! Perhaps you vill give
-me someting to eat den--I haf had noffing since yesterday morning, und
-I haf vorked myself near to death here. If I could haf known it vas
-like dis, I vould never haf come for such money as you gif me." At this
-moment she chanced to look round, and saw Jurgis: She shook her finger
-at him. "You understand me," she said, "you pays me dot money yust de
-same! It is not my fault dat you send for me so late I can't help your
-vife. It is not my fault if der baby comes mit one arm first, so dot I
-can't save it. I haf tried all night, und in dot place vere it is not
-fit for dogs to be born, und mit notting to eat only vot I brings in
-mine own pockets."
-
-Here Madame Haupt paused for a moment to get her breath; and Marija,
-seeing the beads of sweat on Jurgis's forehead, and feeling the
-quivering of his frame, broke out in a low voice: "How is Ona?"
-
-"How is she?" echoed Madame Haupt. "How do you tink she can be ven
-you leave her to kill herself so? I told dem dot ven they send for de
-priest. She is young, und she might haf got over it, und been vell und
-strong, if she had been treated right. She fight hard, dot girl--she is
-not yet quite dead."
-
-And Jurgis gave a frantic scream. "Dead!"
-
-"She vill die, of course," said the other angrily. "Der baby is dead
-now."
-
-The garret was lighted by a candle stuck upon a board; it had almost
-burned itself out, and was sputtering and smoking as Jurgis rushed up
-the ladder. He could make out dimly in one corner a pallet of rags and
-old blankets, spread upon the floor; at the foot of it was a crucifix,
-and near it a priest muttering a prayer. In a far corner crouched
-Elzbieta, moaning and wailing. Upon the pallet lay Ona.
-
-She was covered with a blanket, but he could see her shoulders and
-one arm lying bare; she was so shrunken he would scarcely have known
-her--she was all but a skeleton, and as white as a piece of chalk. Her
-eyelids were closed, and she lay still as death. He staggered toward her
-and fell upon his knees with a cry of anguish: "Ona! Ona!"
-
-She did not stir. He caught her hand in his, and began to clasp
-it frantically, calling: "Look at me! Answer me! It is Jurgis come
-back--don't you hear me?"
-
-There was the faintest quivering of the eyelids, and he called again in
-frenzy: "Ona! Ona!"
-
-Then suddenly her eyes opened one instant. One instant she looked at
-him--there was a flash of recognition between them, he saw her afar off,
-as through a dim vista, standing forlorn. He stretched out his arms to
-her, he called her in wild despair; a fearful yearning surged up in him,
-hunger for her that was agony, desire that was a new being born
-within him, tearing his heartstrings, torturing him. But it was all in
-vain--she faded from him, she slipped back and was gone. And a wail of
-anguish burst from him, great sobs shook all his frame, and hot tears
-ran down his cheeks and fell upon her. He clutched her hands, he shook
-her, he caught her in his arms and pressed her to him but she lay cold
-and still--she was gone--she was gone!
-
-The word rang through him like the sound of a bell, echoing in the far
-depths of him, making forgotten chords to vibrate, old shadowy fears to
-stir--fears of the dark, fears of the void, fears of annihilation. She
-was dead! She was dead! He would never see her again, never hear her
-again! An icy horror of loneliness seized him; he saw himself standing
-apart and watching all the world fade away from him--a world of shadows,
-of fickle dreams. He was like a little child, in his fright and grief;
-he called and called, and got no answer, and his cries of despair echoed
-through the house, making the women downstairs draw nearer to each other
-in fear. He was inconsolable, beside himself--the priest came and laid
-his hand upon his shoulder and whispered to him, but he heard not a
-sound. He was gone away himself, stumbling through the shadows, and
-groping after the soul that had fled.
-
-
-So he lay. The gray dawn came up and crept into the attic. The
-priest left, the women left, and he was alone with the still, white
-figure--quieter now, but moaning and shuddering, wrestling with the
-grisly fiend. Now and then he would raise himself and stare at the white
-mask before him, then hide his eyes because he could not bear it. Dead!
-dead! And she was only a girl, she was barely eighteen! Her life had
-hardly begun--and here she lay murdered--mangled, tortured to death!
-
-It was morning when he rose up and came down into the kitchen--haggard
-and ashen gray, reeling and dazed. More of the neighbors had come in,
-and they stared at him in silence as he sank down upon a chair by the
-table and buried his face in his arms.
-
-A few minutes later the front door opened; a blast of cold and snow
-rushed in, and behind it little Kotrina, breathless from running, and
-blue with the cold. "I'm home again!" she exclaimed. "I could hardly--"
-
-And then, seeing Jurgis, she stopped with an exclamation. Looking from
-one to another she saw that something had happened, and she asked, in a
-lower voice: "What's the matter?"
-
-Before anyone could reply, Jurgis started up; he went toward her,
-walking unsteadily. "Where have you been?" he demanded.
-
-"Selling papers with the boys," she said. "The snow--"
-
-"Have you any money?" he demanded.
-
-"Yes."
-
-"How much?"
-
-"Nearly three dollars, Jurgis."
-
-"Give it to me."
-
-Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the others. "Give it to
-me!" he commanded again, and she put her hand into her pocket and pulled
-out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag. Jurgis took it without a word,
-and went out of the door and down the street.
-
-Three doors away was a saloon. "Whisky," he said, as he entered, and as
-the man pushed him some, he tore at the rag with his teeth and pulled
-out half a dollar. "How much is the bottle?" he said. "I want to get
-drunk."
-
-
-
-Chapter 20
-
-
-But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was
-Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick,
-realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not
-bought a single instant's forgetfulness with it.
-
-Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the
-morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the
-potter's field. Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of
-the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her; and the children
-were upstairs starving to death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had
-been spending their money on drink. So spoke Aniele, scornfully, and
-when he started toward the fire she added the information that her
-kitchen was no longer for him to fill with his phosphate stinks. She
-had crowded all her boarders into one room on Ona's account, but now he
-could go up in the garret where he belonged--and not there much longer,
-either, if he did not pay her some rent.
-
-Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping
-boarders in the next room, ascended the ladder. It was dark up above;
-they could not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as outdoors.
-In a corner, as far away from the corpse as possible, sat Marija,
-holding little Antanas in her one good arm and trying to soothe him to
-sleep. In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing because
-he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija said not a word to Jurgis; he
-crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by the body.
-
-Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children, and
-upon his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself up
-again to the luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a
-sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never
-dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
-that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away,
-and that he would never lay eyes upon her again--never all the days
-of his life. His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten to
-death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory were lifted--he saw
-all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the
-first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird. He
-saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her heart
-of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in his ears,
-the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long, cruel battle
-with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not
-changed her--she had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching
-out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and
-tenderness. And she had suffered--so cruelly she had suffered, such
-agonies, such infamies--ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne.
-What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been! Every angry
-word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife;
-every selfish act that he had done--with what torments he paid for them
-now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his soul--now that it
-could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too late! His bosom-was
-choking with it, bursting with it; he crouched here in the darkness
-beside her, stretching out his arms to her--and she was gone forever,
-she was dead! He could have screamed aloud with the horror and despair
-of it; a sweat of agony beaded his forehead, yet he dared not make a
-sound--he scarcely dared to breathe, because of his shame and loathing
-of himself.
-
-Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass, and
-paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home.
-She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that some one had given her,
-and with that they quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she
-came over to Jurgis and sat down beside him.
-
-She said not a word of reproach--she and Marija had chosen that course
-before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead
-wife. Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded
-out of her soul by fear. She had to bury one of her children--but then
-she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone back
-to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbieta was one of the primitive
-creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though cut in half;
-like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the
-last that is left her. She did this because it was her nature--she asked
-no questions about the justice of it, nor the worth-whileness of life in
-which destruction and death ran riot.
-
-And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis,
-pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others
-were left and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children.
-She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his
-own son. Ona had given Antanas to him--the little fellow was the only
-remembrance of her that he had; he must treasure it and protect it, he
-must show himself a man. He knew what Ona would have had him do, what
-she would ask of him at this moment, if she could speak to him. It was
-a terrible thing that she should have died as she had; but the life had
-been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was terrible that they
-were not able to bury her, that he could not even have a day to mourn
-her--but so it was. Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and
-the children would perish--some money must be had. Could he not be a man
-for Ona's sake, and pull himself together? In a little while they would
-be out of danger--now that they had given up the house they could live
-more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
-if only he would not go to pieces. So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
-intensity. It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid that
-Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was
-wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them, might take to
-the road, as Jonas had done.
-
-But with Ona's dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think
-of treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of
-Antanas. He would give the little fellow his chance--would get to work
-at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They
-might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might.
-
-And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache, heartache,
-and all. He went straight to Graham's fertilizer mill, to see if he
-could get back his job. But the boss shook his head when he saw him--no,
-his place had been filled long ago, and there was no room for him.
-
-"Do you think there will be?" Jurgis asked. "I may have to wait."
-
-"No," said the other, "it will not be worth your while to wait--there
-will be nothing for you here."
-
-Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. "What is the matter?" he
-asked. "Didn't I do my work?"
-
-The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
-"There will be nothing for you here, I said."
-
-Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
-and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his stand
-with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in the snow
-before the time station. Here he stayed, breakfastless, for two hours,
-until the throng was driven away by the clubs of the police. There was
-no work for him that day.
-
-Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
-yards--there were saloon-keepers who would trust him for a drink and a
-sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at a
-pinch. It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore; he
-might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging on
-thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime, Teta
-Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district, and the
-children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep them all
-alive.
-
-It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in
-the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a chance
-in one of the cellars of Jones's big packing plant. He saw a foreman
-passing the open doorway, and hailed him for a job.
-
-"Push a truck?" inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, "Yes, sir!"
-before the words were well out of his mouth.
-
-"What's your name?" demanded the other.
-
-"Jurgis Rudkus."
-
-"Worked in the yards before?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"Whereabouts?"
-
-"Two places--Brown's killing beds and Durham's fertilizer mill."
-
-"Why did you leave there?"
-
-"The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up for a
-month."
-
-"I see. Well, I'll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for Mr.
-Thomas."
-
-So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job--that
-the terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a
-celebration that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place
-half an hour before the time of opening. The foreman came in shortly
-afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned.
-
-"Oh," he said, "I promised you a job, didn't I?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Well, I'm sorry, but I made a mistake. I can't use you."
-
-Jurgis stared, dumfounded. "What's the matter?" he gasped.
-
-"Nothing," said the man, "only I can't use you."
-
-There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of
-the fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word, and
-he turned and went away.
-
-Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it;
-they gazed at him with pitying eyes--poor devil, he was blacklisted!
-What had he done? they asked--knocked down his boss? Good heavens, then
-he might have known! Why, he stood as much chance of getting a job in
-Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his
-time hunting? They had him on a secret list in every office, big and
-little, in the place. They had his name by this time in St. Louis and
-New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and St. Joseph. He was
-condemned and sentenced, without trial and without appeal; he could
-never work for the packers again--he could not even clean cattle pens or
-drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try it, if he
-chose, as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He
-would never be told anything about it; he would never get any more
-satisfaction than he had gotten just now; but he would always find when
-the time came that he was not needed. It would not do for him to give
-any other name, either--they had company "spotters" for just that
-purpose, and he wouldn't keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was
-worth a fortune to the packers to keep their blacklist effective, as
-a warning to the men and a means of keeping down union agitation and
-political discontent.
-
-Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council. It
-was a most cruel thing; here in this district was his home, such as it
-was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew--and now every
-possibility of employment in it was closed to him. There was nothing in
-Packingtown but packing houses; and so it was the same thing as evicting
-him from his home.
-
-He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It
-would be convenient, downtown, to the children's place of work; but then
-Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting a job in
-the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a month,
-because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up her
-mind to go away and give him up forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had heard
-something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham's offices and was
-waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis should
-go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide after he
-got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow there, and he
-dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that every day
-he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of their
-earnings, upon which he could keep going. Then all day he was to pace
-the streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches
-inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and at
-night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a truck, and hide
-there until midnight, when he might get into one of the station houses,
-and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down in the midst of
-a throng of "bums" and beggars, reeking with alcohol and tobacco, and
-filthy with vermin and disease.
-
-
-So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he
-got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an old
-woman's valise and was given a quarter. This let him into a lodging-house
-on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death; and it
-also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning
-and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a
-paper to be thrown away. This, however, was really not the advantage it
-seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of much loss of
-precious time and of many weary journeys. A full half of these were
-"fakes," put in by the endless variety of establishments which preyed
-upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis lost only
-his time, it was because he had nothing else to lose; whenever a
-smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful positions he had on
-hand, he could only shake his head sorrowfully and say that he had not
-the necessary dollar to deposit; when it was explained to him what "big
-money" he and all his family could make by coloring photographs, he
-could only promise to come in again when he had two dollars to invest in
-the outfit.
-
-In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an
-old-time acquaintance of his union days. He met this man on his way to
-work in the giant factories of the Harvester Trust; and his friend told
-him to come along and he would speak a good word for him to his boss,
-whom he knew well. So Jurgis trudged four or five miles, and passed
-through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under the escort
-of his friend. His knees nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman,
-after looking him over and questioning him, told him that he could find
-an opening for him.
-
-How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages;
-for he found that the harvester works were the sort of place to which
-philanthropists and reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought
-for its employees; its workshops were big and roomy, it provided a
-restaurant where the workmen could buy good food at cost, it had even
-a reading room, and decent places where its girl-hands could rest; also
-the work was free from many of the elements of filth and repulsiveness
-that prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis discovered these
-things--things never expected nor dreamed of by him--until this new
-place came to seem a kind of a heaven to him.
-
-It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred and sixty acres
-of ground, employing five thousand people, and turning out over three
-hundred thousand machines every year--a good part of all the harvesting
-and mowing machines used in the country. Jurgis saw very little of it,
-of course--it was all specialized work, the same as at the stockyards;
-each one of the hundreds of parts of a mowing machine was made
-separately, and sometimes handled by hundreds of men. Where Jurgis
-worked there was a machine which cut and stamped a certain piece of
-steel about two square inches in size; the pieces came tumbling out upon
-a tray, and all that human hands had to do was to pile them in regular
-rows, and change the trays at intervals. This was done by a single boy,
-who stood with eyes and thought centered upon it, and fingers flying so
-fast that the sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was
-like the music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at
-night. This was "piece-work," of course; and besides it was made certain
-that the boy did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest
-possible speed of human hands. Thirty thousand of these pieces he
-handled every day, nine or ten million every year--how many in a
-lifetime it rested with the gods to say. Near by him men sat bending
-over whirling grindstones, putting the finishing touches to the steel
-knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket with the right hand,
-pressing first one side and then the other against the stone and finally
-dropping them with the left hand into another basket. One of these men
-told Jurgis that he had sharpened three thousand pieces of steel a day
-for thirteen years. In the next room were wonderful machines that ate
-up long steel rods by slow stages, cutting them off, seizing the pieces,
-stamping heads upon them, grinding them and polishing them, threading
-them, and finally dropping them into a basket, all ready to bolt the
-harvesters together. From yet another machine came tens of thousands of
-steel burs to fit upon these bolts. In other places all these various
-parts were dipped into troughs of paint and hung up to dry, and then
-slid along on trolleys to a room where men streaked them with red and
-yellow, so that they might look cheerful in the harvest fields.
-
-Jurgis's friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task was
-to make the molds of a certain part. He shoveled black sand into an
-iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden; then it
-would be taken out, and molten iron poured into it. This man, too, was
-paid by the mold--or rather for perfect castings, nearly half his
-work going for naught. You might see him, along with dozens of others,
-toiling like one possessed by a whole community of demons; his arms
-working like the driving rods of an engine, his long, black hair flying
-wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat rolling in rivers down his face.
-When he had shoveled the mold full of sand, and reached for the pounder
-to pound it with, it was after the manner of a canoeist running rapids
-and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All day long this man
-would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making
-twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then
-his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant
-captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling
-how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other
-country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would
-seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to
-this pitch of frenzy; though there are a few other things that are great
-among us including our drink-bill, which is a billion and a quarter of
-dollars a year, and doubling itself every decade.
-
-
-There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then another
-which, with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the sitting-down
-portion of the American farmer. Then they were piled upon a truck, and
-it was Jurgis's task to wheel them to the room where the machines were
-"assembled." This was child's play for him, and he got a dollar
-and seventy-five cents a day for it; on Saturday he paid Aniele the
-seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use of her garret, and
-also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta had put in pawn when he was
-in jail.
-
-This last was a great blessing. A man cannot go about in midwinter in
-Chicago with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Jurgis had to walk or
-ride five or six miles back and forth to his work. It so happened that
-half of this was in one direction and half in another, necessitating
-a change of cars; the law required that transfers be given at all
-intersecting points, but the railway corporation had gotten round this
-by arranging a pretense at separate ownership. So whenever he wished
-to ride, he had to pay ten cents each way, or over ten per cent of his
-income to this power, which had gotten its franchises long ago by buying
-up the city council, in the face of popular clamor amounting almost to a
-rebellion. Tired as he felt at night, and dark and bitter cold as it
-was in the morning, Jurgis generally chose to walk; at the hours other
-workmen were traveling, the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few
-cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them
-and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof. Of course the doors
-could never be closed, and so the cars were as cold as outdoors; Jurgis,
-like many others, found it better to spend his fare for a drink and a
-free lunch, to give him strength to walk.
-
-These, however, were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from
-Durham's fertilizer mill. Jurgis began to pick up heart again and to
-make plans. He had lost his house but then the awful load of the rent
-and interest was off his shoulders, and when Marija was well again they
-could start over and save. In the shop where he worked was a man, a
-Lithuanian like himself, whom the others spoke of in admiring whispers,
-because of the mighty feats he was performing. All day he sat at a
-machine turning bolts; and then in the evening he went to the public
-school to study English and learn to read. In addition, because he had a
-family of eight children to support and his earnings were not enough, on
-Saturdays and Sundays he served as a watchman; he was required to press
-two buttons at opposite ends of a building every five minutes, and
-as the walk only took him two minutes, he had three minutes to study
-between each trip. Jurgis felt jealous of this fellow; for that was
-the sort of thing he himself had dreamed of, two or three years ago.
-He might do it even yet, if he had a fair chance--he might attract
-attention and become a skilled man or a boss, as some had done in this
-place. Suppose that Marija could get a job in the big mill where they
-made binder twine--then they would move into this neighborhood, and he
-would really have a chance. With a hope like that, there was some use
-in living; to find a place where you were treated like a human being--by
-God! he would show them how he could appreciate it. He laughed to
-himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job!
-
-And then one afternoon, the ninth of his work in the place, when he went
-to get his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a placard on
-the door, and when he went over and asked what it was, they told him
-that beginning with the morrow his department of the harvester works
-would be closed until further notice!
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 21
-
-
-That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour's warning--the
-works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the men, and it
-would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting machines
-that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out! It
-was nobody's fault--that was the way of it; and thousands of men and
-women were turned out in the dead of winter, to live upon their savings
-if they had any, and otherwise to die. So many tens of thousands already
-in the city, homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand
-more added to them!
-
-Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken,
-overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more
-pitfall was revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on
-the part of employers--when they could not keep a job for him, when
-there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy!
-What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man should slave to make
-harvesting machines for the country, only to be turned out to starve for
-doing his duty too well!
-
-It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment. He
-did not drink anything, because Elzbieta got his money for safekeeping,
-and knew him too well to be in the least frightened by his angry
-demands. He stayed up in the garret however, and sulked--what was the
-use of a man's hunting a job when it was taken from him before he had
-time to learn the work? But then their money was going again, and little
-Antanas was hungry, and crying with the bitter cold of the garret. Also
-Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after him for some money. So he went out
-once more.
-
-For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city,
-sick and hungry, begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices,
-in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards, in
-warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that went
-to every corner of the world. There were often one or two chances--but
-there were always a hundred men for every chance, and his turn would not
-come. At night he crept into sheds and cellars and doorways--until there
-came a spell of belated winter weather, with a raging gale, and the
-thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and falling all night.
-Then Jurgis fought like a wild beast to get into the big Harrison Street
-police station, and slept down in a corridor, crowded with two other men
-upon a single step.
-
-He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the
-factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found, for
-instance, that the business of carrying satchels for railroad passengers
-was a pre-empted one--whenever he essayed it, eight or ten men and boys
-would fall upon him and force him to run for his life. They always
-had the policeman "squared," and so there was no use in expecting
-protection.
-
-That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the
-children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the
-cold was almost more than the children could bear; and then they, too,
-were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law
-was against them, too--little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did
-not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in
-spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be working and that
-if he did not stop selling papers she would send a truant officer after
-him. Also one night a strange man caught little Kotrina by the arm and
-tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an experience which filled
-her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at work.
-
-At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went
-home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting
-for him for three days--there was a chance of a job for him.
-
-It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger
-these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had
-only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child,
-but he had got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a
-crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to
-Mike Scully's dump, which lay three or four blocks away. To this place
-there came every day many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash
-from the lake front, where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the
-children raked for food--there were hunks of bread and potato peelings
-and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite
-unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a
-newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in.
-Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the
-dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it and
-Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go
-again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had
-been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had called him.
-A real fine lady, the little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and
-she wanted to know all about him, and whether he got the garbage for
-chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona had died, and
-how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the matter with Marija,
-and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived, and said that
-she was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to walk with. She
-had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas added, and a long fur snake
-around her neck.
-
-She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the
-garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of
-the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a "settlement
-worker," she explained to Elzbieta--she lived around on Ashland Avenue.
-Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to
-go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have
-something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have
-anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came
-to live there to find out about the poor people; but what good they
-expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So spoke
-Elzbieta, naively, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss
-for an answer--she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical
-remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink
-of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.
-
-Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their
-woes--what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their
-home, and Marija's accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could
-get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady's eyes filled with
-tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on
-Elzbieta's shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on
-a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor Elzbieta
-was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other
-had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of it was
-that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a
-letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in
-one of the mills of the great steelworks in South Chicago. "He will get
-Jurgis something to do," the young lady had said, and added, smiling
-through her tears--"If he doesn't, he will never marry me."
-
-The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so
-contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the
-sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering
-chimneys--for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast works, a
-city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade; and already a full
-hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on. Soon
-after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of
-men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the way,
-leaping from trolley cars that passed--it seemed as if they rose out of
-the ground, in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in through the
-gate--and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were only a few
-late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the hungry
-strangers stamping and shivering.
-
-Jurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly, and put
-him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he
-had taken the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for the
-gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was addressed.
-A messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came
-inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less
-fortunate watching him with greedy eyes. The great mills were getting
-under way--one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling
-and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain: towering, black
-buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways
-branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of
-billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad
-with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers
-came to load.
-
-Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours
-before he was summoned. He went into the office building, where a
-company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he
-said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job. He had
-never worked in a steel mill before? But he was ready for anything?
-Well, then, they would go and see.
-
-So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He
-wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like this,
-where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked
-warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature steam engines came
-rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of metal
-sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and
-scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with soot, and
-hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here
-and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung
-to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter
-hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another
-unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.
-
-He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of
-steel--a dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood
-where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the
-stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of
-hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding,
-bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through
-it--one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap
-from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below--and men were working
-there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.
-Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
-come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one
-of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by
-the stage, and another train would back up--and suddenly, without an
-instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple,
-flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back
-appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of
-white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in
-the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building,
-overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked
-through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a
-cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
-scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue,
-red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white,
-ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life;
-and the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and
-resistless, back into far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell. Then
-the great caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief
-that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide out into the
-sunlight.
-
-They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars
-of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around
-and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels were turning,
-great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked and groaned overhead,
-reaching down iron hands and seizing iron prey--it was like standing in
-the center of the earth, where the machinery of time was revolving.
-
-By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and Jurgis
-heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with a
-white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body. There was a sudden
-crash and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon
-a moving platform, where steel fingers and arms seized hold of it,
-punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip of
-huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other side, and there were more
-crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped, like a pancake on
-a gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through another
-squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing
-thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing;
-it did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate,
-it was tumbled on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By
-and by it was long and thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory;
-and then, as it slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it
-was alive--it writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed out
-through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. There was
-no rest for it until it was cold and black--and then it needed only to
-be cut and straightened to be ready for a railroad.
-
-It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgis got his chance.
-They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use
-another man. So he took off his coat and set to work on the spot.
-
-
-It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a
-dollar and twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he
-wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with him, and one of his
-fellow workingmen introduced him to a Polish lodging-house, where he
-might have the privilege of sleeping upon the floor for ten cents a
-night. He got his meals at free-lunch counters, and every Saturday night
-he went home--bedding and all--and took the greater part of his money to
-the family. Elzbieta was sorry for this arrangement, for she feared that
-it would get him into the habit of living without them, and once a week
-was not very often for him to see his baby; but there was no other way
-of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the steelworks, and
-Marija was now ready for work again, and lured on from day to day by the
-hope of finding it at the yards.
-
-
-In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment
-in the rail mill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the
-miracles and terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling
-and crashing. From blind fear he went to the other extreme; he became
-reckless and indifferent, like all the rest of the men, who took
-but little thought of themselves in the ardor of their work. It was
-wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these men should have
-taken an interest in the work they did--they had no share in it--they
-were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested. Also they
-knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten--and
-still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use
-methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact
-that they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man
-stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off,
-and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more
-dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white
-through every crack with the molten steel inside. Some of these were
-bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses
-when they opened and shut the doors. One morning as Jurgis was passing,
-a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire. As
-they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed
-to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the
-inside of one of his hands. The company doctor bandaged it up, but he
-got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days
-without any pay.
-
-Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited chance
-to go at five o'clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of
-one of the packers. Jurgis came home and covered himself with blankets
-to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and playing with
-little Antanas. Juozapas was away raking in the dump a good part of the
-time, and Elzbieta and Marija were hunting for more work.
-
-Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking
-machine. He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it
-seemed to him as if he had a new child. He would sit down and listen and
-stare at him, and give vent to delighted exclamations--"Palauk! Muma!
-Tu mano szirdele!" The little fellow was now really the one delight
-that Jurgis had in the world--his one hope, his one victory. Thank God,
-Antanas was a boy! And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the
-appetite of a wolf. Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him;
-he had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed--only
-shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon life. He was a
-terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but his father did not mind
-that--he would watch him and smile to himself with satisfaction. The
-more of a fighter he was the better--he would need to fight before he
-got through.
-
-Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the
-money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole
-armful, with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that
-Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the long
-words. There was battle and murder and sudden death--it was marvelous
-how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings;
-the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have made such
-things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as
-life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as good
-as a spree--certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman, who was
-tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education, and whose work
-was one dull, sordid grind, day after day, and year after year, with
-never a sight of a green field nor an hour's entertainment, nor anything
-but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other things, these
-papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy
-in life to little Antanas. He treasured them up, and would drag them out
-and make his father tell him about them; there were all sorts of animals
-among them, and Antanas could tell the names of all of them, lying
-upon the floor for hours and pointing them out with his chubby little
-fingers. Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgis to make out,
-Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then he would remember it,
-prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with other stories in
-an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation of words was
-such a delight--and the phrases he would pick up and remember, the most
-outlandish and impossible things! The first time that the little rascal
-burst out with "God damn," his father nearly rolled off the chair
-with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this, for Antanas was soon
-"God-damning" everything and everybody.
-
-And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his bedding
-again and went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April, and
-the snow had given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in front
-of Aniele's house was turned into a canal. Jurgis would have to wade
-through it to get home, and if it was late he might easily get stuck to
-his waist in the mire. But he did not mind this much--it was a promise
-that summer was coming. Marija had now gotten a place as beef-trimmer
-in one of the smaller packing plants; and he told himself that he had
-learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more accidents--so that
-at last there was prospect of an end to their long agony. They could
-save money again, and when another winter came they would have a
-comfortable place; and the children would be off the streets and in
-school again, and they might set to work to nurse back into life their
-habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgis began to make plans
-and dream dreams.
-
-And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home, with
-the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had been
-pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a rainbow
-in the sky, and another in his breast--for he had thirty-six hours' rest
-before him, and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly he came in
-sight of the house, and noticed that there was a crowd before the door.
-He ran up the steps and pushed his way in, and saw Aniele's kitchen
-crowded with excited women. It reminded him so vividly of the time when
-he had come home from jail and found Ona dying, that his heart almost
-stood still. "What's the matter?" he cried.
-
-A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was
-staring at him. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed again.
-
-And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija's
-voice. He started for the ladder--and Aniele seized him by the arm. "No,
-no!" she exclaimed. "Don't go up there!"
-
-"What is it?" he shouted.
-
-And the old woman answered him weakly: "It's Antanas. He's dead. He was
-drowned out in the street!"
-
-
-Chapter 22
-
-
-Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he
-caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room,
-clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he pushed Aniele
-aside and strode into the next room and climbed the ladder.
-
-In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it; and
-beside it lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis could not
-tell. Marija was pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He
-clenched his hands tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke.
-
-"How did it happen?" he asked.
-
-Marija scarcely heard him in her agony. He repeated the question,
-louder and yet more harshly. "He fell off the sidewalk!" she wailed.
-The sidewalk in front of the house was a platform made of half-rotten
-boards, about five feet above the level of the sunken street.
-
-"How did he come to be there?" he demanded.
-
-"He went--he went out to play," Marija sobbed, her voice choking her.
-"We couldn't make him stay in. He must have got caught in the mud!"
-
-"Are you sure that he is dead?" he demanded.
-
-"Ai! ai!" she wailed. "Yes; we had the doctor."
-
-Then Jurgis stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He
-took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it,
-and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence
-fell once more in the room as he entered. He went straight to the door,
-passed out, and started down the street.
-
-When his wife had died, Jurgis made for the nearest saloon, but he did
-not do that now, though he had his week's wages in his pocket. He walked
-and walked, seeing nothing, splashing through mud and water. Later on he
-sat down upon a step and hid his face in his hands and for half an hour
-or so he did not move. Now and then he would whisper to himself: "Dead!
-Dead!"
-
-Finally, he got up and walked on again. It was about sunset, and he went
-on and on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a railroad crossing.
-The gates were down, and a long train of freight cars was thundering by.
-He stood and watched it; and all at once a wild impulse seized him, a
-thought that had been lurking within him, unspoken, unrecognized, leaped
-into sudden life. He started down the track, and when he was past the
-gate-keeper's shanty he sprang forward and swung himself on to one of
-the cars.
-
-By and by the train stopped again, and Jurgis sprang down and ran under
-the car, and hid himself upon the truck. Here he sat, and when the train
-started again, he fought a battle with his soul. He gripped his hands
-and set his teeth together--he had not wept, and he would not--not a
-tear! It was past and over, and he was done with it--he would fling it
-off his shoulders, be free of it, the whole business, that night. It
-should go like a black, hateful nightmare, and in the morning he would
-be a new man. And every time that a thought of it assailed him--a tender
-memory, a trace of a tear--he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it
-down.
-
-He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in his
-desperation. He had been a fool, a fool! He had wasted his life, he had
-wrecked himself, with his accursed weakness; and now he was done with
-it--he would tear it out of him, root and branch! There should be no
-more tears and no more tenderness; he had had enough of them--they had
-sold him into slavery! Now he was going to be free, to tear off his
-shackles, to rise up and fight. He was glad that the end had come--it
-had to come some time, and it was just as well now. This was no world
-for women and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better
-for them. Whatever Antanas might suffer where he was, he could suffer
-no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth. And meantime his
-father had thought the last thought about him that he meant to; he was
-going to think of himself, he was going to fight for himself, against
-the world that had baffled him and tortured him!
-
-So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul,
-and setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and
-a storm of dust blew in his face; but though it stopped now and then
-through the night, he clung where he was--he would cling there until
-he was driven off, for every mile that he got from Packingtown meant
-another load from his mind.
-
-Whenever the cars stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze laden
-with the perfume of fresh fields, of honeysuckle and clover. He snuffed
-it, and it made his heart beat wildly--he was out in the country again!
-He was going to live in the country! When the dawn came he was peering
-out with hungry eyes, getting glimpses of meadows and woods and rivers.
-At last he could stand it no longer, and when the train stopped again he
-crawled out. Upon the top of the car was a brakeman, who shook his fist
-and swore; Jurgis waved his hand derisively, and started across the
-country.
-
-Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for three
-long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound!
-Excepting for that one walk when he left jail, when he was too much
-worried to notice anything, and for a few times that he had rested
-in the city parks in the winter time when he was out of work, he had
-literally never seen a tree! And now he felt like a bird lifted up
-and borne away upon a gale; he stopped and stared at each new sight of
-wonder--at a herd of cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at hedgerows
-set thick with June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.
-
-Then he came to a farm-house, and after getting himself a stick for
-protection, he approached it. The farmer was greasing a wagon in
-front of the barn, and Jurgis went to him. "I would like to get some
-breakfast, please," he said.
-
-"Do you want to work?" said the farmer.
-
-"No," said Jurgis. "I don't."
-
-"Then you can't get anything here," snapped the other.
-
-"I meant to pay for it," said Jurgis.
-
-"Oh," said the farmer; and then added sarcastically, "We don't serve
-breakfast after 7 A.M."
-
-"I am very hungry," said Jurgis gravely; "I would like to buy some
-food."
-
-"Ask the woman," said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder. The "woman"
-was more tractable, and for a dime Jurgis secured two thick sandwiches
-and a piece of pie and two apples. He walked off eating the pie, as the
-least convenient thing to carry. In a few minutes he came to a stream,
-and he climbed a fence and walked down the bank, along a woodland path.
-By and by he found a comfortable spot, and there he devoured his meal,
-slaking his thirst at the stream. Then he lay for hours, just gazing and
-drinking in joy; until at last he felt sleepy, and lay down in the shade
-of a bush.
-
-When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face. He sat up and
-stretched his arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. There was a
-deep pool, sheltered and silent, below him, and a sudden wonderful idea
-rushed upon him. He might have a bath! The water was free, and he might
-get into it--all the way into it! It would be the first time that he had
-been all the way into the water since he left Lithuania!
-
-When Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean as any
-workingman could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold
-and hunger and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the
-vermin in his home, he had given up washing in winter, and in summer
-only as much of him as would go into a basin. He had had a shower bath
-in jail, but nothing since--and now he would have a swim!
-
-The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his glee.
-Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank, and proceeded to scrub
-himself--soberly and methodically, scouring every inch of him with sand.
-While he was doing it he would do it thoroughly, and see how it felt to
-be clean. He even scrubbed his head with sand, and combed what the men
-called "crumbs" out of his long, black hair, holding his head under
-water as long as he could, to see if he could not kill them all. Then,
-seeing that the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the bank
-and proceeded to wash them, piece by piece; as the dirt and grease went
-floating off downstream he grunted with satisfaction and soused the
-clothes again, venturing even to dream that he might get rid of the
-fertilizer.
-
-He hung them all up, and while they were drying he lay down in the sun
-and had another long sleep. They were hot and stiff as boards on top,
-and a little damp on the underside, when he awakened; but being hungry,
-he put them on and set out again. He had no knife, but with some labor
-he broke himself a good stout club, and, armed with this, he marched
-down the road again.
-
-Before long he came to a big farmhouse, and turned up the lane that led
-to it. It was just supper-time, and the farmer was washing his hands at
-the kitchen door. "Please, sir," said Jurgis, "can I have something to
-eat? I can pay." To which the farmer responded promptly, "We don't feed
-tramps here. Get out!"
-
-Jurgis went without a word; but as he passed round the barn he came to
-a freshly ploughed and harrowed field, in which the farmer had set out
-some young peach trees; and as he walked he jerked up a row of them by
-the roots, more than a hundred trees in all, before he reached the end
-of the field. That was his answer, and it showed his mood; from now on
-he was fighting, and the man who hit him would get all that he gave,
-every time.
-
-Beyond the orchard Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and then a
-field of winter grain, and came at last to another road. Before long he
-saw another farmhouse, and, as it was beginning to cloud over a little,
-he asked here for shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eying him
-dubiously, he added, "I'll be glad to sleep in the barn."
-
-"Well, I dunno," said the other. "Do you smoke?"
-
-"Sometimes," said Jurgis, "but I'll do it out of doors." When the man
-had assented, he inquired, "How much will it cost me? I haven't very
-much money."
-
-"I reckon about twenty cents for supper," replied the farmer. "I won't
-charge ye for the barn."
-
-So Jurgis went in, and sat down at the table with the farmer's wife and
-half a dozen children. It was a bountiful meal--there were baked beans
-and mashed potatoes and asparagus chopped and stewed, and a dish of
-strawberries, and great, thick slices of bread, and a pitcher of milk.
-Jurgis had not had such a feast since his wedding day, and he made a
-mighty effort to put in his twenty cents' worth.
-
-They were all of them too hungry to talk; but afterward they sat upon
-the steps and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. When Jurgis
-had explained that he was a workingman from Chicago, and that he did not
-know just whither he was bound, the other said, "Why don't you stay here
-and work for me?"
-
-"I'm not looking for work just now," Jurgis answered.
-
-"I'll pay ye good," said the other, eying his big form--"a dollar a day
-and board ye. Help's terrible scarce round here."
-
-"Is that winter as well as summer?" Jurgis demanded quickly.
-
-"N--no," said the farmer; "I couldn't keep ye after November--I ain't
-got a big enough place for that."
-
-"I see," said the other, "that's what I thought. When you get through
-working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in the snow?"
-(Jurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays.)
-
-"It ain't quite the same," the farmer answered, seeing the point. "There
-ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do, in the cities,
-or some place, in the winter time."
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's what they all think; and so they crowd into
-the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then people
-ask 'em why they don't go into the country, where help is scarce." The
-farmer meditated awhile.
-
-"How about when your money's gone?" he inquired, finally. "You'll have
-to, then, won't you?"
-
-"Wait till she's gone," said Jurgis; "then I'll see."
-
-He had a long sleep in the barn and then a big breakfast of coffee and
-bread and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the man charged him
-only fifteen cents, perhaps having been influenced by his arguments.
-Then Jurgis bade farewell, and went on his way.
-
-
-Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp. It was seldom he got
-as fair treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time went on he
-learned to shun the houses and to prefer sleeping in the fields. When
-it rained he would find a deserted building, if he could, and if not,
-he would wait until after dark and then, with his stick ready, begin a
-stealthy approach upon a barn. Generally he could get in before the dog
-got scent of him, and then he would hide in the hay and be safe until
-morning; if not, and the dog attacked him, he would rise up and make a
-retreat in battle order. Jurgis was not the mighty man he had once been,
-but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he needed to
-hit more than once.
-
-Before long there came raspberries, and then blackberries, to help him
-save his money; and there were apples in the orchards and potatoes in
-the ground--he learned to note the places and fill his pockets after
-dark. Twice he even managed to capture a chicken, and had a feast, once
-in a deserted barn and the other time in a lonely spot alongside of a
-stream. When all of these things failed him he used his money carefully,
-but without worry--for he saw that he could earn more whenever he chose.
-Half an hour's chopping wood in his lively fashion was enough to bring
-him a meal, and when the farmer had seen him working he would sometimes
-try to bribe him to stay.
-
-But Jurgis was not staying. He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old
-wanderlust had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the
-joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. There were mishaps and
-discomforts--but at least there was always something new; and only think
-what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place,
-seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories, to be
-suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes,
-new places, and new people every hour! To a man whose whole life had
-consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted
-that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day--and to be now
-his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a
-new adventure every hour!
-
-Then, too, his health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor, his
-joy and power that he had mourned and forgotten! It came with a sudden
-rush, bewildering him, startling him; it was as if his dead childhood
-had come back to him, laughing and calling! What with plenty to eat and
-fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken
-from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy,
-stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back
-to him. Now and then, of course, he could not help but think of little
-Antanas, whom he should never see again, whose little voice he should
-never hear; and then he would have to battle with himself. Sometimes at
-night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and stretch out his arms to her,
-and wet the ground with his tears. But in the morning he would get up
-and shake himself, and stride away again to battle with the world.
-
-He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country was big
-enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it.
-And of course he could always have company for the asking--everywhere he
-went there were men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcome to
-join. He was a stranger at the business, but they were not clannish, and
-they taught him all their tricks--what towns and villages it was best
-to keep away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and
-when to beg and when to steal, and just how to do both. They laughed at
-his ideas of paying for anything with money or with work--for they got
-all they wanted without either. Now and then Jurgis camped out with
-a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged with them in the
-neighborhood at night. And then among them some one would "take a shine"
-to him, and they would go off together and travel for a week, exchanging
-reminiscences.
-
-Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been shiftless
-and vicious all their lives. But the vast majority of them had been
-workingmen, had fought the long fight as Jurgis had, and found that it
-was a losing fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet another
-sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were recruited, men who
-were homeless and wandering, but still seeking work--seeking it in the
-harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army
-of society; called into being under the stern system of nature, to
-do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and
-irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they
-were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the job, and that
-the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas, and
-as the crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending
-with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber
-camps, where there was winter work; or failing in this, would drift to
-the cities, and live upon what they had managed to save, with the
-help of such transient work as was there the loading and unloading of
-steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the shoveling of snow.
-If there were more of them on hand than chanced to be needed, the weaker
-ones died off of cold and hunger, again according to the stern system of
-nature.
-
-It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri, that
-he came upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for
-three or four months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly
-all unless they could find others to help them for a week or two. So all
-over the land there was a cry for labor--agencies were set up and all
-the cities were drained of men, even college boys were brought by the
-carload, and hordes of frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry
-off wagon-loads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay them
-well--any man could get two dollars a day and his board, and the best
-men could get two dollars and a half or three.
-
-The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in
-him could be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and
-worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without
-a break. Then he had a sum of money that would have been a fortune to
-him in the old days of misery--but what could he do with it now? To be
-sure he might have put it in a bank, and, if he were fortunate, get
-it back again when he wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man,
-wandering over a continent; and what did he know about banking and
-drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about with him, he
-would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him to do
-but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a town
-with his fellows; and because it was raining, and there was no other
-place provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some who
-treated him and whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing
-and good cheer; and then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl's
-face, red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped
-suddenly in his throat. He nodded to her, and she came and sat by him,
-and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a room with her,
-and the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it has screamed
-in the Jungle from the dawn of time. And then because of his memories
-and his shame, he was glad when others joined them, men and women; and
-they had more drink and spent the night in wild rioting and debauchery.
-In the van of the surplus-labor army, there followed another, an army of
-women, they also struggling for life under the stern system of nature.
-Because there were rich men who sought pleasure, there had been ease and
-plenty for them so long as they were young and beautiful; and later on,
-when they were crowded out by others younger and more beautiful, they
-went out to follow upon the trail of the workingmen. Sometimes they came
-of themselves, and the saloon-keepers shared with them; or sometimes
-they were handled by agencies, the same as the labor army. They were in
-the towns in harvest time, near the lumber camps in the winter, in
-the cities when the men came there; if a regiment were encamped, or a
-railroad or canal being made, or a great exposition getting ready, the
-crowd of women were on hand, living in shanties or saloons or tenement
-rooms, sometimes eight or ten of them together.
-
-In the morning Jurgis had not a cent, and he went out upon the road
-again. He was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of his life, he
-crushed his feelings down. He had made a fool of himself, but he could
-not help it now--all he could do was to see that it did not happen
-again. So he tramped on until exercise and fresh air banished his
-headache, and his strength and joy returned. This happened to him every
-time, for Jurgis was still a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had
-not yet become business. It would be a long time before he could be like
-the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger for
-drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a purpose
-in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree.
-
-On the contrary, try as he would, Jurgis could not help being made
-miserable by his conscience. It was the ghost that would not down. It
-would come upon him in the most unexpected places--sometimes it fairly
-drove him to drink.
-
-One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a
-little house just outside of a town. It was a working-man's home, and
-the owner was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from White Russia; he
-bade Jurgis welcome in his home language, and told him to come to the
-kitchen-fire and dry himself. He had no bed for him, but there was straw
-in the garret, and he could make out. The man's wife was cooking the
-supper, and their children were playing about on the floor. Jurgis sat
-and exchanged thoughts with him about the old country, and the places
-where they had been and the work they had done. Then they ate, and
-afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and how they
-found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis stopped, seeing
-that the woman had brought a big basin of water and was proceeding to
-undress her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the closet where
-they slept, but the baby was to have a bath, the workingman explained.
-The nights had begun to be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the
-climate in America, had sewed him up for the winter; then it had turned
-warm again, and some kind of a rash had broken out on the child. The
-doctor had said she must bathe him every night, and she, foolish woman,
-believed him.
-
-Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. He was
-about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft fat legs, and a
-round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did
-not seem to bother him much, and he was wild with glee over the bath,
-kicking and squirming and chuckling with delight, pulling at his
-mother's face and then at his own little toes. When she put him into the
-basin he sat in the midst of it and grinned, splashing the water over
-himself and squealing like a little pig. He spoke in Russian, of which
-Jurgis knew some; he spoke it with the quaintest of baby accents--and
-every word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his own dead little
-one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly motionless, silent,
-but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm gathered in his bosom and
-a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could bear
-it no more, but buried his face in his hands and burst into tears, to
-the alarm and amazement of his hosts. Between the shame of this and his
-woe Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed out into the rain.
-
-He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where
-he hid and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that,
-what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of
-his old life came forth to scourge him! What terror to see what he had
-been and now could never be--to see Ona and his child and his own dead
-self stretching out their arms to him, calling to him across a bottomless
-abyss--and to know that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing
-and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness!
-
-
-Chapter 23
-
-
-Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went out
-of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay; and, like
-many thousands of others, he deluded himself with the hope that by
-coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with
-him, hidden away in one of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from
-the saloon-keepers, not so much by his conscience, as by the fear which
-filled him at the thought of being out of work in the city in the winter
-time.
-
-He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight
-cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time, regardless of
-the speed of the train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for
-he had money and they did not, and he meant to save himself in this
-fight. He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought him,
-and he would stand, whoever fell. On fair nights he would sleep in the
-park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy or
-cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodging-house,
-or pay three cents for the privileges of a "squatter" in a tenement
-hallway. He would eat at free lunches, five cents a meal, and never a
-cent more--so he might keep alive for two months and more, and in that
-time he would surely find a job. He would have to bid farewell to
-his summer cleanliness, of course, for he would come out of the first
-night's lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no place
-in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to
-the lake front--and there it would soon be all ice.
-
-First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that
-his places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away
-from the stockyards--he was a single man now, he told himself, and he
-meant to stay one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He
-began the long, weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all
-day, from one end of the city to the other, finding everywhere from ten
-to a hundred men ahead of him. He watched the newspapers, too--but no
-longer was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents. He had been told
-of all those tricks while "on the road."
-
-In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly
-a month of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he
-thought it was a "fake," he went because the place was near by. He found
-a line of men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out of an
-alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a place.
-Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and made
-a disturbance to attract a policeman, upon which they subsided, knowing
-that if the latter interfered it would be to "fire" them all.
-
-An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman
-behind a desk.
-
-"Ever worked in Chicago before?" the man inquired; and whether it was
-a good angel that put it into Jurgis's mind, or an intuition of his
-sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, "No, sir."
-
-"Where do you come from?"
-
-"Kansas City, sir."
-
-"Any references?"
-
-"No, sir. I'm just an unskilled man. I've got good arms."
-
-"I want men for hard work--it's all underground, digging tunnels for
-telephones. Maybe it won't suit you."
-
-"I'm willing, sir--anything for me. What's the pay?"
-
-"Fifteen cents an hour."
-
-"I'm willing, sir."
-
-"All right; go back there and give your name."
-
-So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of the
-city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires; it was
-about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had
-innumerable branches--a perfect spider web beneath the city; Jurgis
-walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to
-work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity, and upon it
-was laid a double-tracked, narrow-gauge railroad!
-
-But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the
-matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally learned
-the meaning of this whole affair. The City Council had passed a quiet
-and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct telephone
-conduits under the city streets; and upon the strength of this, a great
-corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a system of railway
-freight-subways. In the city there was a combination of employers,
-representing hundreds of millions of capital, and formed for the purpose
-of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which troubled it was the
-teamsters'; and when these freight tunnels were completed, connecting
-all the big factories and stores with the railroad depots, they would
-have the teamsters' union by the throat. Now and then there were rumors
-and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen, and once there was a committee to
-investigate--but each time another small fortune was paid over, and the
-rumors died away; until at last the city woke up with a start to find
-the work completed. There was a tremendous scandal, of course; it
-was found that the city records had been falsified and other
-crimes committed, and some of Chicago's big capitalists got into
-jail--figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared that they had had no
-idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main entrance to the work
-had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them.
-
-It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew that he
-had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a
-spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself
-a place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw
-mattress along with four other workingmen. This was one dollar a week,
-and for four more he got his food in a boardinghouse near his work. This
-would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum for
-him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to buy
-a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a
-flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He
-spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat.
-There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar button peddler, who had died
-in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her
-rent; in the end, however, Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to
-be underground by day and in bed at night.
-
-This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more quickly
-than ever into the saloons. From now on Jurgis worked from seven o'clock
-until half-past five, with half an hour for dinner; which meant that he
-never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there was no place
-for him to go except a barroom; no place where there was light and
-warmth, where he could hear a little music or sit with a companion
-and talk. He had now no home to go to; he had no affection left in his
-life--only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice. On
-Sundays the churches were open--but where was there a church in which an
-ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon his neck, could sit
-without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of course,
-his corner in a close though unheated room, with a window opening upon
-a blank wall two feet away; and also he had the bare streets, with
-the winter gales sweeping through them; besides this he had only the
-saloons--and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them. If he drank
-now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or
-a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money, or to
-look at a beer-stained pink "sporting paper," with pictures of murderers
-and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures as these that he spent
-his money; and such was his life during the six weeks and a half that he
-toiled for the merchants of Chicago, to enable them to break the grip of
-their teamsters' union.
-
-In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the welfare of
-the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a life a day and several
-manglings; it was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or two men
-heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new boring
-machinery, with as little blasting as possible; but there would be
-falling rocks and crushed supports, and premature explosions--and in
-addition all the dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as
-Jurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car
-dashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
-upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and knocking
-him senseless.
-
-When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of
-an ambulance. He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and it was
-threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took
-him to the county hospital, where a young surgeon set his arm; then he
-was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of
-maimed and mangled men.
-
-Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest
-Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and
-investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that doctors
-were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients; but Jurgis
-knew nothing of this--his only complaint was that they used to feed him
-upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in Packingtown would
-feed to his dog. Jurgis had often wondered just who ate the canned
-corned beef and "roast beef" of the stockyards; now he began to
-understand--that it was what you might call "graft meat," put up to
-be sold to public officials and contractors, and eaten by soldiers and
-sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions, "shantymen" and gangs of
-railroad laborers.
-
-Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This
-did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to
-work, but simply that he could get along without further attention, and
-that his place was needed for some one worse off than he. That he was
-utterly helpless, and had no means of keeping himself alive in the
-meantime, was something which did not concern the hospital authorities,
-nor any one else in the city.
-
-As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid for his
-last week's board and his room rent, and spent nearly all the balance of
-his Saturday's pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets,
-and a dollar and a half due him for the day's work he had done before he
-was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company, and got some damages
-for his injuries, but he did not know this, and it was not the company's
-business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his tools, which he
-left in a pawnshop for fifty cents. Then he went to his landlady,
-who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then to his
-boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him. As he must
-certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had boarded there only
-six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be worth the risk
-to keep him on trust.
-
-So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. It was
-bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face.
-He had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five
-cents in his pocket, with the certainty that he could not earn another
-cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now; he must walk along
-and see others shoveling, vigorous and active--and he with his left arm
-bound to his side! He could not hope to tide himself over by odd jobs
-of loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry satchels,
-because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not paint the
-terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was like a wounded
-animal in the forest; he was forced to compete with his enemies upon
-unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him because of his
-weakness--it was no one's business to help him in such distress, to make
-the fight the least bit easier for him. Even if he took to begging, he
-would be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in good
-time.
-
-In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of
-the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been wont to
-frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire shivering and
-waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a
-drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long; then one
-had to buy another drink or move on. That Jurgis was an old customer
-entitled him to a somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two
-weeks, and was evidently "on the bum." He might plead and tell his "hard
-luck story," but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper who was
-to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to the doors
-with "hoboes" on a day like this.
-
-So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He
-was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an
-indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was
-again told to move on, he made his way to a "tough" place in the
-"Levee" district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed
-Bohemian workingman of his acquaintance, seeking a woman. It was
-Jurgis's vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a
-"sitter." In low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers
-would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
-with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to
-attract custom. A workingman would come in, feeling cheerful after his
-day's work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass
-with such a sight under his nose; and so he would call out: "Hello, Bub,
-what's the matter? You look as if you'd been up against it!" And then
-the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would
-say, "Come have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up." And so
-they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
-wretched-looking, or good enough at the "gab," they might have two; and
-if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had
-lived in the same city or worked at the same trade, they might sit down
-at a table and spend an hour or two in talk--and before they got through
-the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this might seem
-diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He
-was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and
-misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will; and the
-saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
-the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.
-
-The market for "sitters" was glutted that afternoon, however, and there
-was no place for Jurgis. In all he had to spend six nickels in keeping a
-shelter over him that frightful day, and then it was just dark, and
-the station houses would not open until midnight! At the last place,
-however, there was a bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him
-doze at one of the tables until the boss came back; and also, as he
-was going out, the man gave him a tip--on the next block there was a
-religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing, and hundreds
-of hoboes would go there for the shelter and warmth.
-
-Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door
-would open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran, a block, and
-hid awhile in a doorway and then ran again, and so on until the hour.
-At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his way in with the rest of
-the throng (at the risk of having his arm broken again), and got close
-to the big stove.
-
-By eight o'clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to
-have been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at the door
-men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly
-gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the
-piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a
-tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began
-an address. Jurgis heard smatterings of it, for the reason that terror
-kept him awake--he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put
-out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him.
-
-The evangelist was preaching "sin and redemption," the infinite grace of
-God and His pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and
-he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with
-hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering--with his smooth, black
-coat and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full,
-and money in his pocket--and lecturing men who were struggling for their
-lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and
-cold!--This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were
-out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to
-solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem--they
-were part of the order established that was crushing men down and
-beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they
-had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they
-might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and
-listen! They were trying to save their souls--and who but a fool could
-fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they
-had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
-
-At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into
-the snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got repentance
-and gone up on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station
-house would open, and Jurgis had no overcoat--and was weak from a long
-illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run hard
-to keep his blood moving at all--and then he came back to the station
-house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door! This was in
-the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the verge of "hard
-times," and the newspapers were reporting the shutting down of factories
-every day--it was estimated that a million and a half men were thrown
-out of work before the spring. So all the hiding places of the city were
-crowded, and before that station house door men fought and tore each
-other like savage beasts. When at last the place was jammed and they
-shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside; and Jurgis, with his
-helpless arm, was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a
-lodging-house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do
-this, at half-past twelve o'clock, after he had wasted the night at the
-meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging-house
-promptly at seven--they had the shelves which served as bunks so
-contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was slow about
-obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor.
-
-This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At the
-end of six days every cent of Jurgis' money was gone; and then he went
-out on the streets to beg for his life.
-
-He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would
-sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there was no policeman
-in sight, would approach every likely-looking person who passed him,
-telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a dime. Then when
-he got one, he would dart round the corner and return to his base to get
-warm; and his victim, seeing him do this, would go away, vowing that he
-would never give a cent to a beggar again. The victim never paused to
-ask where else Jurgis could have gone under the circumstances--where
-he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon Jurgis could not only get
-more food and better food than he could buy in any restaurant for the
-same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm him up. Also he could
-find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could chat with a companion until
-he was as warm as toast. At the saloon, too, he felt at home. Part of
-the saloon-keeper's business was to offer a home and refreshments to
-beggars in exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was there
-any one else in the whole city who would do this--would the victim have
-done it himself?
-
-Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He
-was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking, and with
-a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But,
-alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the
-genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic
-counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in
-competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just
-out of the hospital--but the story was worn threadbare, and how could
-he prove it? He had his arm in a sling--and it was a device a regular
-beggar's little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering--but
-they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied the art of chattering
-their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would
-meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and
-a pair of cotton trousers--so cleverly had they concealed the several
-suits of all-wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional
-mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of dollars
-in the bank; some of them had retired upon their earnings, and gone into
-the business of fitting out and doctoring others, or working children
-at the trade. There were some who had both their arms bound tightly to
-their sides, and padded stumps in their sleeves, and a sick child hired
-to carry a cup for them. There were some who had no legs, and pushed
-themselves upon a wheeled platform--some who had been favored with
-blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs. Some less fortunate had
-mutilated themselves or burned themselves, or had brought horrible sores
-upon themselves with chemicals; you might suddenly encounter upon the
-street a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored with
-gangrene--or one with livid scarlet wounds half escaped from their
-filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the city's
-cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of
-old ramshackle tenements, in "stale-beer dives" and opium joints, with
-abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot's progress--women who
-had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. Every day
-the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the
-detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature
-inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease,
-laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking like
-dogs, gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in delirium.
-
-
-
-Chapter 24
-
-
-In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the
-price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of
-freezing to death. Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold,
-his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. He saw the world of
-civilization then more plainly than ever he had seen it before; a world
-in which nothing counted but brutal might, an order devised by those who
-possessed it for the subjugation of those who did not. He was one of
-the latter; and all outdoors, all life, was to him one colossal prison,
-which he paced like a pent-up tiger, trying one bar after another, and
-finding them all beyond his power. He had lost in the fierce battle of
-greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all society was busied
-to see that he did not escape the sentence. Everywhere that he turned
-were prison bars, and hostile eyes following him; the well-fed, sleek
-policemen, from whose glances he shrank, and who seemed to grip their
-clubs more tightly when they saw him; the saloon-keepers, who never
-ceased to watch him while he was in their places, who were jealous
-of every moment he lingered after he had paid his money; the hurrying
-throngs upon the streets, who were deaf to his entreaties, oblivious of
-his very existence--and savage and contemptuous when he forced himself
-upon them. They had their own affairs, and there was no place for him
-among them. There was no place for him anywhere--every direction he
-turned his gaze, this fact was forced upon him: Everything was built
-to express it to him: the residences, with their heavy walls and bolted
-doors, and basement windows barred with iron; the great warehouses
-filled with the products of the whole world, and guarded by iron
-shutters and heavy gates; the banks with their unthinkable billions of
-wealth, all buried in safes and vaults of steel.
-
-
-And then one day there befell Jurgis the one adventure of his life. It
-was late at night, and he had failed to get the price of a lodging. Snow
-was falling, and he had been out so long that he was covered with it,
-and was chilled to the bone. He was working among the theater crowds,
-flitting here and there, taking large chances with the police, in his
-desperation half hoping to be arrested. When he saw a blue-coat start
-toward him, however, his heart failed him, and he dashed down a side
-street and fled a couple of blocks. When he stopped again he saw a man
-coming toward him, and placed himself in his path.
-
-"Please, sir," he began, in the usual formula, "will you give me the
-price of a lodging? I've had a broken arm, and I can't work, and I've
-not a cent in my pocket. I'm an honest working-man, sir, and I never
-begged before! It's not my fault, sir--"
-
-Jurgis usually went on until he was interrupted, but this man did not
-interrupt, and so at last he came to a breathless stop. The other had
-halted, and Jurgis suddenly noticed that he stood a little unsteadily.
-"Whuzzat you say?" he queried suddenly, in a thick voice.
-
-Jurgis began again, speaking more slowly and distinctly; before he was
-half through the other put out his hand and rested it upon his shoulder.
-"Poor ole chappie!" he said. "Been up--hic--up--against it, hey?"
-
-Then he lurched toward Jurgis, and the hand upon his shoulder became an
-arm about his neck. "Up against it myself, ole sport," he said. "She's a
-hard ole world."
-
-They were close to a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the other. He
-was a young fellow--not much over eighteen, with a handsome boyish face.
-He wore a silk hat and a rich soft overcoat with a fur collar; and he
-smiled at Jurgis with benignant sympathy. "I'm hard up, too, my
-goo' fren'," he said. "I've got cruel parents, or I'd set you up.
-Whuzzamatter whizyer?"
-
-"I've been in the hospital."
-
-"Hospital!" exclaimed the young fellow, still smiling sweetly, "thass
-too bad! Same's my Aunt Polly--hic--my Aunt Polly's in the hospital,
-too--ole auntie's been havin' twins! Whuzzamatter whiz you?"
-
-"I've got a broken arm--" Jurgis began.
-
-"So," said the other, sympathetically. "That ain't so bad--you get over
-that. I wish somebody'd break my arm, ole chappie--damfidon't! Then
-they'd treat me better--hic--hole me up, ole sport! Whuzzit you wamme
-do?"
-
-"I'm hungry, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Hungry! Why don't you hassome supper?"
-
-"I've got no money, sir."
-
-"No money! Ho, ho--less be chums, ole boy--jess like me! No money,
-either--a'most busted! Why don't you go home, then, same's me?"
-
-"I haven't any home," said Jurgis.
-
-"No home! Stranger in the city, hey? Goo' God, thass bad! Better come
-home wiz me--yes, by Harry, thass the trick, you'll come home an'
-hassome supper--hic--wiz me! Awful lonesome--nobody home! Guv'ner gone
-abroad--Bubby on's honeymoon--Polly havin' twins--every damn soul gone
-away! Nuff--hic--nuff to drive a feller to drink, I say! Only ole Ham
-standin' by, passin' plates--damfican eat like that, no sir! The club
-for me every time, my boy, I say. But then they won't lemme sleep
-there--guv'ner's orders, by Harry--home every night, sir! Ever hear
-anythin' like that? 'Every mornin' do?' I asked him. 'No, sir, every
-night, or no allowance at all, sir.' Thass my guv'ner--'nice as nails,
-by Harry! Tole ole Ham to watch me, too--servants spyin' on me--whuzyer
-think that, my fren'? A nice, quiet--hic--goodhearted young feller like
-me, an' his daddy can't go to Europe--hup!--an' leave him in peace!
-Ain't that a shame, sir? An' I gotter go home every evenin' an' miss
-all the fun, by Harry! Thass whuzzamatter now--thass why I'm here! Hadda
-come away an' leave Kitty--hic--left her cryin', too--whujja think of
-that, ole sport? 'Lemme go, Kittens,' says I--'come early an'
-often--I go where duty--hic--calls me. Farewell, farewell, my own true
-love--farewell, farewehell, my--own true--love!'"
-
-This last was a song, and the young gentleman's voice rose mournful
-and wailing, while he swung upon Jurgis's neck. The latter was glancing
-about nervously, lest some one should approach. They were still alone,
-however.
-
-"But I came all right, all right," continued the youngster,
-aggressively, "I can--hic--I can have my own way when I want it, by
-Harry--Freddie Jones is a hard man to handle when he gets goin'! 'No,
-sir,' says I, 'by thunder, and I don't need anybody goin' home with me,
-either--whujja take me for, hey? Think I'm drunk, dontcha, hey?--I know
-you! But I'm no more drunk than you are, Kittens,' says I to her. And
-then says she, 'Thass true, Freddie dear' (she's a smart one, is Kitty),
-'but I'm stayin' in the flat, an' you're goin' out into the cold, cold
-night!' 'Put it in a pome, lovely Kitty,' says I. 'No jokin', Freddie,
-my boy,' says she. 'Lemme call a cab now, like a good dear'--but I can
-call my own cabs, dontcha fool yourself--and I know what I'm a-doin',
-you bet! Say, my fren', whatcha say--willye come home an' see me, an'
-hassome supper? Come 'long like a good feller--don't be haughty! You're
-up against it, same as me, an' you can unerstan' a feller; your heart's
-in the right place, by Harry--come 'long, ole chappie, an' we'll
-light up the house, an' have some fizz, an' we'll raise hell, we
-will--whoop-la! S'long's I'm inside the house I can do as I please--the
-guv'ner's own very orders, b'God! Hip! hip!"
-
-They had started down the street, arm in arm, the young man pushing
-Jurgis along, half dazed. Jurgis was trying to think what to do--he knew
-he could not pass any crowded place with his new acquaintance without
-attracting attention and being stopped. It was only because of the
-falling snow that people who passed here did not notice anything wrong.
-
-Suddenly, therefore, Jurgis stopped. "Is it very far?" he inquired.
-
-"Not very," said the other, "Tired, are you, though? Well, we'll
-ride--whatcha say? Good! Call a cab!"
-
-And then, gripping Jurgis tight with one hand, the young fellow began
-searching his pockets with the other. "You call, ole sport, an' I'll
-pay," he suggested. "How's that, hey?"
-
-And he pulled out from somewhere a big roll of bills. It was more money
-than Jurgis had ever seen in his life before, and he stared at it with
-startled eyes.
-
-"Looks like a lot, hey?" said Master Freddie, fumbling with it. "Fool
-you, though, ole chappie--they're all little ones! I'll be busted in
-one week more, sure thing--word of honor. An' not a cent more till the
-first--hic--guv'ner's orders--hic--not a cent, by Harry! Nuff to set a
-feller crazy, it is. I sent him a cable, this af'noon--thass one
-reason more why I'm goin' home. 'Hangin' on the verge of starvation,' I
-says--'for the honor of the family--hic--sen' me some bread. Hunger will
-compel me to join you--Freddie.' Thass what I wired him, by Harry, an' I
-mean it--I'll run away from school, b'God, if he don't sen' me some."
-
-After this fashion the young gentleman continued to prattle on--and
-meantime Jurgis was trembling with excitement. He might grab that wad of
-bills and be out of sight in the darkness before the other could collect
-his wits. Should he do it? What better had he to hope for, if he waited
-longer? But Jurgis had never committed a crime in his life, and now he
-hesitated half a second too long. "Freddie" got one bill loose, and then
-stuffed the rest back into his trousers' pocket.
-
-"Here, ole man," he said, "you take it." He held it out fluttering. They
-were in front of a saloon; and by the light of the window Jurgis saw
-that it was a hundred-dollar bill! "You take it," the other repeated.
-"Pay the cabbie an' keep the change--I've got--hic--no head for
-business! Guv'ner says so hisself, an' the guv'ner knows--the guv'ner's
-got a head for business, you bet! 'All right, guv'ner,' I told him, 'you
-run the show, and I'll take the tickets!' An' so he set Aunt Polly to
-watch me--hic--an' now Polly's off in the hospital havin' twins, an' me
-out raisin' Cain! Hello, there! Hey! Call him!"
-
-A cab was driving by; and Jurgis sprang and called, and it swung round
-to the curb. Master Freddie clambered in with some difficulty, and
-Jurgis had started to follow, when the driver shouted: "Hi, there! Get
-out--you!"
-
-Jurgis hesitated, and was half obeying; but his companion broke out:
-"Whuzzat? Whuzzamatter wiz you, hey?"
-
-And the cabbie subsided, and Jurgis climbed in. Then Freddie gave a
-number on the Lake Shore Drive, and the carriage started away. The
-youngster leaned back and snuggled up to Jurgis, murmuring contentedly;
-in half a minute he was sound asleep, Jurgis sat shivering, speculating
-as to whether he might not still be able to get hold of the roll of
-bills. He was afraid to try to go through his companion's pockets,
-however; and besides the cabbie might be on the watch. He had the
-hundred safe, and he would have to be content with that.
-
-
-At the end of half an hour or so the cab stopped. They were out on
-the waterfront, and from the east a freezing gale was blowing off the
-ice-bound lake. "Here we are," called the cabbie, and Jurgis awakened
-his companion.
-
-Master Freddie sat up with a start.
-
-"Hello!" he said. "Where are we? Whuzzis? Who are you, hey? Oh, yes,
-sure nuff! Mos' forgot you--hic--ole chappie! Home, are we?
-Lessee! Br-r-r--it's cold! Yes--come 'long--we're home--it ever
-so--hic--humble!"
-
-Before them there loomed an enormous granite pile, set far back from the
-street, and occupying a whole block. By the light of the driveway lamps
-Jurgis could see that it had towers and huge gables, like a medieval
-castle. He thought that the young fellow must have made a mistake--it
-was inconceivable to him that any person could have a home like a hotel
-or the city hall. But he followed in silence, and they went up the long
-flight of steps, arm in arm.
-
-"There's a button here, ole sport," said Master Freddie. "Hole my arm
-while I find her! Steady, now--oh, yes, here she is! Saved!"
-
-A bell rang, and in a few seconds the door was opened. A man in blue
-livery stood holding it, and gazing before him, silent as a statue.
-
-They stood for a moment blinking in the light. Then Jurgis felt his
-companion pulling, and he stepped in, and the blue automaton closed the
-door. Jurgis's heart was beating wildly; it was a bold thing for him to
-do--into what strange unearthly place he was venturing he had no idea.
-Aladdin entering his cave could not have been more excited.
-
-The place where he stood was dimly lighted; but he could see a vast
-hall, with pillars fading into the darkness above, and a great staircase
-opening at the far end of it. The floor was of tesselated marble, smooth
-as glass, and from the walls strange shapes loomed out, woven into
-huge portieres in rich, harmonious colors, or gleaming from paintings,
-wonderful and mysterious-looking in the half-light, purple and red and
-golden, like sunset glimmers in a shadowy forest.
-
-The man in livery had moved silently toward them; Master Freddie took
-off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis'
-arm, tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he
-accomplished this, with the lackey's help, and meantime a second man had
-approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He
-bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him
-by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him. Then
-suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton! My fren' will remain
-wiz me."
-
-The man paused and half released Jurgis. "Come 'long ole chappie," said
-the other, and Jurgis started toward him.
-
-"Master Frederick!" exclaimed the man.
-
-"See that the cabbie--hic--is paid," was the other's response; and he
-linked his arm in Jurgis'. Jurgis was about to say, "I have the money
-for him," but he restrained himself. The stout man in uniform signaled
-to the other, who went out to the cab, while he followed Jurgis and his
-young master.
-
-They went down the great hall, and then turned. Before them were two
-huge doors.
-
-"Hamilton," said Master Freddie.
-
-"Well, sir?" said the other.
-
-"Whuzzamatter wizze dinin'-room doors?"
-
-"Nothing is the matter, sir."
-
-"Then why dontcha openum?"
-
-The man rolled them back; another vista lost itself in the darkness.
-"Lights," commanded Master Freddie; and the butler pressed a button, and
-a flood of brilliant incandescence streamed from above, half-blinding
-Jurgis. He stared; and little by little he made out the great apartment,
-with a domed ceiling from which the light poured, and walls that were
-one enormous painting--nymphs and dryads dancing in a flower-strewn
-glade--Diana with her hounds and horses, dashing headlong through a
-mountain streamlet--a group of maidens bathing in a forest pool--all
-life-size, and so real that Jurgis thought that it was some work of
-enchantment, that he was in a dream palace. Then his eye passed to
-the long table in the center of the hall, a table black as ebony, and
-gleaming with wrought silver and gold. In the center of it was a huge
-carven bowl, with the glistening gleam of ferns and the red and purple
-of rare orchids, glowing from a light hidden somewhere in their midst.
-
-"This's the dinin' room," observed Master Freddie. "How you like it,
-hey, ole sport?"
-
-He always insisted on having an answer to his remarks, leaning over
-Jurgis and smiling into his face. Jurgis liked it.
-
-"Rummy ole place to feed in all 'lone, though," was Freddie's
-comment--"rummy's hell! Whuzya think, hey?" Then another idea
-occurred to him and he went on, without waiting: "Maybe you never saw
-anythin--hic--like this 'fore? Hey, ole chappie?"
-
-"No," said Jurgis.
-
-"Come from country, maybe--hey?"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis.
-
-"Aha! I thosso! Lossa folks from country never saw such a place. Guv'ner
-brings 'em--free show--hic--reg'lar circus! Go home tell folks about it.
-Ole man Jones's place--Jones the packer--beef-trust man. Made it all
-out of hogs, too, damn ole scoundrel. Now we see where our pennies
-go--rebates, an' private car lines--hic--by Harry! Bully place,
-though--worth seein'! Ever hear of Jones the packer, hey, ole chappie?"
-
-Jurgis had started involuntarily; the other, whose sharp eyes missed
-nothing, demanded: "Whuzzamatter, hey? Heard of him?"
-
-And Jurgis managed to stammer out: "I have worked for him in the yards."
-
-"What!" cried Master Freddie, with a yell. "You! In the yards? Ho, ho!
-Why, say, thass good! Shake hands on it, ole man--by Harry! Guv'ner
-ought to be here--glad to see you. Great fren's with the men,
-guv'ner--labor an' capital, commun'ty 'f int'rests, an' all that--hic!
-Funny things happen in this world, don't they, ole man? Hamilton, lemme
-interduce you--fren' the family--ole fren' the guv'ner's--works in the
-yards. Come to spend the night wiz me, Hamilton--have a hot time. Me
-fren', Mr.--whuzya name, ole chappie? Tell us your name."
-
-"Rudkus--Jurgis Rudkus."
-
-"My fren', Mr. Rednose, Hamilton--shake han's."
-
-The stately butler bowed his head, but made not a sound; and suddenly
-Master Freddie pointed an eager finger at him. "I know whuzzamatter wiz
-you, Hamilton--lay you a dollar I know! You think--hic--you think I'm
-drunk! Hey, now?"
-
-And the butler again bowed his head. "Yes, sir," he said, at which
-Master Freddie hung tightly upon Jurgis's neck and went into a fit of
-laughter. "Hamilton, you damn ole scoundrel," he roared, "I'll 'scharge
-you for impudence, you see 'f I don't! Ho, ho, ho! I'm drunk! Ho, ho!"
-
-The two waited until his fit had spent itself, to see what new whim
-would seize him. "Whatcha wanta do?" he queried suddenly. "Wanta see
-the place, ole chappie? Wamme play the guv'ner--show you roun'? State
-parlors--Looee Cans--Looee Sez--chairs cost three thousand apiece. Tea
-room Maryanntnet--picture of shepherds dancing--Ruysdael--twenty-three
-thousan'! Ballroom--balc'ny pillars--hic--imported--special
-ship--sixty-eight thousan'! Ceilin' painted in Rome--whuzzat
-feller's name, Hamilton--Mattatoni? Macaroni? Then this place--silver
-bowl--Benvenuto Cellini--rummy ole Dago! An' the organ--thirty thousan'
-dollars, sir--starter up, Hamilton, let Mr. Rednose hear it. No--never
-mind--clean forgot--says he's hungry, Hamilton--less have some supper.
-Only--hic--don't less have it here--come up to my place, ole sport--nice
-an' cosy. This way--steady now, don't slip on the floor. Hamilton, we'll
-have a cole spread, an' some fizz--don't leave out the fizz, by Harry.
-We'll have some of the eighteen-thirty Madeira. Hear me, sir?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said the butler, "but, Master Frederick, your father left
-orders--"
-
-And Master Frederick drew himself up to a stately height. "My father's
-orders were left to me--hic--an' not to you," he said. Then, clasping
-Jurgis tightly by the neck, he staggered out of the room; on the way
-another idea occurred to him, and he asked: "Any--hic--cable message for
-me, Hamilton?"
-
-"No, sir," said the butler.
-
-"Guv'ner must be travelin'. An' how's the twins, Hamilton?"
-
-"They are doing well, sir."
-
-"Good!" said Master Freddie; and added fervently: "God bless 'em, the
-little lambs!"
-
-They went up the great staircase, one step at a time; at the top of it
-there gleamed at them out of the shadows the figure of a nymph crouching
-by a fountain, a figure ravishingly beautiful, the flesh warm and
-glowing with the hues of life. Above was a huge court, with domed roof,
-the various apartments opening into it. The butler had paused below but
-a few minutes to give orders, and then followed them; now he pressed a
-button, and the hall blazed with light. He opened a door before them,
-and then pressed another button, as they staggered into the apartment.
-
-It was fitted up as a study. In the center was a mahogany table, covered
-with books, and smokers' implements; the walls were decorated
-with college trophies and colors--flags, posters, photographs and
-knickknacks--tennis rackets, canoe paddles, golf clubs, and polo sticks.
-An enormous moose head, with horns six feet across, faced a buffalo head
-on the opposite wall, while bear and tiger skins covered the polished
-floor. There were lounging chairs and sofas, window seats covered with
-soft cushions of fantastic designs; there was one corner fitted in
-Persian fashion, with a huge canopy and a jeweled lamp beneath. Beyond,
-a door opened upon a bedroom, and beyond that was a swimming pool of the
-purest marble, that had cost about forty thousand dollars.
-
-Master Freddie stood for a moment or two, gazing about him; then out
-of the next room a dog emerged, a monstrous bulldog, the most hideous
-object that Jurgis had ever laid eyes upon. He yawned, opening a mouth
-like a dragon's; and he came toward the young man, wagging his tail.
-"Hello, Dewey!" cried his master. "Been havin' a snooze, ole boy? Well,
-well--hello there, whuzzamatter?" (The dog was snarling at Jurgis.)
-"Why, Dewey--this' my fren', Mr. Rednose--ole fren' the guv'ner's! Mr.
-Rednose, Admiral Dewey; shake han's--hic. Ain't he a daisy, though--blue
-ribbon at the New York show--eighty-five hundred at a clip! How's that,
-hey?"
-
-The speaker sank into one of the big armchairs, and Admiral Dewey
-crouched beneath it; he did not snarl again, but he never took his eyes
-off Jurgis. He was perfectly sober, was the Admiral.
-
-The butler had closed the door, and he stood by it, watching Jurgis
-every second. Now there came footsteps outside, and, as he opened the
-door a man in livery entered, carrying a folding table, and behind him
-two men with covered trays. They stood like statues while the first
-spread the table and set out the contents of the trays upon it.
-There were cold pates, and thin slices of meat, tiny bread and butter
-sandwiches with the crust cut off, a bowl of sliced peaches and cream
-(in January), little fancy cakes, pink and green and yellow and white,
-and half a dozen ice-cold bottles of wine.
-
-"Thass the stuff for you!" cried Master Freddie, exultantly, as he spied
-them. "Come 'long, ole chappie, move up."
-
-And he seated himself at the table; the waiter pulled a cork, and he
-took the bottle and poured three glasses of its contents in succession
-down his throat. Then he gave a long-drawn sigh, and cried again to
-Jurgis to seat himself.
-
-The butler held the chair at the opposite side of the table, and Jurgis
-thought it was to keep him out of it; but finally he understand that
-it was the other's intention to put it under him, and so he sat
-down, cautiously and mistrustingly. Master Freddie perceived that the
-attendants embarrassed him, and he remarked with a nod to them, "You may
-go."
-
-They went, all save the butler.
-
-"You may go too, Hamilton," he said.
-
-"Master Frederick--" the man began.
-
-"Go!" cried the youngster, angrily. "Damn you, don't you hear me?"
-
-The man went out and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he,
-observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might
-peer through the keyhole.
-
-Master Frederick turned to the table again. "Now," he said, "go for it."
-
-Jurgis gazed at him doubtingly. "Eat!" cried the other. "Pile in, ole
-chappie!"
-
-"Don't you want anything?" Jurgis asked.
-
-"Ain't hungry," was the reply--"only thirsty. Kitty and me had some
-candy--you go on."
-
-So Jurgis began, without further parley. He ate as with two shovels, his
-fork in one hand and his knife in the other; when he once got started
-his wolf-hunger got the better of him, and he did not stop for breath
-until he had cleared every plate. "Gee whiz!" said the other, who had
-been watching him in wonder.
-
-Then he held Jurgis the bottle. "Lessee you drink now," he said; and
-Jurgis took the bottle and turned it up to his mouth, and a wonderfully
-unearthly liquid ecstasy poured down his throat, tickling every nerve of
-him, thrilling him with joy. He drank the very last drop of it, and then
-he gave vent to a long-drawn "Ah!"
-
-"Good stuff, hey?" said Freddie, sympathetically; he had leaned back in
-the big chair, putting his arm behind his head and gazing at Jurgis.
-
-And Jurgis gazed back at him. He was clad in spotless evening dress, was
-Freddie, and looked very handsome--he was a beautiful boy, with
-light golden hair and the head of an Antinous. He smiled at Jurgis
-confidingly, and then started talking again, with his blissful
-insouciance. This time he talked for ten minutes at a stretch, and in
-the course of the speech he told Jurgis all of his family history. His
-big brother Charlie was in love with the guileless maiden who played the
-part of "Little Bright-Eyes" in "The Kaliph of Kamskatka." He had been
-on the verge of marrying her once, only "the guv'ner" had sworn to
-disinherit him, and had presented him with a sum that would stagger the
-imagination, and that had staggered the virtue of "Little Bright-Eyes."
-Now Charlie had got leave from college, and had gone away in his
-automobile on the next best thing to a honeymoon. "The guv'ner" had made
-threats to disinherit another of his children also, sister Gwendolen,
-who had married an Italian marquis with a string of titles and a dueling
-record. They lived in his chateau, or rather had, until he had taken to
-firing the breakfast dishes at her; then she had cabled for help, and
-the old gentleman had gone over to find out what were his Grace's terms.
-So they had left Freddie all alone, and he with less than two thousand
-dollars in his pocket. Freddie was up in arms and meant serious
-business, as they would find in the end--if there was no other way of
-bringing them to terms he would have his "Kittens" wire that she was
-about to marry him, and see what happened then.
-
-So the cheerful youngster rattled on, until he was tired out. He smiled
-his sweetest smile at Jurgis, and then he closed his eyes, sleepily.
-Then he opened them again, and smiled once more, and finally closed them
-and forgot to open them.
-
-For several minutes Jurgis sat perfectly motionless, watching him, and
-reveling in the strange sensation of the champagne. Once he stirred,
-and the dog growled; after that he sat almost holding his breath--until
-after a while the door of the room opened softly, and the butler came
-in.
-
-He walked toward Jurgis upon tiptoe, scowling at him; and Jurgis rose
-up, and retreated, scowling back. So until he was against the wall, and
-then the butler came close, and pointed toward the door. "Get out of
-here!" he whispered.
-
-Jurgis hesitated, giving a glance at Freddie, who was snoring softly.
-"If you do, you son of a--" hissed the butler, "I'll mash in your face
-for you before you get out of here!"
-
-And Jurgis wavered but an instant more. He saw "Admiral Dewey" coming
-up behind the man and growling softly, to back up his threats. Then he
-surrendered and started toward the door.
-
-They went out without a sound, and down the great echoing staircase,
-and through the dark hall. At the front door he paused, and the butler
-strode close to him.
-
-"Hold up your hands," he snarled. Jurgis took a step back, clinching his
-one well fist.
-
-"What for?" he cried; and then understanding that the fellow proposed to
-search him, he answered, "I'll see you in hell first."
-
-"Do you want to go to jail?" demanded the butler, menacingly. "I'll have
-the police--"
-
-"Have 'em!" roared Jurgis, with fierce passion. "But you won't put
-your hands on me till you do! I haven't touched anything in your damned
-house, and I'll not have you touch me!"
-
-So the butler, who was terrified lest his young master should waken,
-stepped suddenly to the door, and opened it. "Get out of here!" he said;
-and then as Jurgis passed through the opening, he gave him a ferocious
-kick that sent him down the great stone steps at a run, and landed him
-sprawling in the snow at the bottom.
-
-
-
-Chapter 25
-
-
-Jurgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the great
-castle was dark and impregnable. Then the icy teeth of the blast bit
-into him, and he turned and went away at a run.
-
-When he stopped again it was because he was coming to frequented
-streets and did not wish to attract attention. In spite of that last
-humiliation, his heart was thumping fast with triumph. He had come out
-ahead on that deal! He put his hand into his trousers' pocket every now
-and then, to make sure that the precious hundred-dollar bill was still
-there.
-
-Yet he was in a plight--a curious and even dreadful plight, when he came
-to realize it. He had not a single cent but that one bill! And he had to
-find some shelter that night he had to change it!
-
-Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. There was
-no one he could go to for help--he had to manage it all alone. To get
-it changed in a lodging-house would be to take his life in his hands--he
-would almost certainly be robbed, and perhaps murdered, before morning.
-He might go to some hotel or railroad depot and ask to have it changed;
-but what would they think, seeing a "bum" like him with a hundred
-dollars? He would probably be arrested if he tried it; and what story
-could he tell? On the morrow Freddie Jones would discover his loss, and
-there would be a hunt for him, and he would lose his money. The only
-other plan he could think of was to try in a saloon. He might pay them
-to change it, if it could not be done otherwise.
-
-He began peering into places as he walked; he passed several as being
-too crowded--then finally, chancing upon one where the bartender was all
-alone, he gripped his hands in sudden resolution and went in.
-
-"Can you change me a hundred-dollar bill?" he demanded.
-
-The bartender was a big, husky fellow, with the jaw of a prize fighter,
-and a three weeks' stubble of hair upon it. He stared at Jurgis. "What's
-that youse say?" he demanded.
-
-"I said, could you change me a hundred-dollar bill?"
-
-"Where'd youse get it?" he inquired incredulously.
-
-"Never mind," said Jurgis; "I've got it, and I want it changed. I'll pay
-you if you'll do it."
-
-The other stared at him hard. "Lemme see it," he said.
-
-"Will you change it?" Jurgis demanded, gripping it tightly in his
-pocket.
-
-"How the hell can I know if it's good or not?" retorted the bartender.
-"Whatcher take me for, hey?"
-
-Then Jurgis slowly and warily approached him; he took out the bill, and
-fumbled it for a moment, while the man stared at him with hostile eyes
-across the counter. Then finally he handed it over.
-
-The other took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his
-fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside
-down, and edgeways. It was new and rather stiff, and that made him
-dubious. Jurgis was watching him like a cat all the time.
-
-"Humph," he said, finally, and gazed at the stranger, sizing him up--a
-ragged, ill-smelling tramp, with no overcoat and one arm in a sling--and
-a hundred-dollar bill! "Want to buy anything?" he demanded.
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "I'll take a glass of beer."
-
-"All right," said the other, "I'll change it." And he put the bill in
-his pocket, and poured Jurgis out a glass of beer, and set it on the
-counter. Then he turned to the cash register, and punched up five cents,
-and began to pull money out of the drawer. Finally, he faced Jurgis,
-counting it out--two dimes, a quarter, and fifty cents. "There," he
-said.
-
-For a second Jurgis waited, expecting to see him turn again. "My
-ninety-nine dollars," he said.
-
-"What ninety-nine dollars?" demanded the bartender.
-
-"My change!" he cried--"the rest of my hundred!"
-
-"Go on," said the bartender, "you're nutty!"
-
-And Jurgis stared at him with wild eyes. For an instant horror reigned
-in him--black, paralyzing, awful horror, clutching him at the heart;
-and then came rage, in surging, blinding floods--he screamed aloud, and
-seized the glass and hurled it at the other's head. The man ducked, and
-it missed him by half an inch; he rose again and faced Jurgis, who was
-vaulting over the bar with his one well arm, and dealt him a smashing
-blow in the face, hurling him backward upon the floor. Then, as Jurgis
-scrambled to his feet again and started round the counter after him, he
-shouted at the top of his voice, "Help! help!"
-
-Jurgis seized a bottle off the counter as he ran; and as the bartender
-made a leap he hurled the missile at him with all his force. It just
-grazed his head, and shivered into a thousand pieces against the post
-of the door. Then Jurgis started back, rushing at the man again in the
-middle of the room. This time, in his blind frenzy, he came without a
-bottle, and that was all the bartender wanted--he met him halfway and
-floored him with a sledgehammer drive between the eyes. An instant later
-the screen doors flew open, and two men rushed in--just as Jurgis was
-getting to his feet again, foaming at the mouth with rage, and trying to
-tear his broken arm out of its bandages.
-
-"Look out!" shouted the bartender. "He's got a knife!" Then, seeing that
-the two were disposed to join the fray, he made another rush at Jurgis,
-and knocked aside his feeble defense and sent him tumbling again; and
-the three flung themselves upon him, rolling and kicking about the
-place.
-
-A second later a policeman dashed in, and the bartender yelled once
-more--"Look out for his knife!" Jurgis had fought himself half to his
-knees, when the policeman made a leap at him, and cracked him across the
-face with his club. Though the blow staggered him, the wild-beast frenzy
-still blazed in him, and he got to his feet, lunging into the air. Then
-again the club descended, full upon his head, and he dropped like a log
-to the floor.
-
-The policeman crouched over him, clutching his stick, waiting for him to
-try to rise again; and meantime the barkeeper got up, and put his hand
-to his head. "Christ!" he said, "I thought I was done for that time. Did
-he cut me?"
-
-"Don't see anything, Jake," said the policeman. "What's the matter with
-him?"
-
-"Just crazy drunk," said the other. "A lame duck, too--but he 'most got
-me under the bar. Youse had better call the wagon, Billy."
-
-"No," said the officer. "He's got no more fight in him, I guess--and
-he's only got a block to go." He twisted his hand in Jurgis's collar and
-jerked at him. "Git up here, you!" he commanded.
-
-But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar, and
-after stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding place, came
-and poured a glass of water over Jurgis. Then, as the latter began to
-moan feebly, the policeman got him to his feet and dragged him out of
-the place. The station house was just around the corner, and so in a few
-minutes Jurgis was in a cell.
-
-He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance moaning in
-torment, with a blinding headache and a racking thirst. Now and then
-he cried aloud for a drink of water, but there was no one to hear him.
-There were others in that same station house with split heads and
-a fever; there were hundreds of them in the great city, and tens of
-thousands of them in the great land, and there was no one to hear any of
-them.
-
-In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of bread, and
-then hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the nearest police court.
-He sat in the pen with a score of others until his turn came.
-
-The bartender--who proved to be a well-known bruiser--was called to the
-stand. He took the oath and told his story. The prisoner had come into
-his saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had ordered a glass
-of beer and tendered a dollar bill in payment. He had been given
-ninety-five cents' change, and had demanded ninety-nine dollars more,
-and before the plaintiff could even answer had hurled the glass at him
-and then attacked him with a bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the
-place.
-
-Then the prisoner was sworn--a forlorn object, haggard and unshorn, with
-an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and head cut, and bloody,
-and one eye purplish black and entirely closed. "What have you to say
-for yourself?" queried the magistrate.
-
-"Your Honor," said Jurgis, "I went into his place and asked the man
-if he could change me a hundred-dollar bill. And he said he would if
-I bought a drink. I gave him the bill and then he wouldn't give me the
-change."
-
-The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity. "You gave him a
-hundred-dollar bill!" he exclaimed.
-
-"Yes, your Honor," said Jurgis.
-
-"Where did you get it?"
-
-"A man gave it to me, your Honor."
-
-"A man? What man, and what for?"
-
-"A young man I met upon the street, your Honor. I had been begging."
-
-There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding Jurgis
-put up his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled without
-trying to hide it. "It's true, your Honor!" cried Jurgis, passionately.
-
-"You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you not?"
-inquired the magistrate. "No, your Honor--" protested Jurgis. "I--"
-
-"You had not had anything to drink?"
-
-"Why, yes, your Honor, I had--"
-
-"What did you have?"
-
-"I had a bottle of something--I don't know what it was--something that
-burned--"
-
-There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as the
-magistrate looked up and frowned. "Have you ever been arrested before?"
-he asked abruptly.
-
-The question took Jurgis aback. "I--I--" he stammered.
-
-"Tell me the truth, now!" commanded the other, sternly.
-
-"Yes, your Honor," said Jurgis.
-
-"How often?"
-
-"Only once, your Honor."
-
-"What for?"
-
-"For knocking down my boss, your Honor. I was working in the stockyards,
-and he--"
-
-"I see," said his Honor; "I guess that will do. You ought to stop
-drinking if you can't control yourself. Ten days and costs. Next case."
-
-Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the policeman,
-who seized him by the collar. He was jerked out of the way, into a room
-with the convicted prisoners, where he sat and wept like a child in
-his impotent rage. It seemed monstrous to him that policemen and
-judges should esteem his word as nothing in comparison with the
-bartender's--poor Jurgis could not know that the owner of the saloon
-paid five dollars each week to the policeman alone for Sunday privileges
-and general favors--nor that the pugilist bartender was one of the
-most trusted henchmen of the Democratic leader of the district, and had
-helped only a few months before to hustle out a record-breaking vote as
-a testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the target of odious
-kid-gloved reformers.
-
-Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time. In his
-tumbling around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not work, but
-had to be attended by the physician. Also his head and his eye had to
-be tied up--and so he was a pretty-looking object when, the second
-day after his arrival, he went out into the exercise court and
-encountered--Jack Duane!
-
-The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged him.
-"By God, if it isn't 'the Stinker'!" he cried. "And what is it--have you
-been through a sausage machine?"
-
-"No," said Jurgis, "but I've been in a railroad wreck and a fight." And
-then, while some of the other prisoners gathered round he told his wild
-story; most of them were incredulous, but Duane knew that Jurgis could
-never have made up such a yarn as that.
-
-"Hard luck, old man," he said, when they were alone; "but maybe it's
-taught you a lesson."
-
-"I've learned some things since I saw you last," said Jurgis mournfully.
-Then he explained how he had spent the last summer, "hoboing it," as
-the phrase was. "And you?" he asked finally. "Have you been here ever
-since?"
-
-"Lord, no!" said the other. "I only came in the day before yesterday.
-It's the second time they've sent me up on a trumped-up charge--I've had
-hard luck and can't pay them what they want. Why don't you quit Chicago
-with me, Jurgis?"
-
-"I've no place to go," said Jurgis, sadly.
-
-"Neither have I," replied the other, laughing lightly. "But we'll wait
-till we get out and see."
-
-In the Bridewell Jurgis met few who had been there the last time, but
-he met scores of others, old and young, of exactly the same sort. It
-was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water, but the wave looked
-just the same. He strolled about and talked with them, and the biggest
-of them told tales of their prowess, while those who were weaker, or
-younger and inexperienced, gathered round and listened in admiring
-silence. The last time he was there, Jurgis had thought of little but
-his family; but now he was free to listen to these men, and to realize
-that he was one of them--that their point of view was his point of view,
-and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world was the way he
-meant to do it in the future.
-
-And so, when he was turned out of prison again, without a penny in his
-pocket, he went straight to Jack Duane. He went full of humility and
-gratitude; for Duane was a gentleman, and a man with a profession--and
-it was remarkable that he should be willing to throw in his lot with a
-humble workingman, one who had even been a beggar and a tramp. Jurgis
-could not see what help he could be to him; but he did not understand
-that a man like himself--who could be trusted to stand by any one who
-was kind to him--was as rare among criminals as among any other class of
-men.
-
-The address Jurgis had was a garret room in the Ghetto district, the
-home of a pretty little French girl, Duane's mistress, who sewed all
-day, and eked out her living by prostitution. He had gone elsewhere, she
-told Jurgis--he was afraid to stay there now, on account of the police.
-The new address was a cellar dive, whose proprietor said that he had
-never heard of Duane; but after he had put Jurgis through a catechism
-he showed him a back stairs which led to a "fence" in the rear of a
-pawnbroker's shop, and thence to a number of assignation rooms, in one
-of which Duane was hiding.
-
-Duane was glad to see him; he was without a cent of money, he said,
-and had been waiting for Jurgis to help him get some. He explained his
-plan--in fact he spent the day in laying bare to his friend the criminal
-world of the city, and in showing him how he might earn himself a living
-in it. That winter he would have a hard time, on account of his arm, and
-because of an unwonted fit of activity of the police; but so long as he
-was unknown to them he would be safe if he were careful. Here at "Papa"
-Hanson's (so they called the old man who kept the dive) he might rest at
-ease, for "Papa" Hanson was "square"--would stand by him so long as he
-paid, and gave him an hour's notice if there were to be a police raid.
-Also Rosensteg, the pawnbroker, would buy anything he had for a third of
-its value, and guarantee to keep it hidden for a year.
-
-There was an oil stove in the little cupboard of a room, and they had
-some supper; and then about eleven o'clock at night they sallied forth
-together, by a rear entrance to the place, Duane armed with a slingshot.
-They came to a residence district, and he sprang up a lamppost and blew
-out the light, and then the two dodged into the shelter of an area step
-and hid in silence.
-
-Pretty soon a man came by, a workingman--and they let him go. Then after
-a long interval came the heavy tread of a policeman, and they held their
-breath till he was gone. Though half-frozen, they waited a full quarter
-of an hour after that--and then again came footsteps, walking briskly.
-Duane nudged Jurgis, and the instant the man had passed they rose up.
-Duane stole out as silently as a shadow, and a second later Jurgis heard
-a thud and a stifled cry. He was only a couple of feet behind, and he
-leaped to stop the man's mouth, while Duane held him fast by the arms,
-as they had agreed. But the man was limp and showed a tendency to fall,
-and so Jurgis had only to hold him by the collar, while the other,
-with swift fingers, went through his pockets--ripping open, first his
-overcoat, and then his coat, and then his vest, searching inside and
-outside, and transferring the contents into his own pockets. At last,
-after feeling of the man's fingers and in his necktie, Duane whispered,
-"That's all!" and they dragged him to the area and dropped him in. Then
-Jurgis went one way and his friend the other, walking briskly.
-
-The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the "swag."
-There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and locket; there
-was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful of small change,
-and finally a card-case. This last Duane opened feverishly--there were
-letters and checks, and two theater-tickets, and at last, in the back
-part, a wad of bills. He counted them--there was a twenty, five tens,
-four fives, and three ones. Duane drew a long breath. "That lets us
-out!" he said.
-
-After further examination, they burned the card-case and its contents,
-all but the bills, and likewise the picture of a little girl in the
-locket. Then Duane took the watch and trinkets downstairs, and came back
-with sixteen dollars. "The old scoundrel said the case was filled," he
-said. "It's a lie, but he knows I want the money."
-
-They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share fifty-five
-dollars and some change. He protested that it was too much, but the
-other had agreed to divide even. That was a good haul, he said, better
-than average.
-
-When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a paper;
-one of the pleasures of committing a crime was the reading about
-it afterward. "I had a pal that always did it," Duane remarked,
-laughing--"until one day he read that he had left three thousand dollars
-in a lower inside pocket of his party's vest!"
-
-There was a half-column account of the robbery--it was evident that a
-gang was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper, for it was
-the third within a week, and the police were apparently powerless. The
-victim was an insurance agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten dollars
-that did not belong to him. He had chanced to have his name marked
-on his shirt, otherwise he would not have been identified yet. His
-assailant had hit him too hard, and he was suffering from concussion of
-the brain; and also he had been half-frozen when found, and would lose
-three fingers on his right hand. The enterprising newspaper reporter had
-taken all this information to his family, and told how they had received
-it.
-
-Since it was Jurgis's first experience, these details naturally caused
-him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly--it was the way of the
-game, and there was no helping it. Before long Jurgis would think no
-more of it than they did in the yards of knocking out a bullock. "It's a
-case of us or the other fellow, and I say the other fellow, every time,"
-he observed.
-
-"Still," said Jurgis, reflectively, "he never did us any harm."
-
-"He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure of
-that," said his friend.
-
-
-Duane had already explained to Jurgis that if a man of their trade were
-known he would have to work all the time to satisfy the demands of the
-police. Therefore it would be better for Jurgis to stay in hiding and
-never be seen in public with his pal. But Jurgis soon got very tired
-of staying in hiding. In a couple of weeks he was feeling strong and
-beginning to use his arm, and then he could not stand it any longer.
-Duane, who had done a job of some sort by himself, and made a truce with
-the powers, brought over Marie, his little French girl, to share with
-him; but even that did not avail for long, and in the end he had to give
-up arguing, and take Jurgis out and introduce him to the saloons and
-"sporting houses" where the big crooks and "holdup men" hung out.
-
-And so Jurgis got a glimpse of the high-class criminal world of
-Chicago. The city, which was owned by an oligarchy of business men, being
-nominally ruled by the people, a huge army of graft was necessary for
-the purpose of effecting the transfer of power. Twice a year, in the
-spring and fall elections, millions of dollars were furnished by the
-business men and expended by this army; meetings were held and clever
-speakers were hired, bands played and rockets sizzled, tons of documents
-and reservoirs of drinks were distributed, and tens of thousands of
-votes were bought for cash. And this army of graft had, of course, to be
-maintained the year round. The leaders and organizers were maintained by
-the business men directly--aldermen and legislators by means of bribes,
-party officials out of the campaign funds, lobbyists and corporation
-lawyers in the form of salaries, contractors by means of jobs, labor
-union leaders by subsidies, and newspaper proprietors and editors by
-advertisements. The rank and file, however, were either foisted upon the
-city, or else lived off the population directly. There was the police
-department, and the fire and water departments, and the whole balance
-of the civil list, from the meanest office boy to the head of a city
-department; and for the horde who could find no room in these, there was
-the world of vice and crime, there was license to seduce, to swindle
-and plunder and prey. The law forbade Sunday drinking; and this had
-delivered the saloon-keepers into the hands of the police, and made an
-alliance between them necessary. The law forbade prostitution; and this
-had brought the "madames" into the combination. It was the same with the
-gambling-house keeper and the poolroom man, and the same with any other
-man or woman who had a means of getting "graft," and was willing to
-pay over a share of it: the green-goods man and the highwayman, the
-pickpocket and the sneak thief, and the receiver of stolen goods,
-the seller of adulterated milk, of stale fruit and diseased meat, the
-proprietor of unsanitary tenements, the fake doctor and the usurer, the
-beggar and the "pushcart man," the prize fighter and the professional
-slugger, the race-track "tout," the procurer, the white-slave agent, and
-the expert seducer of young girls. All of these agencies of corruption
-were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood with the
-politician and the police; more often than not they were one and the
-same person,--the police captain would own the brothel he pretended
-to raid, the politician would open his headquarters in his saloon.
-"Hinkydink" or "Bathhouse John," or others of that ilk, were proprietors
-of the most notorious dives in Chicago, and also the "gray wolves"
-of the city council, who gave away the streets of the city to the
-business men; and those who patronized their places were the gamblers and
-prize fighters who set the law at defiance, and the burglars and holdup
-men who kept the whole city in terror. On election day all these powers
-of vice and crime were one power; they could tell within one per cent
-what the vote of their district would be, and they could change it at an
-hour's notice.
-
-A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the streets;
-and now suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had entered into a
-world where money and all the good things of life came freely. He was
-introduced by his friend to an Irishman named "Buck" Halloran, who was
-a political "worker" and on the inside of things. This man talked with
-Jurgis for a while, and then told him that he had a little plan by which
-a man who looked like a workingman might make some easy money; but it
-was a private affair, and had to be kept quiet. Jurgis expressed himself
-as agreeable, and the other took him that afternoon (it was Saturday) to
-a place where city laborers were being paid off. The paymaster sat in
-a little booth, with a pile of envelopes before him, and two policemen
-standing by. Jurgis went, according to directions, and gave the name of
-"Michael O'Flaherty," and received an envelope, which he took around the
-corner and delivered to Halloran, who was waiting for him in a saloon.
-Then he went again; and gave the name of "Johann Schmidt," and a third
-time, and give the name of "Serge Reminitsky." Halloran had quite a list
-of imaginary workingmen, and Jurgis got an envelope for each one. For
-this work he received five dollars, and was told that he might have it
-every week, so long as he kept quiet. As Jurgis was excellent at keeping
-quiet, he soon won the trust of "Buck" Halloran, and was introduced to
-others as a man who could be depended upon.
-
-This acquaintance was useful to him in another way, also before long
-Jurgis made his discovery of the meaning of "pull," and just why his
-boss, Connor, and also the pugilist bartender, had been able to send him
-to jail. One night there was given a ball, the "benefit" of "One-eyed
-Larry," a lame man who played the violin in one of the big "high-class"
-houses of prostitution on Clark Street, and was a wag and a popular
-character on the "Levee." This ball was held in a big dance hall, and
-was one of the occasions when the city's powers of debauchery gave
-themselves up to madness. Jurgis attended and got half insane with
-drink, and began quarreling over a girl; his arm was pretty strong by
-then, and he set to work to clean out the place, and ended in a cell in
-the police station. The police station being crowded to the doors, and
-stinking with "bums," Jurgis did not relish staying there to sleep off
-his liquor, and sent for Halloran, who called up the district leader and
-had Jurgis bailed out by telephone at four o'clock in the morning. When
-he was arraigned that same morning, the district leader had already seen
-the clerk of the court and explained that Jurgis Rudkus was a decent
-fellow, who had been indiscreet; and so Jurgis was fined ten dollars and
-the fine was "suspended"--which meant that he did not have to pay for
-it, and never would have to pay it, unless somebody chose to bring it up
-against him in the future.
-
-Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an
-entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown; yet,
-strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he had
-as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and
-hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He
-soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new
-opportunities; and being naturally an active man, he not only kept sober
-himself, but helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal fonder of
-both wine and women than he.
-
-One thing led to another. In the saloon where Jurgis met "Buck" Halloran
-he was sitting late one night with Duane, when a "country customer"
-(a buyer for an out-of-town merchant) came in, a little more than half
-"piped." There was no one else in the place but the bartender, and as
-the man went out again Jurgis and Duane followed him; he went round
-the corner, and in a dark place made by a combination of the elevated
-railroad and an unrented building, Jurgis leaped forward and shoved a
-revolver under his nose, while Duane, with his hat pulled over his eyes,
-went through the man's pockets with lightning fingers. They got his
-watch and his "wad," and were round the corner again and into the saloon
-before he could shout more than once. The bartender, to whom they had
-tipped the wink, had the cellar door open for them, and they vanished,
-making their way by a secret entrance to a brothel next door. From the
-roof of this there was access to three similar places beyond. By means
-of these passages the customers of any one place could be gotten out
-of the way, in case a falling out with the police chanced to lead to a
-raid; and also it was necessary to have a way of getting a girl out
-of reach in case of an emergency. Thousands of them came to Chicago
-answering advertisements for "servants" and "factory hands," and found
-themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked up in a
-bawdy-house. It was generally enough to take all their clothes away from
-them; but sometimes they would have to be "doped" and kept prisoners for
-weeks; and meantime their parents might be telegraphing the police, and
-even coming on to see why nothing was done. Occasionally there was no
-way of satisfying them but to let them search the place to which the
-girl had been traced.
-
-For his help in this little job, the bartender received twenty out of
-the hundred and thirty odd dollars that the pair secured; and naturally
-this put them on friendly terms with him, and a few days later he
-introduced them to a little "sheeny" named Goldberger, one of the
-"runners" of the "sporting house" where they had been hidden. After a
-few drinks Goldberger began, with some hesitation, to narrate how he had
-had a quarrel over his best girl with a professional "cardsharp," who
-had hit him in the jaw. The fellow was a stranger in Chicago, and if he
-was found some night with his head cracked there would be no one to care
-very much. Jurgis, who by this time would cheerfully have cracked the
-heads of all the gamblers in Chicago, inquired what would be coming to
-him; at which the Jew became still more confidential, and said that he
-had some tips on the New Orleans races, which he got direct from the
-police captain of the district, whom he had got out of a bad scrape, and
-who "stood in" with a big syndicate of horse owners. Duane took all
-this in at once, but Jurgis had to have the whole race-track situation
-explained to him before he realized the importance of such an
-opportunity.
-
-There was the gigantic Racing Trust. It owned the legislatures in
-every state in which it did business; it even owned some of the big
-newspapers, and made public opinion--there was no power in the land that
-could oppose it unless, perhaps, it were the Poolroom Trust. It built
-magnificent racing parks all over the country, and by means of enormous
-purses it lured the people to come, and then it organized a gigantic
-shell game, whereby it plundered them of hundreds of millions of dollars
-every year. Horse racing had once been a sport, but nowadays it was
-a business; a horse could be "doped" and doctored, undertrained or
-overtrained; it could be made to fall at any moment--or its gait could
-be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all the spectators would
-take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the lead. There were scores
-of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners who played them and made
-fortunes, sometimes it was the jockeys and trainers, sometimes it was
-outsiders, who bribed them--but most of the time it was the chiefs
-of the trust. Now for instance, they were having winter racing in New
-Orleans and a syndicate was laying out each day's program in advance,
-and its agents in all the Northern cities were "milking" the poolrooms.
-The word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a little
-while before each race; and any man who could get the secret had as good
-as a fortune. If Jurgis did not believe it, he could try it, said the
-little Jew--let them meet at a certain house on the morrow and make a
-test. Jurgis was willing, and so was Duane, and so they went to one
-of the high-class poolrooms where brokers and merchants gambled (with
-society women in a private room), and they put up ten dollars each upon
-a horse called "Black Beldame," a six to one shot, and won. For a secret
-like that they would have done a good many sluggings--but the next day
-Goldberger informed them that the offending gambler had got wind of what
-was coming to him, and had skipped the town.
-
-
-There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a living,
-inside of a jail, if not out of it. Early in April the city elections
-were due, and that meant prosperity for all the powers of graft. Jurgis,
-hanging round in dives and gambling houses and brothels, met with
-the heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he came to
-understand all the ins and outs of the game, and to hear of a number of
-ways in which he could make himself useful about election time. "Buck"
-Halloran was a "Democrat," and so Jurgis became a Democrat also; but he
-was not a bitter one--the Republicans were good fellows, too, and were
-to have a pile of money in this next campaign. At the last election the
-Republicans had paid four dollars a vote to the Democrats' three; and
-"Buck" Halloran sat one night playing cards with Jurgis and another man,
-who told how Halloran had been charged with the job voting a "bunch" of
-thirty-seven newly landed Italians, and how he, the narrator, had met
-the Republican worker who was after the very same gang, and how the
-three had effected a bargain, whereby the Italians were to vote half and
-half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the balance of the fund went to
-the conspirators!
-
-Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and vicissitudes
-of miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the career for that of a
-politician. Just at this time there was a tremendous uproar being raised
-concerning the alliance between the criminals and the police. For the
-criminal graft was one in which the business men had no direct part--it
-was what is called a "side line," carried by the police. "Wide
-open" gambling and debauchery made the city pleasing to "trade," but
-burglaries and holdups did not. One night it chanced that while Jack
-Duane was drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed
-by the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced to
-know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him make his
-escape. Such a howl from the newspapers followed this that Duane was
-slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town in time. And just at
-that juncture it happened that Jurgis was introduced to a man named
-Harper whom he recognized as the night watchman at Brown's, who had been
-instrumental in making him an American citizen, the first year of his
-arrival at the yards. The other was interested in the coincidence, but
-did not remember Jurgis--he had handled too many "green ones" in his
-time, he said. He sat in a dance hall with Jurgis and Halloran until one
-or two in the morning, exchanging experiences. He had a long story to
-tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his department, and how
-he was now a plain workingman, and a good union man as well. It was not
-until some months afterward that Jurgis understood that the quarrel with
-the superintendent had been prearranged, and that Harper was in reality
-drawing a salary of twenty dollars a week from the packers for an inside
-report of his union's secret proceedings. The yards were seething with
-agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a unionist. The people of
-Packingtown had borne about all that they would bear, and it looked as
-if a strike might begin any week.
-
-After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a couple
-of days later he came to him with an interesting proposition. He was
-not absolutely certain, he said, but he thought that he could get him
-a regular salary if he would come to Packingtown and do as he was told,
-and keep his mouth shut. Harper--"Bush" Harper, he was called--was a
-right-hand man of Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards;
-and in the coming election there was a peculiar situation. There had
-come to Scully a proposition to nominate a certain rich brewer who lived
-upon a swell boulevard that skirted the district, and who coveted the
-big badge and the "honorable" of an alderman. The brewer was a Jew, and
-had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare campaign
-fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone to the Republicans
-with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage the "sheeny,"
-and he did not mean to take any chances with his district; let the
-Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable friend of Scully's,
-who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an Ashland Avenue saloon,
-and he, Scully, would elect him with the "sheeny's" money, and the
-Republicans might have the glory, which was more than they would get
-otherwise. In return for this the Republicans would agree to put up no
-candidate the following year, when Scully himself came up for reelection
-as the other alderman from the ward. To this the Republicans had
-assented at once; but the hell of it was--so Harper explained--that
-the Republicans were all of them fools--a man had to be a fool to be
-a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was king. And they didn't
-know how to work, and of course it would not do for the Democratic
-workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League, to support the
-Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so great except
-for another fact--there had been a curious development in stockyards
-politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped into being.
-They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess, said "Bush"
-Harper. The one image which the word "Socialist" brought to Jurgis was
-of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself one, and
-would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and shout
-himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had tried
-to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was not of
-an imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present he was
-content with his companion's explanation that the Socialists were the
-enemies of American institutions--could not be bought, and would not
-combine or make any sort of a "dicker." Mike Scully was very much
-worried over the opportunity which his last deal gave to them--the
-stockyards Democrats were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist
-for their candidate, and while they were changing they might possibly
-conclude that a Socialist firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.
-And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in
-the world, explained "Bush" Harper; he had been a union man, and he
-was known in the yards as a workingman; he must have hundreds of
-acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he might
-come out as a Republican now without exciting the least suspicion. There
-were barrels of money for the use of those who could deliver the goods;
-and Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully, who had never yet gone back on
-a friend. Just what could he do? Jurgis asked, in some perplexity, and
-the other explained in detail. To begin with, he would have to go to the
-yards and work, and he mightn't relish that; but he would have what he
-earned, as well as the rest that came to him. He would get active in the
-union again, and perhaps try to get an office, as he, Harper, had; he
-would tell all his friends the good points of Doyle, the Republican
-nominee, and the bad ones of the "sheeny"; and then Scully would
-furnish a meeting place, and he would start the "Young Men's Republican
-Association," or something of that sort, and have the rich brewer's
-best beer by the hogshead, and fireworks and speeches, just like the
-War Whoop League. Surely Jurgis must know hundreds of men who would like
-that sort of fun; and there would be the regular Republican leaders and
-workers to help him out, and they would deliver a big enough majority on
-election day.
-
-When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis demanded: "But
-how can I get a job in Packingtown? I'm blacklisted."
-
-At which "Bush" Harper laughed. "I'll attend to that all right," he
-said.
-
-And the other replied, "It's a go, then; I'm your man." So Jurgis went
-out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the political lord of
-the district, the boss of Chicago's mayor. It was Scully who owned the
-brick-yards and the dump and the ice pond--though Jurgis did not know it.
-It was Scully who was to blame for the unpaved street in which Jurgis's
-child had been drowned; it was Scully who had put into office the
-magistrate who had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was
-principal stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
-tenement, and then robbed him of it. But Jurgis knew none of these
-things--any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool and puppet of
-the packers. To him Scully was a mighty power, the "biggest" man he had
-ever met.
-
-He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook. He had a brief
-talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes, and making
-up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to Mr. Harmon, one of
-the head managers of Durham's--
-
-"The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I would
-like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. He was once
-indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to overlook that."
-
-Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this. "What does he mean
-by 'indiscreet'?" he asked.
-
-"I was blacklisted, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-At which the other frowned. "Blacklisted?" he said. "How do you mean?"
-And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.
-
-He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist. "I--that is--I had
-difficulty in getting a place," he stammered.
-
-"What was the matter?"
-
-"I got into a quarrel with a foreman--not my own boss, sir--and struck
-him."
-
-"I see," said the other, and meditated for a few moments. "What do you
-wish to do?" he asked.
-
-"Anything, sir," said Jurgis--"only I had a broken arm this winter, and
-so I have to be careful."
-
-"How would it suit you to be a night watchman?"
-
-"That wouldn't do, sir. I have to be among the men at night."
-
-"I see--politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, "Take this man to Pat
-Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow."
-
-And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the
-days gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily, and
-smiled to himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss's face as
-the timekeeper said, "Mr. Harmon says to put this man on." It would
-overcrowd his department and spoil the record he was trying to make--but
-he said not a word except "All right."
-
-And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he sought
-out his old friends, and joined the union, and began to "root" for
-"Scotty" Doyle. Doyle had done him a good turn once, he explained,
-and was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman himself, and would
-represent the workingmen--why did they want to vote for a millionaire
-"sheeny," and what the hell had Mike Scully ever done for them that they
-should back his candidates all the time? And meantime Scully had given
-Jurgis a note to the Republican leader of the ward, and he had gone
-there and met the crowd he was to work with. Already they had hired
-a big hall, with some of the brewer's money, and every night Jurgis
-brought in a dozen new members of the "Doyle Republican Association."
-Pretty soon they had a grand opening night; and there was a brass band,
-which marched through the streets, and fireworks and bombs and red
-lights in front of the hall; and there was an enormous crowd, with
-two overflow meetings--so that the pale and trembling candidate had to
-recite three times over the little speech which one of Scully's henchmen
-had written, and which he had been a month learning by heart. Best
-of all, the famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks, presidential
-candidate, rode out in an automobile to discuss the sacred privileges
-of American citizenship, and protection and prosperity for the American
-workingman. His inspiriting address was quoted to the extent of half a
-column in all the morning newspapers, which also said that it could be
-stated upon excellent authority that the unexpected popularity developed
-by Doyle, the Republican candidate for alderman, was giving great
-anxiety to Mr. Scully, the chairman of the Democratic City Committee.
-
-The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight
-procession came off, with the members of the Doyle Republican
-Association all in red capes and hats, and free beer for every voter in
-the ward--the best beer ever given away in a political campaign, as
-the whole electorate testified. During this parade, and at innumerable
-cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored tirelessly. He did not make
-any speeches--there were lawyers and other experts for that--but he
-helped to manage things; distributing notices and posting placards and
-bringing out the crowds; and when the show was on he attended to the
-fireworks and the beer. Thus in the course of the campaign he handled
-many hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer's money, administering it
-with naive and touching fidelity. Toward the end, however, he learned
-that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the "boys," because he
-compelled them either to make a poorer showing than he or to do without
-their share of the pie. After that Jurgis did his best to please them,
-and to make up for the time he had lost before he discovered the extra
-bungholes of the campaign barrel.
-
-He pleased Mike Scully, also. On election morning he was out at four
-o'clock, "getting out the vote"; he had a two-horse carriage to ride in,
-and he went from house to house for his friends, and escorted them in
-triumph to the polls. He voted half a dozen times himself, and voted
-some of his friends as often; he brought bunch after bunch of the newest
-foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks--and when he had put
-them through the mill he turned them over to another man to take to
-the next polling place. When Jurgis first set out, the captain of the
-precinct gave him a hundred dollars, and three times in the course of
-the day he came for another hundred, and not more than twenty-five out
-of each lot got stuck in his own pocket. The balance all went for actual
-votes, and on a day of Democratic landslides they elected "Scotty"
-Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by nearly a thousand plurality--and
-beginning at five o'clock in the afternoon, and ending at three the next
-morning, Jurgis treated himself to a most unholy and horrible "jag."
-Nearly every one else in Packingtown did the same, however, for there
-was universal exultation over this triumph of popular government, this
-crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by the power of the common
-people.
-
-
-
-Chapter 26
-
-
-After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his
-job. The agitation to break up the police protection of criminals was
-continuing, and it seemed to him best to "lay low" for the present. He
-had nearly three hundred dollars in the bank, and might have considered
-himself entitled to a vacation; but he had an easy job, and force of
-habit kept him at it. Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised
-him that something might "turn up" before long.
-
-Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial
-friends. He had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that Elzbieta
-and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no further thought
-to them. He went with a new set, now, young unmarried fellows who were
-"sporty." Jurgis had long ago cast off his fertilizer clothing, and
-since going into politics he had donned a linen collar and a greasy red
-necktie. He had some reason for thinking of his dress, for he was making
-about eleven dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend upon
-his pleasures without ever touching his savings.
-
-Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the cheap
-theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which they were
-familiar. Many of the saloons in Packingtown had pool tables, and some
-of them bowling alleys, by means of which he could spend his evenings
-in petty gambling. Also, there were cards and dice. One time Jurgis got
-into a game on a Saturday night and won prodigiously, and because he was
-a man of spirit he stayed in with the rest and the game continued
-until late Sunday afternoon, and by that time he was "out" over twenty
-dollars. On Saturday nights, also, a number of balls were generally
-given in Packingtown; each man would bring his "girl" with him, paying
-half a dollar for a ticket, and several dollars additional for drinks
-in the course of the festivities, which continued until three or four
-o'clock in the morning, unless broken up by fighting. During all this
-time the same man and woman would dance together, half-stupefied with
-sensuality and drink.
-
-Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something
-"turning up." In May the agreement between the packers and the unions
-expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. Negotiations were going
-on, and the yards were full of talk of a strike. The old scale had dealt
-with the wages of the skilled men only; and of the members of the Meat
-Workers' Union about two-thirds were unskilled men. In Chicago these
-latter were receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half cents an
-hour, and the unions wished to make this the general wage for the next
-year. It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed--in the course of
-the negotiations the union officers examined time checks to the amount
-of ten thousand dollars, and they found that the highest wages paid had
-been fourteen dollars a week, and the lowest two dollars and five cents,
-and the average of the whole, six dollars and sixty-five cents. And six
-dollars and sixty-five cents was hardly too much for a man to keep
-a family on, considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had
-increased nearly fifty per cent in the last five years, while the price
-of "beef on the hoof" had decreased as much, it would have seemed that
-the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the packers were unwilling
-to pay it--they rejected the union demand, and to show what their
-purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired they put down the
-wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a half cents, and it was
-said that old man Jones had vowed he would put them to fifteen before
-he got through. There were a million and a half of men in the country
-looking for work, a hundred thousand of them right in Chicago; and were
-the packers to let the union stewards march into their places and bind
-them to a contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day
-for a year? Not much!
-
-All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a
-referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the
-same in all the packing house cities; and suddenly the newspapers and
-public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All
-sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were
-obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off
-shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots.
-So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union
-headquarters to all the big packing centers--to St. Paul, South Omaha,
-Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York--and
-the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off their
-working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great "Beef
-Strike" was on.
-
-Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see Mike
-Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had been decently
-paved and lighted for his especial benefit. Scully had gone into
-semi-retirement, and looked nervous and worried. "What do you want?" he
-demanded, when he saw Jurgis.
-
-"I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the strike," the
-other replied.
-
-And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly. In that morning's
-papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the packers by Scully,
-who had declared that if they did not treat their people better the
-city authorities would end the matter by tearing down their plants. Now,
-therefore, Jurgis was not a little taken aback when the other demanded
-suddenly, "See here, Rudkus, why don't you stick by your job?"
-
-Jurgis started. "Work as a scab?" he cried.
-
-"Why not?" demanded Scully. "What's that to you?"
-
-"But--but--" stammered Jurgis. He had somehow taken it for granted that
-he should go out with his union. "The packers need good men, and need
-them bad," continued the other, "and they'll treat a man right that
-stands by them. Why don't you take your chance and fix yourself?"
-
-"But," said Jurgis, "how could I ever be of any use to you--in
-politics?"
-
-"You couldn't be it anyhow," said Scully, abruptly.
-
-"Why not?" asked Jurgis.
-
-"Hell, man!" cried the other. "Don't you know you're a Republican? And
-do you think I'm always going to elect Republicans? My brewer has found
-out already how we served him, and there is the deuce to pay."
-
-Jurgis looked dumfounded. He had never thought of that aspect of it
-before. "I could be a Democrat," he said.
-
-"Yes," responded the other, "but not right away; a man can't change his
-politics every day. And besides, I don't need you--there'd be nothing
-for you to do. And it's a long time to election day, anyhow; and what
-are you going to do meantime?"
-
-"I thought I could count on you," began Jurgis.
-
-"Yes," responded Scully, "so you could--I never yet went back on a
-friend. But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to me for
-another? I have had a hundred fellows after me today, and what can I
-do? I've put seventeen men on the city payroll to clean streets this one
-week, and do you think I can keep that up forever? It wouldn't do for
-me to tell other men what I tell you, but you've been on the inside,
-and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself. What have you to
-gain by a strike?"
-
-"I hadn't thought," said Jurgis.
-
-"Exactly," said Scully, "but you'd better. Take my word for it, the
-strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be beaten; and
-meantime what you can get out of it will belong to you. Do you see?"
-
-And Jurgis saw. He went back to the yards, and into the workroom. The
-men had left a long line of hogs in various stages of preparation, and
-the foreman was directing the feeble efforts of a score or two of clerks
-and stenographers and office boys to finish up the job and get them into
-the chilling rooms. Jurgis went straight up to him and announced, "I
-have come back to work, Mr. Murphy."
-
-The boss's face lighted up. "Good man!" he cried. "Come ahead!"
-
-"Just a moment," said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm. "I think I ought
-to get a little more wages."
-
-"Yes," replied the other, "of course. What do you want?"
-
-Jurgis had debated on the way. His nerve almost failed him now, but he
-clenched his hands. "I think I ought to have' three dollars a day," he
-said.
-
-"All right," said the other, promptly; and before the day was out our
-friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and office boys were
-getting five dollars a day, and then he could have kicked himself!
-
-
-So Jurgis became one of the new "American heroes," a man whose virtues
-merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington and Valley
-Forge. The resemblance was not complete, of course, for Jurgis was
-generously paid and comfortably clad, and was provided with a spring cot
-and a mattress and three substantial meals a day; also he was perfectly
-at ease, and safe from all peril of life and limb, save only in the
-case that a desire for beer should lead him to venture outside of the
-stockyards gates. And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not
-left unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of Chicago
-was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals, and rushed out
-to serve him. The police, and the strikers also, were determined that
-there should be no violence; but there was another party interested
-which was minded to the contrary--and that was the press. On the first
-day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a
-spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go
-outside and get a drink. They accepted, and went through the big Halsted
-Street gate, where several policemen were watching, and also some union
-pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out. Jurgis and
-his companions went south on Halsted Street; past the hotel, and then
-suddenly half a dozen men started across the street toward them and
-proceeded to argue with them concerning the error of their ways. As the
-arguments were not taken in the proper spirit, they went on to threats;
-and suddenly one of them jerked off the hat of one of the four and
-flung it over the fence. The man started after it, and then, as a cry
-of "Scab!" was raised and a dozen people came running out of saloons and
-doorways, a second man's heart failed him and he followed. Jurgis and
-the fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of
-a quick exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their heels and
-fled back of the hotel and into the yards again. Meantime, of course,
-policemen were coming on a run, and as a crowd gathered other police got
-excited and sent in a riot call. Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went
-back to "Packers' Avenue," and in front of the "Central Time Station"
-he saw one of his companions, breathless and wild with excitement,
-narrating to an ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and
-surrounded by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces. While
-he stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men stood by
-with notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than two hours later
-that Jurgis saw newsboys running about with armfuls of newspapers,
-printed in red and black letters six inches high:
-
-VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS! STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!
-
-If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United States
-the next morning, he might have discovered that his beer-hunting exploit
-was being perused by some two score millions of people, and had served
-as a text for editorials in half the staid and solemn business-men's
-newspapers in the land.
-
-Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed. For the present, his work
-being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a railroad direct from
-the yards, or else to spend the night in a room where cots had been
-laid in rows. He chose the latter, but to his regret, for all night long
-gangs of strikebreakers kept arriving. As very few of the better class
-of workingmen could be got for such work, these specimens of the new
-American hero contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of
-the city, besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners--Greeks, Roumanians,
-Sicilians, and Slovaks. They had been attracted more by the prospect of
-disorder than by the big wages; and they made the night hideous with
-singing and carousing, and only went to sleep when the time came for
-them to get up to work.
-
-In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, "Pat" Murphy
-ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned him as to his
-experience in the work of the killing room. His heart began to thump
-with excitement, for he divined instantly that his hour had come--that
-he was to be a boss!
-
-Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had gone
-out with the men. It was in the killing department that the packers had
-been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that they could least
-afford it; the smoking and canning and salting of meat might wait, and
-all the by-products might be wasted--but fresh meats must be had, or the
-restaurants and hotels and brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and
-then "public opinion" would take a startling turn.
-
-An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and Jurgis
-seized it. Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he could teach it
-to others. But if he took the job and gave satisfaction he would expect
-to keep it--they would not turn him off at the end of the strike? To
-which the superintendent replied that he might safely trust Durham's
-for that--they proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of
-all those foremen who had gone back on them. Jurgis would receive five
-dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it was
-settled.
-
-So our friend got a pair of "slaughter pen" boots and "jeans," and flung
-himself at his task. It was a weird sight, there on the killing beds--a
-throng of stupid black Negroes, and foreigners who could not understand
-a word that was said to them, mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested
-bookkeepers and clerks, half-fainting for the tropical heat and the
-sickening stench of fresh blood--and all struggling to dress a dozen
-or two cattle in the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old
-killing gang had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning
-out four hundred carcasses every hour!
-
-The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work,
-and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire and
-recuperate. In a couple of days Durham and Company had electric fans up
-to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches for them to rest
-on; and meantime they could go out and find a shady corner and take a
-"snooze," and as there was no place for any one in particular, and no
-system, it might be hours before their boss discovered them. As for
-the poor office employees, they did their best, moved to it by terror;
-thirty of them had been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for
-refusing to serve, besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who
-had declined to act as waitresses.
-
-It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize. He did his
-best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing them the
-tricks; he had never given an order in his life before, but he had taken
-enough of them to know, and he soon fell into the spirit of it, and
-roared and stormed like any old stager. He had not the most tractable
-pupils, however. "See hyar, boss," a big black "buck" would begin, "ef
-you doan' like de way Ah does dis job, you kin get somebody else to do
-it." Then a crowd would gather and listen, muttering threats. After the
-first meal nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every
-Negro had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.
-
-There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon discovered;
-and he fell in with the spirit of the thing--there was no reason why he
-should wear himself out with shouting. If hides and guts were slashed
-and rendered useless there was no way of tracing it to any one; and if
-a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained
-by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime. Everything
-went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis
-found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the
-possibility of registering at more than one place and earning more than
-one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he "fired" him,
-but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man tendered him a
-ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. Of course, before long
-this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon making quite a good income from
-it.
-
-In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted themselves
-lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been crippled in
-transit and the hogs that had developed disease. Frequently, in the
-course of a two or three days' trip, in hot weather and without water,
-some hog would develop cholera, and die; and the rest would attack him
-before he had ceased kicking, and when the car was opened there would be
-nothing of him left but the bones. If all the hogs in this carload were
-not killed at once, they would soon be down with the dread disease, and
-there would be nothing to do but make them into lard. It was the same
-with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping with broken bones
-stuck through their flesh--they must be killed, even if brokers and
-buyers and superintendents had to take off their coats and help
-drive and cut and skin them. And meantime, agents of the packers were
-gathering gangs of Negroes in the country districts of the far South,
-promising them five dollars a day and board, and being careful not to
-mention there was a strike; already carloads of them were on the way,
-with special rates from the railroads, and all traffic ordered out of
-the way. Many towns and cities were taking advantage of the chance to
-clear out their jails and workhouses--in Detroit the magistrates would
-release every man who agreed to leave town within twenty-four hours,
-and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship them right. And
-meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in for their accommodation,
-including beer and whisky, so that they might not be tempted to go
-outside. They hired thirty young girls in Cincinnati to "pack fruit,"
-and when they arrived put them at work canning corned beef, and put cots
-for them to sleep in a public hallway, through which the men passed. As
-the gangs came in day and night, under the escort of squads of police,
-they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car
-sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots touched. In some places
-they would use the same room for eating and sleeping, and at night the
-men would put their cots upon the tables, to keep away from the swarms
-of rats.
-
-But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized.
-Ninety per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the task of
-completely remaking their labor force--and with the price of meat up
-thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a settlement. They made an
-offer to submit the whole question at issue to arbitration; and at the
-end of ten days the unions accepted it, and the strike was called off.
-It was agreed that all the men were to be re-employed within forty-five
-days, and that there was to be "no discrimination against union men."
-
-This was an anxious time for Jurgis. If the men were taken back "without
-discrimination," he would lose his present place. He sought out the
-superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him "wait and see." Durham's
-strikebreakers were few of them leaving.
-
-Whether or not the "settlement" was simply a trick of the packers to
-gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike and
-cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that night there
-went out from the office of Durham and Company a telegram to all the big
-packing centers, "Employ no union leaders." And in the morning, when the
-twenty thousand men thronged into the yards, with their dinner pails and
-working clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room,
-where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager
-men, with a score or two of policemen watching them; and he saw a
-superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man after
-man that pleased him; and one after another came, and there were some
-men up near the head of the line who were never picked--they being
-the union stewards and delegates, and the men Jurgis had heard making
-speeches at the meetings. Each time, of course, there were louder
-murmurings and angrier looks. Over where the cattle butchers were
-waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and saw a crowd, and he hurried there. One
-big butcher, who was president of the Packing Trades Council, had been
-passed over five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had
-appointed a committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and
-the committee had made three attempts, and each time the police had
-clubbed them back from the door. Then there were yells and hoots,
-continuing until at last the superintendent came to the door. "We all go
-back or none of us do!" cried a hundred voices. And the other shook his
-fist at them, and shouted, "You went out of here like cattle, and like
-cattle you'll come back!"
-
-Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of stones and
-yelled: "It's off, boys. We'll all of us quit again!" And so the cattle
-butchers declared a new strike on the spot; and gathering their members
-from the other plants, where the same trick had been played, they
-marched down Packers' Avenue, which was thronged with a dense mass of
-workers, cheering wildly. Men who had already got to work on the killing
-beds dropped their tools and joined them; some galloped here and there
-on horseback, shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of
-Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury.
-
-There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this--the place
-was a seething caldron of passion, and the "scab" who ventured into
-it fared badly. There were one or two of these incidents each day, the
-newspapers detailing them, and always blaming them upon the unions. Yet
-ten years before, when there were no unions in Packingtown, there was
-a strike, and national troops had to be called, and there were pitched
-battles fought at night, by the light of blazing freight trains.
-Packingtown was always a center of violence; in "Whisky Point," where
-there were a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always
-fighting, and always more of it in hot weather. Any one who had taken
-the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have found that
-there was less violence that summer than ever before--and this while
-twenty thousand men were out of work, and with nothing to do all day
-but brood upon bitter wrongs. There was no one to picture the battle the
-union leaders were fighting--to hold this huge army in rank, to keep
-it from straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a
-hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through six long
-weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.
-
-Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of making
-a new labor force. A thousand or two of strikebreakers were brought in
-every night, and distributed among the various plants. Some of them were
-experienced workers,--butchers, salesmen, and managers from the packers'
-branch stores, and a few union men who had deserted from other cities;
-but the vast majority were "green" Negroes from the cotton districts of
-the far South, and they were herded into the packing plants like sheep.
-There was a law forbidding the use of buildings as lodging-houses unless
-they were licensed for the purpose, and provided with proper windows,
-stairways, and fire escapes; but here, in a "paint room," reached only
-by an enclosed "chute," a room without a single window and only one
-door, a hundred men were crowded upon mattresses on the floor. Up on
-the third story of the "hog house" of Jones's was a storeroom, without
-a window, into which they crowded seven hundred men, sleeping upon the
-bare springs of cots, and with a second shift to use them by day.
-And when the clamor of the public led to an investigation into
-these conditions, and the mayor of the city was forced to order the
-enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge to issue an injunction
-forbidding him to do it!
-
-Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end
-to gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of
-professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to fleece
-the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space in front of
-Brown's, one might see brawny Negroes stripped to the waist and pounding
-each other for money, while a howling throng of three or four thousand
-surged about, men and women, young white girls from the country rubbing
-elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their boots, while rows of
-woolly heads peered down from every window of the surrounding factories.
-The ancestors of these black people had been savages in Africa; and
-since then they had been chattel slaves, or had been held down by a
-community ruled by the traditions of slavery. Now for the first time
-they were free--free to gratify every passion, free to wreck themselves.
-They were wanted to break a strike, and when it was broken they would be
-shipped away, and their present masters would never see them again; and
-so whisky and women were brought in by the carload and sold to them, and
-hell was let loose in the yards. Every night there were stabbings and
-shootings; it was said that the packers had blank permits, which
-enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city without troubling the
-authorities. They lodged men and women on the same floor; and with
-the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery--scenes such as never
-before had been witnessed in America. And as the women were the dregs
-from the brothels of Chicago, and the men were for the most part
-ignorant country Negroes, the nameless diseases of vice were soon rife;
-and this where food was being handled which was sent out to every corner
-of the civilized world.
-
-The "Union Stockyards" were never a pleasant place; but now they were
-not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the camping place
-of an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human beasts. All day long the
-blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations:
-upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors
-stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn
-railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose
-labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them;
-and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of
-moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
-fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell--there were also
-tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the
-workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black
-with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.
-
-And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets to
-play--fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and screaming,
-laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! They were worked
-in the yards all the seven days of the week, and they had their prize
-fights and crap games on Sunday nights as well; but then around the
-corner one might see a bonfire blazing, and an old, gray-headed Negress,
-lean and witchlike, her hair flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling
-and chanting of the fires of perdition and the blood of the "Lamb,"
-while men and women lay down upon the ground and moaned and screamed in
-convulsions of terror and remorse.
-
-Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions watched
-in sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy child for its
-food, and the packers went grimly on their way. Each day they added new
-workers, and could be more stern with the old ones--could put them on
-piecework, and dismiss them if they did not keep up the pace. Jurgis was
-now one of their agents in this process; and he could feel the change
-day by day, like the slow starting up of a huge machine. He had gotten
-used to being a master of men; and because of the stifling heat and
-the stench, and the fact that he was a "scab" and knew it and despised
-himself. He was drinking, and developing a villainous temper, and he
-stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them until they were
-ready to drop with exhaustion.
-
-
-Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place
-and shouted to Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. They
-followed him outside, to where, in the midst of a dense throng, they
-saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three patrol-wagon loads of
-police. Jurgis and his men sprang upon one of the trucks, and the driver
-yelled to the crowd, and they went thundering away at a gallop. Some
-steers had just escaped from the yards, and the strikers had got hold of
-them, and there would be the chance of a scrap!
-
-They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the direction of
-the "dump." There was a yell as soon as they were sighted, men and women
-rushing out of houses and saloons as they galloped by. There were eight
-or ten policemen on the truck, however, and there was no disturbance
-until they came to a place where the street was blocked with a dense
-throng. Those on the flying truck yelled a warning and the crowd
-scattered pell-mell, disclosing one of the steers lying in its blood.
-There were a good many cattle butchers about just then, with nothing
-much to do, and hungry children at home; and so some one had knocked out
-the steer--and as a first-class man can kill and dress one in a couple
-of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts already missing.
-This called for punishment, of course; and the police proceeded to
-administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at every head they
-saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the terrified people fled
-into houses and stores, or scattered helter-skelter down the street.
-Jurgis and his gang joined in the sport, every man singling out his
-victim, and striving to bring him to bay and punch him. If he fled into
-a house his pursuer would smash in the flimsy door and follow him up the
-stairs, hitting every one who came within reach, and finally dragging
-his squealing quarry from under a bed or a pile of old clothes in a
-closet.
-
-Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room. One of
-them took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him and
-proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders, until he lay down
-and gave a chance at his head. The others leaped a fence in the rear,
-balking the second policeman, who was fat; and as he came back, furious
-and cursing, a big Polish woman, the owner of the saloon, rushed in
-screaming, and received a poke in the stomach that doubled her up on
-the floor. Meantime Jurgis, who was of a practical temper, was helping
-himself at the bar; and the first policeman, who had laid out his man,
-joined him, handing out several more bottles, and filling his pockets
-besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the balance
-with a sweep of his club. The din of the glass crashing to the floor
-brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, but another policeman
-came up behind her and put his knee into her back and his hands over her
-eyes--and then called to his companion, who went back and broke open
-the cash drawer and filled his pockets with the contents. Then the three
-went outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a shove and
-dashed out himself. The gang having already got the carcass on to the
-truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams and curses,
-and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen enemies. These bricks and
-stones would figure in the accounts of the "riot" which would be sent
-out to a few thousand newspapers within an hour or two; but the episode
-of the cash drawer would never be mentioned again, save only in the
-heartbreaking legends of Packingtown.
-
-
-It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed out
-the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been killed,
-and then knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to supper, with
-three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they exchanged
-reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a roulette parlor,
-and Jurgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped about fifteen
-dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal, and he went
-back to Packingtown about two o'clock in the morning, very much the
-worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, entirely deserving
-the calamity that was in store for him.
-
-As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-cheeked
-woman in a greasy "kimono," and she put her arm about his waist to
-steady him; they turned into a dark room they were passing--but scarcely
-had they taken two steps before suddenly a door swung open, and a man
-entered, carrying a lantern. "Who's there?" he called sharply. And
-Jurgis started to mutter some reply; but at the same instant the man
-raised his light, which flashed in his face, so that it was possible
-to recognize him. Jurgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap
-like a mad thing. The man was Connor!
-
-Connor, the boss of the loading gang! The man who had seduced his
-wife--who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home, ruined his life!
-He stood there, staring, with the light shining full upon him.
-
-Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to Packingtown, but
-it had been as of something far off, that no longer concerned him.
-Now, however, when he saw him, alive and in the flesh, the same thing
-happened to him that had happened before--a flood of rage boiled up in
-him, a blind frenzy seized him. And he flung himself at the man, and
-smote him between the eyes--and then, as he fell, seized him by the
-throat and began to pound his head upon the stones.
-
-The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in. The lantern had
-been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they could not see a
-thing; but they could hear Jurgis panting, and hear the thumping of
-his victim's skull, and they rushed there and tried to pull him off.
-Precisely as before, Jurgis came away with a piece of his enemy's flesh
-between his teeth; and, as before, he went on fighting with those who
-had interfered with him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into
-insensibility.
-
-
-And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards station
-house. This time, however, he had money in his pocket, and when he came
-to his senses he could get something to drink, and also a messenger
-to take word of his plight to "Bush" Harper. Harper did not appear,
-however, until after the prisoner, feeling very weak and ill, had been
-hailed into court and remanded at five hundred dollars' bail to await
-the result of his victim's injuries. Jurgis was wild about this, because
-a different magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he had
-stated that he had never been arrested before, and also that he had been
-attacked first--and if only someone had been there to speak a good word
-for him, he could have been let off at once.
-
-But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got the
-message. "What's happened to you?" he asked.
-
-"I've been doing a fellow up," said Jurgis, "and I've got to get five
-hundred dollars' bail."
-
-"I can arrange that all right," said the other--"though it may cost you
-a few dollars, of course. But what was the trouble?"
-
-"It was a man that did me a mean trick once," answered Jurgis.
-
-"Who is he?"
-
-"He's a foreman in Brown's or used to be. His name's Connor."
-
-And the other gave a start. "Connor!" he cried. "Not Phil Connor!"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the fellow. Why?"
-
-"Good God!" exclaimed the other, "then you're in for it, old man! I
-can't help you!"
-
-"Not help me! Why not?"
-
-"Why, he's one of Scully's biggest men--he's a member of the War-Whoop
-League, and they talked of sending him to the legislature! Phil Connor!
-Great heavens!"
-
-Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.
-
-"Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!" declared the other.
-
-"Can't I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?" asked
-Jurgis, at length.
-
-"But Scully's out of town," the other answered. "I don't even know where
-he is--he's run away to dodge the strike."
-
-That was a pretty mess, indeed. Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed. His pull had
-run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! "But what am I
-going to do?" he asked, weakly.
-
-"How should I know?" said the other. "I shouldn't even dare to get bail
-for you--why, I might ruin myself for life!"
-
-Again there was silence. "Can't you do it for me," Jurgis asked, "and
-pretend that you didn't know who I'd hit?"
-
-"But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?" asked
-Harper. Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. "There's
-nothing--unless it's this," he said. "I could have your bail reduced;
-and then if you had the money you could pay it and skip."
-
-"How much will it be?" Jurgis asked, after he had had this explained
-more in detail.
-
-"I don't know," said the other. "How much do you own?"
-
-"I've got about three hundred dollars," was the answer.
-
-"Well," was Harper's reply, "I'm not sure, but I'll try and get you off
-for that. I'll take the risk for friendship's sake--for I'd hate to see
-you sent to state's prison for a year or two."
-
-And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook--which was sewed up in his
-trousers--and signed an order, which "Bush" Harper wrote, for all the
-money to be paid out. Then the latter went and got it, and hurried to
-the court, and explained to the magistrate that Jurgis was a
-decent fellow and a friend of Scully's, who had been attacked by a
-strike-breaker. So the bail was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
-Harper went on it himself; he did not tell this to Jurgis, however--nor
-did he tell him that when the time for trial came it would be an easy
-matter for him to avoid the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the three
-hundred dollars as his reward for the risk of offending Mike Scully! All
-that he told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the best thing
-he could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so Jurgis
-overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and fourteen
-cents that was left him out of all his bank account, and put it with the
-two dollars and quarter that was left from his last night's celebration,
-and boarded a streetcar and got off at the other end of Chicago.
-
-
-Chapter 27
-
-
-Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more. He was
-crippled--he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which has lost
-its claws, or been torn out of its shell. He had been shorn, at one
-cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a
-living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions. He could
-no longer command a job when he wanted it; he could no longer steal with
-impunity--he must take his chances with the common herd. Nay worse, he
-dared not mingle with the herd--he must hide himself, for he was one
-marked out for destruction. His old companions would betray him, for the
-sake of the influence they would gain thereby; and he would be made
-to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed, but for others
-which would be laid at his door, just as had been done for some poor
-devil on the occasion of that assault upon the "country customer" by him
-and Duane.
-
-And also he labored under another handicap now. He had acquired new
-standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. When he had
-been out of work before, he had been content if he could sleep in a
-doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if he could get fifteen
-cents a day for saloon lunches. But now he desired all sorts of other
-things, and suffered because he had to do without them. He must have a
-drink now and then, a drink for its own sake, and apart from the food
-that came with it. The craving for it was strong enough to master every
-other consideration--he would have it, though it were his last nickel
-and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence.
-
-Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates. But never since he
-had been in Chicago had he stood less chance of getting a job than just
-then. For one thing, there was the economic crisis, the million or two
-of men who had been out of work in the spring and summer, and were not
-yet all back, by any means. And then there was the strike, with seventy
-thousand men and women all over the country idle for a couple of
-months--twenty thousand in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work
-throughout the city. It did not remedy matters that a few days later the
-strike was given up and about half the strikers went back to work; for
-every one taken on, there was a "scab" who gave up and fled. The ten
-or fifteen thousand "green" Negroes, foreigners, and criminals were now
-being turned loose to shift for themselves. Everywhere Jurgis went he
-kept meeting them, and he was in an agony of fear lest some one of them
-should know that he was "wanted." He would have left Chicago, only by
-the time he had realized his danger he was almost penniless; and it
-would be better to go to jail than to be caught out in the country in
-the winter time.
-
-At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few pennies left; and he
-had not yet found a job--not even a day's work at anything, not a chance
-to carry a satchel. Once again, as when he had come out of the hospital,
-he was bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom of starvation.
-Raw, naked terror possessed him, a maddening passion that would never
-leave him, and that wore him down more quickly than the actual want of
-food. He was going to die of hunger! The fiend reached out its scaly
-arms for him--it touched him, its breath came into his face; and he
-would cry out for the awfulness of it, he would wake up in the night,
-shuddering, and bathed in perspiration, and start up and flee. He would
-walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted; he could not remain
-still--he would wander on, gaunt and haggard, gazing about him with
-restless eyes. Everywhere he went, from one end of the vast city to the
-other, there were hundreds of others like him; everywhere was the sight
-of plenty and the merciless hand of authority waving them away. There is
-one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that
-he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are
-behind the bars, and the man is outside.
-
-When he was down to his last quarter, Jurgis learned that before the
-bakeshops closed at night they sold out what was left at half price, and
-after that he would go and get two loaves of stale bread for a nickel,
-and break them up and stuff his pockets with them, munching a bit from
-time to time. He would not spend a penny save for this; and, after two
-or three days more, he even became sparing of the bread, and would stop
-and peer into the ash barrels as he walked along the streets, and now
-and then rake out a bit of something, shake it free from dust, and count
-himself just so many minutes further from the end.
-
-So for several days he had been going about, ravenous all the time,
-and growing weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had a hideous
-experience, that almost broke his heart. He was passing down a street
-lined with warehouses, and a boss offered him a job, and then, after he
-had started to work, turned him off because he was not strong enough.
-And he stood by and saw another man put into his place, and then picked
-up his coat, and walked off, doing all that he could to keep from
-breaking down and crying like a baby. He was lost! He was doomed! There
-was no hope for him! But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave place
-to rage. He fell to cursing. He would come back there after dark, and he
-would show that scoundrel whether he was good for anything or not!
-
-He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came upon
-a green-grocery, with a tray full of cabbages in front of it. Jurgis,
-after one swift glance about him, stooped and seized the biggest of
-them, and darted round the corner with it. There was a hue and cry,
-and a score of men and boys started in chase of him; but he came to an
-alley, and then to another branching off from it and leading him into
-another street, where he fell into a walk, and slipped his cabbage under
-his coat and went off unsuspected in the crowd. When he had gotten
-a safe distance away he sat down and devoured half the cabbage raw,
-stowing the balance away in his pockets till the next day.
-
-Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers, which made much of
-the "common people," opened a "free-soup kitchen" for the benefit of
-the unemployed. Some people said that they did this for the sake of the
-advertising it gave them, and some others said that their motive was
-a fear lest all their readers should be starved off; but whatever the
-reason, the soup was thick and hot, and there was a bowl for every man,
-all night long. When Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow "hobo," he
-vowed that he would have half a dozen bowls before morning; but, as it
-proved, he was lucky to get one, for there was a line of men two blocks
-long before the stand, and there was just as long a line when the place
-was finally closed up.
-
-This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis--in the "Levee"
-district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same, for he
-was desperate, and beginning to think of even the Bridewell as a place
-of refuge. So far the weather had been fair, and he had slept out every
-night in a vacant lot; but now there fell suddenly a shadow of the
-advancing winter, a chill wind from the north and a driving storm of
-rain. That day Jurgis bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter, and
-at night he spent his last two pennies in a "stale-beer dive." This was
-a place kept by a Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of
-beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons; and after he had
-doctored it with chemicals to make it "fizz," he sold it for two cents a
-can, the purchase of a can including the privilege of sleeping the night
-through upon the floor, with a mass of degraded outcasts, men and women.
-
-All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because he
-was always contrasting them with the opportunities he had lost. For
-instance, just now it was election time again--within five or six weeks
-the voters of the country would select a President; and he heard the
-wretches with whom he associated discussing it, and saw the streets
-of the city decorated with placards and banners--and what words could
-describe the pangs of grief and despair that shot through him?
-
-For instance, there was a night during this cold spell. He had begged
-all day, for his very life, and found not a soul to heed him, until
-toward evening he saw an old lady getting off a streetcar and helped
-her down with her umbrellas and bundles and then told her his "hard-luck
-story," and after answering all her suspicious questions satisfactorily,
-was taken to a restaurant and saw a quarter paid down for a meal. And so
-he had soup and bread, and boiled beef and potatoes and beans, and pie
-and coffee, and came out with his skin stuffed tight as a football. And
-then, through the rain and the darkness, far down the street he saw red
-lights flaring and heard the thumping of a bass drum; and his heart gave
-a leap, and he made for the place on the run--knowing without the asking
-that it meant a political meeting.
-
-The campaign had so far been characterized by what the newspapers termed
-"apathy." For some reason the people refused to get excited over the
-struggle, and it was almost impossible to get them to come to meetings,
-or to make any noise when they did come. Those which had been held in
-Chicago so far had proven most dismal failures, and tonight, the speaker
-being no less a personage than a candidate for the vice-presidency of
-the nation, the political managers had been trembling with anxiety. But
-a merciful providence had sent this storm of cold rain--and now all it
-was necessary to do was to set off a few fireworks, and thump awhile on
-a drum, and all the homeless wretches from a mile around would pour in
-and fill the hall! And then on the morrow the newspapers would have a
-chance to report the tremendous ovation, and to add that it had been no
-"silk-stocking" audience, either, proving clearly that the high
-tariff sentiments of the distinguished candidate were pleasing to the
-wage-earners of the nation.
-
-So Jurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated with
-flags and bunting; and after the chairman had made his little speech,
-and the orator of the evening rose up, amid an uproar from the
-band--only fancy the emotions of Jurgis upon making the discovery
-that the personage was none other than the famous and eloquent Senator
-Spareshanks, who had addressed the "Doyle Republican Association" at
-the stockyards, and helped to elect Mike Scully's tenpin setter to the
-Chicago Board of Aldermen!
-
-In truth, the sight of the senator almost brought the tears into
-Jurgis's eyes. What agony it was to him to look back upon those golden
-hours, when he, too, had a place beneath the shadow of the plum tree!
-When he, too, had been of the elect, through whom the country is
-governed--when he had had a bung in the campaign barrel for his own! And
-this was another election in which the Republicans had all the money;
-and but for that one hideous accident he might have had a share of it,
-instead of being where he was!
-
-
-The eloquent senator was explaining the system of protection; an
-ingenious device whereby the workingman permitted the manufacturer to
-charge him higher prices, in order that he might receive higher wages;
-thus taking his money out of his pocket with one hand, and putting a
-part of it back with the other. To the senator this unique arrangement
-had somehow become identified with the higher verities of the universe.
-It was because of it that Columbia was the gem of the ocean; and all her
-future triumphs, her power and good repute among the nations, depended
-upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the hands of
-those who were toiling to maintain it. The name of this heroic company
-was "the Grand Old Party"--
-
-And here the band began to play, and Jurgis sat up with a violent
-start. Singular as it may seem, Jurgis was making a desperate effort
-to understand what the senator was saying--to comprehend the extent of
-American prosperity, the enormous expansion of American commerce, and
-the Republic's future in the Pacific and in South America, and wherever
-else the oppressed were groaning. The reason for it was that he wanted
-to keep awake. He knew that if he allowed himself to fall asleep
-he would begin to snore loudly; and so he must listen--he must be
-interested! But he had eaten such a big dinner, and he was so exhausted,
-and the hall was so warm, and his seat was so comfortable! The senator's
-gaunt form began to grow dim and hazy, to tower before him and dance
-about, with figures of exports and imports. Once his neighbor gave him
-a savage poke in the ribs, and he sat up with a start and tried to look
-innocent; but then he was at it again, and men began to stare at him
-with annoyance, and to call out in vexation. Finally one of them called
-a policeman, who came and grabbed Jurgis by the collar, and jerked him
-to his feet, bewildered and terrified. Some of the audience turned to
-see the commotion, and Senator Spareshanks faltered in his speech; but a
-voice shouted cheerily: "We're just firing a bum! Go ahead, old sport!"
-And so the crowd roared, and the senator smiled genially, and went on;
-and in a few seconds poor Jurgis found himself landed out in the rain,
-with a kick and a string of curses.
-
-He got into the shelter of a doorway and took stock of himself. He was
-not hurt, and he was not arrested--more than he had any right to expect.
-He swore at himself and his luck for a while, and then turned his
-thoughts to practical matters. He had no money, and no place to sleep;
-he must begin begging again.
-
-He went out, hunching his shoulders together and shivering at the touch
-of the icy rain. Coming down the street toward him was a lady, well
-dressed, and protected by an umbrella; and he turned and walked beside
-her. "Please, ma'am," he began, "could you lend me the price of a
-night's lodging? I'm a poor working-man--"
-
-Then, suddenly, he stopped short. By the light of a street lamp he had
-caught sight of the lady's face. He knew her.
-
-It was Alena Jasaityte, who had been the belle of his wedding feast!
-Alena Jasaityte, who had looked so beautiful, and danced with such a
-queenly air, with Juozas Raczius, the teamster! Jurgis had only seen
-her once or twice afterward, for Juozas had thrown her over for another
-girl, and Alena had gone away from Packingtown, no one knew where. And
-now he met her here!
-
-She was as much surprised as he was. "Jurgis Rudkus!" she gasped. "And
-what in the world is the matter with you?"
-
-"I--I've had hard luck," he stammered. "I'm out of work, and I've no
-home and no money. And you, Alena--are you married?"
-
-"No," she answered, "I'm not married, but I've got a good place."
-
-They stood staring at each other for a few moments longer. Finally Alena
-spoke again. "Jurgis," she said, "I'd help you if I could, upon my
-word I would, but it happens that I've come out without my purse, and
-I honestly haven't a penny with me: I can do something better for you,
-though--I can tell you how to get help. I can tell you where Marija is."
-
-Jurgis gave a start. "Marija!" he exclaimed.
-
-"Yes," said Alena; "and she'll help you. She's got a place, and she's
-doing well; she'll be glad to see you."
-
-It was not much more than a year since Jurgis had left Packingtown,
-feeling like one escaped from jail; and it had been from Marija and
-Elzbieta that he was escaping. But now, at the mere mention of them, his
-whole being cried out with joy. He wanted to see them; he wanted to go
-home! They would help him--they would be kind to him. In a flash he had
-thought over the situation. He had a good excuse for running away--his
-grief at the death of his son; and also he had a good excuse for not
-returning--the fact that they had left Packingtown. "All right," he
-said, "I'll go."
-
-So she gave him a number on Clark Street, adding, "There's no need
-to give you my address, because Marija knows it." And Jurgis set out,
-without further ado. He found a large brownstone house of aristocratic
-appearance, and rang the basement bell. A young colored girl came to the
-door, opening it about an inch, and gazing at him suspiciously.
-
-"What do you want?" she demanded.
-
-"Does Marija Berczynskas live here?" he inquired.
-
-"I dunno," said the girl. "What you want wid her?"
-
-"I want to see her," said he; "she's a relative of mine."
-
-The girl hesitated a moment. Then she opened the door and said, "Come
-in." Jurgis came and stood in the hall, and she continued: "I'll go see.
-What's yo' name?"
-
-"Tell her it's Jurgis," he answered, and the girl went upstairs. She
-came back at the end of a minute or two, and replied, "Dey ain't no sich
-person here."
-
-Jurgis's heart went down into his boots. "I was told this was where she
-lived!" he cried. But the girl only shook her head. "De lady says dey
-ain't no sich person here," she said.
-
-And he stood for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. Then he
-turned to go to the door. At the same instant, however, there came a
-knock upon it, and the girl went to open it. Jurgis heard the shuffling
-of feet, and then heard her give a cry; and the next moment she sprang
-back, and past him, her eyes shining white with terror, and bounded up
-the stairway, screaming at the top of her lungs: "Police! Police! We're
-pinched!"
-
-Jurgis stood for a second, bewildered. Then, seeing blue-coated forms
-rushing upon him, he sprang after the Negress. Her cries had been the
-signal for a wild uproar above; the house was full of people, and as he
-entered the hallway he saw them rushing hither and thither, crying and
-screaming with alarm. There were men and women, the latter clad for the
-most part in wrappers, the former in all stages of dishabille. At one
-side Jurgis caught a glimpse of a big apartment with plush-covered
-chairs, and tables covered with trays and glasses. There were playing
-cards scattered all over the floor--one of the tables had been upset,
-and bottles of wine were rolling about, their contents running out upon
-the carpet. There was a young girl who had fainted, and two men who were
-supporting her; and there were a dozen others crowding toward the front
-door.
-
-Suddenly, however, there came a series of resounding blows upon it,
-causing the crowd to give back. At the same instant a stout woman, with
-painted cheeks and diamonds in her ears, came running down the stairs,
-panting breathlessly: "To the rear! Quick!"
-
-She led the way to a back staircase, Jurgis following; in the kitchen
-she pressed a spring, and a cupboard gave way and opened, disclosing a
-dark passageway. "Go in!" she cried to the crowd, which now amounted to
-twenty or thirty, and they began to pass through. Scarcely had the last
-one disappeared, however, before there were cries from in front, and
-then the panic-stricken throng poured out again, exclaiming: "They're
-there too! We're trapped!"
-
-"Upstairs!" cried the woman, and there was another rush of the mob,
-women and men cursing and screaming and fighting to be first. One
-flight, two, three--and then there was a ladder to the roof, with a
-crowd packed at the foot of it, and one man at the top, straining and
-struggling to lift the trap door. It was not to be stirred, however,
-and when the woman shouted up to unhook it, he answered: "It's already
-unhooked. There's somebody sitting on it!"
-
-And a moment later came a voice from downstairs: "You might as well
-quit, you people. We mean business, this time."
-
-So the crowd subsided; and a few moments later several policemen came
-up, staring here and there, and leering at their victims. Of the latter
-the men were for the most part frightened and sheepish-looking. The
-women took it as a joke, as if they were used to it--though if they had
-been pale, one could not have told, for the paint on their cheeks. One
-black-eyed young girl perched herself upon the top of the balustrade,
-and began to kick with her slippered foot at the helmets of the
-policemen, until one of them caught her by the ankle and pulled her
-down. On the floor below four or five other girls sat upon trunks in the
-hall, making fun of the procession which filed by them. They were noisy
-and hilarious, and had evidently been drinking; one of them, who wore a
-bright red kimono, shouted and screamed in a voice that drowned out all
-the other sounds in the hall--and Jurgis took a glance at her, and then
-gave a start, and a cry, "Marija!"
-
-She heard him, and glanced around; then she shrank back and half sprang
-to her feet in amazement. "Jurgis!" she gasped.
-
-For a second or two they stood staring at each other. "How did you come
-here?" Marija exclaimed.
-
-"I came to see you," he answered.
-
-"When?"
-
-"Just now."
-
-"But how did you know--who told you I was here?"
-
-"Alena Jasaityte. I met her on the street."
-
-Again there was a silence, while they gazed at each other. The rest of
-the crowd was watching them, and so Marija got up and came closer to
-him. "And you?" Jurgis asked. "You live here?"
-
-"Yes," said Marija, "I live here." Then suddenly came a hail from below:
-"Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along. You'd best begin, or
-you'll be sorry--it's raining outside."
-
-"Br-r-r!" shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the
-various doors which lined the hallway.
-
-"Come," said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a tiny
-place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand
-and some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered
-about on the floor, and hopeless confusion everywhere--boxes of rouge
-and bottles of perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the dresser,
-and a pair of slippers and a clock and a whisky bottle on a chair.
-
-Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings; yet she
-proceeded to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble to
-close the door. He had by this time divined what sort of a place he was
-in; and he had seen a great deal of the world since he had left home,
-and was not easy to shock--and yet it gave him a painful start that
-Marija should do this. They had always been decent people at home, and
-it seemed to him that the memory of old times ought to have ruled her.
-But then he laughed at himself for a fool. What was he, to be pretending
-to decency!
-
-"How long have you been living here?" he asked.
-
-"Nearly a year," she answered.
-
-"Why did you come?"
-
-"I had to live," she said; "and I couldn't see the children starve."
-
-He paused for a moment, watching her. "You were out of work?" he asked,
-finally.
-
-"I got sick," she replied, "and after that I had no money. And then
-Stanislovas died--"
-
-"Stanislovas dead!"
-
-"Yes," said Marija, "I forgot. You didn't know about it."
-
-"How did he die?"
-
-"Rats killed him," she answered.
-
-Jurgis gave a gasp. "Rats killed him!"
-
-"Yes," said the other; she was bending over, lacing her shoes as she
-spoke. "He was working in an oil factory--at least he was hired by the
-men to get their beer. He used to carry cans on a long pole; and he'd
-drink a little out of each can, and one day he drank too much, and fell
-asleep in a corner, and got locked up in the place all night. When they
-found him the rats had killed him and eaten him nearly all up."
-
-Jurgis sat, frozen with horror. Marija went on lacing up her shoes.
-There was a long silence.
-
-Suddenly a big policeman came to the door. "Hurry up, there," he said.
-
-"As quick as I can," said Marija, and she stood up and began putting on
-her corsets with feverish haste.
-
-"Are the rest of the people alive?" asked Jurgis, finally.
-
-"Yes," she said.
-
-"Where are they?"
-
-"They live not far from here. They're all right now."
-
-"They are working?" he inquired.
-
-"Elzbieta is," said Marija, "when she can. I take care of them most of
-the time--I'm making plenty of money now."
-
-Jurgis was silent for a moment. "Do they know you live here--how you
-live?" he asked.
-
-"Elzbieta knows," answered Marija. "I couldn't lie to her. And maybe the
-children have found out by this time. It's nothing to be ashamed of--we
-can't help it."
-
-"And Tamoszius?" he asked. "Does he know?"
-
-Marija shrugged her shoulders. "How do I know?" she said. "I haven't
-seen him for over a year. He got blood poisoning and lost one finger,
-and couldn't play the violin any more; and then he went away."
-
-Marija was standing in front of the glass fastening her dress. Jurgis
-sat staring at her. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman
-he had known in the old days; she was so quiet--so hard! It struck fear
-to his heart to watch her.
-
-Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. "You look as if you had been
-having a rough time of it yourself," she said.
-
-"I have," he answered. "I haven't a cent in my pockets, and nothing to
-do."
-
-"Where have you been?"
-
-"All over. I've been hoboing it. Then I went back to the yards--just
-before the strike." He paused for a moment, hesitating. "I asked for
-you," he added. "I found you had gone away, no one knew where. Perhaps
-you think I did you a dirty trick running away as I did, Marija--"
-
-"No," she answered, "I don't blame you. We never have--any of us. You
-did your best--the job was too much for us." She paused a moment, then
-added: "We were too ignorant--that was the trouble. We didn't stand any
-chance. If I'd known what I know now we'd have won out."
-
-"You'd have come here?" said Jurgis.
-
-"Yes," she answered; "but that's not what I meant. I meant you--how
-differently you would have behaved--about Ona."
-
-Jurgis was silent; he had never thought of that aspect of it.
-
-"When people are starving," the other continued, "and they have anything
-with a price, they ought to sell it, I say. I guess you realize it
-now when it's too late. Ona could have taken care of us all, in the
-beginning." Marija spoke without emotion, as one who had come to regard
-things from the business point of view.
-
-"I--yes, I guess so," Jurgis answered hesitatingly. He did not add
-that he had paid three hundred dollars, and a foreman's job, for the
-satisfaction of knocking down "Phil" Connor a second time.
-
-The policeman came to the door again just then. "Come on, now," he said.
-"Lively!"
-
-"All right," said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big enough to
-be a drum major's, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out into the
-hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman remaining to look under the bed
-and behind the door.
-
-"What's going to come of this?" Jurgis asked, as they started down the
-steps.
-
-"The raid, you mean? Oh, nothing--it happens to us every now and then.
-The madame's having some sort of time with the police; I don't know
-what it is, but maybe they'll come to terms before morning. Anyhow, they
-won't do anything to you. They always let the men off."
-
-"Maybe so," he responded, "but not me--I'm afraid I'm in for it."
-
-"How do you mean?"
-
-"I'm wanted by the police," he said, lowering his voice, though of
-course their conversation was in Lithuanian. "They'll send me up for a
-year or two, I'm afraid."
-
-"Hell!" said Marija. "That's too bad. I'll see if I can't get you off."
-
-Downstairs, where the greater part of the prisoners were now massed, she
-sought out the stout personage with the diamond earrings, and had a few
-whispered words with her. The latter then approached the police sergeant
-who was in charge of the raid. "Billy," she said, pointing to Jurgis,
-"there's a fellow who came in to see his sister. He'd just got in the
-door when you knocked. You aren't taking hoboes, are you?"
-
-The sergeant laughed as he looked at Jurgis. "Sorry," he said, "but the
-orders are every one but the servants."
-
-So Jurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging behind
-each other like sheep that have smelled a wolf. There were old men
-and young men, college boys and gray-beards old enough to be their
-grandfathers; some of them wore evening dress--there was no one among
-them save Jurgis who showed any signs of poverty.
-
-When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the party
-marched out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the curb, and the
-whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport; there was much
-chaffing, and a universal craning of necks. The women stared about them
-with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked, while the men kept their heads
-bowed, and their hats pulled over their faces. They were crowded into
-the patrol wagons as if into streetcars, and then off they went amid a
-din of cheers. At the station house Jurgis gave a Polish name and was
-put into a cell with half a dozen others; and while these sat and
-talked in whispers, he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his
-thoughts.
-
-Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit, and grown
-used to the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all humanity as
-vile and hideous, he had somehow always excepted his own family that he
-had loved; and now this sudden horrible discovery--Marija a whore, and
-Elzbieta and the children living off her shame! Jurgis might argue
-with himself all he chose, that he had done worse, and was a fool
-for caring--but still he could not get over the shock of that sudden
-unveiling, he could not help being sunk in grief because of it. The
-depths of him were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him
-that had been sleeping so long he had counted them dead. Memories of the
-old life--his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of decency
-and independence! He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle voice pleading
-with him. He saw little Antanas, whom he had meant to make a man. He saw
-his trembling old father, who had blessed them all with his wonderful
-love. He lived again through that day of horror when he had discovered
-Ona's shame--God, how he had suffered, what a madman he had been!
-How dreadful it had all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat and
-listened, and half agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool!
-Yes--told him that he ought to have sold his wife's honor and lived by
-it!--And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate--that brief story
-which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull indifference! The
-poor little fellow, with his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the
-snow--his wailing voice rang in Jurgis's ears, as he lay there in the
-darkness, until the sweat started on his forehead. Now and then he
-would quiver with a sudden spasm of horror, at the picture of little
-Stanislovas shut up in the deserted building and fighting for his life
-with the rats!
-
-All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis; it was so
-long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to think they might
-ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped, as he was, what good did they
-do him--why should he ever have allowed them to torment him? It had been
-the task of his recent life to fight them down, to crush them out of
-him; never in his life would he have suffered from them again, save
-that they had caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he could
-protect himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its old
-ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But they were
-far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and bottomless;
-they would fade away into the mists of the past once more. Their voices
-would die, and never again would he hear them--and so the last faint
-spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out.
-
-
-Chapter 28
-
-
-After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with
-the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope
-of recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men
-were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed;
-but, Jurgis, to his terror, was called separately, as being a
-suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same court that he had been
-tried, that time when his sentence had been "suspended"; it was the same
-judge, and the same clerk. The latter now stared at Jurgis, as if he
-half thought that he knew him; but the judge had no suspicions--just
-then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was expecting from a
-friend of the police captain of the district, telling what disposition
-he should make of the case of "Polly" Simpson, as the "madame" of the
-house was known. Meantime, he listened to the story of how Jurgis had
-been looking for his sister, and advised him dryly to keep his sister
-in a better place; then he let him go, and proceeded to fine each of the
-girls five dollars, which fines were paid in a bunch from a wad of bills
-which Madame Polly extracted from her stocking.
-
-Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija. The police had left
-the house, and already there were a few visitors; by evening the place
-would be running again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime,
-Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room, and they sat and talked. By
-daylight, Jurgis was able to observe that the color on her cheeks was
-not the old natural one of abounding health; her complexion was in
-reality a parchment yellow, and there were black rings under her eyes.
-
-"Have you been sick?" he asked.
-
-"Sick?" she said. "Hell!" (Marija had learned to scatter her
-conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule driver.)
-"How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life?"
-
-She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her gloomily. "It's
-morphine," she said, at last. "I seem to take more of it every day."
-
-"What's that for?" he asked.
-
-"It's the way of it; I don't know why. If it isn't that, it's drink. If
-the girls didn't booze they couldn't stand it any time at all. And the
-madame always gives them dope when they first come, and they learn to
-like it; or else they take it for headaches and such things, and get
-the habit that way. I've got it, I know; I've tried to quit, but I never
-will while I'm here."
-
-"How long are you going to stay?" he asked.
-
-"I don't know," she said. "Always, I guess. What else could I do?"
-
-"Don't you save any money?"
-
-"Save!" said Marija. "Good Lord, no! I get enough, I suppose, but it all
-goes. I get a half share, two dollars and a half for each customer, and
-sometimes I make twenty-five or thirty dollars a night, and you'd think
-I ought to save something out of that! But then I am charged for my
-room and my meals--and such prices as you never heard of; and then for
-extras, and drinks--for everything I get, and some I don't. My laundry
-bill is nearly twenty dollars each week alone--think of that! Yet what
-can I do? I either have to stand it or quit, and it would be the same
-anywhere else. It's all I can do to save the fifteen dollars I give
-Elzbieta each week, so the children can go to school."
-
-Marija sat brooding in silence for a while; then, seeing that Jurgis was
-interested, she went on: "That's the way they keep the girls--they
-let them run up debts, so they can't get away. A young girl comes from
-abroad, and she doesn't know a word of English, and she gets into a
-place like this, and when she wants to go the madame shows her that she
-is a couple of hundred dollars in debt, and takes all her clothes away,
-and threatens to have her arrested if she doesn't stay and do as she's
-told. So she stays, and the longer she stays, the more in debt she gets.
-Often, too, they are girls that didn't know what they were coming to,
-that had hired out for housework. Did you notice that little French girl
-with the yellow hair, that stood next to me in the court?"
-
-Jurgis answered in the affirmative.
-
-"Well, she came to America about a year ago. She was a store clerk, and
-she hired herself to a man to be sent here to work in a factory. There
-were six of them, all together, and they were brought to a house just
-down the street from here, and this girl was put into a room alone, and
-they gave her some dope in her food, and when she came to she found that
-she had been ruined. She cried, and screamed, and tore her hair, but she
-had nothing but a wrapper, and couldn't get away, and they kept her half
-insensible with drugs all the time, until she gave up. She never got
-outside of that place for ten months, and then they sent her away,
-because she didn't suit. I guess they'll put her out of here, too--she's
-getting to have crazy fits, from drinking absinthe. Only one of
-the girls that came out with her got away, and she jumped out of a
-second-story window one night. There was a great fuss about that--maybe
-you heard of it."
-
-"I did," said Jurgis, "I heard of it afterward." (It had happened in the
-place where he and Duane had taken refuge from their "country customer."
-The girl had become insane, fortunately for the police.)
-
-"There's lots of money in it," said Marija--"they get as much as forty
-dollars a head for girls, and they bring them from all over. There are
-seventeen in this place, and nine different countries among them.
-In some places you might find even more. We have half a dozen French
-girls--I suppose it's because the madame speaks the language. French
-girls are bad, too, the worst of all, except for the Japanese. There's
-a place next door that's full of Japanese women, but I wouldn't live in
-the same house with one of them."
-
-Marija paused for a moment or two, and then she added: "Most of the
-women here are pretty decent--you'd be surprised. I used to think they
-did it because they liked to; but fancy a woman selling herself to
-every kind of man that comes, old or young, black or white--and doing it
-because she likes to!"
-
-"Some of them say they do," said Jurgis.
-
-"I know," said she; "they say anything. They're in, and they know they
-can't get out. But they didn't like it when they began--you'd find
-out--it's always misery! There's a little Jewish girl here who used to
-run errands for a milliner, and got sick and lost her place; and she was
-four days on the streets without a mouthful of food, and then she went
-to a place just around the corner and offered herself, and they made her
-give up her clothes before they would give her a bite to eat!"
-
-Marija sat for a minute or two, brooding somberly. "Tell me about
-yourself, Jurgis," she said, suddenly. "Where have you been?"
-
-So he told her the long story of his adventures since his flight from
-home; his life as a tramp, and his work in the freight tunnels, and the
-accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the
-stockyards, and his downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened
-with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation,
-for his face showed it all. "You found me just in the nick of time," she
-said. "I'll stand by you--I'll help you till you can get some work."
-
-"I don't like to let you--" he began.
-
-"Why not? Because I'm here?"
-
-"No, not that," he said. "But I went off and left you--"
-
-"Nonsense!" said Marija. "Don't think about it. I don't blame you."
-
-"You must be hungry," she said, after a minute or two. "You stay here to
-lunch--I'll have something up in the room."
-
-She pressed a button, and a colored woman came to the door and took her
-order. "It's nice to have somebody to wait on you," she observed, with a
-laugh, as she lay back on the bed.
-
-As the prison breakfast had not been liberal, Jurgis had a good
-appetite, and they had a little feast together, talking meanwhile
-of Elzbieta and the children and old times. Shortly before they were
-through, there came another colored girl, with the message that the
-"madame" wanted Marija--"Lithuanian Mary," as they called her here.
-
-"That means you have to go," she said to Jurgis.
-
-So he got up, and she gave him the new address of the family, a tenement
-over in the Ghetto district. "You go there," she said. "They'll be glad
-to see you."
-
-But Jurgis stood hesitating.
-
-"I--I don't like to," he said. "Honest, Marija, why don't you just give
-me a little money and let me look for work first?"
-
-"How do you need money?" was her reply. "All you want is something to
-eat and a place to sleep, isn't it?"
-
-"Yes," he said; "but then I don't like to go there after I left
-them--and while I have nothing to do, and while you--you--"
-
-"Go on!" said Marija, giving him a push. "What are you talking?--I won't
-give you money," she added, as she followed him to the door, "because
-you'll drink it up, and do yourself harm. Here's a quarter for you now,
-and go along, and they'll be so glad to have you back, you won't have
-time to feel ashamed. Good-by!"
-
-
-So Jurgis went out, and walked down the street to think it over. He
-decided that he would first try to get work, and so he put in the rest
-of the day wandering here and there among factories and warehouses
-without success. Then, when it was nearly dark, he concluded to go home,
-and set out; but he came to a restaurant, and went in and spent his
-quarter for a meal; and when he came out he changed his mind--the night
-was pleasant, and he would sleep somewhere outside, and put in the
-morrow hunting, and so have one more chance of a job. So he started away
-again, when suddenly he chanced to look about him, and found that he
-was walking down the same street and past the same hall where he had
-listened to the political speech the night before. There was no red
-fire and no band now, but there was a sign out, announcing a meeting,
-and a stream of people pouring in through the entrance. In a flash
-Jurgis had decided that he would chance it once more, and sit down
-and rest while making up his mind what to do. There was no one taking
-tickets, so it must be a free show again.
-
-He entered. There were no decorations in the hall this time; but there
-was quite a crowd upon the platform, and almost every seat in the place
-was filled. He took one of the last, far in the rear, and straightway
-forgot all about his surroundings. Would Elzbieta think that he had come
-to sponge off her, or would she understand that he meant to get to work
-again and do his share? Would she be decent to him, or would she scold
-him? If only he could get some sort of a job before he went--if that
-last boss had only been willing to try him!
-
---Then suddenly Jurgis looked up. A tremendous roar had burst from the
-throats of the crowd, which by this time had packed the hall to the very
-doors. Men and women were standing up, waving handkerchiefs, shouting,
-yelling. Evidently the speaker had arrived, thought Jurgis; what fools
-they were making of themselves! What were they expecting to get out
-of it anyhow--what had they to do with elections, with governing the
-country? Jurgis had been behind the scenes in politics.
-
-He went back to his thoughts, but with one further fact to reckon
-with--that he was caught here. The hall was now filled to the doors; and
-after the meeting it would be too late for him to go home, so he would
-have to make the best of it outside. Perhaps it would be better to go
-home in the morning, anyway, for the children would be at school, and
-he and Elzbieta could have a quiet explanation. She always had been a
-reasonable person; and he really did mean to do right. He would manage
-to persuade her of it--and besides, Marija was willing, and Marija was
-furnishing the money. If Elzbieta were ugly, he would tell her that in
-so many words.
-
-So Jurgis went on meditating; until finally, when he had been an hour
-or two in the hall, there began to prepare itself a repetition of the
-dismal catastrophe of the night before. Speaking had been going on
-all the time, and the audience was clapping its hands and shouting,
-thrilling with excitement; and little by little the sounds were
-beginning to blur in Jurgis's ears, and his thoughts were beginning to
-run together, and his head to wobble and nod. He caught himself many
-times, as usual, and made desperate resolutions; but the hall was hot
-and close, and his long walk and is dinner were too much for him--in the
-end his head sank forward and he went off again.
-
-And then again someone nudged him, and he sat up with his old terrified
-start! He had been snoring again, of course! And now what? He fixed his
-eyes ahead of him, with painful intensity, staring at the platform as
-if nothing else ever had interested him, or ever could interest him, all
-his life. He imagined the angry exclamations, the hostile glances; he
-imagined the policeman striding toward him--reaching for his neck. Or
-was he to have one more chance? Were they going to let him alone this
-time? He sat trembling; waiting--
-
-And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman's voice, gentle
-and sweet, "If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you would be
-interested."
-
-Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the touch of
-a policeman. He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and did not stir;
-but his heart gave a great leap. Comrade! Who was it that called him
-"comrade"?
-
-He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was no
-longer watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes at the
-woman who sat beside him. She was young and beautiful; she wore fine
-clothes, and was what is called a "lady." And she called him "comrade"!
-
-He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better; then he
-began to watch her, fascinated. She had apparently forgotten all
-about him, and was looking toward the platform. A man was speaking
-there--Jurgis heard his voice vaguely; but all his thoughts were for
-this woman's face. A feeling of alarm stole over him as he stared at
-her. It made his flesh creep. What was the matter with her, what could
-be going on, to affect any one like that? She sat as one turned to
-stone, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could
-see the cords standing out in her wrists. There was a look of excitement
-upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling mightily, or
-witnessing a struggle. There was a faint quivering of her nostrils; and
-now and then she would moisten her lips with feverish haste. Her bosom
-rose and fell as she breathed, and her excitement seemed to mount higher
-and higher, and then to sink away again, like a boat tossing upon ocean
-surges. What was it? What was the matter? It must be something that the
-man was saying, up there on the platform. What sort of a man was he?
-And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?--So all at once it occurred to
-Jurgis to look at the speaker.
-
-It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature--a mountain
-forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a stormy sea.
-Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of confusion, of disorder,
-of wild and meaningless uproar. The man was tall and gaunt, as haggard
-as his auditor himself; a thin black beard covered half of his face,
-and one could see only two black hollows where the eyes were. He was
-speaking rapidly, in great excitement; he used many gestures--as he spoke
-he moved here and there upon the stage, reaching with his long arms as
-if to seize each person in his audience. His voice was deep, like an
-organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis thought of the voice--he
-was too much occupied with his eyes to think of what the man was saying.
-But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had begun pointing straight at
-him, as if he had singled him out particularly for his remarks; and
-so Jurgis became suddenly aware of his voice, trembling, vibrant with
-emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things unutterable, not
-to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be suddenly arrested, to be
-gripped, transfixed.
-
-"You listen to these things," the man was saying, "and you say, 'Yes,
-they are true, but they have been that way always.' Or you say, 'Maybe
-it will come, but not in my time--it will not help me.' And so you
-return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for
-profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours
-for another's advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in
-dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger
-and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and death. And
-each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day
-you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of circumstance
-close upon you a little tighter. Months pass, years maybe--and then you
-come again; and again I am here to plead with you, to know if want and
-misery have yet done their work with you, if injustice and oppression
-have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be waiting--there is nothing
-else that I can do. There is no wilderness where I can hide from these
-things, there is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to
-the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system--I find that all
-the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the
-agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized
-and predatory Greed! And therefore I cannot rest, I cannot be
-silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness, health and good
-repute--and go out into the world and cry out the pain of my spirit!
-Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness, not by hatred
-and obloquy, by threats and ridicule--not by prison and persecution, if
-they should come--not by any power that is upon the earth or above the
-earth, that was, or is, or ever can be created. If I fail tonight, I can
-only try tomorrow; knowing that the fault must be mine--that if once
-the vision of my soul were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of
-its defeat were uttered in human speech, it would break the stoutest
-barriers of prejudice, it would shake the most sluggish soul to action!
-It would abash the most cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and
-the voice of mockery would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood would
-slink back into their dens, and the truth would stand forth alone! For I
-speak with the voice of the millions who are voiceless! Of them that are
-oppressed and have no comforter! Of the disinherited of life, for whom
-there is no respite and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison, a
-dungeon of torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils
-tonight in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb
-with agony, and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by
-candlelight in her tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with
-the mortal hunger of her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags,
-wrestling in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of
-the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the streets of
-this horrible city, beaten and starving, and making her choice between
-the brothel and the lake! With the voice of those, whoever and wherever
-they may be, who are caught beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of
-Greed! With the voice of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the
-everlasting soul of Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of
-its prison--rending the bands of oppression and ignorance--groping its
-way to the light!"
-
-The speaker paused. There was an instant of silence, while men caught
-their breaths, and then like a single sound there came a cry from a
-thousand people. Through it all Jurgis sat still, motionless and rigid,
-his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was trembling, smitten with wonder.
-
-Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began again.
-
-"I plead with you," he said, "whoever you may be, provided that you care
-about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-man, with those
-to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to be
-dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten--to
-whom they are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the
-chains upon their limbs, the lash upon their backs, the iron in their
-souls. To you, working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this
-land, and have no voice in its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow
-that others may reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages
-of a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive from day to
-day. It is to you that I come with my message of salvation, it is to you
-that I appeal. I know how much it is to ask of you--I know, for I have
-been in your place, I have lived your life, and there is no man before
-me here tonight who knows it better. I have known what it is to be a
-street-waif, a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in
-cellar stairways and under empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare
-and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them perish--to see all
-the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into the mire by the wild-beast
-powers of my life. I know what is the price that a working-man pays for
-knowledge--I have paid for it with food and sleep, with agony of body
-and mind, with health, almost with life itself; and so, when I come to
-you with a story of hope and freedom, with the vision of a new earth to
-be created, of a new labor to be dared, I am not surprised that I find
-you sordid and material, sluggish and incredulous. That I do not despair
-is because I know also the forces that are driving behind you--because
-I know the raging lash of poverty, the sting of contempt and mastership,
-'the insolence of office and the spurns.' Because I feel sure that in
-the crowd that has come to me tonight, no matter how many may be dull
-and heedless, no matter how many may have come out of idle curiosity, or
-in order to ridicule--there will be some one man whom pain and suffering
-have made desperate, whom some chance vision of wrong and horror has
-startled and shocked into attention. And to him my words will come like
-a sudden flash of lightning to one who travels in darkness--revealing
-the way before him, the perils and the obstacles--solving all problems,
-making all difficulties clear! The scales will fall from his eyes, the
-shackles will be torn from his limbs--he will leap up with a cry of
-thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at last! A man
-delivered from his self-created slavery! A man who will never more
-be trapped--whom no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will
-frighten; who from tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who
-will study and understand, who will gird on his sword and take his
-place in the army of his comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good
-tidings to others, as I have carried them to him--priceless gift of
-liberty and light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of
-the soul of man! Working-men, working-men--comrades! open your eyes and
-look about you! You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your
-senses are dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives
-this world in which you dwell--tear off the rags of its customs and
-conventions--behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize
-it, realize it! Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight
-two hostile armies are facing each other--that now, while we are seated
-here, a million human beings may be hurled at each other's throats,
-striving with the fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces! And this
-in the twentieth century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince of
-Peace was born on earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have been
-preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and tearing
-each other like the wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers have
-reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have wept and pleaded--and
-still this hideous Monster roams at large! We have schools and colleges,
-newspapers and books; we have searched the heavens and the earth, we
-have weighed and probed and reasoned--and all to equip men to destroy
-each other! We call it War, and pass it by--but do not put me off with
-platitudes and conventions--come with me, come with me--realize it!
-See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by bursting
-shells! Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human flesh;
-hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men crazed by
-pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate! Put your hand upon that piece
-of flesh--it is hot and quivering--just now it was a part of a man! This
-blood is still steaming--it was driven by a human heart! Almighty God!
-and this goes on--it is systematic, organized, premeditated! And we know
-it, and read of it, and take it for granted; our papers tell of it, and
-the presses are not stopped--our churches know of it, and do not close
-their doors--the people behold it, and do not rise up in horror and
-revolution!
-
-"Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you--come home with me then,
-come here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are
-shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live.
-And we know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in the image
-of your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters; the child
-whom you left at home tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the
-morning--that fate may be waiting for her! To-night in Chicago there are
-ten thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for
-a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the awful winter cold!
-Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand children wearing out
-their strength and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their
-bread! There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery and
-squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones! There are
-a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless, waiting for death
-to take them from their torments! There are a million people, men and
-women and children, who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil
-every hour they can stand and see, for just enough to keep them alive;
-who are condemned till the end of their days to monotony and weariness,
-to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to
-ignorance and drunkenness and vice! And then turn over the page with me,
-and gaze upon the other side of the picture. There are a thousand--ten
-thousand, maybe--who are the masters of these slaves, who own their
-toil. They do nothing to earn what they receive, they do not even have
-to ask for it--it comes to them of itself, their only care is to dispose
-of it. They live in palaces, they riot in luxury and extravagance--such
-as no words can describe, as makes the imagination reel and stagger,
-makes the soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for a
-pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions for horses
-and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets, for little shiny
-stones with which to deck their bodies. Their life is a contest among
-themselves for supremacy in ostentation and recklessness, in the
-destroying of useful and necessary things, in the wasting of the labor
-and the lives of their fellow creatures, the toil and anguish of the
-nations, the sweat and tears and blood of the human race! It is all
-theirs--it comes to them; just as all the springs pour into streamlets,
-and the streamlets into rivers, and the rivers into the oceans--so,
-automatically and inevitably, all the wealth of society comes to them.
-The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends
-the loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd
-man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired man sings--and all the
-result, the products of the labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into
-one stupendous stream and poured into their laps! The whole of society
-is in their grip, the whole labor of the world lies at their mercy--and
-like fierce wolves they rend and destroy, like ravening vultures they
-devour and tear! The whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever
-and beyond recall--do what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for
-them and dies for them! They own not merely the labor of society, they
-have bought the governments; and everywhere they use their raped and
-stolen power to intrench themselves in their privileges, to dig wider
-and deeper the channels through which the river of profits flows to
-them!--And you, workingmen, workingmen! You have been brought up to
-it, you plod on like beasts of burden, thinking only of the day and its
-pain--yet is there a man among you who can believe that such a system
-will continue forever--is there a man here in this audience tonight
-so hardened and debased that he dare rise up before me and say that
-he believes it can continue forever; that the product of the labor of
-society, the means of existence of the human race, will always belong
-to idlers and parasites, to be spent for the gratification of vanity and
-lust--to be spent for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any
-individual will whatever--that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity
-will not belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of humanity, to
-be controlled by the will of humanity? And if this is ever to be, how is
-it to be--what power is there that will bring it about? Will it be the
-task of your masters, do you think--will they write the charter of your
-liberties? Will they forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they
-marshal you the army and lead it to the fray? Will their wealth be spent
-for the purpose--will they build colleges and churches to teach you,
-will they print papers to herald your progress, and organize political
-parties to guide and carry on the struggle? Can you not see that the
-task is your task--yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute?
-That if ever it is carried out, it will be in the face of every obstacle
-that wealth and mastership can oppose--in the face of ridicule and
-slander, of hatred and persecution, of the bludgeon and the jail? That
-it will be by the power of your naked bosoms, opposed to the rage of
-oppression! By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and merciless
-affliction! By the painful gropings of the untutored mind, by the feeble
-stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad and lonely hunger of
-the spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by heartache and
-despairing, by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by money paid for
-with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated
-under the shadow of the gallows! It will be a movement beginning in the
-far-off past, a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing easy to ridicule,
-easy to despise; a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of vengeance and
-hate--but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave, calling with a voice
-insistent, imperious--with a voice that you cannot escape, wherever upon
-the earth you may be! With the voice of all your wrongs, with the voice
-of all your desires; with the voice of your duty and your hope--of
-everything in the world that is worth while to you! The voice of the
-poor, demanding that poverty shall cease! The voice of the oppressed,
-pronouncing the doom of oppression! The voice of power, wrought out of
-suffering--of resolution, crushed out of weakness--of joy and courage,
-born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! The voice of Labor,
-despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying prostrate--mountainous,
-colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant of his strength. And now a
-dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling with fear; until suddenly
-he stirs, and a fetter snaps--and a thrill shoots through him, to the
-farthest ends of his huge body, and in a flash the dream becomes an act!
-He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered, the burdens
-roll off him--he rises--towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet, he
-shouts in his newborn exultation--"
-
-And the speaker's voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his feelings;
-he stood with his arms stretched out above him, and the power of his
-vision seemed to lift him from the floor. The audience came to its feet
-with a yell; men waved their arms, laughing aloud in their excitement.
-And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to tear his throat; shouting
-because he could not help it, because the stress of his feeling was more
-than he could bear. It was not merely the man's words, the torrent
-of his eloquence. It was his presence, it was his voice: a voice with
-strange intonations that rang through the chambers of the soul like the
-clanging of a bell--that gripped the listener like a mighty hand about
-his body, that shook him and startled him with sudden fright, with
-a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries never spoken before, of
-presences of awe and terror! There was an unfolding of vistas before
-him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring,
-a trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no longer--there were
-powers within him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending,
-age-long wonders struggling to be born; and he sat oppressed with pain
-and joy, while a tingling stole down into his finger tips, and his
-breath came hard and fast. The sentences of this man were to Jurgis like
-the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of emotions surged up
-in him--all his old hopes and longings, his old griefs and rages and
-despairs. All that he had ever felt in his whole life seemed to come
-back to him at once, and with one new emotion, hardly to be described.
-That he should have suffered such oppressions and such horrors was bad
-enough; but that he should have been crushed and beaten by them, that he
-should have submitted, and forgotten, and lived in peace--ah, truly that
-was a thing not to be put into words, a thing not to be borne by a human
-creature, a thing of terror and madness! "What," asks the prophet, "is
-the murder of them that kill the body, to the murder of them that kill
-the soul?" And Jurgis was a man whose soul had been murdered, who had
-ceased to hope and to struggle--who had made terms with degradation
-and despair; and now, suddenly, in one awful convulsion, the black and
-hideous fact was made plain to him! There was a falling in of all the
-pillars of his soul, the sky seemed to split above him--he stood there,
-with his clenched hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot, and the veins
-standing out purple in his face, roaring in the voice of a wild beast,
-frantic, incoherent, maniacal. And when he could shout no more he still
-stood there, gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: "By God! By
-God! By God!"
-
-
-Chapter 29
-
-
-The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis realized
-that his speech was over. The applause continued for several minutes;
-and then some one started a song, and the crowd took it up, and the
-place shook with it. Jurgis had never heard it, and he could not make
-out the words, but the wild and wonderful spirit of it seized upon
-him--it was the "Marseillaise!" As stanza after stanza of it thundered
-forth, he sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve. He
-had never been so stirred in his life--it was a miracle that had been
-wrought in him. He could not think at all, he was stunned; yet he knew
-that in the mighty upheaval that had taken place in his soul, a new man
-had been born. He had been torn out of the jaws of destruction, he had
-been delivered from the thraldom of despair; the whole world had been
-changed for him--he was free, he was free! Even if he were to suffer as
-he had before, even if he were to beg and starve, nothing would be the
-same to him; he would understand it, and bear it. He would no longer
-be the sport of circumstances, he would be a man, with a will and a
-purpose; he would have something to fight for, something to die for,
-if need be! Here were men who would show him and help him; and he would
-have friends and allies, he would dwell in the sight of justice, and
-walk arm in arm with power.
-
-The audience subsided again, and Jurgis sat back. The chairman of the
-meeting came forward and began to speak. His voice sounded thin and
-futile after the other's, and to Jurgis it seemed a profanation. Why
-should any one else speak, after that miraculous man--why should they
-not all sit in silence? The chairman was explaining that a collection
-would now be taken up to defray the expenses of the meeting, and for the
-benefit of the campaign fund of the party. Jurgis heard; but he had not
-a penny to give, and so his thoughts went elsewhere again.
-
-He kept his eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his head
-leaning on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion. But suddenly
-he stood up again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of the meeting saying
-that the speaker would now answer any questions which the audience might
-care to put to him. The man came forward, and some one--a woman--arose
-and asked about some opinion the speaker had expressed concerning
-Tolstoy. Jurgis had never heard of Tolstoy, and did not care anything
-about him. Why should any one want to ask such questions, after an
-address like that? The thing was not to talk, but to do; the thing was
-to get bold of others and rouse them, to organize them and prepare for
-the fight! But still the discussion went on, in ordinary conversational
-tones, and it brought Jurgis back to the everyday world. A few minutes
-ago he had felt like seizing the hand of the beautiful lady by his side,
-and kissing it; he had felt like flinging his arms about the neck of the
-man on the other side of him. And now he began to realize again that he
-was a "hobo," that he was ragged and dirty, and smelled bad, and had no
-place to sleep that night!
-
-And so, at last, when the meeting broke up, and the audience started to
-leave, poor Jurgis was in an agony of uncertainty. He had not thought of
-leaving--he had thought that the vision must last forever, that he had
-found comrades and brothers. But now he would go out, and the thing
-would fade away, and he would never be able to find it again! He sat in
-his seat, frightened and wondering; but others in the same row wanted to
-get out, and so he had to stand up and move along. As he was swept down
-the aisle he looked from one person to another, wistfully; they were all
-excitedly discussing the address--but there was nobody who offered to
-discuss it with him. He was near enough to the door to feel the night
-air, when desperation seized him. He knew nothing at all about that
-speech he had heard, not even the name of the orator; and he was to go
-away--no, no, it was preposterous, he must speak to some one; he must
-find that man himself and tell him. He would not despise him, tramp as
-he was!
-
-So he stepped into an empty row of seats and watched, and when the crowd
-had thinned out, he started toward the platform. The speaker was gone;
-but there was a stage door that stood open, with people passing in and
-out, and no one on guard. Jurgis summoned up his courage and went in,
-and down a hallway, and to the door of a room where many people were
-crowded. No one paid any attention to him, and he pushed in, and in a
-corner he saw the man he sought. The orator sat in a chair, with his
-shoulders sunk together and his eyes half closed; his face was ghastly
-pale, almost greenish in hue, and one arm lay limp at his side. A big
-man with spectacles on stood near him, and kept pushing back the crowd,
-saying, "Stand away a little, please; can't you see the comrade is worn
-out?"
-
-So Jurgis stood watching, while five or ten minutes passed. Now and then
-the man would look up, and address a word or two to those who were
-near him; and, at last, on one of these occasions, his glance rested
-on Jurgis. There seemed to be a slight hint of inquiry about it, and a
-sudden impulse seized the other. He stepped forward.
-
-"I wanted to thank you, sir!" he began, in breathless haste. "I could
-not go away without telling you how much--how glad I am I heard you.
-I--I didn't know anything about it all--"
-
-The big man with the spectacles, who had moved away, came back at this
-moment. "The comrade is too tired to talk to any one--" he began; but
-the other held up his hand.
-
-"Wait," he said. "He has something to say to me." And then he looked
-into Jurgis's face. "You want to know more about Socialism?" he asked.
-
-Jurgis started. "I--I--" he stammered. "Is it Socialism? I didn't know.
-I want to know about what you spoke of--I want to help. I have been
-through all that."
-
-"Where do you live?" asked the other.
-
-"I have no home," said Jurgis, "I am out of work."
-
-"You are a foreigner, are you not?"
-
-"Lithuanian, sir."
-
-The man thought for a moment, and then turned to his friend. "Who is
-there, Walters?" he asked. "There is Ostrinski--but he is a Pole--"
-
-"Ostrinski speaks Lithuanian," said the other. "All right, then; would
-you mind seeing if he has gone yet?"
-
-The other started away, and the speaker looked at Jurgis again. He had
-deep, black eyes, and a face full of gentleness and pain. "You must
-excuse me, comrade," he said. "I am just tired out--I have spoken every
-day for the last month. I will introduce you to some one who will be
-able to help you as well as I could--"
-
-The messenger had had to go no further than the door, he came back,
-followed by a man whom he introduced to Jurgis as "Comrade Ostrinski."
-Comrade Ostrinski was a little man, scarcely up to Jurgis's shoulder,
-wizened and wrinkled, very ugly, and slightly lame. He had on a
-long-tailed black coat, worn green at the seams and the buttonholes; his
-eyes must have been weak, for he wore green spectacles that gave him
-a grotesque appearance. But his handclasp was hearty, and he spoke in
-Lithuanian, which warmed Jurgis to him.
-
-"You want to know about Socialism?" he said. "Surely. Let us go out and
-take a stroll, where we can be quiet and talk some."
-
-And so Jurgis bade farewell to the master wizard, and went out.
-Ostrinski asked where he lived, offering to walk in that direction;
-and so he had to explain once more that he was without a home. At the
-other's request he told his story; how he had come to America, and
-what had happened to him in the stockyards, and how his family had been
-broken up, and how he had become a wanderer. So much the little man
-heard, and then he pressed Jurgis's arm tightly. "You have been through
-the mill, comrade!" he said. "We will make a fighter out of you!"
-
-Then Ostrinski in turn explained his circumstances. He would have asked
-Jurgis to his home--but he had only two rooms, and had no bed to offer.
-He would have given up his own bed, but his wife was ill. Later on, when
-he understood that otherwise Jurgis would have to sleep in a hallway,
-he offered him his kitchen floor, a chance which the other was only too
-glad to accept. "Perhaps tomorrow we can do better," said Ostrinski. "We
-try not to let a comrade starve."
-
-Ostrinski's home was in the Ghetto district, where he had two rooms in
-the basement of a tenement. There was a baby crying as they entered,
-and he closed the door leading into the bedroom. He had three young
-children, he explained, and a baby had just come. He drew up two chairs
-near the kitchen stove, adding that Jurgis must excuse the disorder of
-the place, since at such a time one's domestic arrangements were upset.
-Half of the kitchen was given up to a workbench, which was piled with
-clothing, and Ostrinski explained that he was a "pants finisher." He
-brought great bundles of clothing here to his home, where he and his
-wife worked on them. He made a living at it, but it was getting harder
-all the time, because his eyes were failing. What would come when they
-gave out he could not tell; there had been no saving anything--a man
-could barely keep alive by twelve or fourteen hours' work a day. The
-finishing of pants did not take much skill, and anybody could learn it,
-and so the pay was forever getting less. That was the competitive wage
-system; and if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was, it was
-there he had best begin. The workers were dependent upon a job to exist
-from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no man could
-get more than the lowest man would consent to work for. And thus
-the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with
-poverty. That was "competition," so far as it concerned the wage-earner,
-the man who had only his labor to sell; to those on top, the exploiters,
-it appeared very differently, of course--there were few of them, and
-they could combine and dominate, and their power would be unbreakable.
-And so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged
-chasm between them--the capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes,
-and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains. The latter
-were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were ignorant and helpless,
-and they would remain at the mercy of their exploiters until they were
-organized--until they had become "class-conscious." It was a slow
-and weary process, but it would go on--it was like the movement of a
-glacier, once it was started it could never be stopped. Every
-Socialist did his share, and lived upon the vision of the "good time
-coming,"--when the working class should go to the polls and seize the
-powers of government, and put an end to private property in the means
-of production. No matter how poor a man was, or how much he suffered, he
-could never be really unhappy while he knew of that future; even if he
-did not live to see it himself, his children would, and, to a Socialist,
-the victory of his class was his victory. Also he had always the
-progress to encourage him; here in Chicago, for instance, the movement
-was growing by leaps and bounds. Chicago was the industrial center
-of the country, and nowhere else were the unions so strong; but their
-organizations did the workers little good, for the employers were
-organized, also; and so the strikes generally failed, and as fast as the
-unions were broken up the men were coming over to the Socialists.
-
-Ostrinski explained the organization of the party, the machinery by
-which the proletariat was educating itself. There were "locals" in every
-big city and town, and they were being organized rapidly in the smaller
-places; a local had anywhere from six to a thousand members, and there
-were fourteen hundred of them in all, with a total of about twenty-five
-thousand members, who paid dues to support the organization. "Local Cook
-County," as the city organization was called, had eighty branch locals,
-and it alone was spending several thousand dollars in the campaign. It
-published a weekly in English, and one each in Bohemian and German; also
-there was a monthly published in Chicago, and a cooperative publishing
-house, that issued a million and a half of Socialist books and pamphlets
-every year. All this was the growth of the last few years--there had
-been almost nothing of it when Ostrinski first came to Chicago.
-
-Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age. He had lived in Silesia,
-a member of a despised and persecuted race, and had taken part in the
-proletarian movement in the early seventies, when Bismarck, having
-conquered France, had turned his policy of blood and iron upon the
-"International." Ostrinski himself had twice been in jail, but he had
-been young then, and had not cared. He had had more of his share of the
-fight, though, for just when Socialism had broken all its barriers and
-become the great political force of the empire, he had come to America,
-and begun all over again. In America every one had laughed at the mere
-idea of Socialism then--in America all men were free. As if political
-liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! said Ostrinski.
-
-The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair, with his
-feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in low whispers,
-so as not to waken those in the next room. To Jurgis he seemed a
-scarcely less wonderful person than the speaker at the meeting; he was
-poor, the lowest of the low, hunger-driven and miserable--and yet how
-much he knew, how much he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had
-been! There were others like him, too--thousands like him, and all of
-them workingmen! That all this wonderful machinery of progress had been
-created by his fellows--Jurgis could not believe it, it seemed too good
-to be true.
-
-That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first converted
-to Socialism he was like a crazy person--he could not understand how
-others could fail to see it, and he expected to convert all the world
-the first week. After a while he would realize how hard a task it was;
-and then it would be fortunate that other new hands kept coming, to save
-him from settling down into a rut. Just now Jurgis would have plenty of
-chance to vent his excitement, for a presidential campaign was on, and
-everybody was talking politics. Ostrinski would take him to the next
-meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and he might join the
-party. The dues were five cents a week, but any one who could not afford
-this might be excused from paying. The Socialist party was a really
-democratic political organization--it was controlled absolutely by
-its own membership, and had no bosses. All of these things Ostrinski
-explained, as also the principles of the party. You might say that there
-was really but one Socialist principle--that of "no compromise," which
-was the essence of the proletarian movement all over the world. When a
-Socialist was elected to office he voted with old party legislators for
-any measure that was likely to be of help to the working class, but
-he never forgot that these concessions, whatever they might be, were
-trifles compared with the great purpose--the organizing of the working
-class for the revolution. So far, the rule in America had been that
-one Socialist made another Socialist once every two years; and if
-they should maintain the same rate they would carry the country in
-1912--though not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as that.
-
-The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was an
-international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest the world
-had ever known. It numbered thirty million of adherents, and it cast
-eight million votes. It had started its first newspaper in Japan, and
-elected its first deputy in Argentina; in France it named members of
-cabinets, and in Italy and Australia it held the balance of power and
-turned out ministries. In Germany, where its vote was more than a third
-of the total vote of the empire, all other parties and powers had united
-to fight it. It would not do, Ostrinski explained, for the proletariat
-of one nation to achieve the victory, for that nation would be crushed
-by the military power of the others; and so the Socialist movement was a
-world movement, an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and
-fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity--or you might say it was
-the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal
-application of all the teachings of Christ.
-
-
-Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his
-new acquaintance. It was a most wonderful experience to him--an almost
-supernatural experience. It was like encountering an inhabitant of
-the fourth dimension of space, a being who was free from all one's
-own limitations. For four years, now, Jurgis had been wondering and
-blundering in the depths of a wilderness; and here, suddenly, a hand
-reached down and seized him, and lifted him out of it, and set him upon
-a mountain-top, from which he could survey it all--could see the paths
-from which he had wandered, the morasses into which he had stumbled, the
-hiding places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him. There
-were his Packingtown experiences, for instance--what was there about
-Packingtown that Ostrinski could not explain! To Jurgis the packers had
-been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef
-Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed
-all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying
-upon the people. Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to
-Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how
-cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he
-was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just
-what he had been--one of the packers' hogs. What they wanted from a hog
-was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they
-wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from
-the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were
-not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the
-purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was
-especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the
-work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity--it was
-literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human
-lives did not balance a penny of profit. When Jurgis had made himself
-familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would very quickly, he
-would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all sorts of aspects, and he
-would find it everywhere the same; it was the incarnation of blind and
-insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths,
-trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the
-spirit of Capitalism made flesh. Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed
-as a pirate ship; it had hoisted the black flag and declared war upon
-civilization. Bribery and corruption were its everyday methods. In
-Chicago the city government was simply one of its branch offices; it
-stole billions of gallons of city water openly, it dictated to the
-courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it forbade the mayor to
-enforce the building laws against it. In the national capital it had
-power to prevent inspection of its product, and to falsify government
-reports; it violated the rebate laws, and when an investigation was
-threatened it burned its books and sent its criminal agents out of the
-country. In the commercial world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out
-thousands of businesses every year, it drove men to madness and suicide.
-It had forced the price of cattle so low as to destroy the stock-raising
-industry, an occupation upon which whole states existed; it had ruined
-thousands of butchers who had refused to handle its products. It divided
-the country into districts, and fixed the price of meat in all of them;
-and it owned all the refrigerator cars, and levied an enormous tribute
-upon all poultry and eggs and fruit and vegetables. With the millions
-of dollars a week that poured in upon it, it was reaching out for
-the control of other interests, railroads and trolley lines, gas and
-electric light franchises--it already owned the leather and the grain
-business of the country. The people were tremendously stirred up over
-its encroachments, but nobody had any remedy to suggest; it was the task
-of Socialists to teach and organize them, and prepare them for the time
-when they were to seize the huge machine called the Beef Trust, and use
-it to produce food for human beings and not to heap up fortunes for a
-band of pirates. It was long after midnight when Jurgis lay down upon
-the floor of Ostrinski's kitchen; and yet it was an hour before he
-could get to sleep, for the glory of that joyful vision of the people of
-Packingtown marching in and taking possession of the Union Stockyards!
-
-
-Chapter 30
-
-
-Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then he went
-home to Elzbieta. He was no longer shy about it--when he went in,
-instead of saying all the things he had been planning to say, he started
-to tell Elzbieta about the revolution! At first she thought he was out
-of his mind, and it was hours before she could really feel certain that
-he was himself. When, however, she had satisfied herself that he was
-sane upon all subjects except politics, she troubled herself no
-further about it. Jurgis was destined to find that Elzbieta's armor was
-absolutely impervious to Socialism. Her soul had been baked hard in the
-fire of adversity, and there was no altering it now; life to her was the
-hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only as they bore upon
-that. All that interested her in regard to this new frenzy which had
-seized hold of her son-in-law was whether or not it had a tendency to
-make him sober and industrious; and when she found he intended to look
-for work and to contribute his share to the family fund, she gave him
-full rein to convince her of anything. A wonderfully wise little woman
-was Elzbieta; she could think as quickly as a hunted rabbit, and in half
-an hour she had chosen her life-attitude to the Socialist movement.
-She agreed in everything with Jurgis, except the need of his paying his
-dues; and she would even go to a meeting with him now and then, and sit
-and plan her next day's dinner amid the storm.
-
-For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wander about
-all day, looking for work; until at last he met with a strange fortune.
-He was passing one of Chicago's innumerable small hotels, and after some
-hesitation he concluded to go in. A man he took for the proprietor was
-standing in the lobby, and he went up to him and tackled him for a job.
-
-"What can you do?" the man asked.
-
-"Anything, sir," said Jurgis, and added quickly: "I've been out of work
-for a long time, sir. I'm an honest man, and I'm strong and willing--"
-
-The other was eying him narrowly. "Do you drink?" he asked.
-
-"No, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Well, I've been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks. I've
-discharged him seven times now, and I've about made up my mind that's
-enough. Would you be a porter?"
-
-"Yes, sir."
-
-"It's hard work. You'll have to clean floors and wash spittoons and fill
-lamps and handle trunks--"
-
-"I'm willing, sir."
-
-"All right. I'll pay you thirty a month and board, and you can begin
-now, if you feel like it. You can put on the other fellow's rig."
-
-And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night. Then
-he went and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paid a visit to
-Ostrinski to let him know of his good fortune. Here he received a great
-surprise, for when he was describing the location of the hotel Ostrinski
-interrupted suddenly, "Not Hinds's!"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the name."
-
-To which the other replied, "Then you've got the best boss in
-Chicago--he's a state organizer of our party, and one of our best-known
-speakers!"
-
-So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him; and the
-man seized him by the hand and shook it. "By Jove!" he cried, "that lets
-me out. I didn't sleep all last night because I had discharged a good
-Socialist!"
-
-So, after that, Jurgis was known to his "boss" as "Comrade Jurgis," and
-in return he was expected to call him "Comrade Hinds." "Tommy" Hinds,
-as he was known to his intimates, was a squat little man, with broad
-shoulders and a florid face, decorated with gray side whiskers.
-He was the kindest-hearted man that ever lived, and the
-liveliest--inexhaustible in his enthusiasm, and talking Socialism all
-day and all night. He was a great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and
-would keep a meeting in an uproar; when once he got really waked up, the
-torrent of his eloquence could be compared with nothing save Niagara.
-
-Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith's helper, and had run away
-to join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with
-"graft," in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a
-musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only
-brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of his
-own old age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his
-joints, and then he would screw up his face and mutter: "Capitalism, my
-boy, capitalism! 'Ecrasez l'infame!'" He had one unfailing remedy for
-all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one; no matter
-whether the person's trouble was failure in business, or dyspepsia, or
-a quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle would come into his eyes and he
-would say, "You know what to do about it--vote the Socialist ticket!"
-
-Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon as the war
-was over. He had gone into business, and found himself in competition
-with the fortunes of those who had been stealing while he had been
-fighting. The city government was in their hands and the railroads were
-in league with them, and honest business was driven to the wall; and
-so Hinds had put all his savings into Chicago real estate, and set out
-singlehanded to dam the river of graft. He had been a reform member
-of the city council, he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor Unionist, a
-Populist, a Bryanite--and after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896
-had served to convince him that the power of concentrated wealth could
-never be controlled, but could only be destroyed. He had published a
-pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of his own, when a
-stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that others had been
-ahead of him. Now for eight years he had been fighting for the
-party, anywhere, everywhere--whether it was a G.A.R. reunion, or a
-hotel-keepers' convention, or an Afro-American business-men's banquet, or
-a Bible society picnic, Tommy Hinds would manage to get himself invited
-to explain the relations of Socialism to the subject in hand. After that
-he would start off upon a tour of his own, ending at some place between
-New York and Oregon; and when he came back from there, he would go out
-to organize new locals for the state committee; and finally he would
-come home to rest--and talk Socialism in Chicago. Hinds's hotel was a
-very hot-bed of the propaganda; all the employees were party men, and if
-they were not when they came, they were quite certain to be before they
-went away. The proprietor would get into a discussion with some one in
-the lobby, and as the conversation grew animated, others would gather
-about to listen, until finally every one in the place would be crowded
-into a group, and a regular debate would be under way. This went on
-every night--when Tommy Hinds was not there to do it, his clerk did it;
-and when his clerk was away campaigning, the assistant attended to it,
-while Mrs. Hinds sat behind the desk and did the work. The clerk was an
-old crony of the proprietor's, an awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with
-a lean, sallow face, a broad mouth, and whiskers under his chin,
-the very type and body of a prairie farmer. He had been that all his
-life--he had fought the railroads in Kansas for fifty years, a Granger,
-a Farmers' Alliance man, a "middle-of-the-road" Populist. Finally, Tommy
-Hinds had revealed to him the wonderful idea of using the trusts instead
-of destroying them, and he had sold his farm and come to Chicago.
-
-That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, the assistant
-clerk, a pale, scholarly-looking man, who came from Massachusetts, of
-Pilgrim stock. Adams had been a cotton operative in Fall River, and the
-continued depression in the industry had worn him and his family out,
-and he had emigrated to South Carolina. In Massachusetts the percentage
-of white illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in South
-Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent; also in South Carolina
-there is a property qualification for voters--and for these and other
-reasons child labor is the rule, and so the cotton mills were driving
-those of Massachusetts out of the business. Adams did not know this, he
-only knew that the Southern mills were running; but when he got there
-he found that if he was to live, all his family would have to work, and
-from six o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. So he had set
-to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion in Massachusetts,
-and had been discharged; but he had gotten other work, and stuck at it,
-and at last there had been a strike for shorter hours, and Harry Adams
-had attempted to address a street meeting, which was the end of him.
-In the states of the far South the labor of convicts is leased to
-contractors, and when there are not convicts enough they have to be
-supplied. Harry Adams was sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the
-mill owner with whose business he had interfered; and though the life
-had nearly killed him, he had been wise enough not to murmur, and at
-the end of his term he and his family had left the state of South
-Carolina--hell's back yard, as he called it. He had no money for
-carfare, but it was harvest-time, and they walked one day and worked
-the next; and so Adams got at last to Chicago, and joined the Socialist
-party. He was a studious man, reserved, and nothing of an orator; but
-he always had a pile of books under his desk in the hotel, and articles
-from his pen were beginning to attract attention in the party press.
-
-Contrary to what one would have expected, all this radicalism did not
-hurt the hotel business; the radicals flocked to it, and the commercial
-travelers all found it diverting. Of late, also, the hotel had become a
-favorite stopping place for Western cattlemen. Now that the Beef Trust
-had adopted the trick of raising prices to induce enormous shipments of
-cattle, and then dropping them again and scooping in all they needed,
-a stock raiser was very apt to find himself in Chicago without money
-enough to pay his freight bill; and so he had to go to a cheap hotel,
-and it was no drawback to him if there was an agitator talking in the
-lobby. These Western fellows were just "meat" for Tommy Hinds--he
-would get a dozen of them around him and paint little pictures of "the
-System." Of course, it was not a week before he had heard Jurgis's
-story, and after that he would not have let his new porter go for the
-world. "See here," he would say, in the middle of an argument, "I've got
-a fellow right here in my place who's worked there and seen every bit of
-it!" And then Jurgis would drop his work, whatever it was, and come, and
-the other would say, "Comrade Jurgis, just tell these gentlemen what you
-saw on the killing-beds." At first this request caused poor Jurgis the
-most acute agony, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to talk; but
-gradually he found out what was wanted, and in the end he learned to
-stand up and speak his piece with enthusiasm. His employer would sit by
-and encourage him with exclamations and shakes of the head; when Jurgis
-would give the formula for "potted ham," or tell about the condemned
-hogs that were dropped into the "destructors" at the top and immediately
-taken out again at the bottom, to be shipped into another state and made
-into lard, Tommy Hinds would bang his knee and cry, "Do you think a man
-could make up a thing like that out of his head?"
-
-And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialists had the
-only real remedy for such evils, how they alone "meant business" with
-the Beef Trust. And when, in answer to this, the victim would say that
-the whole country was getting stirred up, that the newspapers were full
-of denunciations of it, and the government taking action against it,
-Tommy Hinds had a knock-out blow all ready. "Yes," he would say, "all
-that is true--but what do you suppose is the reason for it? Are you
-foolish enough to believe that it's done for the public? There are
-other trusts in the country just as illegal and extortionate as the Beef
-Trust: there is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in winter--there
-is the Steel Trust, that doubles the price of every nail in your
-shoes--there is the Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading at night--and
-why do you suppose it is that all the fury of the press and the
-government is directed against the Beef Trust?" And when to this the
-victim would reply that there was clamor enough over the Oil Trust, the
-other would continue: "Ten years ago Henry D. Lloyd told all the truth
-about the Standard Oil Company in his Wealth versus Commonwealth; and
-the book was allowed to die, and you hardly ever hear of it. And now, at
-last, two magazines have the courage to tackle 'Standard Oil' again, and
-what happens? The newspapers ridicule the authors, the churches defend
-the criminals, and the government--does nothing. And now, why is it all
-so different with the Beef Trust?"
-
-Here the other would generally admit that he was "stuck"; and Tommy
-Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyes open. "If you
-were a Socialist," the hotel-keeper would say, "you would understand that
-the power which really governs the United States today is the Railroad
-Trust. It is the Railroad Trust that runs your state government,
-wherever you live, and that runs the United States Senate. And all of
-the trusts that I have named are railroad trusts--save only the Beef
-Trust! The Beef Trust has defied the railroads--it is plundering them
-day by day through the Private Car; and so the public is roused to
-fury, and the papers clamor for action, and the government goes on the
-war-path! And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, and
-think it's all done for you, and never dream that it is really the grand
-climax of the century-long battle of commercial competition--the final
-death grapple between the chiefs of the Beef Trust and 'Standard Oil,'
-for the prize of the mastery and ownership of the United States of
-America!"
-
-
-Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and in which his
-education was completed. Perhaps you would imagine that he did not do
-much work there, but that would be a great mistake. He would have cut
-off one hand for Tommy Hinds; and to keep Hinds's hotel a thing of
-beauty was his joy in life. That he had a score of Socialist arguments
-chasing through his brain in the meantime did not interfere with
-this; on the contrary, Jurgis scrubbed the spittoons and polished
-the banisters all the more vehemently because at the same time he was
-wrestling inwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant. It would be pleasant
-to record that he swore off drinking immediately, and all the rest
-of his bad habits with it; but that would hardly be exact. These
-revolutionists were not angels; they were men, and men who had come up
-from the social pit, and with the mire of it smeared over them. Some of
-them drank, and some of them swore, and some of them ate pie with their
-knives; there was only one difference between them and all the rest of
-the populace--that they were men with a hope, with a cause to fight
-for and suffer for. There came times to Jurgis when the vision seemed
-far-off and pale, and a glass of beer loomed large in comparison; but
-if the glass led to another glass, and to too many glasses, he had
-something to spur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow. It was
-so evidently a wicked thing to spend one's pennies for drink, when the
-working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to be delivered;
-the price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies of a leaflet, and
-one could hand these out to the unregenerate, and then get drunk upon
-the thought of the good that was being accomplished. That was the way
-the movement had been made, and it was the only way it would progress;
-it availed nothing to know of it, without fighting for it--it was a
-thing for all, not for a few! A corollary of this proposition of course
-was, that any one who refused to receive the new gospel was personally
-responsible for keeping Jurgis from his heart's desire; and this, alas,
-made him uncomfortable as an acquaintance. He met some neighbors with
-whom Elzbieta had made friends in her neighborhood, and he set out to
-make Socialists of them by wholesale, and several times he all but got
-into a fight.
-
-It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis! It was so incomprehensible
-how a man could fail to see it! Here were all the opportunities of the
-country, the land, and the buildings upon the land, the railroads, the
-mines, the factories, and the stores, all in the hands of a few private
-individuals, called capitalists, for whom the people were obliged to
-work for wages. The whole balance of what the people produced went to
-heap up the fortunes of these capitalists, to heap, and heap again, and
-yet again--and that in spite of the fact that they, and every one about
-them, lived in unthinkable luxury! And was it not plain that if the
-people cut off the share of those who merely "owned," the share of those
-who worked would be much greater? That was as plain as two and two makes
-four; and it was the whole of it, absolutely the whole of it; and yet
-there were people who could not see it, who would argue about everything
-else in the world. They would tell you that governments could not manage
-things as economically as private individuals; they would repeat and
-repeat that, and think they were saying something! They could not see
-that "economical" management by masters meant simply that they, the
-people, were worked harder and ground closer and paid less! They were
-wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of exploiters whose one thought
-was to get as much out of them as possible; and they were taking
-an interest in the process, were anxious lest it should not be done
-thoroughly enough! Was it not honestly a trial to listen to an argument
-such as that?
-
-And yet there were things even worse. You would begin talking to some
-poor devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirty years, and
-had never been able to save a penny; who left home every morning at six
-o'clock, to go and tend a machine, and come back at night too tired to
-take his clothes off; who had never had a week's vacation in his life,
-had never traveled, never had an adventure, never learned anything,
-never hoped anything--and when you started to tell him about
-Socialism he would sniff and say, "I'm not interested in that--I'm an
-individualist!" And then he would go on to tell you that Socialism was
-"paternalism," and that if it ever had its way the world would stop
-progressing. It was enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like
-that; and yet it was no laughing matter, as you found out--for how many
-millions of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose lives had been
-so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew what freedom was! And
-they really thought that it was "individualism" for tens of thousands
-of them to herd together and obey the orders of a steel magnate, and
-produce hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth for him, and then let
-him give them libraries; while for them to take the industry, and run it
-to suit themselves, and build their own libraries--that would have been
-"Paternalism"!
-
-Sometimes the agony of such things as this was almost more than Jurgis
-could bear; yet there was no way of escape from it, there was nothing
-to do but to dig away at the base of this mountain of ignorance and
-prejudice. You must keep at the poor fellow; you must hold your temper,
-and argue with him, and watch for your chance to stick an idea or
-two into his head. And the rest of the time you must sharpen up your
-weapons--you must think out new replies to his objections, and provide
-yourself with new facts to prove to him the folly of his ways.
-
-So Jurgis acquired the reading habit. He would carry in his pocket a
-tract or a pamphlet which some one had loaned him, and whenever he had
-an idle moment during the day he would plod through a paragraph, and
-then think about it while he worked. Also he read the newspapers, and
-asked questions about them. One of the other porters at Hinds's was a
-sharp little Irishman, who knew everything that Jurgis wanted to know;
-and while they were busy he would explain to him the geography of
-America, and its history, its constitution and its laws; also he gave
-him an idea of the business system of the country, the great railroads
-and corporations, and who owned them, and the labor unions, and the big
-strikes, and the men who had led them. Then at night, when he could get
-off, Jurgis would attend the Socialist meetings. During the campaign one
-was not dependent upon the street corner affairs, where the weather
-and the quality of the orator were equally uncertain; there were
-hall meetings every night, and one could hear speakers of national
-prominence. These discussed the political situation from every point of
-view, and all that troubled Jurgis was the impossibility of carrying off
-but a small part of the treasures they offered him.
-
-There was a man who was known in the party as the "Little Giant." The
-Lord had used up so much material in the making of his head that there
-had not been enough to complete his legs; but he got about on the
-platform, and when he shook his raven whiskers the pillars of capitalism
-rocked. He had written a veritable encyclopedia upon the subject, a book
-that was nearly as big as himself--And then there was a young
-author, who came from California, and had been a salmon fisher, an
-oyster-pirate, a longshoreman, a sailor; who had tramped the country and
-been sent to jail, had lived in the Whitechapel slums, and been to the
-Klondike in search of gold. All these things he pictured in his books,
-and because he was a man of genius he forced the world to hear him. Now
-he was famous, but wherever he went he still preached the gospel of
-the poor. And then there was one who was known at the "millionaire
-Socialist." He had made a fortune in business, and spent nearly all of
-it in building up a magazine, which the post office department had tried
-to suppress, and had driven to Canada. He was a quiet-mannered man, whom
-you would have taken for anything in the world but a Socialist agitator.
-His speech was simple and informal--he could not understand why any
-one should get excited about these things. It was a process of economic
-evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws and methods. Life was a
-struggle for existence, and the strong overcame the weak, and in turn
-were overcome by the strongest. Those who lost in the struggle were
-generally exterminated; but now and then they had been known to save
-themselves by combination--which was a new and higher kind of strength.
-It was so that the gregarious animals had overcome the predaceous; it
-was so, in human history, that the people had mastered the kings. The
-workers were simply the citizens of industry, and the Socialist movement
-was the expression of their will to survive. The inevitability of the
-revolution depended upon this fact, that they had no choice but to unite
-or be exterminated; this fact, grim and inexorable, depended upon no
-human will, it was the law of the economic process, of which the editor
-showed the details with the most marvelous precision.
-
-And later on came the evening of the great meeting of the campaign, when
-Jurgis heard the two standard-bearers of his party. Ten years before
-there had been in Chicago a strike of a hundred and fifty thousand
-railroad employees, and thugs had been hired by the railroads to commit
-violence, and the President of the United States had sent in troops
-to break the strike, by flinging the officers of the union into jail
-without trial. The president of the union came out of his cell a ruined
-man; but also he came out a Socialist; and now for just ten years he had
-been traveling up and down the country, standing face to face with the
-people, and pleading with them for justice. He was a man of electric
-presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thin by struggle and
-suffering. The fury of outraged manhood gleamed in it--and the tears of
-suffering little children pleaded in his voice. When he spoke he paced
-the stage, lithe and eager, like a panther. He leaned over, reaching out
-for his audience; he pointed into their souls with an insistent finger.
-His voice was husky from much speaking, but the great auditorium was as
-still as death, and every one heard him.
-
-And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some one handed him
-a paper which he carried home with him and read; and so he became
-acquainted with the "Appeal to Reason." About twelve years previously a
-Colorado real-estate speculator had made up his mind that it was wrong
-to gamble in the necessities of life of human beings: and so he had
-retired and begun the publication of a Socialist weekly. There had come
-a time when he had to set his own type, but he had held on and won out,
-and now his publication was an institution. It used a carload of paper
-every week, and the mail trains would be hours loading up at the depot
-of the little Kansas town. It was a four-page weekly, which sold for
-less than half a cent a copy; its regular subscription list was a
-quarter of a million, and it went to every crossroads post office in
-America.
-
-The "Appeal" was a "propaganda" paper. It had a manner all its own--it
-was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang and hustle: It collected
-news of the doings of the "plutes," and served it up for the benefit
-of the "American working-mule." It would have columns of the deadly
-parallel--the million dollars' worth of diamonds, or the fancy
-pet-poodle establishment of a society dame, beside the fate of Mrs.
-Murphy of San Francisco, who had starved to death on the streets, or of
-John Robinson, just out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New
-York because he could not find work. It collected the stories of graft
-and misery from the daily press, and made a little pungent paragraphs
-out of them. "Three banks of Bungtown, South Dakota, failed, and
-more savings of the workers swallowed up!" "The mayor of Sandy Creek,
-Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousand dollars. That's the kind
-of rulers the old partyites give you!" "The president of the Florida
-Flying Machine Company is in jail for bigamy. He was a prominent
-opponent of Socialism, which he said would break up the home!" The
-"Appeal" had what it called its "Army," about thirty thousand of the
-faithful, who did things for it; and it was always exhorting the "Army"
-to keep its dander up, and occasionally encouraging it with a prize
-competition, for anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or an
-eighty-acre farm. Its office helpers were all known to the "Army" by
-quaint titles--"Inky Ike," "the Bald-headed Man," "the Redheaded Girl,"
-"the Bulldog," "the Office Goat," and "the One Hoss."
-
-But sometimes, again, the "Appeal" would be desperately serious. It sent
-a correspondent to Colorado, and printed pages describing the overthrow
-of American institutions in that state. In a certain city of the country
-it had over forty of its "Army" in the headquarters of the Telegraph
-Trust, and no message of importance to Socialists ever went through that
-a copy of it did not go to the "Appeal." It would print great broadsides
-during the campaign; one copy that came to Jurgis was a manifesto
-addressed to striking workingmen, of which nearly a million copies had
-been distributed in the industrial centers, wherever the employers'
-associations had been carrying out their "open shop" program. "You have
-lost the strike!" it was headed. "And now what are you going to do about
-it?" It was what is called an "incendiary" appeal--it was written by a
-man into whose soul the iron had entered. When this edition appeared,
-twenty thousand copies were sent to the stockyards district; and they
-were taken out and stowed away in the rear of a little cigar store, and
-every evening, and on Sundays, the members of the Packingtown locals
-would get armfuls and distribute them on the streets and in the houses.
-The people of Packingtown had lost their strike, if ever a people had,
-and so they read these papers gladly, and twenty thousand were hardly
-enough to go round. Jurgis had resolved not to go near his old home
-again, but when he heard of this it was too much for him, and every
-night for a week he would get on the car and ride out to the stockyards,
-and help to undo his work of the previous year, when he had sent Mike
-Scully's ten-pin setter to the city Board of Aldermen.
-
-It was quite marvelous to see what a difference twelve months had
-made in Packingtown--the eyes of the people were getting opened! The
-Socialists were literally sweeping everything before them that election,
-and Scully and the Cook County machine were at their wits' end for an
-"issue." At the very close of the campaign they bethought themselves of
-the fact that the strike had been broken by Negroes, and so they sent
-for a South Carolina fire-eater, the "pitchfork senator," as he was
-called, a man who took off his coat when he talked to workingmen,
-and damned and swore like a Hessian. This meeting they advertised
-extensively, and the Socialists advertised it too--with the result
-that about a thousand of them were on hand that evening. The "pitchfork
-senator" stood their fusillade of questions for about an hour, and then
-went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting was a strictly
-party affair. Jurgis, who had insisted upon coming, had the time of
-his life that night; he danced about and waved his arms in his
-excitement--and at the very climax he broke loose from his friends,
-and got out into the aisle, and proceeded to make a speech himself! The
-senator had been denying that the Democratic party was corrupt; it
-was always the Republicans who bought the votes, he said--and here was
-Jurgis shouting furiously, "It's a lie! It's a lie!" After which he went
-on to tell them how he knew it--that he knew it because he had bought
-them himself! And he would have told the "pitchfork senator" all his
-experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed him about the neck
-and shoved him into a seat.
-
-
-Chapter 31
-
-
-One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job was to
-go and see Marija. She came down into the basement of the house to meet
-him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, "I've
-got work now, and so you can leave here."
-
-But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to
-do, she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a
-secret--girls had tried it, and they were always found out. There were
-thousands of men who came to this place, and sooner or later she would
-meet one of them. "And besides," Marija added, "I can't do anything. I'm
-no good--I take dope. What could you do with me?"
-
-"Can't you stop?" Jurgis cried.
-
-"No," she answered, "I'll never stop. What's the use of talking about
-it--I'll stay here till I die, I guess. It's all I'm fit for." And that
-was all that he could get her to say--there was no use trying. When
-he told her he would not let Elzbieta take her money, she answered
-indifferently: "Then it'll be wasted here--that's all." Her eyelids
-looked heavy and her face was red and swollen; he saw that he was
-annoying her, that she only wanted him to go away. So he went,
-disappointed and sad.
-
-Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life. Elzbieta was sick a
-good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very much the
-worse for their life upon the streets. But he stuck by the family
-nevertheless, for they reminded him of his old happiness; and when
-things went wrong he could solace himself with a plunge into the
-Socialist movement. Since his life had been caught up into the current
-of this great stream, things which had before been the whole of life
-to him came to seem of relatively slight importance; his interests were
-elsewhere, in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and
-uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain one
-while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought, his life was a
-perpetual adventure. There was so much to know--so many wonders to
-be discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgis forget the day before
-election, when there came a telephone message from a friend of Harry
-Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis to see him that night; and Jurgis
-went, and met one of the minds of the movement.
-
-The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire who
-had given up his life to settlement work, and had a little home in the
-heart of the city's slums. He did not belong to the party, but he was
-in sympathy with it; and he said that he was to have as his guest that
-night the editor of a big Eastern magazine, who wrote against Socialism,
-but really did not know what it was. The millionaire suggested that
-Adams bring Jurgis along, and then start up the subject of "pure food,"
-in which the editor was interested.
-
-Young Fisher's home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and
-weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw
-was half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly
-visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a
-log fire was crackling in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were
-gathered about it when Adams and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to
-his dismay that three of them were ladies. He had never talked to people
-of this sort before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment. He
-stood in the doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and made a
-deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, when he was
-asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner, and sat down
-upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off his forehead with
-his sleeve. He was terrified lest they should expect him to talk.
-
-There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in evening
-dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking gentleman named
-Maynard. There was the former's frail young wife, and also an elderly
-lady, who taught kindergarten in the settlement, and a young college
-student, a beautiful girl with an intense and earnest face. She only
-spoke once or twice while Jurgis was there--the rest of the time she sat
-by the table in the center of the room, resting her chin in her hands
-and drinking in the conversation. There were two other men, whom young
-Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr. Schliemann; he
-heard them address Adams as "Comrade," and so he knew that they were
-Socialists.
-
-The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman of
-clerical aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, it transpired,
-and had seen the light and become a prophet of the new dispensation.
-He traveled all over the country, living like the apostles of old, upon
-hospitality, and preaching upon street-corners when there was no hall.
-The other man had been in the midst of a discussion with the editor when
-Adams and Jurgis came in; and at the suggestion of the host they resumed
-it after the interruption. Jurgis was soon sitting spellbound, thinking
-that here was surely the strangest man that had ever lived in the world.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairy hands
-and bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, and had been a
-professor of philosophy--until, as he said, he had found that he was
-selling his character as well as his time. Instead he had come to
-America, where he lived in a garret room in this slum district, and made
-volcanic energy take the place of fire. He studied the composition of
-food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his
-body needed; and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the value
-of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the first
-of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when he
-struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars and a
-half a day, and come home when he had another year's supply--a hundred
-and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to independence
-a man could make "under capitalism," he explained; he would never marry,
-for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the
-revolution.
-
-He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head so far in
-the shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflected from the fire
-on the hearth. He spoke simply, and utterly without emotion; with the
-manner of a teacher setting forth to a group of scholars an axiom in
-geometry, he would enunciate such propositions as made the hair of
-an ordinary person rise on end. And when the auditor had asserted
-his non-comprehension, he would proceed to elucidate by some new
-proposition, yet more appalling. To Jurgis the Herr Dr. Schliemann
-assumed the proportions of a thunderstorm or an earthquake. And yet,
-strange as it might seem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he
-could follow the argument nearly all the time. He was carried over the
-difficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away in mad
-career--a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse Speculation.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and with man
-as a small part of it. He understood human institutions, and blew them
-about like soap bubbles. It was surprising that so much destructiveness
-could be contained in one human mind. Was it government? The purpose
-of government was the guarding of property-rights, the perpetuation
-of ancient force and modern fraud. Or was it marriage? Marriage
-and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man's
-exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a
-difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own
-terms: equality, a life contract, and the legitimacy--that is, the
-property-rights--of her children. If she had no money, she was a
-proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. And then the subject
-became Religion, which was the Archfiend's deadliest weapon. Government
-oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind,
-and poisoned the stream of progress at its source. The working-man was
-to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in
-this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience--in short
-to all the pseudo-virtues of capitalism. The destiny of civilization
-would be decided in one final death struggle between the Red
-International and the Black, between Socialism and the Roman Catholic
-Church; while here at home, "the stygian midnight of American
-evangelicalism--"
-
-And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was a lively
-tussle. "Comrade" Lucas was not what is called an educated man; he knew
-only the Bible, but it was the Bible interpreted by real experience. And
-what was the use, he asked, of confusing Religion with men's perversions
-of it? That the church was in the hands of the merchants at the moment
-was obvious enough; but already there were signs of rebellion, and if
-Comrade Schliemann could come back a few years from now--
-
-"Ah, yes," said the other, "of course, I have no doubt that in a hundred
-years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed Socialism, just
-as at present it denies that it ever tortured Galileo."
-
-"I am not defending the Vatican," exclaimed Lucas, vehemently. "I am
-defending the word of God--which is one long cry of the human spirit for
-deliverance from the sway of oppression. Take the twenty-fourth chapter
-of the Book of Job, which I am accustomed to quote in my addresses as
-'the Bible upon the Beef Trust'; or take the words of Isaiah--or of the
-Master himself! Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious art,
-not the jeweled idol of our society churches--but the Jesus of the awful
-reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of the world,
-who had nowhere to lay his head--"
-
-"I will grant you Jesus," interrupted the other.
-
-"Well, then," cried Lucas, "and why should Jesus have nothing to do with
-his church--why should his words and his life be of no authority among
-those who profess to adore him? Here is a man who was the world's first
-revolutionist, the true founder of the Socialist movement; a man whose
-whole being was one flame of hatred for wealth, and all that wealth
-stands for,--for the pride of wealth, and the luxury of wealth, and the
-tyranny of wealth; who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man of the
-people, an associate of saloon-keepers and women of the town; who again
-and again, in the most explicit language, denounced wealth and
-the holding of wealth: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
-earth!'--'Sell that ye have and give alms!'--'Blessed are ye poor, for
-yours is the kingdom of Heaven!'--'Woe unto you that are rich, for ye
-have received your consolation!'--'Verily, I say unto you, that a rich
-man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of Heaven!' Who denounced in
-unmeasured terms the exploiters of his own time: 'Woe unto you, scribes
-and pharisees, hypocrites!'--'Woe unto you also, you lawyers!'--'Ye
-serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
-hell?' Who drove out the business men and brokers from the temple with a
-whip! Who was crucified--think of it--for an incendiary and a disturber
-of the social order! And this man they have made into the high priest of
-property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors
-and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jeweled images are
-made of him, sensual priests burn incense to him, and modern pirates of
-industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women
-and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats and
-listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of dusty divinity--"
-
-"Bravo!" cried Schliemann, laughing. But the other was in full
-career--he had talked this subject every day for five years, and had
-never yet let himself be stopped. "This Jesus of Nazareth!" he cried.
-"This class-conscious working-man! This union carpenter! This agitator,
-law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist! He, the sovereign lord and master
-of a world which grinds the bodies and souls of human beings into
-dollars--if he could come into the world this day and see the things
-that men have made in his name, would it not blast his soul with horror?
-Would he not go mad at the sight of it, he the Prince of Mercy and Love!
-That dreadful night when he lay in the Garden of Gethsemane and writhed
-in agony until he sweat blood--do you think that he saw anything worse
-than he might see tonight upon the plains of Manchuria, where men march
-out with a jeweled image of him before them, to do wholesale murder for
-the benefit of foul monsters of sensuality and cruelty? Do you not know
-that if he were in St. Petersburg now, he would take the whip with which
-he drove out the bankers from his temple--"
-
-Here the speaker paused an instant for breath. "No, comrade," said the
-other, dryly, "for he was a practical man. He would take pretty little
-imitation lemons, such as are now being shipped into Russia, handy for
-carrying in the pockets, and strong enough to blow a whole temple out of
-sight."
-
-Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this; then
-he began again: "But look at it from the point of view of practical
-politics, comrade. Here is an historical figure whom all men reverence
-and love, whom some regard as divine; and who was one of us--who lived
-our life, and taught our doctrine. And now shall we leave him in the
-hands of his enemies--shall we allow them to stifle and stultify his
-example? We have his words, which no one can deny; and shall we not
-quote them to the people, and prove to them what he was, and what he
-taught, and what he did? No, no, a thousand times no!--we shall use his
-authority to turn out the knaves and sluggards from his ministry, and we
-shall yet rouse the people to action!--"
-
-Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to a paper on
-the table. "Here, comrade," he said, with a laugh, "here is a place for
-you to begin. A bishop whose wife has just been robbed of fifty thousand
-dollars' worth of diamonds! And a most unctuous and oily of bishops!
-An eminent and scholarly bishop! A philanthropist and friend of labor
-bishop--a Civic Federation decoy duck for the chloroforming of the
-wage-working-man!"
-
-To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat as
-spectators. But now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion to remark,
-somewhat naively, that he had always understood that Socialists had a
-cut-and-dried program for the future of civilization; whereas here were
-two active members of the party, who, from what he could make out, were
-agreed about nothing at all. Would the two, for his enlightenment, try
-to ascertain just what they had in common, and why they belonged to the
-same party? This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of
-two carefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist believes in
-the common ownership and democratic management of the means of producing
-the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialist believes that
-the means by which this is to be brought about is the class conscious
-political organization of the wage-earners. Thus far they were at
-one; but no farther. To Lucas, the religious zealot, the co-operative
-commonwealth was the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, which is
-"within you." To the other, Socialism was simply a necessary step toward
-a far-distant goal, a step to be tolerated with impatience. Schliemann
-called himself a "philosophic anarchist"; and he explained that an
-anarchist was one who believed that the end of human existence was the
-free development of every personality, unrestricted by laws save those
-of its own being. Since the same kind of match would light every one's
-fire and the same-shaped loaf of bread would fill every one's stomach,
-it would be perfectly feasible to submit industry to the control of a
-majority vote. There was only one earth, and the quantity of material
-things was limited. Of intellectual and moral things, on the other hand,
-there was no limit, and one could have more without another's
-having less; hence "Communism in material production, anarchism in
-intellectual," was the formula of modern proletarian thought. As soon
-as the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society had been healed,
-there would be established a simple system whereby each man was credited
-with his labor and debited with his purchases; and after that the
-processes of production, exchange, and consumption would go on
-automatically, and without our being conscious of them, any more than
-a man is conscious of the beating of his heart. And then, explained
-Schliemann, society would break up into independent, self-governing
-communities of mutually congenial persons; examples of which at present
-were clubs, churches, and political parties. After the revolution, all
-the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of men would be
-cared for by such "free associations"; romantic novelists would be
-supported by those who liked to read romantic novels, and impressionist
-painters would be supported by those who liked to look at impressionist
-pictures--and the same with preachers and scientists, editors and actors
-and musicians. If any one wanted to work or paint or pray, and could
-find no one to maintain him, he could support himself by working part of
-the time. That was the case at present, the only difference being that
-the competitive wage system compelled a man to work all the time to
-live, while, after the abolition of privilege and exploitation, any
-one would be able to support himself by an hour's work a day. Also the
-artist's audience of the present was a small minority of people, all
-debased and vulgarized by the effort it had cost them to win in the
-commercial battle, of the intellectual and artistic activities which
-would result when the whole of mankind was set free from the nightmare
-of competition, we could at present form no conception whatever.
-
-And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr. Schliemann
-asserted that it might be possible for a society to exist upon an hour's
-toil by each of its members. "Just what," answered the other, "would be
-the productive capacity of society if the present resources of science
-were utilized, we have no means of ascertaining; but we may be sure it
-would exceed anything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to
-the ferocious barbarities of capitalism. After the triumph of the
-international proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable; and
-who can figure the cost of war to humanity--not merely the value of the
-lives and the material that it destroys, not merely the cost of keeping
-millions of men in idleness, of arming and equipping them for battle
-and parade, but the drain upon the vital energies of society by the
-war attitude and the war terror, the brutality and ignorance, the
-drunkenness, prostitution, and crime it entails, the industrial
-impotence and the moral deadness? Do you think that it would be too much
-to say that two hours of the working time of every efficient member of a
-community goes to feed the red fiend of war?"
-
-And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of
-competition: the losses of industrial warfare; the ceaseless worry and
-friction; the vices--such as drink, for instance, the use of which had
-nearly doubled in twenty years, as a consequence of the intensification
-of the economic struggle; the idle and unproductive members of the
-community, the frivolous rich and the pauperized poor; the law and the
-whole machinery of repression; the wastes of social ostentation, the
-milliners and tailors, the hairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and
-lackeys. "You understand," he said, "that in a society dominated by
-the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of
-prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So we have,
-at the present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the
-population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per cent
-occupied in destroying them. And this is not all; for the servants
-and panders of the parasites are also parasites, the milliners and the
-jewelers and the lackeys have also to be supported by the useful members
-of the community. And bear in mind also that this monstrous disease
-affects not merely the idlers and their menials, its poison penetrates
-the whole social body. Beneath the hundred thousand women of the elite
-are a million middle-class women, miserable because they are not of the
-elite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath them, in turn,
-are five million farmers' wives reading 'fashion papers' and trimming
-bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids selling themselves into
-brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-skin robes. And then
-consider that, added to this competition in display, you have, like
-oil on the flames, a whole system of competition in selling! You have
-manufacturers contriving tens of thousands of catchpenny devices,
-storekeepers displaying them, and newspapers and magazines filled up
-with advertisements of them!"
-
-"And don't forget the wastes of fraud," put in young Fisher.
-
-"When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,"
-responded Schliemann--"the science of persuading people to buy what they
-do not want--he is in the very center of the ghastly charnel house
-of capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely knows which of a dozen
-horrors to point out first. But consider the waste in time and energy
-incidental to making ten thousand varieties of a thing for purposes
-of ostentation and snobbishness, where one variety would do for use!
-Consider all the waste incidental to the manufacture of cheap qualities
-of goods, of goods made to sell and deceive the ignorant; consider the
-wastes of adulteration,--the shoddy clothing, the cotton blankets, the
-unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-preservers, the adulterated
-milk, the aniline soda water, the potato-flour sausages--"
-
-"And consider the moral aspects of the thing," put in the ex-preacher.
-
-"Precisely," said Schliemann; "the low knavery and the ferocious cruelty
-incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and the bribing, the
-blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, the hurrying and
-worrying. Of course, imitation and adulteration are the essence of
-competition--they are but another form of the phrase 'to buy in the
-cheapest market and sell in the dearest.' A government official has
-stated that the nation suffers a loss of a billion and a quarter dollars
-a year through adulterated foods; which means, of course, not only
-materials wasted that might have been useful outside of the human
-stomach, but doctors and nurses for people who would otherwise have
-been well, and undertakers for the whole human race ten or twenty years
-before the proper time. Then again, consider the waste of time and
-energy required to sell these things in a dozen stores, where one would
-do. There are a million or two of business firms in the country,
-and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and
-rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and worrying,
-the balancing of petty profit and loss. Consider the whole machinery
-of the civil law made necessary by these processes; the libraries of
-ponderous tomes, the courts and juries to interpret them, the lawyers
-studying to circumvent them, the pettifogging and chicanery, the hatreds
-and lies! Consider the wastes incidental to the blind and haphazard
-production of commodities--the factories closed, the workers idle,
-the goods spoiling in storage; consider the activities of the stock
-manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, the overstimulation of
-others, for speculative purposes; the assignments and bank failures,
-the crises and panics, the deserted towns and the starving populations!
-Consider the energies wasted in the seeking of markets, the sterile
-trades, such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster, advertising agent.
-Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into cities, made
-necessary by competition and by monopoly railroad rates; consider
-the slums, the bad air, the disease and the waste of vital energies;
-consider the office buildings, the waste of time and material in the
-piling of story upon story, and the burrowing underground! Then take
-the whole business of insurance, the enormous mass of administrative and
-clerical labor it involves, and all utter waste--"
-
-"I do not follow that," said the editor. "The Cooperative Commonwealth
-is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its
-members. Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared
-by all and made up by all. The bank is the universal government
-credit-account, the ledger in which every individual's earnings and
-spendings are balanced. There is also a universal government bulletin,
-in which are listed and precisely described everything which the
-commonwealth has for sale. As no one makes any profit by the sale, there
-is no longer any stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation; no
-cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery or 'grafting.'"
-
-"How is the price of an article determined?"
-
-"The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is
-determined by the first principles of arithmetic. The million workers in
-the nation's wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total
-product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of
-wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day. If we employ an arbitrary
-symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of
-a bushel of wheat is fifty cents."
-
-"You say 'for farm work,'" said Mr. Maynard. "Then labor is not to be
-paid alike?"
-
-"Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should
-have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. Of course the
-wages may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will
-have to be varied continually, according as a greater or less number of
-workers is needed in any particular industry. That is precisely what is
-done at present, except that the transfer of the workers is accomplished
-blindly and imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of
-instantly and completely, by a universal government bulletin."
-
-"How about those occupations in which time is difficult to calculate?
-What is the labor cost of a book?"
-
-"Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and binding of
-it--about a fifth of its present cost."
-
-"And the author?"
-
-"I have already said that the state could not control intellectual
-production. The state might say that it had taken a year to write the
-book, and the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that
-every bon mot of his had cost a purse of gold. What I outline here is
-a national, or rather international, system for the providing of the
-material needs of men. Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will
-work longer, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and in his
-own way. I live on the same earth as the majority, I wear the same kind
-of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but I do not think the same
-kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such thinkers as the
-majority selects. I wish such things to be left to free effort, as
-at present. If people want to listen to a certain preacher, they get
-together and contribute what they please, and pay for a church and
-support the preacher, and then listen to him; I, who do not want to
-listen to him, stay away, and it costs me nothing. In the same way there
-are magazines about Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and flying
-machines, and athletic records, and I know nothing about any of them.
-On the other hand, if wage slavery were abolished, and I could earn some
-spare money without paying tribute to an exploiting capitalist,
-then there would be a magazine for the purpose of interpreting
-and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche, the prophet of
-Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, the inventor of the noble
-science of clean eating; and incidentally, perhaps, for the discouraging
-of long skirts, and the scientific breeding of men and women, and the
-establishing of divorce by mutual consent."
-
-Dr. Schliemann paused for a moment. "That was a lecture," he said with a
-laugh, "and yet I am only begun!"
-
-"What else is there?" asked Maynard.
-
-"I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,"
-answered the other. "I have hardly mentioned the positive economies
-of co-operation. Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million
-families in this country; and at least ten million of these live
-separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage slave.
-Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the
-economies of co-operative cooking; and consider one single item, the
-washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing
-for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day's
-work, it takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons--mostly
-women to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most
-filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia,
-nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and
-insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children--for all of which
-things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each
-of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash
-and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch,
-but scientifically--sterilizing them--and do it at a saving of all the
-drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may
-find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take Kropotkin's Fields,
-Factories, and Workshops, and read about the new science of agriculture,
-which has been built up in the last ten years; by which, with made soils
-and intensive culture, a gardener can raise ten or twelve crops in a
-season, and two hundred tons of vegetables upon a single acre; by which
-the population of the whole globe could be supported on the soil now
-cultivated in the United States alone! It is impossible to apply such
-methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of our scattered farming
-population; but imagine the problem of providing the food supply of our
-nation once taken in hand systematically and rationally, by scientists!
-All the poor and rocky land set apart for a national timber reserve, in
-which our children play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell!
-The most favorable climate and soil for each product selected; the
-exact requirements of the community known, and the acreage figured
-accordingly; the most improved machinery employed, under the direction
-of expert agricultural chemists! I was brought up on a farm, and I know
-the awful deadliness of farm work; and I like to picture it all as
-it will be after the revolution. To picture the great potato-planting
-machine, drawn by four horses, or an electric motor, ploughing the
-furrow, cutting and dropping and covering the potatoes, and planting a
-score of acres a day! To picture the great potato-digging machine,
-run by electricity, perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field,
-scooping up earth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks! To
-every other kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way--apples
-and oranges picked by machinery, cows milked by electricity--things
-which are already done, as you may know. To picture the harvest fields
-of the future, to which millions of happy men and women come for a
-summer holiday, brought by special trains, the exactly needful number to
-each place! And to contrast all this with our present agonizing system
-of independent small farming,--a stunted, haggard, ignorant man, mated
-with a yellow, lean, and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling from four o'clock
-in the morning until nine at night, working the children as soon as they
-are able to walk, scratching the soil with its primitive tools, and shut
-out from all knowledge and hope, from all their benefits of science and
-invention, and all the joys of the spirit--held to a bare existence
-by competition in labor, and boasting of his freedom because he is too
-blind to see his chains!"
-
-Dr. Schliemann paused a moment. "And then," he continued, "place
-beside this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newest discovery of
-physiologists, that most of the ills of the human system are due to
-overfeeding! And then again, it has been proven that meat is unnecessary
-as a food; and meat is obviously more difficult to produce than
-vegetable food, less pleasant to prepare and handle, and more likely
-to be unclean. But what of that, so long as it tickles the palate more
-strongly?"
-
-"How would Socialism change that?" asked the girl-student, quickly. It
-was the first time she had spoken.
-
-"So long as we have wage slavery," answered Schliemann, "it matters not
-in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may be, it is easy to
-find people to perform it. But just as soon as labor is set free, then
-the price of such work will begin to rise. So one by one the old, dingy,
-and unsanitary factories will come down--it will be cheaper to build
-new; and so the steamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and
-so the dangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found
-for their products. In exactly the same way, as the citizens of
-our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost of
-slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those who want
-to eat meat will have to do their own killing--and how long do you think
-the custom would survive then?--To go on to another item--one of the
-necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political
-corruption; and one of the consequences of civic administration by
-ignorant and vicious politicians, is that preventable diseases kill off
-half our population. And even if science were allowed to try, it could
-do little, because the majority of human beings are not yet human beings
-at all, but simply machines for the creating of wealth for others. They
-are penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery, and
-the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all the doctors
-in the world could heal them; and so, of course, they remain as centers
-of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us, and making happiness
-impossible for even the most selfish. For this reason I would seriously
-maintain that all the medical and surgical discoveries that science can
-make in the future will be of less importance than the application of
-the knowledge we already possess, when the disinherited of the earth
-have established their right to a human existence."
-
-And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again. Jurgis had noticed
-that the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-table was listening
-with something of the same look that he himself had worn, the time when
-he had first discovered Socialism. Jurgis would have liked to talk to
-her, he felt sure that she would have understood him. Later on in the
-evening, when the group broke up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in
-a low voice, "I wonder if Mr. Maynard will still write the same things
-about Socialism"; to which she answered, "I don't know--but if he does
-we shall know that he is a knave!"
-
-
-And only a few hours after this came election day--when the long
-campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still and hold
-its breath, awaiting the issue. Jurgis and the rest of the staff of
-Hinds's Hotel could hardly stop to finish their dinner, before they
-hurried off to the big hall which the party had hired for that evening.
-
-But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph
-instrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns. When the
-final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to be over four
-hundred thousand--an increase of something like three hundred and fifty
-per cent in four years. And that was doing well; but the party was
-dependent for its early returns upon messages from the locals, and
-naturally those locals which had been most successful were the ones
-which felt most like reporting; and so that night every one in the hall
-believed that the vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight
-hundred thousand. Just such an incredible increase had actually been
-made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been 6,700
-in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been 9,600, and
-now it was 69,000! So, as the evening waxed, and the crowd piled in, the
-meeting was a sight to be seen. Bulletins would be read, and the people
-would shout themselves hoarse--and then some one would make a speech,
-and there would be more shouting; and then a brief silence, and more
-bulletins. There would come messages from the secretaries of neighboring
-states, reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from
-2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from 4,800
-to 36,000! There were telegrams to the national office from enthusiastic
-individuals in little towns which had made amazing and unprecedented
-increases in a single year: Benedict, Kansas, from 26 to 260; Henderson,
-Kentucky, from 19 to 111; Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208; Cleo,
-Oklahoma, from 0 to 104; Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many
-more of the same kind. There were literally hundreds of such towns;
-there would be reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch of
-telegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to the audience were
-old campaigners, who had been to the places and helped to make the
-vote, and could make appropriate comments: Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to
-831--that was where the mayor had arrested a Socialist speaker! Crawford
-County, Kansas, from 285 to 1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal
-to Reason"! Battle Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the
-answer of labor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!
-
-And then there were official returns from the various precincts and
-wards of the city itself! Whether it was a factory district or one of
-the "silk-stocking" wards seemed to make no particular difference in the
-increase; but one of the things which surprised the party leaders
-most was the tremendous vote that came rolling in from the stockyards.
-Packingtown comprised three wards of the city, and the vote in the
-spring of 1903 had been 500, and in the fall of the same year, 1,600.
-Now, only one year later, it was over 6,300--and the Democratic vote
-only 8,800! There were other wards in which the Democratic vote had
-been actually surpassed, and in two districts, members of the state
-legislature had been elected. Thus Chicago now led the country; it had
-set a new standard for the party, it had shown the workingmen the way!
-
---So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs of eyes
-were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheering his every
-sentence. The orator had been the head of the city's relief bureau in
-the stockyards, until the sight of misery and corruption had made him
-sick. He was young, hungry-looking, full of fire; and as he swung his
-long arms and beat up the crowd, to Jurgis he seemed the very spirit of
-the revolution. "Organize! Organize! Organize!"--that was his cry. He
-was afraid of this tremendous vote, which his party had not expected,
-and which it had not earned. "These men are not Socialists!" he cried.
-"This election will pass, and the excitement will die, and people will
-forget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink back and
-rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that we have polled to-day,
-and our enemies will laugh us to scorn! It rests with you to take your
-resolution--now, in the flush of victory, to find these men who have
-voted for us, and bring them to our meetings, and organize them and bind
-them to us! We shall not find all our campaigns as easy as this one.
-Everywhere in the country tonight the old party politicians are studying
-this vote, and setting their sails by it; and nowhere will they be
-quicker or more cunning than here in our own city. Fifty thousand
-Socialist votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownership Democracy in the
-spring! And then they will fool the voters once more, and all the powers
-of plunder and corruption will be swept into office again! But whatever
-they may do when they get in, there is one thing they will not do, and
-that will be the thing for which they were elected! They will not give
-the people of our city municipal ownership--they will not mean to do it,
-they will not try to do it; all that they will do is give our party
-in Chicago the greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialism
-in America! We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified and
-self-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy left without a lie
-with which to cover its nakedness! And then will begin the rush that
-will never be checked, the tide that will never turn till it has reached
-its flood--that will be irresistible, overwhelming--the rallying of the
-outraged workingmen of Chicago to our standard! And we shall organize
-them, we shall drill them, we shall marshal them for the victory! We
-shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep if before us--and Chicago
-will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!"
-
-
-
-
-
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-
-
-
-The Jungle
-by
-Upton Sinclair
-(1906)
-
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 1  
-
-
-It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began
-to arrive.  There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the
-exuberance of Marija Berczynskas.  The occasion rested heavily upon
-Marija's broad shoulders--it was her task to see that all things went
-in due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly
-hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and
-exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to
-see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself.
-She had left the church last of all, and, desiring to arrive first at
-the hall, had issued orders to the coachman to drive faster.  When that
-personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Marija had
-flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out, proceeded to tell
-him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not understand,
-and then in Polish, which he did.  Having the advantage of her in altitude,
-the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to attempt to speak;
-and the result had been a furious altercation, which, continuing all the
-way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of urchins to the cortege
-at each side street for half a mile.  
-
-This was unfortunate, for already there was a throng before the door.
-The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull
-"broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied
-with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics.  Seeing the
-throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors
-of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and
-proceeded to clear a way to the hall.  Once within, she turned and began
-to push the other way, roaring, meantime, "Eik!  Eik!  Uzdaryk-duris!"
-in tones which made the orchestral uproar sound like fairy music.
-
-"Z. Graiczunas, Pasilinksminimams darzas.  Vynas.  Sznapsas.  Wines and
-Liquors.  Union Headquarters"--that was the way the signs ran.  The reader,
-who perhaps has never held much converse in the language of far-off
-Lithuania, will be glad of the explanation that the place was the rear
-room of a saloon in that part of Chicago known as "back of the yards."
-This information is definite and suited to the matter of fact; but how
-pitifully inadequate it would have seemed to one who understood that it
-was also the supreme hour of ecstasy in the life of one of God's gentlest
-creatures, the scene of the wedding feast and the joy-transfiguration
-of little Ona Lukoszaite!
-
-She stood in the doorway, shepherded by Cousin Marija, breathless from
-pushing through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon.
-There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her
-otherwise wan little face was flushed.  She wore a muslin dress,
-conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders.
-There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright
-green rose leaves.  There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands,
-and as she stood staring about her she twisted them together feverishly.
-It was almost too much for her--you could see the pain of too great emotion
-in her face, and all the tremor of her form.  She was so young--not quite
-sixteen--and small for her age, a mere child; and she had just been
-married--and married to Jurgis,* (*Pronounced Yoorghis) of all men,
-to Jurgis Rudkus, he with the white flower in the buttonhole of his new
-black suit, he with the mighty shoulders and the giant hands.
-
-Ona was blue-eyed and fair, while Jurgis had great black eyes with beetling
-brows, and thick black hair that curled in waves about his ears--in short,
-they were one of those incongruous and impossible married couples with which
-Mother Nature so often wills to confound all prophets, before and after.
-Jurgis could take up a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound quarter of beef and
-carry it into a car without a stagger, or even a thought; and now he stood
-in a far corner, frightened as a hunted animal, and obliged to moisten his
-lips with his tongue each time before he could answer the congratulations
-of his friends.
-
-Gradually there was effected a separation between the spectators and the
-guests--a separation at least sufficiently complete for working purposes.
-There was no time during the festivities which ensued when there were not
-groups of onlookers in the doorways and the corners; and if any one of
-these onlookers came sufficiently close, or looked sufficiently hungry,
-a chair was offered him, and he was invited to the feast.  It was one of
-the laws of the veselija that no one goes hungry; and, while a rule made
-in the forests of Lithuania is hard to apply in the stockyards district of
-Chicago, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, still they did their
-best, and the children who ran in from the street, and even the dogs, went
-out again happier.  A charming informality was one of the characteristics
-of this celebration.  The men wore their hats, or, if they wished, they
-took them off, and their coats with them; they ate when and where they
-pleased, and moved as often as they pleased.  There were to be speeches
-and singing, but no one had to listen who did not care to; if he wished,
-meantime, to speak or sing himself, he was perfectly free.  The resulting
-medley of sound distracted no one, save possibly alone the babies, of which
-there were present a number equal to the total possessed by all the guests
-invited.  There was no other place for the babies to be, and so part of
-the preparations for the evening consisted of a collection of cribs and
-carriages in one corner.  In these the babies slept, three or four together,
-or wakened together, as the case might be.  Those who were still older,
-and could reach the tables, marched about munching contentedly at meat bones
-and bologna sausages.
-
-
-The room is about thirty feet square, with whitewashed walls, bare save for
-a calendar.  a picture of a race horse, and a family tree in a gilded frame.
-To the right there is a door from the saloon, with a few loafers in the
-doorway, and in the corner beyond it a bar, with a presiding genius clad
-in soiled white, with waxed black mustaches and a carefully oiled curl
-plastered against one side of his forehead.  In the opposite corner are
-two tables, filling a third of the room and laden with dishes and cold
-viands, which a few of the hungrier guests are already munching.  At the
-head, where sits the bride, is a snow-white cake, with an Eiffel tower of
-constructed decoration, with sugar roses and two angels upon it, and a
-generous sprinkling of pink and green and yellow candies.  Beyond opens
-a door into the kitchen, where there is a glimpse to be had of a range with
-much steam ascending from it, and many women, old and young, rushing hither
-and thither.  In the corner to the left are the three musicians, upon a
-little platform, toiling heroically to make some impression upon the hubbub;
-also the babies, similarly occupied, and an open window whence the populace
-imbibes the sights and sounds and odors.
-
-Suddenly some of the steam begins to advance, and, peering through it,
-you discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona's stepmother--Teta Elzbieta, as they call
-her--bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck.  Behind her is Kotrina,
-making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden; and half a
-minute later there appears old Grandmother Majauszkiene, with a big yellow
-bowl of smoking potatoes, nearly as big as herself.  So, bit by bit, the
-feast takes form--there is a ham and a dish of sauerkraut, boiled rice,
-macaroni, bologna sausages, great piles of penny buns, bowls of milk, and
-foaming pitchers of beer.  There is also, not six feet from your back,
-the bar, where you may order all you please and do not have to pay for it.
-"Eiksz!  Graicziau!" screams Marija Berczynskas, and falls to work herself--
-for there is more upon the stove inside that will be spoiled if it be
-not eaten.
-
-So, with laughter and shouts and endless badinage and merriment, the guests
-take their places.  The young men, who for the most part have been huddled
-near the door, summon their resolution and advance; and the shrinking
-Jurgis is poked and scolded by the old folks until he consents to seat
-himself at the right hand of the bride.  The two bridesmaids, whose
-insignia of office are paper wreaths, come next, and after them the rest
-of the guests, old and young, boys and girls.  The spirit of the occasion
-takes hold of the stately bartender, who condescends to a plate of stewed
-duck; even the fat policeman--whose duty it will be, later in the evening,
-to break up the fights--draws up a chair to the foot of the table.  And the
-children shout and the babies yell, and every one laughs and sings and
-chatters--while above all the deafening clamor Cousin Marija shouts orders
-to the musicians.
-
-The musicians--how shall one begin to describe them?  All this time they
-have been there, playing in a mad frenzy--all of this scene must be read,
-or said, or sung, to music.  It is the music which makes it what it is;
-it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon
-in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little comer of
-the high mansions of the sky.
-
-The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man.  His fiddle is
-out of tune, and there is no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired
-man--the hands of the muses have been laid upon him.  He plays like one
-possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons.  You can feel them in
-the air round about him, capering frenetically; with their invisible feet
-they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the orchestra rises on end,
-and his eyeballs start from their sockets, as he toils to keep up with them.
-
-Tamoszius Kuszleika is his name, and he has taught himself to play the
-violin by practicing all night, after working all day on the "killing beds."
-He is in his shirt sleeves, with a vest figured with faded gold horseshoes,
-and a pink-striped shirt, suggestive of peppermint candy.  A pair of
-military trousers, light blue with a yellow stripe, serve to give that
-suggestion of authority proper to the leader of a band.  He is only about
-five feet high, but even so these trousers are about eight inches short
-of the ground.  You wonder where he can have gotten them or rather you
-would wonder, if the excitement of being in his presence left you time to
-think of such things.
-
-For he is an inspired man.  Every inch of him is inspired--you might
-almost say inspired separately.  He stamps with his feet, he tosses his
-head, he sways and swings to and fro; he has a wizened-up little face,
-irresistibly comical; and, when he executes a turn or a flourish, his brows
-knit and his lips work and his eyelids wink--the very ends of his necktie
-bristle out.  And every now and then he turns upon his companions, nodding,
-signaling, beckoning frantically--with every inch of him appealing,
-imploring, in behalf of the muses and their call.
-
-For they are hardly worthy of Tamoszius, the other two members of the
-orchestra.  The second violin is a Slovak, a tall, gaunt man with black-
-rimmed spectacles and the mute and patient look of an overdriven mule;
-he responds to the whip but feebly, and then always falls back into his
-old rut.  The third man is very fat, with a round, red, sentimental nose,
-and he plays with his eyes turned up to the sky and a look of infinite
-yearning.  He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement
-is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to
-saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock
-in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of
-the total income of one dollar per hour.
-
-Before the feast has been five minutes under way, Tamoszius Kuszleika
-has risen in his excitement; a minute or two more and you see that he is
-beginning to edge over toward the tables.  His nostrils are dilated and
-his breath comes fast--his demons are driving him.  He nods and shakes
-his head at his companions, jerking at them with his violin, until at last
-the long form of the second violinist also rises up.  In the end all three
-of them begin advancing, step by step, upon the banqueters, Valentinavyczia,
-he cellist, bumping along with his instrument between notes.  Finally all
-three are gathered at the foot of the tables, and there Tamoszius mounts
-upon a stool.
-
-Now he is in his glory, dominating the scene.  Some of the people are
-eating, some are laughing and talking--but you will make a great mistake
-if you think there is one of them who does not hear him.  His notes are
-never true, and his fiddle buzzes on the low ones and squeaks and
-scratches on the high; but these things they heed no more than they heed
-the dirt and noise and squalor about them--it is out of this material that
-they have to build their lives, with it that they have to utter their souls.
-And this is their utterance; merry and boisterous, or mournful and wailing,
-or passionate and rebellious, this music is their music, music of home.
-It stretches out its arms to them, they have only to give themselves up.
-Chicago and its saloons and its slums fade away--there are green meadows
-and sunlit rivers, mighty forests and snowclad hills.  They behold home
-landscapes and childhood scenes returning; old loves and friendships begin
-to waken, old joys and griefs to laugh and weep.  Some fall back and close
-their eyes, some beat upon the table.  Now and then one leaps up with a cry
-and calls for this song or that; and then the fire leaps brighter in
-Tamoszius' eyes, and he flings up his fiddle and shouts to his companions,
-and away they go in mad career.  The company takes up the choruses, and men
-and women cry out like all possessed; some leap to their feet and stamp upon
-the floor, lifting their glasses and pledging each other.  Before long it
-occurs to some one to demand an old wedding song, which celebrates the
-beauty of the bride and the joys of love.  In the excitement of this
-masterpiece Tamoszius Kuszleika begins to edge in between the tables,
-making his way toward the head, where sits the bride.  There is not a foot
-of space between the chairs of the guests, and Tamoszius is so short that
-he pokes them with his bow whenever he reaches over for the low notes;
-but still he presses in, and insists relentlessly that his companions
-must follow.  During their progress, needless to say, the sounds of the
-cello are pretty well extinguished; but at last the three are at the head,
-and Tamoszius takes his station at the right hand of the bride and begins
-to pour out his soul in melting strains.
-
-Little Ona is too excited to eat.  Once in a while she tastes a little
-something, when Cousin Marija pinches her elbow and reminds her; but, for
-the most part, she sits gazing with the same fearful eyes of wonder.
-Teta Elzbieta is all in a flutter, like a hummingbird; her sisters, too,
-keep running up behind her, whispering, breathless.  But Ona seems
-scarcely to hear them--the music keeps calling, and the far-off look
-comes back, and she sits with her hands pressed together over her heart.
-Then the tears begin to come into her eyes; and as she is ashamed to wipe
-them away, and ashamed to let them run down her cheeks, she turns and
-shakes her head a little, and then flushes red when she sees that Jurgis
-is watching her.  When in the end Tamoszius Kuszleika has reached her side,
-and is waving his magic wand above her, Ona's cheeks are scarlet, and she
-looks as if she would have to get up and run away.
-
-In this crisis, however, she is saved by Marija Berczynskas, whom the
-muses suddenly visit.  Marija is fond of a song, a song of lovers' parting;
-she wishes to hear it, and, as the musicians do not know it, she has risen,
-and is proceeding to teach them.  Marija is short, but powerful in build.
-She works in a canning factory, and all day long she handles cans of beef
-that weigh fourteen pounds.  She has a broad Slavic face, with prominent
-red cheeks.  When she opens her mouth, it is tragical, but you cannot help
-thinking of a horse.  She wears a blue flannel shirt-waist, which is now
-rolled up at the sleeves, disclosing her brawny arms; she has a carving
-fork in her hand, with which she pounds on the table to mark the time.
-As she roars her song, in a voice of which it is enough to say that it
-leaves no portion of the room vacant, the three musicians follow her,
-laboriously and note by note, but averaging one note behind; thus they
-toil through stanza after stanza of a lovesick swain's lamentation: -- 
-
-          "Sudiev' kvietkeli, tu brangiausis;
-          Sudiev' ir laime, man biednam,
-          Matau--paskyre teip Aukszcziausis,
-          Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!" 
-
-When the song is over, it is time for the speech, and old Dede Antanas
-rises to his feet.  Grandfather Anthony, Jurgis' father, is not more than
-sixty years of age, but you would think that he was eighty.  He has been
-only six months in America, and the change has not done him good.  In his
-manhood he worked in a cotton mill, but then a coughing fell upon him,
-and he had to leave; out in the country the trouble disappeared, but he
-has been working in the pickle rooms at Durham's, and the breathing of
-the cold, damp air all day has brought it back.  Now as he rises he is
-seized with a coughing fit, and holds himself by his chair and turns away
-his wan and battered face until it passes.
-
-Generally it is the custom for the speech at a veselija to be taken out
-of one of the books and learned by heart; but in his youthful days Dede
-Antanas used to be a scholar, and really make up all the love letters
-of his friends.  Now it is understood that he has composed an original
-speech of congratulation and benediction, and this is one of the events
-of the day.  Even the boys, who are romping about the room, draw near and
-listen, and some of the women sob and wipe their aprons in their eyes.
-It is very solemn, for Antanas Rudkus has become possessed of the idea
-that he has not much longer to stay with his children.  His speech leaves
-them all so tearful that one of the guests, Jokubas Szedvilas, who keeps
-a delicatessen store on Halsted Street, and is fat and hearty, is moved
-to rise and say that things may not be as bad as that, and then to go on
-and make a little speech of his own, in which he showers congratulations
-and prophecies of happiness upon the bride and groom, proceeding to
-particulars which greatly delight the young men, but which cause Ona
-to blush more furiously than ever.  Jokubas possesses what his wife
-complacently describes as "poetiszka vaidintuve"--a poetical imagination.
-
-Now a good many of the guests have finished, and, since there is no
-pretense of ceremony, the banquet begins to break up.  Some of the men
-gather about the bar; some wander about, laughing and singing; here and
-there will be a little group, chanting merrily, and in sublime indifference
-to the others and to the orchestra as well.  Everybody is more or less
-restless--one would guess that something is on their minds.  And so it
-proves.  The last tardy diners are scarcely given time to finish, before
-the tables and the debris are shoved into the corner, and the chairs and
-the babies piled out of the way, and the real celebration of the evening
-begins.  Then Tamoszius Kuszleika, after replenishing himself with a pot
-of beer, returns to his platform, and, standing up, reviews the scene;
-he taps authoritatively upon the side of his violin, then tucks it
-carefully under his chin, then waves his bow in an elaborate flourish,
-and finally smites the sounding strings and closes his eyes, and floats
-away in spirit upon the wings of a dreamy waltz.  His companion follows,
-but with his eyes open, watching where he treads, so to speak; and finally
-Valentinavyczia, after waiting for a little and beating with his foot to
-get the time, casts up his eyes to the ceiling and begins to saw--"Broom!
-broom! broom!"
-
-The company pairs off quickly, and the whole room is soon in motion.
-Apparently nobody knows how to waltz, but that is nothing of any
-consequence--there is music, and they dance, each as he pleases, just
-as before they sang.  Most of them prefer the "two-step," especially
-the young, with whom it is the fashion.  The older people have dances
-from home, strange and complicated steps which they execute with grave
-solemnity.  Some do not dance anything at all, but simply hold each other's
-hands and allow the undisciplined joy of motion to express itself with
-their feet.  Among these are Jokubas Szedvilas and his wife, Lucija, who
-together keep the delicatessen store, and consume nearly as much as they
-sell; they are too fat to dance, but they stand in the middle of the floor,
-holding each other fast in their arms, rocking slowly from side to side and
-grinning seraphically, a picture of toothless and perspiring ecstasy.
-
-Of these older people many wear clothing reminiscent in some detail
-of home--an embroidered waistcoat or stomacher, or a gaily colored
-handkerchief, or a coat with large cuffs and fancy buttons.  All these
-things are carefully avoided by the young, most of whom have learned to
-speak English and to affect the latest style of clothing.  The girls wear
-ready-made dresses or shirt waists, and some of them look quite pretty.
-Some of the young men you would take to be Americans, of the type of
-clerks, but for the fact that they wear their hats in the room.  Each of
-these younger couples affects a style of its own in dancing.  Some hold
-each other tightly, some at a cautious distance.  Some hold their hands
-out stiffly, some drop them loosely at their sides.  Some dance springily,
-some glide softly, some move with grave dignity.  There are boisterous
-couples, who tear wildly about the room, knocking every one out of
-their way.  There are nervous couples, whom these frighten, and who cry,
-"Nusfok!  Kas yra?" at them as they pass.  Each couple is paired for the
-evening--you will never see them change about.  There is Alena Jasaityte,
-for instance, who has danced unending hours with Juozas Raczius, to whom
-she is engaged.  Alena is the beauty of the evening, and she would be really
-beautiful if she were not so proud.  She wears a white shirtwaist, which
-represents, perhaps, half a week's labor painting cans.  She holds her skirt
-with her hand as she dances, with stately precision, after the manner of the
-grandes dames.  Juozas is driving one of Durham's wagons, and is making big
-wages.  He affects a "tough" aspect, wearing his hat on one side and keeping
-a cigarette in his mouth all the evening.  Then there is Jadvyga Marcinkus,
-who is also beautiful, but humble.  Jadvyga likewise paints cans, but then
-she has an invalid mother and three little sisters to support by it, and
-so she does not spend her wages for shirtwaists.  Jadvyga is small and
-delicate, with jet-black eyes and hair, the latter twisted into a little
-knot and tied on the top of her head.  She wears an old white dress which
-she has made herself and worn to parties for the past five years; it is
-high-waisted--almost under her arms, and not very becoming,--but that
-does not trouble Jadvyga, who is dancing with her Mikolas.  She is small,
-while he is big and powerful; she nestles in his arms as if she would hide
-herself from view, and leans her head upon his shoulder.  He in turn has
-clasped his arms tightly around her, as if he would carry her away; and so
-she dances, and will dance the entire evening, and would dance forever,
-in ecstasy of bliss.  You would smile, perhaps, to see them--but you would
-not smile if you knew all the story.  This is the fifth year, now, that
-Jadvyga has been engaged to Mikolas, and her heart is sick.  They would
-have been married in the beginning, only Mikolas has a father who is drunk
-all day, and he is the only other man in a large family. Even so they might
-have managed it (for Mikolas is a skilled man) but for cruel accidents which
-have almost taken the heart out of them.  He is a beef-boner, and that is
-a dangerous trade, especially when you are on piecework and trying to earn
-a bride.  Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and you are
-toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you strike a
-bone.  Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a fearful gash.
-And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly contagion.  The cut may
-heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within the last three years,
-Mikolas has been lying at home with blood poisoning--once for three months
-and once for nearly seven.  The last time, too, he lost his job, and that
-meant six weeks more of standing at the doors of the packing houses, at six
-o'clock on bitter winter mornings, with a foot of snow on the ground and
-more in the air.  There are learned people who can tell you out of the
-statistics that beef-boners make forty cents an hour, but, perhaps, these
-people have never looked into a beef-boner's hands.
-
-When Tamoszius and his companions stop for a rest, as perforce they
-must, now and then, the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently.
-They never seem to tire; and there is no place for them to sit down if
-they did.  It is only for a minute, anyway, for the leader starts up
-again, in spite of all the protests of the other two.  This time it
-is another sort of a dance, a Lithuanian dance.  Those who prefer to,
-go on with the two-step, but the majority go through an intricate series
-of motions, resembling more fancy skating than a dance.  The climax of
-it is a furious prestissimo, at which the couples seize hands and begin
-a mad whirling.  This is quite irresistible, and every one in the room
-joins in, until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies
-quite dazzling to look upon.  But the sight of sights at this moment
-is Tamoszius Kuszleika.  The old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest,
-but Tamoszius has no mercy.  The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he
-bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race.  His body shakes and
-throbs like a runaway steam engine, and the ear cannot follow the flying
-showers of notes--there is a pale blue mist where you look to see his
-bowing arm.  With a most wonderful rush he comes to the end of the tune,
-and flings up his hands and staggers back exhausted; and with a final
-shout of delight the dancers fly apart, reeling here and there, bringing
-up against the walls of the room.
-
-After this there is beer for every one, the musicians included, and the
-revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the
-evening, which is the acziavimas.  The acziavimas is a ceremony which,
-once begun, will continue for three or four hours, and it involves one
-uninterrupted dance.  The guests form a great ring, locking hands, and,
-when the music starts up, begin to move around in a circle.  In the center
-stands the bride, and, one by one, the men step into the enclosure and
-dance with her.  Each dances for several minutes--as long as he pleases;
-it is a very merry proceeding, with laughter and singing, and when the
-guest has finished, he finds himself face to face with Teta Elzbieta,
-who holds the hat.  Into it he drops a sum of money--a dollar, or perhaps
-five dollars, according to his power, and his estimate of the value of
-the privilege.  The guests are expected to pay for this entertainment;
-if they be proper guests, they will see that there is a neat sum left over
-for the bride and bridegroom to start life upon.
-
-Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of this entertainment.
-They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and maybe three hundred;
-and three hundred dollars is more than the year's income of many a person
-in this room.  There are able-bodied men here who work from early morning
-until late at night, in ice-cold cellars with a quarter of an inch of
-water on the floor--men who for six or seven months in the year never
-see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till the next Sunday morning--
-and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in a year.  There are little
-children here, scarce in their teens, who can hardly see the top of the
-work benches--whose parents have lied to get them their places--and who
-do not make the half of three hundred dollars a year, and perhaps not
-even the third of it.  And then to spend such a sum, all in a single day
-of your life, at a wedding feast!  (For obviously it is the same thing,
-whether you spend it at once for your own wedding, or in a long time,
-at the weddings of all your friends.)
-
-It is very imprudent, it is tragic--but, ah, it is so beautiful!  Bit by
-bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they
-cling with all the power of their souls--they cannot give up the
-veselija!  To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
-acknowledge defeat--and the difference between these two things is what
-keeps the world going.  The veselija has come down to them from a far-off
-time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and
-gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break
-his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in
-his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares
-and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble
-upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about and play
-with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may quaff,
-like a goblet of rare red wine.  Thus having known himself for the master
-of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the memory all
-his days. 
-
-
-Endlessly the dancers swung round and round--when they were dizzy they
-swung the other way.  Hour after hour this had continued--the darkness
-had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
-The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only
-one tune, wearily, ploddingly.  There were twenty bars or so of it, and
-when they came to the end they began again.  Once every ten minutes or
-so they would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back exhausted;
-a circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and terrifying scene,
-that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his sleeping place behind
-the door.
-
-It was all Marija Berczynskas.  Marija was one of those hungry souls who
-cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse.  All day long
-she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving--
-and she would not let it go.  Her soul cried out in the words of Faust,
-"Stay, thou art fair!"  Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or by music,
-or by motion, she meant that it should not go.  And she would go back to
-the chase of it--and no sooner be fairly started than her chariot would
-be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the stupidity of those thrice
-accursed musicians.  Each time, Marija would emit a howl and fly at them,
-shaking her fists in their faces, stamping upon the floor, purple and
-incoherent with rage.  In vain the frightened Tamoszius would attempt
-to speak, to plead the limitations of the flesh; in vain would the puffing
-and breathless ponas Jokubas insist, in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore.
-"Szalin!" Marija would scream.  "Palauk!  isz kelio!  What are you paid for,
-children of hell?"  And so, in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up
-again, and Marija would return to her place and take up her task.
-
-She bore all the burden of the festivities now.  Ona was kept up by her
-excitement, but all of the women and most of the men were tired--the soul
-of Marija was alone unconquered.  She drove on the dancers--what had once
-been the ring had now the shape of a pear, with Marija at the stem, pulling
-one way and pushing the other.  shouting, stamping, singing, a very volcano
-of energy.  Now and then some one coming in or out would leave the door
-open, and the night air was chill; Marija as she passed would stretch out
-her foot and kick the doorknob, and slam would go the door!  Once this
-procedure was the cause of a calamity of which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was
-the hapless victim.  Little Sebastijonas, aged three, had been wandering
-about oblivious to all things, holding turned up over his mouth a bottle
-of liquid known as "pop," pink-colored, ice-cold, and delicious.  Passing
-through the doorway the door smote him full, and the shriek which followed
-brought the dancing to a halt.  Marija, who threatened horrid murder a
-hundred times a day, and would weep over the injury of a fly, seized
-little Sebastijonas in her arms and bid fair to smother him with kisses.
-There was a long rest for the orchestra, and plenty of refreshments, while
-Marija was making her peace with her victim, seating him upon the bar,
-and standing beside him and holding to his lips a foaming schooner of beer.
-
-In the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an
-anxious conference between Teta Elzbieta and Dede Antanas, and a few of
-the more intimate friends of the family.  A trouble was come upon them.
-The veselija is a compact, a compact not expressed, but therefore only the
-more binding upon all.  Every one's share was different--and yet every one
-knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a little more.
-Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all this was changing;
-it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in the air that one
-breathed here--it was affecting all the young men at once.  They would
-come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner, and then sneak off.
-One would throw another's hat out of the window, and both would go out to
-get it, and neither could be seen again.  Or now and then half a dozen of
-them would get together and march out openly, staring at you, and making fun
-of you to your face.  Still others, worse yet, would crowd about the bar,
-and at the expense of the host drink themselves sodden, paying not the
-least attention to any one, and leaving it to be thought that either they
-had danced with the bride already, or meant to later on.
-
-All these things were going on now, and the family was helpless with
-dismay.  So long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made!
-Ona stood by, her eyes wide with terror.  Those frightful bills--how they
-had haunted her, each item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her
-rest at night.  How often she had named them over one by one and figured
-on them as she went to work--fifteen dollars for the hall, twenty-two
-dollars and a quarter for the ducks, twelve dollars for the musicians,
-five dollars at the church, and a blessing of the Virgin besides--and so
-on without an end!  Worst of all was the frightful bill that was still
-to come from Graiczunas for the beer and liquor that might be consumed.
-One could never get in advance more than a guess as to this from a
-saloonkeeper--and then, when the time came he always came to you scratching
-his head and saying that he had guessed too low, but that he had done his
-best--your guests had gotten so very drunk.  By him you were sure to be
-cheated unmercifully, and that even though you thought yourself the dearest
-of the hundreds of friends he had.  He would begin to serve your guests
-out of a keg that was half full, and finish with one that was half empty,
-and then you would be charged for two kegs of beer.  He would agree to
-serve a certain quality at a certain price, and when the time came you
-and your friends would be drinking some horrible poison that could not be
-described.  You might complain, but you would get nothing for your pains
-but a ruined evening; while, as for going to law about it, you might as
-well go to heaven at once.  The saloonkeeper stood in with all the big
-politics men in the district; and when you had once found out what it
-meant to get into trouble with such people, you would know enough to pay
-what you were told to pay and shut up.  
-
-What made all this the more painful was that it was so hard on the few
-that had really done their best.  There was poor old ponas Jokubas, for
-instance--he had already given five dollars, and did not every one know
-that Jokubas Szedvilas had just mortgaged his delicatessen store for two
-hundred dollars to meet several months' overdue rent?  And then there was
-withered old poni Aniele--who was a widow, and had three children, and the
-rheumatism besides, and did washing for the tradespeople on Halsted Street
-at prices it would break your heart to hear named.  Aniele had given the
-entire profit of her chickens for several months.  Eight of them she owned,
-and she kept them in a little place fenced around on her backstairs.
-All day long the children of Aniele were raking in the dump for food for
-these chickens; and sometimes, when the competition there was too fierce,
-you might see them on Halsted Street walking close to the gutters, and with
-their mother following to see that no one robbed them of their finds.
-Money could not tell the value of these chickens to old Mrs. Jukniene--
-she valued them differently, for she had a feeling that she was getting
-something for nothing by means of them--that with them she was getting the
-better of a world that was getting the better of her in so many other ways.
-So she watched them every hour of the day, and had learned to see like an
-owl at night to watch them then.  One of them had been stolen long ago,
-and not a month passed that some one did not try to steal another.  As the
-frustrating of this one attempt involved a score of false alarms, it will
-be understood what a tribute old Mrs. Jukniene brought, just because Teta
-Elzbieta had once loaned her some money for a few days and saved her from
-being turned out of her house.
-
-More and more friends gathered round while the lamentation about these
-things was going on.  Some drew nearer, hoping to overhear the conversation,
-who were themselves among the guilty--and surely that was a thing to try
-the patience of a saint.  Finally there came Jurgis, urged by some one,
-and the story was retold to him.  Jurgis listened in silence, with his
-great black eyebrows knitted.  Now and then there would come a gleam
-underneath them and he would glance about the room.  Perhaps he would have
-liked to go at some of those fellows with his big clenched fists; but then,
-doubtless, he realized how little good it would do him.  No bill would be
-any less for turning out any one at this time; and then there would be the
-scandal--and Jurgis wanted nothing except to get away with Ona and to let
-the world go its own way.  So his hands relaxed and he merely said quietly:
-"It is done, and there is no use in weeping, Teta Elzbieta."  Then his look
-turned toward Ona, who stood close to his side, and he saw the wide look
-of terror in her eyes.  "Little one," he said, in a low voice, "do not
-worry--it will not matter to us.  We will pay them all somehow.  I will
-work harder."  That was always what Jurgis said.  Ona had grown used to
-it as the solution of all difficulties--"I will work harder!"  He had
-said that in Lithuania when one official had taken his passport from him,
-and another had arrested him for being without it, and the two had divided
-a third of his belongings.  He had said it again in New York, when the
-smooth-spoken agent had taken them in hand and made them pay such high
-prices, and almost prevented their leaving his place, in spite of their
-paying.  Now he said it a third time, and Ona drew a deep breath; it was
-so wonderful to have a husband, just like a grown woman--and a husband who
-could solve all problems, and who was so big and strong!  
-
-The last sob of little Sebastijonas has been stifled, and the orchestra
-has once more been reminded of its duty.  The ceremony begins again--but
-there are few now left to dance with, and so very soon the collection is
-over and promiscuous dances once more begin.  It is now after midnight,
-however, and things are not as they were before.  The dancers are dull
-and heavy--most of them have been drinking hard, and have long ago passed
-the stage of exhilaration.  They dance in monotonous measure, round after
-round, hour after hour, with eyes fixed upon vacancy, as if they were
-only half conscious, in a constantly growing stupor.  The men grasp the
-women very tightly, but there will be half an hour together when neither
-will see the other's face.  Some couples do not care to dance, and have
-retired to the corners, where they sit with their arms enlaced.  Others,
-who have been drinking still more, wander about the room, bumping into
-everything; some are in groups of two or three, singing, each group
-its own song.  As time goes on there is a variety of drunkenness, among
-the younger men especially.  Some stagger about in each other's arms,
-whispering maudlin words--others start quarrels upon the slightest pretext,
-and come to blows and have to be pulled apart.  Now the fat policeman wakens
-definitely, and feels of his club to see that it is ready for business.
-He has to be prompt--for these two-o'clock-in-the-morning fights, if they
-once get out of hand, are like a forest fire, and may mean the whole
-reserves at the station.  The thing to do is to crack every fighting head
-that you see, before there are so many fighting heads that you cannot
-crack any of them.  There is but scant account kept of cracked heads in
-back of the yards, for men who have to crack the heads of animals all day
-seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on
-their families, between times.  This makes it a cause for congratulation
-that by modern methods a very few men can do the painfully necessary work
-of head-cracking for the whole of the cultured world.
-
-There is no fight that night--perhaps because Jurgis, too, is watchful--
-even more so than the policeman.  Jurgis has drunk a great deal, as any
-one naturally would on an occasion when it all has to be paid for, whether
-it is drunk or not; but he is a very steady man, and does not easily lose
-his temper.  Only once there is a tight shave--and that is the fault of
-Marija Berczynskas.  Marija has apparently concluded about two hours ago
-that if the altar in the corner, with the deity in soiled white, be not
-the true home of the muses, it is, at any rate, the nearest substitute on
-earth attainable.  And Marija is just fighting drunk when there come to her
-ears the facts about the villains who have not paid that night.  Marija goes
-on the warpath straight off, without even the preliminary of a good cursing,
-and when she is pulled off it is with the coat collars of two villains in
-her hands.  Fortunately, the policeman is disposed to be reasonable, and so
-it is not Marija who is flung out of the place.
-
-All this interrupts the music for not more than a minute or two.  Then again
-the merciless tune begins--the tune that has been played for the last
-half-hour without one single change.  It is an American tune this time,
-one which they have picked up on the streets; all seem to know the words
-of it--or, at any rate, the first line of it, which they hum to themselves,
-over and over again without rest: "In the good old summertime--in the good
-old summertime!  In the good old summertime--in the good old summertime!"
-There seems to be something hypnotic about this, with its endlessly
-recurring dominant.  It has put a stupor upon every one who hears it,
-as well as upon the men who are playing it.  No one can get away from it,
-or even think of getting away from it; it is three o'clock in the morning,
-and they have danced out all their joy, and danced out all their strength,
-and all the strength that unlimited drink can lend them--and still there
-is no one among them who has the power to think of stopping.  Promptly at
-seven o'clock this same Monday morning they will every one of them have to
-be in their places at Durham's or Brown's or Jones's, each in his working
-clothes.  If one of them be a minute late, he will be docked an hour's pay,
-and if he be many minutes late, he will be apt to find his brass check
-turned to the wall, which will send him out to join the hungry mob that
-waits every morning at the gates of the packing houses, from six o'clock
-until nearly half-past eight.  There is no exception to this rule, not even
-little Ona--who has asked for a holiday the day after her wedding day,
-a holiday without pay, and been refused.  While there are so many who are
-anxious to work as you wish, there is no occasion for incommoding yourself
-with those who must work otherwise.
-
-Little Ona is nearly ready to faint--and half in a stupor herself, because
-of the heavy scent in the room.  She has not taken a drop, but every one
-else there is literally burning alcohol, as the lamps are burning oil;
-some of the men who are sound asleep in their chairs or on the floor are
-reeking of it so that you cannot go near them.  Now and then Jurgis gazes
-at her hungrily--he has long since forgotten his shyness; but then the
-crowd is there, and he still waits and watches the door, where a carriage
-is supposed to come.  It does not, and finally he will wait no longer,
-but comes up to Ona, who turns white and trembles.  He puts her shawl about
-her and then his own coat.  They live only two blocks away, and Jurgis does
-not care about the carriage.  
-
-There is almost no farewell--the dancers do not notice them, and all of the
-children and many of the old folks have fallen asleep of sheer exhaustion.
-Dede Antanas is asleep, and so are the Szedvilases, husband and wife,
-the former snoring in octaves.  There is Teta Elzbieta, and Marija, sobbing
-loudly; and then there is only the silent night, with the stars beginning
-to pale a little in the east.  Jurgis, without a word, lifts Ona in his
-arms, and strides out with her, and she sinks her head upon his shoulder
-with a moan.  When he reaches home he is not sure whether she has fainted
-or is asleep, but when he has to hold her with one hand while he unlocks
-the door, he sees that she has opened her eyes.  
-
-"You shall not go to Brown's today, little one," he whispers, as he climbs
-the stairs; and she catches his arm in terror, gasping: "No!  No!  I dare
-not!  It will ruin us!" 
-
-But he answers her again: "Leave it to me; leave it to me.  I will earn
-more money--I will work harder."
-
-
-
-Chapter 2 
-
-
-Jurgis talked lightly about work, because he was young.  They told him
-stories about the breaking down of men, there in the stockyards of
-Chicago, and of what had happened to them afterward--stories to make
-your flesh creep, but Jurgis would only laugh.  He had only been there
-four months, and he was young, and a giant besides.  There was too much
-health in him.  He could not even imagine how it would feel to be beaten.
-"That is well enough for men like you," he would say, "silpnas, puny
-fellows--but my back is broad."
-
-Jurgis was like a boy, a boy from the country.  He was the sort of man the
-bosses like to get hold of, the sort they make it a grievance they cannot
-get hold of.  When he was told to go to a certain place, he would go there
-on the run.  When he had nothing to do for the moment, he would stand round
-fidgeting, dancing, with the overflow of energy that was in him.  If he
-were working in a line of men, the line always moved too slowly for him,
-and you could pick him out by his impatience and restlessness.  That was
-why he had been picked out on one important occasion; for Jurgis had stood
-outside of Brown and Company's "Central Time Station" not more than half
-an hour, the second day of his arrival in Chicago, before he had been
-beckoned by one of the bosses.  Of this he was very proud, and it made him
-more disposed than ever to laugh at the pessimists.  In vain would they all
-tell him that there were men in that crowd from which he had been chosen
-who had stood there a month--yes, many months--and not been chosen yet.
-"Yes," he would say, "but what sort of men?  Broken-down tramps and good-
-for-nothings, fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to
-get more for it.  Do you want me to believe that with these arms"--and he
-would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might see
-the rolling muscles--that with these arms people will ever let me starve?"
-
-"It is plain," they would answer to this, "that you have come from the
-country, and from very far in the country."  And this was the fact,
-for Jurgis had never seen a city, and scarcely even a fair-sized town,
-until he had set out to make his fortune in the world and earn his right
-to Ona.  His father, and his father's father before him, and as many
-ancestors back as legend could go, had lived in that part of Lithuania
-known as Brelovicz, the Imperial Forest.  This is a great tract of a
-hundred thousand acres, which from time immemorial has been a hunting
-preserve of the nobility.  There are a very few peasants settled in it,
-holding title from ancient times; and one of these was Antanas Rudkus,
-who had been reared himself, and had reared his children in turn, upon
-half a dozen acres of cleared land in the midst of a wilderness.  There had
-been one son besides Jurgis, and one sister.  The former had been drafted
-into the army; that had been over ten years ago, but since that day nothing
-had ever been heard of him.  The sister was married, and her husband had
-bought the place when old Antanas had decided to go with his son.
-
-It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse
-fair a hundred miles from home.  Jurgis had never expected to get married--
-he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into; but here,
-without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than the exchange
-of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the face with
-embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to him for his
-wife--and offering his father's two horses he had been sent to the fair
-to sell.  But Ona's father proved as a rock--the girl was yet a child,
-and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in that way.
-So Jurgis went home with a heavy heart, and that spring and summer toiled
-and tried hard to forget.  In the fall, after the harvest was over, he saw
-that it would not do, and tramped the full fortnight's journey that lay
-between him and Ona.
-
-He found an unexpected state of affairs--for the girl's father had died,
-and his estate was tied up with creditors; Jurgis' heart leaped as he
-realized that now the prize was within his reach.  There was Elzbieta
-Lukoszaite, Teta, or Aunt, as they called her, Ona's stepmother, and there
-were her six children, of all ages.  There was also her brother Jonas,
-a dried-up little man who had worked upon the farm.  They were people of
-great consequence, as it seemed to Jurgis, fresh out of the woods; Ona
-knew how to read, and knew many other things that he did not know, and now
-the farm had been sold, and the whole family was adrift--all they owned in
-the world being about seven hundred rubles which is half as many dollars.
-They would have had three times that, but it had gone to court, and the
-judge had decided against them, and it had cost the balance to get him to
-change his decision.
-
-Ona might have married and left them, but she would not, for she loved
-Teta Elzbieta.  It was Jonas who suggested that they all go to America,
-where a friend of his had gotten rich.  He would work, for his part,
-and the women would work, and some of the children, doubtless--they
-would live somehow.  Jurgis, too, had heard of America.  That was
-a country where, they said, a man might earn three rubles a day;
-and Jurgis figured what three rubles a day would mean, with prices as
-they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to
-America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain.  In that country,
-rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into
-the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials--
-he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man.
-So America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed.  If one
-could only manage to get the price of a passage, he could count his
-troubles at an end.
-
-It was arranged that they should leave the following spring, and meantime
-Jurgis sold himself to a contractor for a certain time, and tramped nearly
-four hundred miles from home with a gang of men to work upon a railroad
-in Smolensk.  This was a fearful experience, with filth and bad food
-and cruelty and overwork; but Jurgis stood it and came out in fine trim,
-and with eighty rubles sewed up in his coat.  He did not drink or fight,
-because he was thinking all the time of Ona; and for the rest, he was
-a quiet, steady man, who did what he was told to, did not lose his temper
-often, and when he did lose it made the offender anxious that he should
-not lose it again.  When they paid him off he dodged the company gamblers
-and dramshops, and so they tried to kill him; but he escaped, and tramped
-it home, working at odd jobs, and sleeping always with one eye open.
-
-So in the summer time they had all set out for America.  At the last
-moment there joined them Marija Berczynskas, who was a cousin of Ona's.
-Marija was an orphan, and had worked since childhood for a rich farmer
-of Vilna, who beat her regularly.  It was only at the age of twenty
-that it had occurred to Marija to try her strength, when she had risen
-up and nearly murdered the man, and then come away.
-
-There were twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children--
-and Ona, who was a little of both.  They had a hard time on the passage;
-there was an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got
-them into a trap with some officials, and cost them a good deal of their
-precious money, which they clung to with such horrible fear.  This happened
-to them again in New York--for, of course, they knew nothing about the
-country, and had no one to tell them, and it was easy for a man in a blue
-uniform to lead them away, and to take them to a hotel and keep them there,
-and make them pay enormous charges to get away.  The law says that the
-rate card shall be on the door of a hotel, but it does not say that it
-shall be in Lithuanian.
-
-
-It was in the stockyards that Jonas' friend had gotten rich, and so to
-Chicago the party was bound.  They knew that one word, Chicago and that
-was all they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city.
-Then, tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off
-than before; they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with
-its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize that
-they had arrived, and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer
-pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed,
-or went on without paying any attention.  They were pitiable in their
-helplessness; above all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort
-of person in official uniform, and so whenever they saw a policeman they
-would cross the street and hurry by.  For the whole of the first day
-they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion, utterly lost;
-and it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a house,
-they were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station.
-In the morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon
-a car, and taught a new word--"stockyards."  Their delight at discovering
-that they were to get out of this adventure without losing another share
-of their possessions it would not be possible to describe.
-
-They sat and stared out of the window.  They were on a street which seemed
-to run on forever, mile after mile--thirty-four of them, if they had known
-it--and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story
-frame buildings.  Down every side street they could see, it was the same--
-never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same endless vista of ugly
-and dirty little wooden buildings.  Here and there would be a bridge
-crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores and dingy sheds and
-docks along it; here and there would be a railroad crossing, with a tangle
-of switches, and locomotives puffing, and rattling freight cars filing by;
-here and there would be a great factory, a dingy building with innumerable
-windows in it, and immense volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys,
-darkening the air above and making filthy the earth beneath.  But after
-each of these interruptions, the desolate procession would begin again--the
-procession of dreary little buildings.
-
-A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the
-perplexing changes in the atmosphere.  It grew darker all the time, and
-upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green.  Every minute, as the
-train sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields were grown
-parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and bare.  And along with the
-thickening smoke they began to notice another circumstance, a strange,
-pungent odor.  They were not sure that it was unpleasant, this odor;
-some might have called it sickening, but their taste in odors was not
-developed, and they were only sure that it was curious.  Now, sitting in
-the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the home
-of it--that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it.  It was
-now no longer something far off and faint, that you caught in whiffs;
-you could literally taste it, as well as smell it--you could take hold
-of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure.  They were divided in their
-opinions about it.  It was an elemental odor, raw and crude; it was rich,
-almost rancid, sensual, and strong.  There were some who drank it in as if
-it were an intoxicant; there were others who put their handkerchiefs to
-their faces.  The new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder,
-when suddenly the car came to a halt, and the door was flung open, and a
-voice shouted--"Stockyards!"
-
-They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street
-there were two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half a
-dozen chimneys, tall as the tallest of buildings, touching the very
-sky--and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily,
-and black as night.  It might have come from the center of the world,
-this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder.  It came as if
-self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion.  It was
-inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great
-streams rolled out.  They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing, curling;
-then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the sky,
-stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach.
-
-Then the party became aware of another strange thing.  This, too, like
-the color, was a thing elemental; it was a sound, a sound made up of ten
-thousand little sounds.  You scarcely noticed it at first--it sunk into
-your consciousness, a vague disturbance, a trouble.  It was like the
-murmuring of the bees in the spring, the whisperings of the forest; it
-suggested endless activity, the rumblings of a world in motion.  It was
-only by an effort that one could realize that it was made by animals,
-that it was the distant lowing of ten thousand cattle, the distant
-grunting of ten thousand swine.
-
-They would have liked to follow it up, but, alas, they had no time for
-adventures just then.  The policeman on the corner was beginning to
-watch them; and so, as usual, they started up the street.  Scarcely had
-they gone a block, however, before Jonas was heard to give a cry, and began
-pointing excitedly across the street.  Before they could gather the meaning
-of his breathless ejaculations he had bounded away, and they saw him enter
-a shop, over which was a sign: "J. Szedvilas, Delicatessen."  When he came
-out again it was in company with a very stout gentleman in shirt sleeves
-and an apron, clasping Jonas by both hands and laughing hilariously.
-Then Teta Elzbieta recollected suddenly that Szedvilas had been the name
-of the mythical friend who had made his fortune in America.  To find that
-he had been making it in the delicatessen business was an extraordinary
-piece of good fortune at this juncture; though it was well on in the
-morning, they had not breakfasted, and the children were beginning to
-whimper.
-
-Thus was the happy ending to a woeful voyage.  The two families literally
-fell upon each other's necks--for it had been years since Jokubas Szedvilas
-had met a man from his part of Lithuania.  Before half the day they were
-lifelong friends.  Jokubas understood all the pitfalls of this new world,
-and could explain all of its mysteries; he could tell them the things
-they ought to have done in the different emergencies--and what was still
-more to the point, he could tell them what to do now.  He would take them
-to poni Aniele, who kept a boardinghouse the other side of the yards;
-old Mrs. Jukniene, he explained, had not what one would call choice
-accommodations, but they might do for the moment.  To this Teta Elzbieta
-hastened to respond that nothing could be too cheap to suit them just
-then; for they were quite terrified over the sums they had had to expend.
-A very few days of practical experience in this land of high wages had
-been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a
-land of high prices, and that in it the poor man was almost as poor as in
-any other corner of the earth; and so there vanished in a night all the
-wonderful dreams of wealth that had been haunting Jurgis.  What had made
-the discovery all the more painful was that they were spending, at American
-prices, money which they had earned at home rates of wages--and so were
-really being cheated by the world!  The last two days they had all but
-starved themselves--it made them quite sick to pay the prices that the
-railroad people asked them for food.
-
-Yet, when they saw the home of the Widow Jukniene they could not but
-recoil, even so.  ln all their journey they had seen nothing so bad
-as this.  Poni Aniele had a four-room flat in one of that wilderness of
-two-story frame tenements that lie "back of the yards."  There were four
-such flats in each building, and each of the four was a "boardinghouse"
-for the occupancy of foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, or Bohemians.
-Some of these places were kept by private persons, some were cooperative.
-There would be an average of half a dozen boarders to each room--sometimes
-there were thirteen or fourteen to one room, fifty or sixty to a flat.
-Each one of the occupants furnished his own accommodations--that is,
-a mattress and some bedding.  The mattresses would be spread upon the
-floor in rows--and there would be nothing else in the place except a stove.
-It was by no means unusual for two men to own the same mattress in common,
-one working by day and using it by night, and the other working at night
-and using it in the daytime.  Very frequently a lodging house keeper would
-rent the same beds to double shifts of men.
-
-Mrs. Jukniene was a wizened-up little woman, with a wrinkled face.
-Her home was unthinkably filthy; you could not enter by the front
-door at all, owing to the mattresses, and when you tried to go up the
-backstairs you found that she had walled up most of the porch with old
-boards to make a place to keep her chickens.  It was a standing jest of
-the boarders that Aniele cleaned house by letting the chickens loose in
-the rooms.  Undoubtedly this did keep down the vermin, but it seemed
-probable, in view of all the circumstances, that the old lady regarded it
-rather as feeding the chickens than as cleaning the rooms.  The truth was
-that she had definitely given up the idea of cleaning anything, under
-pressure of an attack of rheumatism, which had kept her doubled up in
-one corner of her room for over a week; during which time eleven of her
-boarders, heavily in her debt, had concluded to try their chances of
-employment in Kansas City.  This was July, and the fields were green.
-One never saw the fields, nor any green thing whatever, in Packingtown;
-but one could go out on the road and "hobo it," as the men phrased it,
-and see the country, and have a long rest, and an easy time riding on
-the freight cars.  
-
-
-Such was the home to which the new arrivals were welcomed.  There was
-nothing better to be had--they might not do so well by looking further,
-for Mrs. Jukniene had at least kept one room for herself and her three
-little children, and now offered to share this with the women and the
-girls of the party.  They could get bedding at a secondhand store, she
-explained; and they would not need any, while the weather was so hot--
-doubtless they would all sleep on the sidewalk such nights as this, as did
-nearly all of her guests.  "Tomorrow," Jurgis said, when they were left
-alone, "tomorrow I will get a job, and perhaps Jonas will get one also;
-and then we can get a place of our own."
-
-Later that afternoon he and Ona went out to take a walk and look about them,
-to see more of this district which was to be their home.  In back of the
-yards the dreary two-story frame houses were scattered farther apart,
-and there were great spaces bare--that seemingly had been overlooked by the
-great sore of a city as it spread itself over the surface of the prairie.
-These bare places were grown up with dingy, yellow weeds, hiding
-innumerable tomato cans; innumerable children played upon them, chasing
-one another here and there, screaming and fighting.  The most uncanny
-thing about this neighborhood was the number of the children; you thought
-there must be a school just out, and it was only after long acquaintance
-that you were able to realize that there was no school, but that these
-were the children of the neighborhood--that there were so many children
-to the block in Packingtown that nowhere on its streets could a horse and
-buggy move faster than a walk!
-
-It could not move faster anyhow, on account of the state of the streets.
-Those through which Jurgis and Ona were walking resembled streets less
-than they did a miniature topographical map.  The roadway was commonly
-several feet lower than the level of the houses, which were sometimes
-joined by high board walks; there were no pavements--there were mountains
-and valleys and rivers, gullies and ditches, and great hollows full of
-stinking green water.  In these pools the children played, and rolled
-about in the mud of the streets; here and there one noticed them digging
-in it, after trophies which they had stumbled on.  One wondered about this,
-as also about the swarms of flies which hung about the scene, literally
-blackening the air, and the strange, fetid odor which assailed one's
-nostrils, a ghastly odor, of all the dead things of the universe.
-It impelled the visitor to questions and then the residents would explain,
-quietly, that all this was "made" land, and that it had been "made" by
-using it as a dumping ground for the city garbage.  After a few years the
-unpleasant effect of this would pass away, it was said; but meantime,
-in hot weather--and especially when it rained--the flies were apt to
-be annoying.  Was it not unhealthful? the stranger would ask, and the
-residents would answer, "Perhaps; but there is no telling."
- 
-A little way farther on, and Jurgis and Ona, staring open-eyed and
-wondering, came to the place where this "made" ground was in process
-of making.  Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square,
-and with long files of garbage wagons creeping into it.  The place had
-an odor for which there are no polite words; and it was sprinkled over
-with children, who raked in it from dawn till dark.  Sometimes visitors
-from the packing houses would wander out to see this "dump," and they
-would stand by and debate as to whether the children were eating the food
-they got, or merely collecting it for the chickens at home.  Apparently
-none of them ever went down to find out.
-
-Beyond this dump there stood a great brickyard, with smoking chimneys.
-First they took out the soil to make bricks, and then they filled it
-up again with garbage, which seemed to Jurgis and Ona a felicitous
-arrangement, characteristic of an enterprising country like America.
-A little way beyond was another great hole, which they had emptied and
-not yet filled up.  This held water, and all summer it stood there,
-with the near-by soil draining into it, festering and stewing in the sun;
-and then, when winter came, somebody cut the ice on it, and sold it to
-the people of the city.  This, too, seemed to the newcomers an economical
-arrangement; for they did not read the newspapers, and their heads were
-not full of troublesome thoughts about "germs."
-
-They stood there while the sun went down upon this scene, and the sky
-in the west turned blood-red, and the tops of the houses shone like fire.
-Jurgis and Ona were not thinking of the sunset, however--their backs
-were turned to it, and all their thoughts were of Packingtown, which
-they could see so plainly in the distance.  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.  It was a study in colors now, this smoke; in the
-sunset light it was black and brown and gray and purple.  All the sordid
-suggestions of the place were gone--in the twilight it was a vision of
-power.  To the two who stood watching while the darkness swallowed it up,
-it seemed a dream of wonder, with its talc of human energy, of things being
-done, of employment for thousands upon thousands of men, of opportunity
-and freedom, of life and love and joy.  When they came away, arm in arm,
-Jurgis was saying, "Tomorrow I shall go there and get a job!"
-
-
-
-Chapter 3 
-
-
-In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many
-acquaintances.  Among these was one of the special policemen employed
-by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment.
-Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could
-get some of his friends a job through this man.  It was agreed, after
-consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and
-with Jonas.  Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself,
-unassisted by any one.  As we have said before, he was not mistaken
-in this.  He had gone to Brown's and stood there not more than half
-an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above
-the rest, and signaled to him.  The colloquy which followed was brief
-and to the point:
-
-"Speak English?"
-
-"No; Lit-uanian."  (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.)
-
-"Job?"
-
-"Je."  (A nod.)
-
-"Worked here before?"
-
-"No 'stand." 
-
-(Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss.  Vigorous
-shakes of the head by Jurgis.)
-
-"Shovel guts?"
-
-"No 'stand."  (More shakes of the head.)
-
-"Zarnos.  Pagaiksztis.  Szluofa!"  (Imitative motions.)
-
-"Je."
-
-"See door.  Durys?"  (Pointing.)
-
-"Je." 
-
-"To-morrow, seven o'clock.  Understand?  Rytoj!  Prieszpietys!  Septyni!"
-
-"Dekui, tamistai!"  (Thank you, sir.)  And that was all.  Jurgis turned
-away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph
-swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a run.
-He had a job!  He had a job!  And he went all the way home as if upon
-wings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the
-numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep.
-
-Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received
-encouragement, so it was a happy party.  There being no more to be done
-that day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband
-sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown.  Jokubas did
-this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors
-over his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these wonders had
-grown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in them.  The packers
-might own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and there was no one to
-say nay to this.  
-
-
-They passed down the busy street that led to the yards.  It was still
-early morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity.
-A steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate--employees
-of the higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such.
-For the women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set off
-at a gallop as fast as they were filled.  In the distance there was heard
-again the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling.
-They followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circus
-menagerie--which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled.  They crossed
-the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pens
-full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurried
-them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from which
-everything could be seen.  Here they stood, staring, breathless with wonder.
-
-There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half
-of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can
-reach there stretches a sea of pens.  And they were all filled--so many
-cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world.  Red cattle, black,
-white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing
-bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce,
-long-horned Texas steers.  The sound of them here was as of all the
-barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them--it would have taken
-all day simply to count the pens.  Here and there ran long alleys, blocked
-at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of these gates
-was twenty-five thousand.  Jokubas had recently been reading a newspaper
-article which was full of statistics such as that, and he was very proud
-as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder.  Jurgis too
-had a little of this sense of pride.  Had he not just gotten a job, and
-become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine?
-Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted,
-and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other,
-and to those who were driving the cattle.  They were drovers and stock
-raisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and commission
-merchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses.
-
-Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there
-would be a parley, brief and businesslike.  The buyer would nod or drop
-his whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his
-little book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning.
-Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be
-weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds at
-once and record it automatically.  It was near to the east entrance that
-they stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the railroad
-tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle.  All night long
-this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they would
-all be empty, and the same thing would be done again.
-
-"And what will become of all these creatures?" cried Teta Elzbieta.
-
-"By tonight," Jokubas answered, "they will all be killed and cut up;
-and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more
-railroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away."
-
-There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their
-guide went on to tell them.  They brought about ten thousand head of
-cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep--which meant
-some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year.
-One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide,
-as it set in the direction of the packing houses.  There were groups of
-cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feet
-wide, raised high above the pens.  In these chutes the stream of animals
-was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their
-fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death.  Our friends were not
-poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny;
-they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all.  The chutes into
-which the hogs went climbed high up--to the very top of the distant
-buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went up by the power of
-their own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all the
-processes necessary to make them into pork.
-
-"They don't waste anything here," said the guide, and then he laughed
-and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated
-friends should take to be his own: "They use everything about the hog
-except the squeal."  In front of Brown's General Office building there
-grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit
-of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his
-squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor
-that you will find there.
-
-After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street,
-to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards.  These
-buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of
-Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from
-which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many
-of the torments of his life.  It was here that they made those products
-with the wonders of which they pestered him so--by placards that defaced
-the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the
-newspapers and magazines--by silly little jingles that he could not get
-out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every
-street corner.  Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon,
-Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages!  Here was the
-headquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast Bacon,
-Durham's Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer!
-
-Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitors
-waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through the
-place.  They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing
-plants, for it is a good advertisement.  But Ponas Jokubas whispered
-maliciously that the visitors did not see any more than the packers
-wanted them to.  They climbed a long series of stairways outside of the
-building, to the top of its five or six stories.  Here was the chute,
-with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there was a place
-for them to rest to cool off, and then through another passageway they
-went into a room from which there is no returning for hogs.
-
-It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors.  At the
-head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference,
-with rings here and there along its edge.  Upon both sides of this wheel
-there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their
-journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and
-bare-chested.  He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stopped
-while men were cleaning up.  In a minute or two, however, it began slowly
-to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work.  They had
-chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other
-end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel.  So, as
-the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft.
-
-At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek;
-the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back.
-The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--
-for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the
-top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing
-down the room.  And meantime another was swung up, and then another,
-and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by
-a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing.  The uproar was appalling,
-perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room
-to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack.  There were
-high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would
-come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever,
-surging up to a deafening climax.  It was too much for some of the
-visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the
-women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their
-faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.
-
-Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going
-about their work.  Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any
-difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one
-with a swift stroke they slit their throats.  There was a long line of hogs,
-with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started
-again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water.
-
-It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated.  It was
-porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics.  And yet
-somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the
-hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were
-so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights!
-They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury,
-as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded,
-impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of
-a tear.  Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering
-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors.  It was like some horrible crime
-committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and
-of memory.
-
-One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical,
-without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog
-squeal of the universe.  Was it permitted to believe that there was
-nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where
-they were requited for all this suffering?  Each one of these hogs was a
-separate creature.  Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown,
-some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean,
-some were monstrous.  And each of them had an individuality of his own,
-a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-
-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity.  And trusting and
-strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow
-hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway.  Now suddenly
-it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg.  Relentless,
-remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it--
-it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply
-no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.
-And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom
-this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies
-had a meaning?  Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him,
-reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his
-sacrifice?  Perhaps some glimpse of all this was in the thoughts of our
-humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on with the rest of the party,
-and muttered: "Dieve--but I'm glad I'm not a hog!"
-
-The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it
-fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine
-with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape
-of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its
-bristles removed.  It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent
-upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men,
-who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to
-the carcass as it came to him.  One scraped the outside of a leg;
-another scraped the inside of the same leg.  One with a swift stroke cut
-the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fell
-to the floor and vanished through a hole.  Another made a slit down
-the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the
-breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out--
-and they also slid through a hole in the floor.  There were men to scrape
-each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcass
-inside, to trim it and wash it.  Looking down this room, one saw, creeping
-slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and for every
-yard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him.  At the end of
-this hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over several
-times; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where it stayed for
-twenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest of
-freezing hogs.
-
-Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government
-inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for
-tuberculosis.  This government inspector did not have the manner of a man
-who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the
-hog might get by him before he had finished his testing.  If you were a
-sociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you,
-and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in
-tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so
-ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched.
-This inspector wore a blue uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an
-atmosphere of authority to the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of
-official approval upon the things which were done in Durham's.
-
-Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring
-openmouthed, lost in wonder.  He had dressed hogs himself in the forest
-of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed
-by several hundred men.  It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he took
-it all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculate
-cleanliness of the employees.  Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubas
-translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering to take them to
-the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be doctored.
-
-The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials
-were treated.  Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for
-sausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening
-stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping.  To another room
-came all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping off
-the grease to make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and this,
-too, was a region in which the visitors did not linger.  In still other
-places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been through
-the chilling rooms.  First there were the "splitters," the most expert
-workmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did
-not a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle.  Then there were
-"cleaver men," great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to
-attend him--to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table,
-and hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he might
-chop it once more.  His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he
-never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement
-did not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough force for a
-perfect cut, and no more.  So through various yawning holes there slipped
-to the floor below--to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another
-sides of pork.  One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms,
-where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with their
-airtight iron doors.  In other rooms they prepared salt pork--there were
-whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling.  In yet
-other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and wrapping
-hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing them.
-From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the platform
-where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there and
-realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of this
-enormous building.
-
-Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of
-beef--where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat.
-Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor;
-and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the
-workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one
-to another of these.  This made a scene of intense activity, a picture of
-human power wonderful to watch.  It was all in one great room, like a
-circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the center.
-
-Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from
-the floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads
-which gave them electric shocks.  Once crowded in here, the creatures
-were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them
-no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging,
-over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with
-a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow.  The room
-echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking
-of the steers.  The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed
-on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the
-pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out
-to the "killing bed."  Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed
-another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air.  There were
-fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of
-minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out.  Then once
-more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of
-each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon
-the killing beds had to get out of the way.
-
-The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never
-forgotten.  They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run--
-at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a football
-game.  It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his task
-to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts,
-and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses, making
-these cuts upon each.  First there came the "butcher," to bleed them;
-this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see it--only the
-flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the man had darted
-on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was pouring out upon the
-floor.  This floor was half an inch deep with blood, in spite of the best
-efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes; it must have made
-the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this by watching the
-men at work.
-
-The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost,
-however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always
-ready.  It was let down to the ground, and there came the "headsman,"
-whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes.
-Then came the "floorsman," to make the first cut in the skin; and then
-another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozen
-more in swift succession, to finish the skinning.  After they were through,
-the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined the
-skin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another rolled it tip
-and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beef
-proceeded on its journey.  There were men to cut it, and men to split it,
-and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside.  There were some with hose
-which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feet
-and added the final touches.  In the end, as with the hogs, the finished
-beef was run into the chilling room, to hang its appointed time.  
-
-The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows,
-labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors--and
-some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign
-of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox.
-And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building,
-to see what became of each particle of the waste material that had
-vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the salting
-rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice meat was
-prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be eaten in all
-the four corners of civilization.  Afterward they went outside, wandering
-about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliary
-to this great industry.  There was scarcely a thing needed in the business
-that Durham and Company did not make for themselves.  There was a great
-steam power plant and an electricity plant.  There was a barrel factory,
-and a boiler-repair shop.  There was a building to which the grease was
-piped, and made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory for
-making lard cans, and another for making soap boxes.  There was a building
-in which the bristles were cleaned and dried, for the making of hair
-cushions and such things; there was a building where the skins were dried
-and tanned, there was another where heads and feet were made into glue,
-and another where bones were made into fertilizer.  No tiniest particle
-of organic matter was wasted in Durham's.  Out of the horns of the
-cattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of
-the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles,
-and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and
-buttons, before they made the rest into glue.  From such things as feet,
-knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely
-products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking,
-and bone oil.  They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a
-"wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs
-of the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the
-ill-smelling entrails.  When there was nothing else to be done with
-a thing, they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow
-and grease, and then they made it into fertilizer.  All these industries
-were gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and
-railroads with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they
-had handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding
-of the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago.  If you
-counted with it the other big plants--and they were now really all
-one--it was, so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor
-and capital ever gathered in one place.  It employed thirty thousand men;
-it suppported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its
-neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million.  It sent its
-products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the
-food for no less than thirty million people!
-
-To all of these things our friends would listen openmouthed--it seemed
-to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been
-devised by mortal man.  That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity
-to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as
-tremendous as the universe--the laws and ways of its working no more than
-the universe to be questioned or understood.  All that a mere man could do,
-it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found it, and do
-as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful
-activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for the
-sunshine and the rain.  Jurgis was even glad that he had not seen the
-place before meeting with his triumph, for he felt that the size of it
-would have overwhelmed him.  But now he had been admitted--he was a part
-of it all!  He had the feeling that this whole huge establishment had
-taken him under its protection, and had become responsible for his welfare.
-So guileless was he, and ignorant of the nature of business, that he did
-not even realize that he had become an employee of Brown's, and that Brown
-and Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly rivals--were even
-required to be deadly rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to try
-to ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment!
-
-
-
-Chapter 4
-
-
-Promptly at seven the next morning Jurgis reported for work.  He came to
-the door that had been pointed out to him, and there he waited for nearly
-two hours.  The boss had meant for him to enter, but had not said this,
-and so it was only when on his way out to hire another man that he came
-upon Jurgis.  He gave him a good cursing, but as Jurgis did not understand
-a word of it he did not object.  He followed the boss, who showed him
-where to put his street clothes, and waited while he donned the working
-clothes he had bought in a secondhand shop and brought with him in a
-bundle; then he led him to the "killing beds."  The work which Jurgis was
-to do here was very simple, and it took him but a few minutes to learn it.
-He was provided with a stiff besom, such as is used by street sweepers,
-and it was his place to follow down the line the man who drew out the
-smoking entrails from the carcass of the steer; this mass was to be swept
-into a trap, which was then closed, so that no one might slip into it.
-As Jurgis came in, the first cattle of the morning were just making their
-appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look about him, and none to
-speak to any one, he fell to work.  It was a sweltering day in July,
-and the place ran with steaming hot blood--one waded in it on the floor.
-The stench was almost overpowering, but to Jurgis it was nothing.  His
-whole soul was dancing with joy--he was at work at last!  He was at work
-and earning money!  All day long he was figuring to himself.  He was paid
-the fabulous sum of seventeen and a half cents an hour; and as it proved
-a rush day and he worked until nearly seven o'clock in the evening, he went
-home to the family with the tidings that he had earned more than a dollar
-and a half in a single day!
-
-At home, also, there was more good news; so much of it at once that there
-was quite a celebration in Aniele's hall bedroom.  Jonas had been to have
-an interview with the special policeman to whom Szedvilas had introduced
-him, and had been taken to see several of the bosses, with the result that
-one had promised him a job the beginning of the next week.  And then there
-was Marija Berczynskas, who, fired with jealousy by the success of Jurgis,
-had set out upon her own responsibility to get a place.  Marija had nothing
-to take with her save her two brawny arms and the word "job," laboriously
-learned; but with these she had marched about Packingtown all day, entering
-every door where there were signs of activity.  Out of some she had been
-ordered with curses; but Marija was not afraid of man or devil, and asked
-every one she saw--visitors and strangers, or workpeople like herself,
-and once or twice even high and lofty office personages, who stared at
-her as if they thought she was crazy.  In the end, however, she had reaped
-her reward.  In one of the smaller plants she had stumbled upon a room
-where scores of women and girls were sitting at long tables preparing
-smoked beef in cans; and wandering through room after room, Marija came
-at last to the place where the sealed cans were being painted and labeled,
-and here she had the good fortune to encounter the "forelady."  Marija did
-not understand then, as she was destined to understand later, what there
-was attractive to a "forelady" about the combination of a face full of
-boundless good nature and the muscles of a dray horse; but the woman had
-told her to come the next day and she would perhaps give her a chance to
-learn the trade of painting cans.  The painting of cans being skilled
-piecework, and paying as much as two dollars a day, Marija burst in upon
-the family with the yell of a Comanche Indian, and fell to capering about
-the room so as to frighten the baby almost into convulsions.
-
-Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was only
-one of them left to seek a place.  Jurgis was determined that Teta Elzbieta
-should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help her.  He would
-not have Ona working--he was not that sort of a man, he said, and she was
-not that sort of a woman.  It would be a strange thing if a man like him
-could not support the family, with the help of the board of Jonas and
-Marija.  He would not even hear of letting the children go to work--there
-were schools here in America for children, Jurgis had heard, to which
-they could go for nothing.  That the priest would object to these schools
-was something of which he had as yet no idea, and for the present his mind
-was made up that the children of Teta Elzbieta should have as fair a chance
-as any other children.  The oldest of them, little Stanislovas, was but
-thirteen, and small for his age at that; and while the oldest son of
-Szedvilas was only twelve, and had worked for over a year at Jones's, Jurgis
-would have it that Stanislovas should learn to speak English, and grow up
-to be a skilled man.
-
-So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest too,
-but he was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and, besides,
-the old man would not hear it spoken of--it was his whim to insist that
-he was as lively as any boy.  He had come to America as full of hope as
-the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that worried his son.
-For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it was a waste of time
-to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown.  Szedvilas told him
-that the packers did not even keep the men who had grown old in their
-own service--to say nothing of taking on new ones.  And not only was it
-the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in America, so far as he knew.
-To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the policeman, and brought back the message
-that the thing was not to be thought of.  They had not told this to old
-Anthony, who had consequently spent the two days wandering about from
-one part of the yards to another, and had now come home to hear about
-the triumph of the others, smiling bravely and saying that it would be
-his turn another day.  
-
-Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about
-a home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held
-consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty
-subject.  Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two
-boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that there
-were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled it up and
-tucked it into his shirt.  At noontime a man with whom he had been talking
-had read it to him and told him a little about it, with the result that
-Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.
-
-He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art.  It was nearly
-two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors so
-bright that they shone even in the moonlight.  The center of the placard
-was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling.  The roof
-of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house itself was
-silvery, and the doors and windows red.  It was a two-story building, with
-a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork around the edges; it was
-complete in every tiniest detail, even the doorknob, and there was a
-hammock on the porch and white lace curtains in the windows.  Underneath
-this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and wife in loving embrace;
-in the opposite corner was a cradle, with fluffy curtains drawn over it,
-and a smiling cherub hovering upon silver-colored wings.  For fear that
-the significance of all this should be lost, there was a label, in Polish,
-Lithuanian, and German--"Dom.  Namai.  Heim."  "Why pay rent?" the
-linguistic circular went on to demand.  "Why not own your own home?
-Do you know that you can buy one for less than your rent?  We have built
-thousands of homes which are now occupied by happy families."--So it became
-eloquent, picturing the blissfulness of married life in a house with
-nothing to pay.  It even quoted "Home, Sweet Home," and made bold to
-translate it into Polish--though for some reason it omitted the Lithuanian
-of this.  Perhaps the translator found it a difficult matter to be
-sentimental in a language in which a sob is known as a gukcziojimas and
-a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.
-
-Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its contents.
-It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a basement, and
-that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the lot and all.
-Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down, the balance being
-paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month.  These were frightful sums,
-but then they were in America, where people talked about such without fear.
-They had learned that they would have to pay a rent of nine dollars a month
-for a flat, and there was no way of doing better, unless the family of
-twelve was to exist in one or two rooms, as at present.  If they paid rent,
-of course, they might pay forever, and be no better off; whereas, if they
-could only meet the extra expense in the beginning, there would at last
-come a time when they would not have any rent to pay for the rest of 
-their lives.
-
-They figured it up.  There was a little left of the money belonging to
-Teta Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis.  Marija had about
-fifty dollars pinned up somewhere in her stockings, and Grandfather Anthony
-had part of the money he had gotten for his farm.  If they all combined,
-they would have enough to make the first payment; and if they had
-employment, so that they could be sure of the future, it might really
-prove the best plan.  It was, of course, not a thing even to be talked
-of lightly; it was a thing they would have to sift to the bottom.  And yet,
-on the other hand, if they were going to make the venture, the sooner they
-did it the better, for were they not paying rent all the time, and living
-in a most horrible way besides?  Jurgis was used to dirt--there was nothing
-could scare a man who had been with a railroad gang, where one could gather
-up the fleas off the floor of the sleeping room by the handful.  But that
-sort of thing would not do for Ona.  They must have a better place of some
-sort soon--Jurgis said it with all the assurance of a man who had just
-made a dollar and fifty-seven cents in a single day.  Jurgis was at a loss
-to understand why, with wages as they were, so many of the people of this
-district should live the way they did.
-
-The next day Marija went to see her "forelady," and was told to report
-the first of the week, and learn the business of can-painter.  Marija went
-home, singing out loud all the way, and was just in time to join Ona and
-her stepmother as they were setting out to go and make inquiry concerning
-the house.  That evening the three made their report to the men--the thing
-was altogether as represented in the circular, or at any rate so the agent
-had said.  The houses lay to the south, about a mile and a half from the
-yards; they were wonderful bargains, the gentleman had assured them--
-personally, and for their own good.  He could do this, so he explained
-to them, for the reason that he had himself no interest in their sale--
-he was merely the agent for a company that had built them.  These were
-the last, and the company was going out of business, so if any one wished
-to take advantage of this wonderful no-rent plan, he would have to be
-very quick.  As a matter of fact there was just a little uncertainty as
-to whether there was a single house left; for the agent had taken so many
-people to see them, and for all he knew the company might have parted with
-the last.  Seeing Teta Elzbieta's evident grief at this news, he added,
-after some hesitation, that if they really intended to make a purchase,
-he would send a telephone message at his own expense, and have one of the
-houses kept.  So it had finally been arranged--and they were to go and
-make an inspection the following Sunday morning.
-
-That was Thursday; and all the rest of the week the killing gang at
-Brown's worked at full pressure, and Jurgis cleared a dollar seventy-
-five every day.  That was at the rate of ten and one-half dollars a week,
-or forty-five a month.  Jurgis was not able to figure, except it was a
-very simple sum, but Ona was like lightning at such things, and she worked
-out the problem for the family.  Marija and Jonas were each to pay sixteen
-dollars a month board, and the old man insisted that he could do the same
-as soon as he got a place--which might be any day now.  That would make
-ninety-three dollars.  Then Marija and Jonas were between them to take a
-third share in the house, which would leave only eight dollars a month
-for Jurgis to contribute to the payment.  So they would have eighty-five
-dollars a month--or, supposing that Dede Antanas did not get work at once,
-seventy dollars a month--which ought surely to be sufficient for the
-support of a family of twelve.
-
-An hour before the time on Sunday morning the entire party set out.
-They had the address written on a piece of paper, which they showed to
-some one now and then.  It proved to be a long mile and a half, but they
-walked it, and half an hour or so later the agent put in an appearance.
-He was a smooth and florid personage, elegantly dressed, and he spoke
-their language freely, which gave him a great advantage in dealing with
-them.  He escorted them to the house, which was one of a long row of the
-typical frame dwellings of the neighborhood, where architecture is a
-luxury that is dispensed with.  Ona's heart sank, for the house was not
-as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was different, for one
-thing, and then it did not seem quite so big.  Still, it was freshly
-painted, and made a considerable show.  It was all brand-new, so the
-agent told them, but he talked so incessantly that they were quite
-confused, and did not have time to ask many questions.  There were all
-sorts of things they had made up their minds to inquire about, but when
-the time came, they either forgot them or lacked the courage.  The other
-houses in the row did not seem to be new, and few of them seemed to be
-occupied.  When they ventured to hint at this, the agent's reply was that
-the purchasers would be moving in shortly.  To press the matter would have
-seemed to be doubting his word, and never in their lives had any one of
-them ever spoken to a person of the class called "gentleman" except with
-deference and humility.
-
-The house had a basement, about two feet below the street line, and a
-single story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps.
-In addition there was an attic, made by the peak of the roof, and having
-one small window in each end.  The street in front of the house was
-unpaved and unlighted, and the view from it consisted of a few exactly
-similar houses, scattered here and there upon lots grown up with dingy
-brown weeds.  The house inside contained four rooms, plastered white;
-the basement was but a frame, the walls being unplastered and the floor
-not laid.  The agent explained that the houses were built that way, as the
-purchasers generally preferred to finish the basements to suit their own
-taste.  The attic was also unfinished--the family had been figuring that
-in case of an emergency they could rent this attic, but they found that
-there was not even a floor, nothing but joists, and beneath them the lath
-and plaster of the ceiling below.  All of this, however, did not chill
-their ardor as much as might have been expected, because of the volubility
-of the agent.  There was no end to the advantages of the house, as he
-set them forth, and he was not silent for an instant; he showed them
-everything, down to the locks on the doors and the catches on the windows,
-and how to work them.  He showed them the sink in the kitchen, with
-running water and a faucet, something which Teta Elzbieta had never in
-her wildest dreams hoped to possess.  After a discovery such as that it
-would have seemed ungrateful to find any fault, and so they tried to shut
-their eyes to other defects.
-
-Still, they were peasant people, and they hung on to their money by
-instinct; it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness--
-they would see, they would see, they told him, they could not decide until
-they had had more time.  And so they went home again, and all day and
-evening there was figuring and debating.  It was an agony to them to have
-to make up their minds in a matter such as this.  They never could agree
-all together; there were so many arguments upon each side, and one would
-be obstinate, and no sooner would the rest have convinced him than it
-would transpire that his arguments had caused another to waver.  Once,
-in the evening, when they were all in harmony, and the house was as good
-as bought, Szedvilas came in and upset them again.  Szedvilas had no use
-for property owning.  He told them cruel stories of people who had been
-done to death in this "buying a home" swindle.  They would be almost sure
-to get into a tight place and lose all their money; and there was no end
-of expense that one could never foresee; and the house might be good-for-
-nothing from top to bottom--how was a poor man to know?  Then, too, they
-would swindle you with the contract--and how was a poor man to understand
-anything about a contract?  It was all nothing but robbery, and there was
-no safety but in keeping out of it.  And pay rent?  asked Jurgis.  Ah, yes,
-to be sure, the other answered, that too was robbery.  It was all robbery,
-for a poor man.  After half an hour of such depressing conversation, they
-had their minds quite made up that they had been saved at the brink of a
-precipice; but then Szedvilas went away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little
-man, reminded them that the delicatessen business was a failure, according
-to its proprietor, and that this might account for his pessimistic views.
-Which, of course, reopened the subject!
-
-The controlling factor was that they could not stay where they were--they
-had to go somewhere.  And when they gave up the house plan and decided
-to rent, the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month forever they
-found just as hard to face.  All day and all night for nearly a whole
-week they wrestled with the problem, and then in the end Jurgis took the
-responsibility.  Brother Jonas had gotten his job, and was pushing a truck
-in Durham's; and the killing gang at Brown's continued to work early and
-late, so that Jurgis grew more confident every hour, more certain of his
-mastership.  It was the kind of thing the man of the family had to decide
-and carry through, he told himself.  Others might have failed at it, but he
-was not the failing kind--he would show them how to do it.  He would work
-all day, and all night, too, if need be; he would never rest until the
-house was paid for and his people had a home.  So he told them, and so in
-the end the decision was made.
-
-They had talked about looking at more houses before they made the purchase;
-but then they did not know where any more were, and they did not know any
-way of finding out.  The one they had seen held the sway in their thoughts;
-whenever they thought of themselves in a house, it was this house that
-they thought of.  And so they went and told the agent that they were ready
-to make the agreement.  They knew, as an abstract proposition, that in
-matters of business all men are to be accounted liars; but they could not
-but have been influenced by all they had heard from the eloquent agent,
-and were quite persuaded that the house was something they had run a risk
-of losing by their delay.  They drew a deep breath when he told them that
-they were still in time.
-
-They were to come on the morrow, and he would have the papers all
-drawn up.  This matter of papers was one in which Jurgis understood
-to the full the need of caution; yet he could not go himself--every one
-told him that he could not get a holiday, and that he might lose his job
-by asking.  So there was nothing to be done but to trust it to the women,
-with Szedvilas, who promised to go with them.  Jurgis spent a whole
-evening impressing upon them the seriousness of the occasion--and then
-finally, out of innumerable hiding places about their persons and in their
-baggage, came forth the precious wads of money, to be done up tightly in a
-little bag and sewed fast in the lining of Teta Elzbieta's dress.
-
-Early in the morning they sallied forth.  Jurgis had given them so many
-instructions and warned them against so many perils, that the women were
-quite pale with fright, and even the imperturbable delicatessen vender,
-who prided himself upon being a businessman, was ill at ease.  The agent
-had the deed all ready, and invited them to sit down and read it; this
-Szedvilas proceeded to do--a painful and laborious process, during which
-the agent drummed upon the desk.  Teta Elzbieta was so embarrassed that
-the perspiration came out upon her forehead in beads; for was not this
-reading as much as to say plainly to the gentleman's face that they
-doubted his honesty?  Yet Jokubas Szedvilas read on and on; and presently
-there developed that he had good reason for doing so.  For a horrible
-suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his brows more and
-more as he read.  This was not a deed of sale at all, so far as he could
-see--it provided only for the renting of the property!  It was hard to
-tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had never heard before;
-but was not this plain--"the party of the first part hereby covenants and
-agrees to rent to the said party of the second part!"  And then again--
-"a monthly rental of twelve dollars, for a period of eight years and four
-months!"  Then Szedvilas took off his spectacles, and looked at the agent,
-and stammered a question.
-
-The agent was most polite, and explained that that was the usual formula;
-that it was always arranged that the property should be merely rented.
-He kept trying to show them something in the next paragraph; but Szedvilas
-could not get by the word "rental"--and when he translated it to Teta
-Elzbieta, she too was thrown into a fright.  They would not own the home
-at all, then, for nearly nine years!  The agent, with infinite patience,
-began to explain again; but no explanation would do now.  Elzbieta had
-firmly fixed in her mind the last solemn warning of Jurgis: "If there is
-anything wrong, do not give him the money, but go out and get a lawyer."
-It was an agonizing moment, but she sat in the chair, her hands clenched
-like death, and made a fearful effort, summoning all her powers, and gasped
-out her purpose.
-
-Jokubas translated her words.  She expected the agent to fly into a
-passion, but he was, to her bewilderment, as ever imperturbable; he even
-offered to go and get a lawyer for her, but she declined this.  They went
-a long way, on purpose to find a man who would not be a confederate.
-Then let any one imagine their dismay, when, after half an hour, they
-came in with a lawyer, and heard him greet the agent by his first name!
-They felt that all was lost; they sat like prisoners summoned to hear
-the reading of their death warrant.  There was nothing more that they
-could do--they were trapped!  The lawyer read over the deed, and when
-he had read it he informed Szedvilas that it was all perfectly regular,
-that the deed was a blank deed such as was often used in these sales.
-And was the price as agreed? the old man asked--three hundred dollars
-down, and the balance at twelve dollars a month, till the total of
-fifteen hundred dollars had been paid?  Yes, that was correct.  And it
-was for the sale of such and such a house--the house and lot and everything?
-Yes,--and the lawyer showed him where that was all written.  And it was
-all perfectly regular--there were no tricks about it of any sort?  They
-were poor people, and this was all they had in the world, and if there
-was anything wrong they would be ruined.  And so Szedvilas went on,
-asking one trembling question after another, while the eyes of the women
-folks were fixed upon him in mute agony.  They could not understand what
-he was saying, but they knew that upon it their fate depended.  And when
-at last he had questioned until there was no more questioning to be done,
-and the time came for them to make up their minds, and either close the
-bargain or reject it, it was all that poor Teta Elzbieta could do to keep
-from bursting into tears.  Jokubas had asked her if she wished to sign;
-he had asked her twice--and what could she say?  How did she know if this
-lawyer were telling the truth--that he was not in the conspiracy?  And yet,
-how could she say so--what excuse could she give?  The eyes of every one
-in the room were upon her, awaiting her decision; and at last, half blind
-with her tears, she began fumbling in her jacket, where she had pinned the
-precious money.  And she brought it out and unwrapped it before the men.
-All of this Ona sat watching, from a corner of the room, twisting her
-hands together, meantime, in a fever of fright.  Ona longed to cry out
-and tell her stepmother to stop, that it was all a trap; but there seemed
-to be something clutching her by the throat, and she could not make a sound.
-And so Teta Elzbieta laid the money on the table, and the agent picked it
-up and counted it, and then wrote them a receipt for it and passed them
-the deed.  Then he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and rose and shook hands
-with them all, still as smooth and polite as at the beginning.  Ona had
-a dim recollection of the lawyer telling Szedvilas that his charge was a
-dollar, which occasioned some debate, and more agony; and then, after they
-had paid that, too, they went out into the street, her stepmother clutching
-the deed in her hand.  They were so weak from fright that they could not
-walk, but had to sit down on the way.
-
-So they went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that
-evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end.
-Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he
-tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill
-the agent that very night.  In the end he seized the paper and rushed
-out of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street.
-He dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together they rushed to
-consult another lawyer.  When they entered his office the lawyer sprang up,
-for Jurgis looked like a crazy person, with flying hair and bloodshot eyes.
-His companion explained the situation, and the lawyer took the paper and
-began to read it, while Jurgis stood clutching the desk with knotted hands,
-trembling in every nerve.
-
-Once or twice the lawyer looked up and asked a question of Szedvilas;
-the other did not know a word that he was saying, but his eyes were
-fixed upon the lawyer's face, striving in an agony of dread to read
-his mind.  He saw the lawyer look up and laugh, and he gave a gasp;
-the man said something to Szedvilas, and Jurgis turned upon his friend,
-his heart almost stopping.
-
-"Well?" he panted.
-
-"He says it is all right," said Szedvilas.
-
-"All right!"
-
-"Yes, he says it is just as it should be."  And Jurgis, in his relief,
-sank down into a chair.
-
-"Are you sure of it?" he gasped, and made Szedvilas translate question
-after question.  He could not hear it often enough; he could not ask
-with enough variations.  Yes, they had bought the house, they had really
-bought it.  It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it
-would be all right.  Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for
-there were tears in his eyes, and he felt like a fool.  But he had had
-such a horrible fright; strong man as he was, it left him almost too weak
-to stand up.
-
-The lawyer explained that the rental was a form--the property was said
-to be merely rented until the last payment had been made, the purpose
-being to make it easier to turn the party out if he did not make the
-payments.  So long as they paid, however, they had nothing to fear, the
-house was all theirs.
-
-Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked
-without winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to
-the family.  He found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the
-whole house in an uproar--for it had been believed by all that he had
-gone to murder the agent.  It was hours before the excitement could be
-calmed; and all through that cruel night Jurgis would wake up now and
-then and hear Ona and her stepmother in the next room, sobbing softly
-to themselves.
-
-
-
-Chapter 5
-
-
-They had bought their home.  It was hard for them to realize that the
-wonderful house was theirs to move into whenever they chose.  They spent
-all their time thinking about it, and what they were going to put into it.
-As their week with Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time in
-getting ready.  They had to make some shift to furnish it, and every
-instant of their leisure was given to discussing this.
-
-A person who had such a task before him would not need to look very far
-in Packingtown--he had only to walk up the avenue and read the signs,
-or get into a streetcar, to obtain full information as to pretty much
-everything a human creature could need.  It was quite touching, the
-zeal of people to see that his health and happiness were provided for.
-Did the person wish to smoke?  There was a little discourse about cigars,
-showing him exactly why the Thomas Jefferson Five-cent Perfecto was the
-only cigar worthy of the name.  Had he, on the other hand, smoked too much?
-Here was a remedy for the smoking habit, twenty-five doses for a quarter,
-and a cure absolutely guaranteed in ten doses.  In innumerable ways such
-as this, the traveler found that somebody had been busied to make smooth
-his paths through the world, and to let him know what had been done for him.
-In Packingtown the advertisements had a style all of their own, adapted to
-the peculiar population.  One would be tenderly solicitous.  "Is your wife
-pale?" it would inquire.  "Is she discouraged, does she drag herself about
-the house and find fault with everything?  Why do you not tell her to try
-Dr. Lanahan's Life Preservers?"  Another would be jocular in tone,
-slapping you on the back, so to speak.  "Don't be a chump!" it would
-exclaim.  "Go and get the Goliath Bunion Cure."  "Get a move on you!"
-would chime in another.  "It's easy, if you wear the Eureka Two-fifty Shoe."
-
-Among these importunate signs was one that had caught the attention of
-the family by its pictures.  It showed two very pretty little birds
-building themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to read
-it to her, and told them that it related to the furnishing of a house.
-"Feather your nest," it ran--and went on to say that it could furnish
-all the necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the ludicrously
-small sum of seventy-five dollars.  The particularly important thing
-about this offer was that only a small part of the money need be had
-at once--the rest one might pay a few dollars every month.  Our friends
-had to have some furniture, there was no getting away from that; but their
-little fund of money had sunk so low that they could hardly get to sleep
-at night, and so they fled to this as their deliverance.  There was more
-agony and another paper for Elzbieta to sign, and then one night when
-Jurgis came home, he was told the breathless tidings that the furniture
-had arrived and was safely stowed in the house: a parlor set of four
-pieces, a bedroom set of three pieces, a dining room table and four
-chairs, a toilet set with beautiful pink roses painted all over it,
-an assortment of crockery, also with pink roses--and so on.  One of
-the plates in the set had been found broken when they unpacked it,
-and Ona was going to the store the first thing in the morning to make
-them change it; also they had promised three saucepans, and there had
-only two come, and did Jurgis think that they were trying to cheat them?
-
-The next day they went to the house; and when the men came from work
-they ate a few hurried mouthfuls at Aniele's, and then set to work at
-the task of carrying their belongings to their new home.  The distance
-was in reality over two miles, but Jurgis made two trips that night,
-each time with a huge pile of mattresses and bedding on his head,
-with bundles of clothing and bags and things tied up inside.  Anywhere
-else in Chicago he would have stood a good chance of being arrested;
-but the policemen in Packingtown were apparently used to these informal
-movings, and contented themselves with a cursory examination now and then.
-It was quite wonderful to see how fine the house looked, with all the
-things in it, even by the dim light of a lamp: it was really home,
-and almost as exciting as the placard had described it.  Ona was fairly
-dancing, and she and Cousin Marija took Jurgis by the arm and escorted
-him from room to room, sitting in each chair by turns, and then insisting
-that he should do the same.  One chair squeaked with his great weight,
-and they screamed with fright, and woke the baby and brought everybody
-running.  Altogether it was a great day; and tired as they were, Jurgis
-and Ona sat up late, contented simply to hold each other and gaze in
-rapture about the room.  They were going to be married as soon as they
-could get everything settled, and a little spare money put by; and this
-was to be their home--that little room yonder would be theirs!
-
-It was in truth a never-ending delight, the fixing up of this house.
-They had no money to spend for the pleasure of spending, but there were
-a few absolutely necessary things, and the buying of these was a perpetual
-adventure for Ona.  It must always be done at night, so that Jurgis
-could go along; and even if it were only a pepper cruet, or half a dozen
-glasses for ten cents, that was enough for an expedition.  On Saturday
-night they came home with a great basketful of things, and spread them
-out on the table, while every one stood round, and the children climbed
-up on the chairs, or howled to be lifted up to see.  There were sugar
-and salt and tea and crackers, and a can of lard and a milk pail, and a
-scrubbing brush, and a pair of shoes for the second oldest boy, and a can
-of oil, and a tack hammer, and a pound of nails.  These last were to be
-driven into the walls of the kitchen and the bedrooms, to hang things on;
-and there was a family discussion as to the place where each one was to
-be driven.  Then Jurgis would try to hammer, and hit his fingers because
-the hammer was too small, and get mad because Ona had refused to let him
-pay fifteen cents more and get a bigger hammer; and Ona would be invited
-to try it herself, and hurt her thumb, and cry out, which necessitated the
-thumb's being kissed by Jurgis.  Finally, after every one had had a try,
-the nails would be driven, and something hung up.  Jurgis had come home
-with a big packing box on his head, and he sent Jonas to get another that
-he had bought.  He meant to take one side out of these tomorrow, and put
-shelves in them, and make them into bureaus and places to keep things for
-the bedrooms.  The nest which had been advertised had not included feathers
-for quite so many birds as there were in this family.
-
-They had, of course, put their dining table in the kitchen, and the
-dining room was used as the bedroom of Teta Elzbieta and five of her
-children.  She and the two youngest slept in the only bed, and the
-other three had a mattress on the floor.  Ona and her cousin dragged a
-mattress into the parlor and slept at night, and the three men and the
-oldest boy slept in the other room, having nothing but the very level
-floor to rest on for the present.  Even so, however, they slept soundly--
-it was necessary for Teta Elzbieta to pound more than once on the at a
-quarter past five every morning.  She would have ready a great pot full
-of steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and smoked sausages;
-and then she would fix them their dinner pails with more thick slices
-of bread with lard between them--they could not afford butter--and some
-onions and a piece of cheese, and so they would tramp away to work.
-
-This was the first time in his life that he had ever really worked,
-it seemed to Jurgis; it was the first time that he had ever had anything
-to do which took all he had in him.  Jurgis had stood with the rest up
-in the gallery and watched the men on the killing beds, marveling at their
-speed and power as if they had been wonderful machines; it somehow never
-occurred to one to think of the flesh-and-blood side of it--that is, not
-until he actually got down into the pit and took off his coat.  Then he saw
-things in a different light, he got at the inside of them.  The pace they
-set here, it was one that called for every faculty of a man--from the
-instant the first steer fell till the sounding of the noon whistle, and
-again from half-past twelve till heaven only knew what hour in the late
-afternoon or evening, there was never one instant's rest for a man, for his
-hand or his eye or his brain.  Jurgis saw how they managed it; there were
-portions of the work which determined the pace of the rest, and for these
-they had picked men whom they paid high wages, and whom they changed
-frequently.  You might easily pick out these pacemakers, for they worked
-under the eye of the bosses, and they worked like men possessed.  This was
-called "speeding up the gang," and if any man could not keep up with the
-pace, there were hundreds outside begging to try.
-
-Yet Jurgis did not mind it; he rather enjoyed it.  It saved him the
-necessity of flinging his arms about and fidgeting as he did in most work.
-He would laugh to himself as he ran down the line, darting a glance now
-and then at the man ahead of him.  It was not the pleasantest work one
-could think of, but it was necessary work; and what more had a man the
-right to ask than a chance to do something useful, and to get good pay
-for doing it?
-
-So Jurgis thought, and so he spoke, in his bold, free way; very much
-to his surprise, he found that it had a tendency to get him into trouble.
-For most of the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing.
-He was quite dismayed when he first began to find it out--that most of
-the men hated their work.  It seemed strange, it was even terrible, when
-you came to find out the universality of the sentiment; but it was
-certainly the fact--they hated their work.  They hated the bosses and
-they hated the owners; they hated the whole place, the whole neighborhood--
-even the whole city, with an all-inclusive hatred, bitter and fierce.
-Women and little children would fall to cursing about it; it was rotten,
-rotten as hell--everything was rotten.  When Jurgis would ask them what
-they meant, they would begin to get suspicious, and content themselves
-with saying, "Never mind, you stay here and see for yourself."
-
-One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions.
-He had had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained
-to him that the men were banded together for the purpose of fighting
-for their rights.  Jurgis asked them what they meant by their rights,
-a question in which he was quite sincere, for he had not any idea of any
-rights that he had, except the right to hunt for a job, and do as he was
-told when he got it.  Generally, however, this harmless question would
-only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and call him a fool.
-There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers' union who came to see Jurgis
-to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he would have
-to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and the delegate,
-who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of Lithuanian, lost his
-temper and began to threaten him.  In the end Jurgis got into a fine rage,
-and made it sufficiently plain that it would take more than one Irishman
-to scare him into a union.  Little by little he gathered that the main
-thing the men wanted was to put a stop to the habit of "speeding-up";
-they were trying their best to force a lessening of the pace, for there
-were some, they said, who could not keep up with it, whom it was killing.
-But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as this--he could do the work
-himself, and so could the rest of them, he declared, if they were good
-for anything.  If they couldn't do it, let them go somewhere else.
-Jurgis had not studied the books, and he would not have known how to
-pronounce "laissez faire"; 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.
-
-Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore by
-Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief fund
-in time of a famine.  It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the
-unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart because of
-his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the yards begging for
-a chance to earn his bread.  Old Antanas had been a worker ever since he
-was a child; he had run away from home when he was twelve, because his
-father beat him for trying to learn to read.  And he was a faithful man,
-too; he was a man you might leave alone for a month, if only you had made
-him understand what you wanted him to do in the meantime.  And now here
-he was, worn out in soul and body, and with no more place in the world
-than a sick dog.  He had his home, as it happened, and some one who would
-care for him it he never got a job; but his son could not help thinking,
-suppose this had not been the case.  Antanas Rudkus had been into every
-building in Packingtown by this time, and into nearly every room; he had
-stood mornings among the crowd of applicants till the very policemen had
-come to know his face and to tell him to go home and give it up.  He had
-been likewise to all the stores and saloons for a mile about, begging
-for some little thing to do; and everywhere they had ordered him out,
-sometimes with curses, and not once even stopping to ask him a question.
-
-So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis' faith
-in things as they are.  The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting
-a job--and it was yet wider when he finally got it.  For one evening the
-old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he
-had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms
-of Durham's, and asked what he would pay to get a job.  He had not known
-what to make of this at first; but the man had gone on with matter-of-fact
-frankness to say that he could get him a job, provided that he were
-willing to pay one-third of his wages for it.  Was he a boss?  Antanas
-had asked; to which the man had replied that that was nobody's business,
-but that he could do what he said.
-
-Jurgis had made some friends by this time, and he sought one of them and
-asked what this meant.  The friend, who was named Tamoszius Kuszleika,
-was a sharp little man who folded hides on the killing beds, and he
-listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all surprised.
-They were common enough, he said, such cases of petty graft.  It was
-simply some boss who proposed to add a little to his income.  After Jurgis
-had been there awhile he would know that the plants were simply honeycombed
-with rottenness of that sort--the bosses grafted off the men, and they
-grafted off each other; and some day the superintendent would find out
-about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.  Warming to the
-subject, Tamoszius went on to explain the situation.  Here was Durham's,
-for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as much money out
-of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he did it; and
-underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army, were managers
-and superintendents and foremen, each one driving the man next below
-him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as possible.  And all
-the men of the same rank were pitted against each other; the accounts
-of each were kept separately, and every man lived in terror of losing
-his job, if another made a better record than he.  So from top to bottom
-the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies and hatreds; there
-was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it
-where a man counted for anything against a dollar.  And worse than there
-being no decency, there was not even any honesty.  The reason for that?
-Who could say?  It must have been old Durham in the beginning; it was a
-heritage which the self-made merchant had left to his son, along with
-his millions.
-
-Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
-enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
-was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
-like all the rest.  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.  That man who had been sent to Jurgis'
-father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales and spied upon
-his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own business and did his
-work--why, they would "speed him up" till they had worn him out, and then
-they would throw him into the gutter.
-
-Jurgis went home with his head buzzing.  Yet he could not bring himself
-to believe such things--no, it could not be so.  Tamoszius was simply
-another of the grumblers.  He was a man who spent all his time fiddling;
-and he would go to parties at night and not get home till sunrise,
-and so of course he did not feel like work.  Then, too, he was a puny
-little chap; and so he had been left behind in the race, and that was
-why he was sore.  And yet so many strange things kept coming to Jurgis'
-notice every day!
-
-He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer.
-But old Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage
-was gone; he wanted a job, any sort of a job.  So the next day he went
-and found the man who had spoken to him, and promised to bring him
-a third of all he earned; and that same day he was put to work in Durham's
-cellars.  It was a "pickle room," where there was never a dry spot to
-stand upon, and so he had to take nearly the whole of his first week's
-earnings to buy him a pair of heavy-soled boots.  He was a "squeedgie" man;
-his job was to go about all day with a long-handled mop, swabbing up the
-floor.  Except that it was damp and dark, it was not an unpleasant job,
-in summer.
-
-Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and so
-Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said, that
-his father had been at work only two days before he came home as bitter
-as any of them, and cursing Durham's with all the power of his soul.
-For they had set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family sat round
-and listened in wonder while he told them what that meant.  It seemed
-that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef for
-canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men with
-great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken to
-the cooking room.  When they had speared out all they could reach, they
-emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the
-balance and dumped it into the truck.  This floor was filthy, yet they
-set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that
-connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever;
-and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the
-scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few
-days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their
-contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!
-
-This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and
-Marija with tales to tell.  Marija was working for one of the independent
-packers, and was quite beside herself and outrageous with triumph over
-the sums of money she was making as a painter of cans.  But one day she
-walked home with a pale-faced little woman who worked opposite to her,
-Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga told her how she, Marija, had
-chanced to get her job.  She had taken the place of an Irishwoman who
-had been working in that factory ever since any one could remember.
-For over fifteen years, so she declared.  Mary Dennis was her name,
-and a long time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was
-a cripple, and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the
-world to love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back
-of Halsted Street, where the Irish were.  Mary had had consumption,
-and all day long you might hear her coughing as she worked; of late
-she had been going all to pieces, and when Marija came, the "forelady"
-had suddenly decided to turn her off.  The forelady had to come up to
-a certain standard herself, and could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga
-explained.  The fact that Mary had been there so long had not made any
-difference to her--it was doubtful if she even knew that, for both the
-forelady and the superintendent were new people, having only been there
-two or three years themselves.  Jadvyga did not know what had become of
-the poor creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been sick
-herself.  She had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained,
-and feared that she had womb trouble.  It was not fit work for a woman,
-handling fourteen-pound cans all day.  
-
-It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by the
-misfortune of some other person.  Jonas pushed a truck loaded with hams
-from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing rooms.
-The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about threescore hams
-on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a ton.  On the uneven
-floor it was a task for a man to start one of these trucks, unless he was
-a giant; and when it was once started he naturally tried his best to keep
-it going.  There was always the boss prowling about, and if there was a
-second's delay he would fall to cursing; Lithuanians and Slovaks and such,
-who could not understand what was said to them, the bosses were wont to
-kick about the place like so many dogs.  Therefore these trucks went for
-the most part on the run; and the predecessor of Jonas had been jammed
-against the wall by one and crushed in a horrible and nameless manner.
-
-All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to
-what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long.  One curious thing he had
-noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts; which
-was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to come
-a "slunk" calf.  Any man who knows anything about butchering knows that
-the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is not fit
-for food.  A good many of these came every day to the packing houses--and,
-of course, if they had chosen, it would have been an easy matter for the
-packers to keep them till they were fit for food.  But for the saving of
-time and fodder, it was the law that cows of that sort came along with
-the others, and whoever noticed it would tell the boss, and the boss would
-start up a conversation with the government inspector, and the two would
-stroll away.  So in a trice the carcass of the cow would be cleaned out,
-and entrails would have vanished; it was Jurgis' task to slide them
-into the trap, calves and all, and on the floor below they took out
-these "slunk" calves, and butchered them for meat, and used even the skins
-of them.
-
-One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the
-last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving,
-Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work which this injured
-man had usually done.  It was late, almost dark, and the government
-inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two of men on
-the floor.  That day they had killed about four thousand cattle, and these
-cattle had come in freight trains from far states, and some of them had
-got hurt.  There were some with broken legs, and some with gored sides;
-there were some that had died, from what cause no one could say; and they
-were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence.  "Downers," the
-men called them; and the packing house had a special elevator upon which
-they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang proceeded to handle
-them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which said plainer than
-any words that it was a matter of everyday routine.  It took a couple of
-hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis saw them go into
-the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being carefully scattered
-here and there so that they could not be identified.  When he came home
-that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun to see at last
-how those might be right who had laughed at him for his faith in America.  
-
-
-
-Chapter 6 
-
-
-Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time--
-it was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by
-the criterion of its helping or hindering their union.  All his thoughts
-were there; he accepted the family because it was a part of Ona.  And he
-was interested in the house because it was to be Ona's home.  Even the
-tricks and cruelties he saw at Durham's had little meaning for him just
-then, save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.
-
-The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way;
-but this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding
-feast, and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the
-old people.  To Teta Elzbieta especially the very suggestion was an
-affliction.  What! she would cry.  To be married on the roadside like
-a parcel of beggars!  No!  No!--Elzbieta had some traditions behind her;
-she had been a person of importance in her girlhood--had lived on a big
-estate and had servants, and might have married well and been a lady,
-but for the fact that there had been nine daughters and no sons in the
-family.  Even so, however, she knew what was decent, and clung to her
-traditions with desperation.  They were not going to lose all caste,
-even if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown; and that
-Ona had even talked of omitting a Yeselija was enough to keep her
-stepmother lying awake all night.  It was in vain for them to say that
-they had so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and then
-the friends would talk about it.  They must not give up what was right
-for a little money--if they did, the money would never do them any good,
-they could depend upon that.  And Elzbieta would call upon Dede Antanas
-to support her; there was a fear in the souls of these two, lest this
-journey to a new country might somehow undermine the old home virtues of
-their children.  The very first Sunday they had all been taken to mass;
-and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to invest a little
-of her resources in a representation of the babe of Bethlehem, made in
-plaster, and painted in brilliant colors.  Though it was only a foot high,
-there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and the Virgin standing
-with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and wise men
-bowing down before him.  It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta had a
-feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too
-closely, it would come back in hidden ways.  The piece was beautiful
-on the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home without some sort
-of ornament.
-
-The cost of the wedding feast would, of course, be returned to them;
-but the problem was to raise it even temporarily.  They had been in
-the neighborhood so short a time that they could not get much credit,
-and there was no one except Szedvilas from whom they could borrow even
-a little.  Evening after evening Jurgis and Ona would sit and figure the
-expenses, calculating the term of their separation.  They could not
-possibly manage it decently for less than two hundred dollars, and even
-though they were welcome to count in the whole of the earnings of Marija
-and Jonas, as a loan, they could not hope to raise this sum in less than
-four or five months.  So Ona began thinking of seeking employment herself,
-saying that if she had even ordinarily good luck, she might be able to
-take two months off the time.  They were just beginning to adjust
-themselves to this necessity, when out of the clear sky there fell a
-thunderbolt upon them--a calamity that scattered all their hopes to the
-four winds.
-
-About a block away from them there lived another Lithuanian family,
-consisting of an elderly widow and one grown son; their name was
-Majauszkis, and our friends struck up an acquaintance with them before
-long.  One evening they came over for a visit, and naturally the first
-subject upon which the conversation turned was the neighborhood and its
-history; and then Grandmother Majauszkiene, as the old lady was called,
-proceeded to recite to them a string of horrors that fairly froze their
-blood.  She was a wrinkled-up and wizened personage--she must have been
-eighty--and as she mumbled the grim story through her toothless gums,
-she seemed a very old witch to them.  Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived
-in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element,
-and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people
-might about weddings and holidays.
-
-The thing came gradually.  In the first place as to the house they had
-bought, it was not new at all, as they had supposed; it was about fifteen
-years old, and there was nothing new upon it but the paint, which was so
-bad that it needed to be put on new every year or two.  The house was one
-of a whole row that was built by a company which existed to make money
-by swindling poor people.  The family had paid fifteen hundred dollars
-for it, and it had not cost the builders five hundred, when it was new.
-Grandmother Majauszkiene knew that because her son belonged to a political
-organization with a contractor who put up exactly such houses.  They used
-the very flimsiest and cheapest material; they built the houses a dozen
-at a time, and they cared about nothing at all except the outside shine.
-The family could take her word as to the trouble they would have, for she
-had been through it all--she and her son had bought their house in exactly
-the same way.  They had fooled the company, however, for her son was a
-skilled man, who made as high as a hundred dollars a month, and as he had
-had sense enough not to marry, they had been able to pay for the house.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene saw that her friends were puzzled at this remark;
-they did not quite see how paying for the house was "fooling the company."
-Evidently they were very inexperienced.  Cheap as the houses were, they
-were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would not be able
-to pay for them.  When they failed--if it were only by a single month--
-they would lose the house and all that they had paid on it, and then
-the company would sell it over again.  And did they often get a chance
-to do that?  Dieve!  (Grandmother Majauszkiene raised her hands.)  They did
-it--how often no one could say, but certainly more than half of the time.
-They might ask any one who knew anything at all about Packingtown as to
-that; she had been living here ever since this house was built, and she
-could tell them all about it.  And had it ever been sold before?
-Susimilkie!  Why, since it had been built, no less than four families
-that their informant could name had tried to buy it and failed.  She would
-tell them a little about it.
-
-The first family had been Germans.  The families had all been of different
-nationalities--there had been a representative of several races that had
-displaced each other in the stockyards.  Grandmother Majauszkiene had
-come to America with her son at a time when so far as she knew there was
-only one other Lithuanian family in the district; the workers had all
-been Germans then--skilled cattle butchers that the packers had brought
-from abroad to start the business.  Afterward, as cheaper labor had come,
-these Germans had moved away.  The next were the Irish--there had been
-six or eight years when Packingtown had been a regular Irish city.
-There were a few colonies of them still here, enough to run all the
-unions and the police force and get all the graft; but most of those
-who were working in the packing houses had gone away at the next drop
-in wages--after the big strike.  The Bohemians had come then, and after
-them the Poles.  People said that old man Durham himself was responsible
-for these immigrations; he had sworn that he would fix the people of
-Packingtown so that they would never again call a strike on him, and so
-he had sent his agents into every city and village in Europe to spread
-the tale of the chances of work and high wages at the stockyards.
-The people had come in hordes; and old Durham had squeezed them tighter
-and tighter, speeding them up and grinding them to pieces and sending
-for new ones.  The Poles, who had come by tens of thousands, had been
-driven to the wall by the Lithuanians, and now the Lithuanians were
-giving way to the Slovaks.  Who there was poorer and more miserable than
-the Slovaks, Grandmother Majauszkiene had no idea, but the packers would
-find them, never fear.  It was easy to bring them, for wages were really
-much higher, and it was only when it was too late that the poor people
-found out that everything else was higher too.  They were like rats in
-a trap, that was the truth; and more of them were piling in every day.
-By and by they would have their revenge, though, for the thing was
-getting beyond human endurance, and the people would rise and murder
-the packers.  Grandmother Majauszkiene was a socialist, or some such
-strange thing; another son of hers was working in the mines of Siberia,
-and the old lady herself had made speeches in her time--which made her
-seem all the more terrible to her present auditors.
-
-They called her back to the story of the house.  The German family
-had been a good sort.  To be sure there had been a great many of them,
-which was a common failing in Packingtown; but they had worked hard,
-and the father had been a steady man, and they had a good deal more
-than half paid for the house.  But he had been killed in an elevator
-accident in Durham's.
-
-Then there had come the Irish, and there had been lots of them, too;
-the husband drank and beat the children--the neighbors could hear them
-shrieking any night.  They were behind with their rent all the time,
-but the company was good to them; there was some politics back of that,
-Grandmother Majauszkiene could not say just what, but the Laffertys
-had belonged to the "War Whoop League," which was a sort of political
-club of all the thugs and rowdies in the district; and if you belonged
-to that, you could never be arrested for anything.  Once upon a time
-old Lafferty had been caught with a gang that had stolen cows from
-several of the poor people of the neighborhood and butchered them in
-an old shanty back of the yards and sold them.  He had been in jail only
-three days for it, and had come out laughing, and had not even lost his
-place in the packing house.  He had gone all to ruin with the drink,
-however, and lost his power; one of his sons, who was a good man,
-had kept him and the family up for a year or two, but then he had got
-sick with consumption.
-
-That was another thing, Grandmother Majauszkiene interrupted herself--
-this house was unlucky.  Every family that lived in it, some one was
-sure to get consumption.  Nobody could tell why that was; there must
-be something about the house, or the way it was built--some folks said
-it was because the building had been begun in the dark of the moon.
-There were dozens of houses that way in Packingtown.  Sometimes there
-would be a particular room that you could point out--if anybody slept
-in that room he was just as good as dead.  With this house it had been
-the Irish first; and then a Bohemian family had lost a child of it--
-though, to be sure, that was uncertain, since it was hard to tell what
-was the matter with children who worked in the yards.  In those days
-there had been no law about the age of children--the packers had worked
-all but the babies.  At this remark the family looked puzzled, and
-Grandmother Majauszkiene again had to make an explanation--that it was
-against the law for children to work before they were sixteen.  What was
-the sense of that? they asked.  They had been thinking of letting little
-Stanislovas go to work.  Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother
-Majauszkiene said--the law made no difference except that it forced
-people to lie about the ages of their children.  One would like to know
-what the lawmakers expected them to do; there were families that had no
-possible means of support except the children, and the law provided them
-no other way of getting a living.  Very often a man could get no work in
-Packingtown for months, while a child could go and get a place easily;
-there was always some new machine, by which the packers could get as
-much work out of a child as they had been able to get out of a man,
-and for a third of the pay.
-
-To come back to the house again, it was the woman of the next family
-that had died.  That was after they had been there nearly four years,
-and this woman had had twins regularly every year--and there had been
-more than you could count when they moved in.  After she died the man
-would go to work all day and leave them to shift for themselves--the
-neighbors would help them now and then, for they would almost freeze
-to death.  At the end there were three days that they were alone,
-before it was found out that the father was dead.  He was a "floorsman"
-at Jones's, and a wounded steer had broken loose and mashed him against
-a pillar.  Then the children had been taken away, and the company had
-sold the house that very same week to a party of emigrants.
-
-So this grim old women went on with her tale of horrors.  How much
-of it was exaggeration--who could tell?  It was only too plausible.
-There was that about consumption, for instance.  They knew nothing about
-consumption whatever, except that it made people cough; and for two weeks
-they had been worrying about a coughing-spell of Antanas.  It seemed to
-shake him all over, and it never stopped; you could see a red stain
-wherever he had spit upon the floor.
-
-And yet all these things were as nothing to what came a little later.
-They had begun to question the old lady as to why one family had been
-unable to pay, trying to show her by figures that it ought to have been
-possible; and Grandmother Majauszkiene had disputed their figures--
-"You say twelve dollars a month; but that does not include the interest." 
-
-Then they stared at her.  "Interest!" they cried.
-
-"Interest on the money you still owe," she answered.
-
-"But we don't have to pay any interest!" they exclaimed, three or four
-at once.  "We only have to pay twelve dollars each month."
- 
-And for this she laughed at them.  "You are like all the rest," she said;
-"they trick you and eat you alive.  They never sell the houses without
-interest.  Get your deed, and see."
-
-Then, with a horrible sinking of the heart, Teta Elzbieta unlocked her
-bureau and brought out the paper that had already caused them so many
-agonies.  Now they sat round, scarcely breathing, while the old lady,
-who could read English, ran over it.  "Yes," she said, finally, "here it
-is, of course: 'With interest thereon monthly, at the rate of seven per
-cent per annum.'"
-
-And there followed a dead silence.  "What does that mean?" asked Jurgis
-finally, almost in a whisper.
-
-"That means," replied the other, "that you have to pay them seven dollars
-next month, as well as the twelve dollars."
-
-Then again there was not a sound.  It was sickening, like a nightmare,
-in which suddenly something gives way beneath you, and you feel yourself
-sinking, sinking, down into bottomless abysses.  As if in a flash of
-lightning they saw themselves--victims of a relentless fate, cornered,
-trapped, in the grip of destruction.  All the fair structure of their
-hopes came crashing about their ears.--And all the time the old woman
-was going on talking.  They wished that she would be still; her voice
-sounded like the croaking of some dismal raven.  Jurgis sat with his
-hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his forehead, and there was
-a great lump in Ona's throat, choking her.  Then suddenly Teta Elzbieta
-broke the silence with a wail, and Marija began to wring her hands and
-sob, "Ai!  Ai!  Beda man!"
-
-All their outcry did them no good, of course.  There sat Grandmother
-Majauszkiene, unrelenting, typifying fate.  No, of course it was not fair,
-but then fairness had nothing to do with it.  And of course they had not
-known it.  They had not been intended to know it.  But it was in the deed,
-and that was all that was necessary, as they would find when the time came.
-
-Somehow or other they got rid of their guest, and then they passed a
-night of lamentation.  The children woke up and found out that something
-was wrong, and they wailed and would not be comforted.  In the morning,
-of course, most of them had to go to work, the packing houses would not
-stop for their sorrows; but by seven o'clock Ona and her stepmother were
-standing at the door of the office of the agent.  Yes, he told them,
-when he came, it was quite true that they would have to pay interest.
-And then Teta Elzbieta broke forth into protestations and reproaches,
-so that the people outside stopped and peered in at the window.  The agent
-was as bland as ever.  He was deeply pained, he said.  He had not told
-them, simply because he had supposed they would understand that they had
-to pay interest upon their debt, as a matter of course.
-
-So they came away, and Ona went down to the yards, and at noontime saw
-Jurgis and told him.  Jurgis took it stolidly--he had made up his mind
-to it by this time.  It was part of fate; they would manage it somehow--
-he made his usual answer, "I will work harder."  It would upset their
-plans for a time; and it would perhaps be necessary for Ona to get work
-after all.  Then Ona added that Teta Elzbieta had decided that little
-Stanislovas would have to work too.  It was not fair to let Jurgis and
-her support the family--the family would have to help as it could.
-Previously Jurgis had scouted this idea, but now knit his brows and
-nodded his head slowly--yes, perhaps it would be best; they would all
-have to make some sacrifices now.
-
-So Ona set out that day to hunt for work; and at night Marija came home
-saying that she had met a girl named Jasaityte who had a friend that
-worked in one of the wrapping rooms in Brown's, and might get a place
-for Ona there; only the forelady was the kind that takes presents--it
-was no use for any one to ask her for a place unless at the same time
-they slipped a ten-dollar bill into her hand.  Jurgis was not in the
-least surprised at this now--he merely asked what the wages of the place
-would be.  So negotiations were opened, and after an interview Ona came
-home and reported that the forelady seemed to like her, and had said that,
-while she was not sure, she thought she might be able to put her at work
-sewing covers on hams, a job at which she would earn as much as eight or
-ten dollars a week.  That was a bid, so Marija reported, after consulting
-her friend; and then there was an anxious conference at home.  The work
-was done in one of the cellars, and Jurgis did not want Ona to work in
-such a place; but then it was easy work, and one could not have everything.
-So in the end Ona, with a ten-dollar bill burning a hole in her palm, had
-another interview with the forelady.
-
-Meantime Teta Elzbieta had taken Stanislovas to the priest and gotten
-a certificate to the effect that he was two years older than he was;
-and with it the little boy now sallied forth to make his fortune in
-the world.  It chanced that Durham had just put in a wonderful new
-lard machine, and when the special policeman in front of the time
-station saw Stanislovas and his document, he smiled to himself and
-told him to go--"Czia!  Czia!" pointing.  And so Stanislovas went down
-a long stone corridor, and up a flight of stairs, which took him into
-a room lighted by electricity, with the new machines for filling lard
-cans at work in it.  The lard was finished on the floor above, and it
-came in little jets, like beautiful, wriggling, snow-white snakes of
-unpleasant odor.  There were several kinds and sizes of jets, and after
-a certain precise quantity had come out, each stopped automatically,
-and the wonderful machine made a turn, and took the can under another jet,
-and so on, until it was filled neatly to the brim, and pressed tightly,
-and smoothed off.  To attend to all this and fill several hundred cans
-of lard per hour, there were necessary two human creatures, one of whom
-knew how to place an empty lard can on a certain spot every few seconds,
-and the other of whom knew how to take a full lard can off a certain spot
-every few seconds and set it upon a tray.
-
-And so, after little Stanislovas had stood gazing timidly about him for
-a few minutes, a man approached him, and asked what he wanted, to which
-Stanislovas said, "Job."  Then the man said "How old?" and Stanislovas
-answered, "Sixtin."  Once or twice every year a state inspector would
-come wandering through the packing plants, asking a child here and
-there how old he was; and so the packers were very careful to comply
-with the law, which cost them as much trouble as was now involved in
-the boss's taking the document from the little boy, and glancing at it,
-and then sending it to the office to be filed away.  Then he set some one
-else at a different job, and showed the lad how to place a lard can every
-time the empty arm of the remorseless machine came to him; and so was
-decided the place in the universe of little Stanislovas, and his destiny
-till the end of his days.  Hour after hour, day after day, year after
-year, it was fated that he should stand upon a certain square foot of
-floor from seven in the morning until noon, and again from half-past
-twelve till half-past five, making never a motion and thinking never a
-thought, save for the setting of lard cans.  In summer the stench of the
-warm lard would be nauseating, and in winter the cans would all but freeze
-to his naked little fingers in the unheated cellar.  Half the year it would
-be dark as night when he went in to work, and dark as night again when he
-came out, and so he would never know what the sun looked like on weekdays.
-And for this, at the end of the week, he would carry home three dollars to
-his family, being his pay at the rate of five cents per hour--just about
-his proper share of the total earnings of the million and three-quarters of
-children who are now engaged in earning their livings in the United States.
-
-And meantime, because they were young, and hope is not to be stifled before
-its time, Jurgis and Ona were again calculating; for they had discovered
-that the wages of Stanislovas would a little more than pay the interest,
-which left them just about as they had been before!  It would be but fair
-to them to say that the little boy was delighted with his work, and at the
-idea of earning a lot of money; and also that the two were very much in
-love with each other.
-
-
-
-Chapter 7
-
-
-All summer long the family toiled, and in the fall they had money enough
-for Jurgis and Ona to be married according to home traditions of decency.
-In the latter part of November they hired a hall, and invited all their
-new acquaintances, who came and left them over a hundred dollars in debt.
-
-It was a bitter and cruel experience, and it plunged them into an agony
-of despair.  Such a time, of all times, for them to have it, when their
-hearts were made tender!  Such a pitiful beginning it was for their
-married life; they loved each other so, and they could not have the
-briefest respite!  It was a time when everything cried out to them that
-they ought to be happy; when wonder burned in their hearts, and leaped
-into flame at the slightest breath.  They were shaken to the depths
-of them, with the awe of love realized--and was it so very weak of them
-that they cried out for a little peace?  They had opened their hearts,
-like flowers to the springtime, and the merciless winter had fallen
-upon them.  They wondered if ever any love that had blossomed in the
-world had been so crushed and trampled!
-
-Over them, relentless and savage, there cracked the lash of want;
-the morning after the wedding it sought them as they slept, and drove
-them out before daybreak to work.  Ona was scarcely able to stand with
-exhaustion; but if she were to lose her place they would be ruined,
-and she would surely lose it if she were not on time that day.  They all
-had to go, even little Stanislovas, who was ill from overindulgence in
-sausages and sarsaparilla.  All that day he stood at his lard machine,
-rocking unsteadily, his eyes closing in spite of him; and he all but
-lost his place even so, for the foreman booted him twice to waken him.
-
-It was fully a week before they were all normal again, and meantime,
-with whining children and cross adults, the house was not a pleasant
-place to live in.  Jurgis lost his temper very little, however, all
-things considered.  It was because of Ona; the least glance at her was
-always enough to make him control himself.  She was so sensitive--she
-was not fitted for such a life as this; and a hundred times a day,
-when he thought of her, he would clench his hands and fling himself
-again at the task before him.  She was too good for him, he told himself,
-and he was afraid, because she was his.  So long he had hungered to
-possess her, but now that the time had come he knew that he had not
-earned the right; that she trusted him so was all her own simple
-goodness, and no virtue of his.  But he was resolved that she should
-never find this out, and so was always on the watch to see that he did not
-betray any of his ugly self; he would take care even in little matters,
-such as his manners, and his habit of swearing when things went wrong.
-The tears came so easily into Ona's eyes, and she would look at him so
-appealingly--it kept Jurgis quite busy making resolutions, in addition
-to all the other things he had on his mind.  It was true that more things
-were going on at this time in the mind of Jurgis than ever had in all his
-life before.
-
-He had to protect her, to do battle for her against the horror he saw
-about them.  He was all that she had to look to, and if he failed she
-would be lost; he would wrap his arms about her, and try to hide her
-from the world.  He had learned the ways of things about him now.  It was
-a war of each against all, and the devil take the hindmost.  You did not
-give feasts to other people, you waited for them to give feasts to you.
-You went about with your soul full of suspicion and hatred; you understood
-that you were environed by hostile powers that were trying to get your
-money, and who used all the virtues to bait their traps with.  The store-
-keepers plastered up their windows with all sorts of lies to entice you;
-the very fences by the wayside, the lampposts and telegraph poles, were
-pasted over with lies.  The great corporation which employed you lied
-to you, and lied to the whole country--from top to bottom it was nothing
-but one gigantic lie.
-
-So Jurgis said that he understood it; and yet it was really pitiful,
-for the struggle was so unfair--some had so much the advantage!
-Here he was, for instance, vowing upon his knees that he would save
-Ona from harm, and only a week later she was suffering atrociously,
-and from the blow of an enemy that he could not possibly have thwarted.
-There came a day when the rain fell in torrents; and it being December,
-to be wet with it and have to sit all day long in one of the cold cellars
-of Brown's was no laughing matter.  Ona was a working girl, and did not
-own waterproofs and such things, and so Jurgis took her and put her on
-the streetcar.  Now it chanced that this car line was owned by gentlemen
-who were trying to make money.  And the city having passed an ordinance
-requiring them to give transfers, they had fallen into a rage; and first
-they had made a rule that transfers could be had only when the fare was
-paid; and later, growing still uglier, they had made another--that the
-passenger must ask for the transfer, the conductor was not allowed to
-offer it.  Now Ona had been told that she was to get a transfer; but it
-was not her way to speak up, and so she merely waited, following the
-conductor about with her eyes, wondering when he would think of her.
-When at last the time came for her to get out, she asked for the transfer,
-and was refused.  Not knowing what to make of this, she began to argue
-with the conductor, in a language of which he did not understand a word.
-After warning her several times, he pulled the bell and the car went
-on--at which Ona burst into tears.  At the next corner she got out,
-of course; and as she had no more money, she had to walk the rest of
-the way to the yards in the pouring rain.  And so all day long she sat
-shivering, and came home at night with her teeth chattering and pains
-in her head and back.  For two weeks afterward she suffered cruelly--
-and yet every day she had to drag herself to her work.  The forewoman was
-especially severe with Ona, because she believed that she was obstinate
-on account of having been refused a holiday the day after her wedding.
-Ona had an idea that her "forelady" did not like to have her girls
-marry--perhaps because she was old and ugly and unmarried herself.
-
-There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.
-Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could
-they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage
-of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it?  How could they know that
-the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered,
-and doctored with formaldehyde besides?  When the children were not
-well at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she
-was obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts--and how was she to
-know that they were all adulterated?  How could they find out that their
-tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their
-canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with
-aniline dyes?  And even if they had known it, what good would it have
-done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other
-sort was to be had?  The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save
-money to get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in the
-least how much they saved, they could not get anything to keep them warm.
-All the clothing that was to be had in the stores was made of cotton and
-shoddy, which is made by tearing old clothes to pieces and weaving the
-fiber again.  If they paid higher prices, they might get frills and
-fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not obtain for
-love nor money.  A young friend of Szedvilas', recently come from abroad,
-had become a clerk in a store on Ashland Avenue, and he narrated with
-glee a trick that had been played upon an unsuspecting countryman by
-his boss.  The customer had desired to purchase an alarm clock, and the
-boss had shown him two exactly similar, telling him that the price of
-one was a dollar and of the other a dollar seventy-five.  Upon being
-asked what the difference was, the man had wound up the first halfway
-and the second all the way, and showed the customer how the latter
-made twice as much noise; upon which the customer remarked that he was
-a sound sleeper, and had better take the more expensive clock!
-
-There is a poet who sings that
-
-  "Deeper their heart grows and nobler their bearing,
-   Whose youth in the fires of anguish hath died."
-
-But it was not likely that he had reference to the kind of anguish that
-comes with destitution, that is so endlessly bitter and cruel, and yet
-so sordid and petty, so ugly, so humiliating--unredeemed by the slightest
-touch of dignity or even of pathos.  It is a kind of anguish that poets
-have not commonly dealt with; its very words are not admitted into the
-vocabulary of poets--the details of it cannot be told in polite society
-at all.  How, for instance, could any one expect to excite sympathy among
-lovers of good literature by telling how a family found their home alive
-with vermin, and of all the suffering and inconvenience and humiliation
-they were put to, and the hard-earned money they spent, in efforts to get
-rid of them?  After long hesitation and uncertainty they paid twenty-five
-cents for a big package of insect powder--a patent preparation which
-chanced to be ninety-five per cent gypsum, a harmless earth which had
-cost about two cents to prepare.  Of course it had not the least effect,
-except upon a few roaches which had the misfortune to drink water after
-eating it, and so got their inwards set in a coating of plaster of Paris.
-The family, having no idea of this, and no more money to throw away,
-had nothing to do but give up and submit to one more misery for the rest
-of their days.
-
-Then there was old Antanas.  The winter came, and the place where he
-worked was a dark, unheated cellar, where you could see your breath
-all day, and where your fingers sometimes tried to freeze.  So the
-old man's cough grew every day worse, until there came a time when it
-hardly ever stopped, and he had become a nuisance about the place.
-Then, too, a still more dreadful thing happened to him; he worked in
-a place where his feet were soaked in chemicals, and it was not long
-before they had eaten through his new boots.  Then sores began to break
-out on his feet, and grow worse and worse.  Whether it was that his blood
-was bad, or there had been a cut, he could not say; but he asked the men
-about it, and learned that it was a regular thing--it was the saltpeter.
-Every one felt it, sooner or later, and then it was all up with him,
-at least for that sort of work.  The sores would never heal--in the end
-his toes would drop off, if he did not quit.  Yet old Antanas would not
-quit; he saw the suffering of his family, and he remembered what it had
-cost him to get a job.  So he tied up his feet, and went on limping about
-and coughing, until at last he fell to pieces, all at once and in a heap,
-like the One-Horse Shay.  They carried him to a dry place and laid him
-on the floor, and that night two of the men helped him home.  The poor
-old man was put to bed, and though he tried it every morning until the
-end, he never could get up again.  He would lie there and cough and cough,
-day and night, wasting away to a mere skeleton.  There came a time when
-there was so little flesh on him that the bones began to poke through--
-which was a horrible thing to see or even to think of.  And one night
-he had a choking fit, and a little river of blood came out of his mouth.
-The family, wild with terror, sent for a doctor, and paid half a dollar
-to be told that there was nothing to be done.  Mercifully the doctor did
-not say this so that the old man could hear, for he was still clinging
-to the faith that tomorrow or next day he would be better, and could go
-back to his job.  The company had sent word to him that they would keep
-it for him--or rather Jurgis had bribed one of the men to come one Sunday
-afternoon and say they had.  Dede Antanas continued to believe it, while
-three more hemorrhages came; and then at last one morning they found him
-stiff and cold.  Things were not going well with them then, and though
-it nearly broke Teta Elzbieta's heart, they were forced to dispense with
-nearly all the decencies of a funeral; they had only a hearse, and one
-hack for the women and children; and Jurgis, who was learning things fast,
-spent all Sunday making a bargain for these, and he made it in the
-presence of witnesses, so that when the man tried to charge him for all
-sorts of incidentals, he did not have to pay.  For twenty-five years old
-Antanas Rudkus and his son had dwelt in the forest together, and it was
-hard to part in this way; perhaps it was just as well that Jurgis had to
-give all his attention to the task of having a funeral without being
-bankrupted, and so had no time to indulge in memories and grief.
-
-
-Now the dreadful winter was come upon them.  In the forests, all summer
-long, the branches of the trees do battle for light, and some of them
-lose and die; and then come the raging blasts, and the storms of snow
-and hail, and strew the ground with these weaker branches.  Just so it
-was in Packingtown; the whole district braced itself for the struggle
-that was an agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes.
-All the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great packing
-machine; and now was the time for the renovating of it, and the replacing
-of damaged parts.  There came pneumonia and grippe, stalking among them,
-seeking for weakened constitutions; there was the annual harvest of those
-whom tuberculosis had been dragging down.  There came cruel, cold, and
-biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing relentlessly for failing
-muscles and impoverished blood.  Sooner or later came the day when the
-unfit one did not report for work; and then, with no time lost in waiting,
-and no inquiries or regrets, there was a chance for a new hand.
-
-The new hands were here by the thousands.  All day long the gates of the
-packing houses were besieged by starving and penniless men; they came,
-literally, by the thousands every single morning, fighting with each
-other for a chance for life.  Blizzards and cold made no difference
-to them, they were always on hand; they were on hand two hours before the
-sun rose, an hour before the work began.  Sometimes their faces froze,
-sometimes their feet and their hands; sometimes they froze all together--
-but still they came, for they had no other place to go.  One day Durham
-advertised in the paper for two hundred men to cut ice; and all that day
-the homeless and starving of the city came trudging through the snow from
-all over its two hundred square miles.  That night forty score of them
-crowded into the station house of the stockyards district--they filled
-the rooms, sleeping in each other's laps, toboggan fashion, and they
-piled on top of each other in the corridors, till the police shut the
-doors and left some to freeze outside.  On the morrow, before daybreak,
-there were three thousand at Durham's, and the police reserves had to be
-sent for to quell the riot.  Then Durham's bosses picked out twenty of
-the biggest; the "two hundred" proved to have been a printer's error.
-
-Four or five miles to the eastward lay the lake, and over this the bitter
-winds came raging.  Sometimes the thermometer would fall to ten or twenty
-degrees below zero at night, and in the morning the streets would be
-piled with snowdrifts up to the first-floor windows.  The streets through
-which our friends had to go to their work were all unpaved and full of
-deep holes and gullies; in summer, when it rained hard, a man might have
-to wade to his waist to get to his house; and now in winter it was no
-joke getting through these places, before light in the morning and after
-dark at night.  They would wrap up in all they owned, but they could not
-wrap up against exhaustion; and many a man gave out in these battles with
-the snowdrifts, and lay down and fell asleep.
-
-And if it was bad for the men, one may imagine how the women and children
-fared.  Some would ride in the cars, if the cars were running; but when
-you are making only five cents an hour, as was little Stanislovas, you
-do not like to spend that much to ride two miles.  The children would
-come to the yards with great shawls about their ears, and so tied up
-that you could hardly find them--and still there would be accidents.
-One bitter morning in February the little boy who worked at the lard
-machine with Stanislovas came about an hour late, and screaming with pain.
-They unwrapped him, and a man began vigorously rubbing his ears; and as
-they were frozen stiff, it took only two or three rubs to break them
-short off.  As a result of this, little Stanislovas conceived a terror of
-the cold that was almost a mania.  Every morning, when it came time to
-start for the yards, he would begin to cry and protest.  Nobody knew quite
-how to manage him, for threats did no good--it seemed to be something that
-he could not control, and they feared sometimes that he would go into
-convulsions.  In the end it had to be arranged that he always went with
-Jurgis, and came home with him again; and often, when the snow was deep,
-the man would carry him the whole way on his shoulders.  Sometimes Jurgis
-would be working until late at night, and then it was pitiful, for there
-was no place for the little fellow to wait, save in the doorways or in
-a corner of the killing beds, and he would all but fall asleep there,
-and freeze to death.
-
-There was no heat upon the killing beds; the men might exactly as well
-have worked out of doors all winter.  For that matter, there was very
-little heat anywhere in the building, except in the cooking rooms and
-such places--and it was the men who worked in these who ran the most
-risk of all, because whenever they had to pass to another room they
-had to go through ice-cold corridors, and sometimes with nothing on
-above the waist except a sleeveless undershirt.  On the killing beds
-you were apt to be covered with blood, and it would freeze solid; if you
-leaned against a pillar, you would freeze to that, and if you put your
-hand upon the blade of your knife, you would run a chance of leaving
-your skin on it.  The men would tie up their feet in newspapers and old
-sacks, and these would be soaked in blood and frozen, and then soaked
-again, and so on, until by nighttime a man would be walking on great
-lumps the size of the feet of an elephant.  Now and then, when the bosses
-were not looking, you would see them plunging their feet and ankles into
-the steaming hot carcass of the steer, or darting across the room to the
-hot-water jets.  The cruelest thing of all was that nearly all of them--
-all of those who used knives--were unable to wear gloves, and their arms
-would be white with frost and their hands would grow numb, and then of
-course there would be accidents.  Also the air would be full of steam,
-from the hot water and the hot blood, so that you could not see five feet
-before you; and then, with men rushing about at the speed they kept up
-on the killing beds, and all with butcher knives, like razors, in their
-hands-- well, it was to be counted as a wonder that there were not more
-men slaughtered than cattle.
-
-And yet all this inconvenience they might have put up with, if only it
-had not been for one thing--if only there had been some place where they
-might eat.  Jurgis had either to eat his dinner amid the stench in which
-he had worked, or else to rush, as did all his companions, to any one of
-the hundreds of liquor stores which stretched out their arms to him.
-To the west of the yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken
-line of saloons--"Whiskey Row," they called it; to the north was Forty-
-seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and at the
-angle of the two was "Whiskey Point," a space of fifteen or twenty acres,
-and containing one glue factory and about two hundred saloons.
-
-One might walk among these and take his choice: "Hot pea-soup and boiled
-cabbage today."  "Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters.  Walk in." "Bean soup
-and stewed lamb.  Welcome."  All of these things were printed in many
-languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were infinite
-in their variety and appeal.  There was the "Home Circle" and the
-"Cosey Corner"; there were "Firesides" and "Hearthstones" and "Pleasure
-Palaces" and "Wonderlands" and "Dream Castles" and "Love's Delights."
-Whatever else they were called, they were sure to be called "Union
-Headquarters," and to hold out a welcome to workingmen; and there was
-always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some friends to laugh
-and talk with.  There was only one condition attached,--you must drink.
-If you went in not intending to drink, you would be put out in no time,
-and if you were slow about going, like as not you would get your head
-split open with a beer bottle in the bargain.  But all of the men
-understood the convention and drank; they believed that by it they were
-getting something for nothing--for they did not need to take more than
-one drink, and upon the strength of it they might fill themselves up with
-a good hot dinner.  This did not always work out in practice, however,
-for there was pretty sure to be a friend who would treat you, and then
-you would have to treat him.  Then some one else would come in--and,
-anyhow, a few drinks were good for a man who worked hard.  As he went
-back he did not shiver so, he had more courage for his task; the deadly
-brutalizing monotony of it did not afflict him so,--he had ideas while
-he worked, and took a more cheerful view of his circumstances.  On the
-way home, however, the shivering was apt to come on him again; and so
-he would have to stop once or twice to warm up against the cruel cold.
-As there were hot things to eat in this saloon too, he might get home
-late to his supper, or he might not get home at all.  And then his
-wife might set out to look for him, and she too would feel the cold;
-and perhaps she would have some of the children with her--and so a
-whole family would drift into drinking, as the current of a river drifts
-downstream.  As if to complete the chain, the packers all paid their men
-in checks, refusing all requests to pay in coin; and where in Packingtown
-could a man go to have his check cashed but to a saloon, where he could
-pay for the favor by spending a part of the money?
-
-From all of these things Jurgis was saved because of Ona.  He never
-would take but the one drink at noontime; and so he got the reputation
-of being a surly fellow, and was not quite welcome at the saloons,
-and had to drift about from one to another.  Then at night he would
-go straight home, helping Ona and Stanislovas, or often putting the
-former on a car.  And when he got home perhaps he would have to trudge
-several blocks, and come staggering back through the snowdrifts with a
-bag of coal upon his shoulder.  Home was not a very attractive place--
-at least not this winter.  They had only been able to buy one stove,
-and this was a small one, and proved not big enough to warm even the
-kitchen in the bitterest weather.  This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta
-all day, and for the children when they could not get to school.  At night
-they would sit huddled round this stove, while they ate their supper off
-their laps; and then Jurgis and Jonas would smoke a pipe, after which
-they would all crawl into their beds to get warm, after putting out the
-fire to save the coal.  Then they would have some frightful experiences
-with the cold.  They would sleep with all their clothes on, including
-their overcoats, and put over them all the bedding and spare clothing
-they owned; the children would sleep all crowded into one bed, and yet
-even so they could not keep warm.  The outside ones would be shivering
-and sobbing, crawling over the others and trying to get down into the
-center, and causing a fight.  This old house with the leaky weatherboards
-was a very different thing from their cabins at home, with great thick
-walls plastered inside and outside with mud; and the cold which came
-upon them was a living thing, a demon-presence in the room.  They would
-waken in the midnight hours, when everything was black; perhaps they would
-hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness--
-and that would be worse yet.  They could feel the cold as it crept in
-through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing
-fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all
-in vain.  It would come, and it would come; a grisly thing, a specter
-born in the black caverns of terror; a power primeval, cosmic, shadowing
-the tortures of the lost souls flung out to chaos and destruction.  It was
-cruel iron-hard; and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp,
-alone, alone.  There would be no one to hear them if they cried out;
-there would be no help, no mercy.  And so on until morning--when they
-would go out to another day of toil, a little weaker, a little nearer
-to the time when it would be their turn to be shaken from the tree.  
-
-
-
-Chapter 8
-
-
-Yet even by this deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from
-sprouting in their hearts.  It was just at this time that the great
-adventure befell Marija.
-
-The victim was Tamoszius Kuszleika, who played the violin.  Everybody
-laughed at them, for Tamoszius was petite and frail, and Marija could
-have picked him up and carried him off under one arm.  But perhaps that
-was why she fascinated him; the sheer volume of Marija's energy was
-overwhelming.  That first night at the wedding Tamoszius had hardly taken
-his eyes off her; and later on, when he came to find that she had really
-the heart of a baby, her voice and her violence ceased to terrify him,
-and he got the habit of coming to pay her visits on Sunday afternoons. 
-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 a 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, crying, "Come now, brother,
-give us a tune."  And then Tamoszius' face would light up and he would
-get out his fiddle, tuck it under his chin, and play.  And forthwith
-the soul of him would flame up and become eloquent--it was almost an
-impropriety, for all the while his gaze would be fixed upon Marija's face,
-until she would begin to turn red and lower her eyes.  There was no
-resisting the music of Tamoszius, however; even the children would sit
-awed and wondering, and the tears would run down Teta Elzbieta's cheeks.
-A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man
-of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his
-inmost life.
-
-Then 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; and also they would invite
-him to parties and festivals, knowing well that he was too good-natured
-to come without his fiddle, and that having brought it, he could be made
-to play while others danced.  Once he made bold to ask Marija to accompany
-him to such a party, and Marija accepted, to his great delight--after which
-he never went anywhere without her, while if the celebration were given by
-friends of his, he would invite the rest of the family also.  In any case
-Marija would bring back a huge pocketful of cakes and sandwiches for the
-children, and stories of all the good things she herself had managed to
-consume.  She was compelled, at these parties, to spend most of her time
-at the refreshment table, for she could not dance with anybody except
-other women and very old men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament,
-and afflicted with a frantic jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured
-to put his arm about the ample waist of Marija would be certain to throw
-the orchestra out of tune.
-
-It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be able
-to look forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights.
-The family was too poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances;
-in Packingtown, as a rule, people know only their near neighbors and
-shopmates, and so the place is like a myriad of little country villages.
-But now there was a member of the family who was permitted to travel and
-widen her horizon; and so each week there would be new personalities to
-talk about,--how so-and-so was dressed, and where she worked, and what
-she got, and whom she was in love with; and how this man had jilted his
-girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had passed
-between them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her earnings
-upon drink, and pawned her very clothes.  Some people would have scorned
-this talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about what one knows.
-
-It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding,
-that Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the street
-and spoke his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms.  She told
-them all about it the next day, and fairly cried with happiness, for she
-said that Tamoszius was a lovely man.  After that he no longer made love
-to her with his fiddle, but they would sit for hours in the kitchen,
-blissfully happy in each other's arms; it was the tacit convention of
-the family to know nothing of what was going on in that corner.
-
-They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garret
-of the house fixed up, and live there.  Tamoszius made good wages;
-and little by little the family were paying back their debt to Marija,
-so she ought soon to have enough to start life upon--only, with her
-preposterous softheartedness, she would insist upon spending a good part
-of her money every week for things which she saw they needed.  Marija was
-really the capitalist of the party, for she had become an expert can
-painter by this time--she was getting fourteen cents for every hundred
-and ten cans, and she could paint more than two cans every minute.
-Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the throttle, and the
-neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.
-
-Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one could
-not count upon such good fortune forever--there were accidents that always
-happened.  But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went on planning
-and dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for her home;
-and so, when the crash did come, her grief was painful to see.  
-
-For her canning factory shut down!  Marija would about as soon have
-expected to see the sun shut down--the huge establishment had been to
-her a thing akin to the planets and the seasons.  But now it was shut!
-And they had not given her any explanation, they had not even given her
-a day's warning; they had simply posted a notice one Saturday that all
-hands would be paid off that afternoon, and would not resume work for
-at least a month!  And that was all that there was to it--her job was gone!
-
-It was the holiday rush that was over, the girls said in answer to
-Marija's inquiries; after that there was always a slack.  Sometimes the
-factory would start up on half time after a while, but there was no
-telling--it had been known to stay closed until way into the summer.
-The prospects were bad at present, for truckmen who worked in the
-storerooms said that these were piled up to the ceilings, so that the
-firm could not have found room for another week's output of cans.  And they
-had turned off three-quarters of these men, which was a still worse sign,
-since it meant that there were no orders to be filled.  It was all a
-swindle, can-painting, said the girls--you were crazy with delight because
-you were making twelve or fourteen dollars a week, and saving half of it;
-but you had to spend it all keeping alive while you were out, and so your
-pay was really only half what you thought.  
-
-
-Marija came home, and because she was a person who could not rest without
-danger of explosion, they first had a great house cleaning, and then she
-set out to search Packingtown for a job to fill up the gap.  As nearly all
-the canning establishments were shut down, and all the girls hunting work,
-it will be readily understood that Marija did not find any.  Then she took
-to trying the stores and saloons, and when this failed she even traveled
-over into the far-distant regions near the lake front, where lived the
-rich people in great palaces, and begged there for some sort of work that
-could be done by a person who did not know English.
-
-The men upon the killing beds felt also the effects of the slump which
-had turned Marija out; but they felt it in a different way, and a way
-which made Jurgis understand at last all their bitterness.  The big packers
-did not turn their hands off and close down, like the canning factories;
-but they began to run for shorter and shorter hours.  They had always
-required the men to be on the killing beds and ready for work at seven
-o'clock, although there was almost never any work to be done till the
-buyers out in the yards had gotten to work, and some cattle had come over
-the chutes.  That would often be ten or eleven o'clock, which was bad
-enough, in all conscience; but now, in the slack season, they would
-perhaps not have a thing for their men to do till late in the afternoon.
-And so they would have to loaf around, in a place where the thermometer
-might be twenty degrees below zero!  At first one would see them running
-about, or skylarking with each other, trying to keep warm; but before the
-day was over they would become quite chilled through and exhausted, and,
-when the cattle finally came, so near frozen that to move was an agony.
-And then suddenly the place would spring into activity, and the merciless
-"speeding-up" would begin!
-
-There were weeks at a time when Jurgis went home after such a day as
-this with not more than two hours' work to his credit--which meant about
-thirty- five cents.  There were many days when the total was less than
-half an hour, and others when there was none at all.  The general average
-was six hours a day, which meant for Jurgis about six dollars a week;
-and this six hours of work would be done after standing on the killing bed
-till one o'clock, or perhaps even three or four o'clock, in the afternoon.
-Like as not there would come a rush of cattle at the very end of the day,
-which the men would have to dispose of before they went home, often working
-by electric light till nine or ten, or even twelve or one o'clock, and
-without a single instant for a bite of supper.  The men were at the mercy
-of the cattle.  Perhaps the buyers would be holding off for better prices--
-if they could scare the shippers into thinking that they meant to buy
-nothing that day, they could get their own terms.  For some reason the
-cost of fodder for cattle in the yards was much above the market price--
-and you were not allowed to bring your own fodder!  Then, too, a number of
-cars were apt to arrive late in the day, now that the roads were blocked
-with snow, and the packers would buy their cattle that night, to get them
-cheaper, and then would come into play their ironclad rule, that all
-cattle must be killed the same day they were bought.  There was no use
-kicking about this--there had been one delegation after another to see
-the packers about it, only to be told that it was the rule, and that
-there was not the slightest chance of its ever being altered.  And so
-on Christmas Eve Jurgis worked till nearly one o'clock in the morning,
-and on Christmas Day he was on the killing bed at seven o'clock.
-
-All this was bad; and yet it was not the worst.  For after all the hard
-work a man did, he was paid for only part of it.  Jurgis had once been
-among those who scoffed at the idea of these huge concerns cheating;
-and so now he could appreciate the bitter irony of the fact that it
-was precisely their size which enabled them to do it with impunity. 
-ne of the rules on the killing beds was that a man who was one minute
-late was docked an hour; and this was economical, for he was made to
-work the balance of the hour--he was not allowed to stand round and wait.
-And on the other hand if he came ahead of time he got no pay for that--
-though often the bosses would start up the gang ten or fifteen minutes
-before the whistle.  And this same custom they carried over to the end of
-the day; they did not pay for any fraction of an hour--for "broken time."
-A man might work full fifty minutes, but if there was no work to fill out
-the hour, there was no pay for him.  Thus the end of every day was a sort
-of lottery--a struggle, all but breaking into open war between the bosses
-and the men, the former trying to rush a job through and the latter
-trying to stretch it out.  Jurgis blamed the bosses for this, though the
-truth to be told it was not always their fault; for the packers kept them
-frightened for their lives--and when one was in danger of falling behind
-the standard, what was easier than to catch up by making the gang work
-awhile "for the church"?  This was a savage witticism the men had, which
-Jurgis had to have explained to him.  Old man Jones was great on missions
-and such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularly
-disreputable job, the men would wink at each other and say, "Now we're
-working for the church!"
-
-One of the consequences of all these things was that Jurgis was no
-longer perplexed when he heard men talk of fighting for their rights.
-He felt like fighting now himself; and when the Irish delegate of the
-butcher-helpers' union came to him a second time, he received him in
-a far different spirit.  A wonderful idea it now seemed to Jurgis,
-this of the men--that by combining they might be able to make a stand
-and conquer the packers!  Jurgis wondered who had first thought of it;
-and when he was told that it was a common thing for men to do in America,
-he got the first inkling of a meaning in the phrase "a free country."
-The delegate explained to him how it depended upon their being able to
-get every man to join and stand by the organization, and so Jurgis
-signified that he was willing to do his share.  Before another month
-was by, all the working members of his family had union cards, and wore
-their union buttons conspicuously and with pride.  For fully a week they
-were quite blissfully happy, thinking that belonging to a union meant an
-end to all their troubles.
-
-But only ten days after she had joined, Marija's canning factory closed
-down, and that blow quite staggered them.  They could not understand why
-the union had not prevented it, and the very first time she attended a
-meeting Marija got up and made a speech about it.  It was a business
-meeting, and was transacted in English, but that made no difference to
-Marija; she said what was in her, and all the pounding of the chairman's
-gavel and all the uproar and confusion in the room could not prevail.
-Quite apart from her own troubles she was boiling over with a general
-sense of the injustice of it, and she told what she thought of the
-packers, and what she thought of a world where such things were allowed
-to happen; and then, while the echoes of the hall rang with the shock of
-her terrible voice, she sat down again and fanned herself, and the meeting
-gathered itself together and proceeded to discuss the election of a
-recording secretary.  
-
-Jurgis too had an adventure the first time he attended a union meeting,
-but it was not of his own seeking.  Jurgis had gone with the desire to
-get into an inconspicuous corner and see what was done; but this attitude
-of silent and open-eyed attention had marked him out for a victim.
-Tommy Finnegan was a little Irishman, with big staring eyes and a wild
-aspect, a "hoister" by trade, and badly cracked.  Somewhere back in the
-far-distant past Tommy Finnegan had had a strange experience, and the
-burden of it rested upon him.  All the balance of his life he had done
-nothing but try to make it understood.  When he talked he caught his
-victim by the buttonhole, and his face kept coming closer and closer--
-which was trying, because his teeth were so bad.  Jurgis did not mind that,
-only he was frightened.  The method of operation of the higher intelligences
-was Tom Finnegan's theme, and he desired to find out if Jurgis had ever
-considered that the representation of things in their present similarity
-might be altogether unintelligible upon a more elevated plane.  There were
-assuredly wonderful mysteries about the developing of these things; and
-then, becoming confidential, Mr.  Finnegan proceeded to tell of some
-discoveries of his own.  "If ye have iver had onything to do wid
-shperrits," said he, and looked inquiringly at Jurgis, who kept shaking
-his head.  "Niver mind, niver mind," continued the other, "but their
-influences may be operatin' upon ye; it's shure as I'm tellin' ye, it's
-them that has the reference to the immejit surroundin's that has the most
-of power.  It was vouchsafed to me in me youthful days to be acquainted
-with shperrits" and so Tommy Finnegan went on, expounding a system of
-philosophy, while the perspiration came out on Jurgis' forehead, so great
-was his agitation and embarrassment.  In the end one of the men, seeing
-his plight, came over and rescued him; but it was some time before he was
-able to find any one to explain things to him, and meanwhile his fear
-lest the strange little Irishman should get him cornered again was enough
-to keep him dodging about the room the whole evening.
-
-He never missed a meeting, however.  He had picked up a few words of
-English by this time, and friends would help him to understand.  They
-were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming
-at once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all 
-desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he understood
-that a fight was on, and that it was his fight.  Since the time of his
-disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except in his own
-family; but here he discovered that he had brothers in affliction,
-and allies.  Their one chance for life was in union, and so the struggle
-became a kind of crusade.  Jurgis had always been a member of the church,
-because it was the right thing to be, but the church had never touched
-him, he left all that for the women.  Here, however, was a new religion--
-one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of him; and with all
-the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a missionary.  There were
-many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and with these he would labor
-and wrestle in prayer, trying to show them the right.  Sometimes they
-would be obstinate and refuse to see it, and Jurgis, alas, was not always
-patient!  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.
-
-
-
-Chapter 9
-
-
-One of the first consequences of the discovery of the union was that
-Jurgis became desirous of learning English.  He wanted to know what
-was going on at the meetings, and to be able to take part in them,
-and so he began to look about him, and to try to pick up words.
-The children, who were at school, and learning fast, would teach him
-a few; and a friend loaned him a little book that had some in it,
-and Ona would read them to him.  Then Jurgis became sorry that he
-could not read himself; and later on in the winter, when some one
-told him that there was a night school that was free, he went and
-enrolled.  After that, every evening that he got home from the yards
-in time, he would go to the school; he would go even if he were in
-time for only half an hour.  They were teaching him both to read and
-to speak English--and they would have taught him other things, if only
-he had had a little time.
-
-Also the union made another great difference with him--it made him
-begin to pay attention to the country. It was the beginning of democracy
-with him. It was a little state, the union, a miniature republic;
-its affairs were every man's affairs, and every man had a real say
-about them. In other words, in the union Jurgis learned to talk politics.
-In the place where he had come from there had not been any politics--
-in Russia one thought of the government as an affliction like the
-lightning and the hail.  "Duck, little brother, duck," the wise old
-peasants would whisper; "everything passes away."  And when Jurgis had
-first come to America he had supposed that it was the same. He had heard
-people say that it was a free country--but what did that mean? He found
-that here, precisely as in Russia, there were rich men who owned everything;
-and if one could not find any work, was not the hunger he began to feel
-the same sort of hunger?
-
-When Jurgis had been working about three weeks at Brown's, there had come
-to him one noontime a man who was employed as a night watchman, and who
-asked him if he would not like to take out naturalization papers and
-become a citizen.  Jurgis did not know what that meant, but the man
-explained the advantages.  In the first place, it would not cost him
-anything, and it would get him half a day off, with his pay just the
-same; and then when election time came he would be able to vote--and
-there was something in that.  Jurgis was naturally glad to accept, and so
-the night watchman said a few words to the boss, and he was excused for
-the rest of the day.  When, later on, he wanted a holiday to get married
-he could not get it; and as for a holiday with pay just the same--what
-power had wrought that miracle heaven only knew! However, he went with
-the man, who picked up several other newly landed immigrants, Poles,
-Lithuanians, and Slovaks, and took them all outside, where stood a great
-four-horse tallyho coach, with fifteen or twenty men already in it.
-It was a fine chance to see the sights of the city, and the party had a
-merry time, with plenty of beer handed up from inside.  So they drove
-downtown and stopped before an imposing granite building, in which they
-interviewed an official, who had the papers all ready, with only the names
-to be filled in.  So each man in turn took an oath of which he did not
-understand a word, and then was presented with a handsome ornamented
-document with a big red seal and the shield of the United States upon it,
-and was told that he had become a citizen of the Republic and the equal
-of the President himself.
-
-A month or two later Jurgis had another interview with this same man,
-who told him where to go to "register."  And then finally, when election
-day came, the packing houses posted a notice that men who desired to vote
-might remain away until nine that morning, and the same night watchman
-took Jurgis and the rest of his flock into the back room of a saloon,
-and showed each of them where and how to mark a ballot, and then gave
-each two dollars, and took them to the polling place, where there was
-a policeman on duty especially to see that they got through all right.
-Jurgis felt quite proud of this good luck till he got home and met Jonas,
-who had taken the leader aside and whispered to him, offering to vote
-three times for four dollars, which offer had been accepted.
-
-And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery
-to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its
-government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who
-ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so
-there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties,
-and the one got the office which bought the most votes.  Now and then,
-the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in.
-In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in
-local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. The ruler
-of the district was therefore the Democratic boss, a little Irishman
-named Mike Scully.  Scully held an important party office in the state,
-and bossed even the mayor of the city, it was said; it was his boast
-that he carried the stockyards in his pocket.  He was an enormously rich
-man--he had a hand in all the big graft in the neighborhood.  It was
-Scully, for instance, who owned that dump which Jurgis and Ona had seen
-the first day of their arrival.  Not only did he own the dump, but he
-owned the brick factory as well, and first he took out the clay and made
-it into bricks, and then he had the city bring garbage to fill up the
-hole, so that he could build houses to sell to the people.  Then, too,
-he sold the bricks to the city, at his own price, and the city came and
-got them in its own wagons.  And also he owned the other hole near by,
-where the stagnant water was; and it was he who cut the ice and sold it;
-and what was more, if the men told truth, he had not had to pay any
-taxes for the water, and he had built the icehouse out of city lumber,
-and had not had to pay anything for that.  The newspapers had got hold of
-that story, and there had been a scandal; but Scully had hired somebody
-to confess and take all the blame, and then skip the country.  It was said,
-too, that he had built his brick-kiln in the same way, and that the workmen
-were on the city payroll while they did it; however, one had to press
-closely to get these things out of the men, for it was not their business,
-and Mike Scully was a good man to stand in with.  A note signed by him
-was equal to a job any time at the packing houses; and also he employed
-a good many men himself, and worked them only eight hours a day, and paid
-them the highest wages.  This gave him many friends--all of whom he had
-gotten together into the "War Whoop League," whose clubhouse you might
-see just outside of the yards.  It was the biggest clubhouse, and the
-biggest club, in all Chicago; and they had prizefights every now and then,
-and cockfights and even dogfights.  The policemen in the district all
-belonged to the league, and instead of suppressing the fights, they sold
-tickets for them.  The man that had taken Jurgis to be naturalized was
-one of these "Indians," as they were called; and on election day there
-would be hundreds of them out, and all with big wads of money in their
-pockets and free drinks at every saloon in the district. That was another
-thing, the men said--all the saloon-keepers had to be "Indians," and
-to put up on demand, otherwise they could not do business on Sundays,
-nor have any gambling at all.  In the same way Scully had all the jobs
-in the fire department at his disposal, and all the rest of the city
-graft in the stockyards district; he was building a block of flats
-somewhere up on Ashland Avenue, and the man who was overseeing it for
-him was drawing pay as a city inspector of sewers.  The city inspector
-of water pipes had been dead and buried for over a year, but somebody was
-still drawing his pay.  The city inspector of sidewalks was a barkeeper
-at the War Whoop Cafe--and maybe he could make it uncomfortable for any
-tradesman who did not stand in with Scully!
-
-Even the packers were in awe of him, so the men said.  It gave them
-pleasure to believe this, for Scully stood as the people's man, and
-boasted of it boldly when election day came.  The packers had wanted
-a bridge at Ashland Avenue, but they had not been able to get it till
-they had seen Scully; and it was the same with "Bubbly Creek," which
-the city had threatened to make the packers cover over, till Scully
-had come to their aid.  "Bubbly Creek" is an arm of the Chicago River,
-and forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the
-square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a
-great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide.  One long arm of it is blind,
-and the filth stays there forever and a day.  The grease and chemicals
-that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations,
-which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge
-fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its
-depths.  Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst,
-and make rings two or three feet wide.  Here and there the grease and
-filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens
-walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started
-to stroll across, and vanished temporarily.  The packers used to leave
-the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on
-fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and
-put it out.  Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to
-gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took
-the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it
-themselves.  The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs,
-and this also the packers gather and clean.
-
-And there were things even stranger than this, according to the gossip of
-the men.  The packers had secret mains, through which they stole billions
-of gallons of the city's water.  The newspapers had been full of this
-scandal--once there had even been an investigation, and an actual
-uncovering of the pipes; but nobody had been punished, and the thing
-went right on.  And then there was the condemned meat industry, with its
-endless horrors.  The people of Chicago saw the government inspectors in
-Packingtown, and they all took that to mean that they were protected from
-diseased meat; they did not understand that these hundred and sixty-three
-inspectors had been appointed at the request of the packers, and that
-they were paid by the United States government to certify that all the
-diseased meat was kept in the state.  They had no authority beyond that;
-for the inspection of meat to be sold in the city and state the whole
-force in Packingtown consisted of three henchmen of the local political
-machine!*
-
-(*Rules and Regulations for the Inspection of Livestock and Their Products.
-United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industries,
-Order No. 125:--  
-
-Section 1. Proprietors of slaughterhouses, canning, salting, packing,
-or rendering establishments engaged in the slaughtering of cattle,
-sheep. or swine, or the packing of any of their products, the carcasses
-or products of which are to become subjects of interstate or foreign
-commerce, shall make application to the Secretary of Agriculture for
-inspection of said animals and their products.... 
-
-Section 15. Such rejected or condemned animals shall at once be removed
-by the owners from the pens containing animals which have been inspected
-and found to be free from disease and fit for human food, and shall be
-disposed of in accordance with the laws, ordinances, and regulations of
-the state and municipality in which said rejected or condemned animals
-are located.... 
-
-Section 25. A microscopic examination for trichinae shall be made of
-all swine products exported to countries requiring such examination.
-No microscopic examination will be made of hogs slaughtered for interstate
-trade, but this examination shall be confined to those intended for the
-export trade.)
-
-And shortly afterward one of these, a physician, made the discovery that
-the carcasses of steers which had been condemned as tubercular by the
-government inspectors, and which therefore contained ptomaines, which are
-deadly poisons, were left upon an open platform and carted away to be
-sold in the city; and so he insisted that these carcasses be treated
-with an injection of kerosene--and was ordered to resign the same week!
-So indignant were the packers that they went farther, and compelled the
-mayor to abolish the whole bureau of inspection; so that since then
-there has not been even a pretense of any interference with the graft.
-There was said to be two thousand dollars a week hush money from the
-tubercular steers alone; and as much again from the hogs which had
-died of cholera on the trains, and which you might see any day being
-loaded into boxcars and hauled away to a place called Globe, in Indiana,
-where they made a fancy grade of lard.  
-
-Jurgis heard of these things little by little, in the gossip of those
-who were obliged to perpetrate them.  It seemed as if every time you met
-a person from a new department, you heard of new swindles and new crimes.
-There was, for instance, a Lithuanian who was a cattle butcher for the
-plant where Marija had worked, which killed meat for canning only; and to
-hear this man describe the animals which came to his place would have been
-worthwhile for a Dante or a Zola.  It seemed that they must have agencies
-all over the country, to hunt out old and crippled and diseased cattle
-to be canned.  There were cattle which had been fed on "whisky-malt,"
-the refuse of the breweries, and had become what the men called "steerly"--
-which means covered with boils.  It was a nasty job killing these, for when
-you plunged your knife into them they would burst and splash foul-smelling
-stuff into your face; and when a man's sleeves were smeared with blood,
-and his hands steeped in it, how was he ever to wipe his face, or to clear
-his eyes so that he could see?  It was stuff such as this that made the
-"embalmed beef" that had killed several times as many United States
-soldiers as all the bullets of the Spaniards; only the army beef, besides,
-was not fresh canned, it was old stuff that had been lying for years in
-the cellars. 
-
-Then one Sunday evening, Jurgis sat puffing his pipe by the kitchen stove,
-and talking with an old fellow whom Jonas had introduced, and who worked
-in the canning rooms at Durham's; and so Jurgis learned a few things about
-the great and only Durham canned goods, which had become a national
-institution.  They were regular alchemists at Durham's; they advertised a
-mushroom-catsup, and the men who made it did not know what a mushroom
-looked like.  They advertised "potted chicken,"--and it was like the
-boardinghouse soup of the comic papers, through which a chicken had
-walked with rubbers on.  Perhaps they had a secret process for making
-chickens chemically--who knows? said Jurgis' friend; the things that went
-into the mixture were tripe, and the fat of pork, and beef suet, and hearts
-of beef, and finally the waste ends of veal, when they had any.  They put
-these up in several grades, and sold them at several prices; but the
-contents of the cans all came out of the same hopper.  And then there
-was "potted game" and "potted grouse," "potted ham," and "deviled ham"--
-de-vyled, as the men called it.  "De-vyled" ham was made out of the waste
-ends of smoked beef that were too small to be sliced by the machines;
-and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would not show white;
-and trimmings of hams and corned beef; and potatoes, skins and all;
-and finally the hard cartilaginous gullets of beef, after the tongues
-had been cut out.  All this ingenious mixture was ground up and flavored
-with spices to make it taste like something.  Anybody who could invent a
-new imitation had been sure of a fortune from old Durham, said Jurgis'
-informant; but it was hard to think of anything new in a place where
-so many sharp wits had been at work for so long; where men welcomed
-tuberculosis in the cattle they were feeding, because it made them fatten
-more quickly; and where they bought up all the old rancid butter left over
-in the grocery stores of a continent, and "oxidized" it by a forced-air
-process, to take away the odor, rechurned it with skim milk, and sold it
-in bricks in the cities!  Up to a year or two ago it had been the custom
-to kill horses in the yards--ostensibly for fertilizer; but after long
-agitation the newspapers had been able to make the public realize that
-the horses were being canned.  Now it was against the law to kill horses
-in Packingtown, and the law was really complied with--for the present,
-at any rate.  Any day, however, one might see sharp-horned and shaggy-
-haired creatures running with the sheep and yet what a job you would have
-to get the public to believe that a good part of what it buys for lamb
-and mutton is really goat's flesh!
-
-There was another interesting set of statistics that a person might have
-gathered in Packingtown--those of the various afflictions of the workers.
-When Jurgis had first inspected the packing plants with Szedvilas, he had
-marveled while he listened to the tale of all the things that were made
-out of the carcasses of animals, and of all the lesser industries that
-were maintained there; now 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.  The workers in each
-of them had their own peculiar diseases.  And the wandering visitor might
-be skeptical about all the swindles, but he could not be skeptical about
-these, for the worker bore the evidence of them about on his own person--
-generally he had only to hold out his hand.
-
-There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas
-had gotten his death; scarce a one of these that had not some spot of
-horror on his person.  Let a man so much as scrape his finger pushing
-a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put
-him out of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by
-the acid, one by one.  Of the butchers and floorsmen, the beef-boners
-and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely find a
-person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it
-had been slashed, till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man
-pressed the knife to hold it.  The hands of these men would be criss-
-crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or to
-trace them.  They would have no nails,--they had worn them off pulling
-hides; their knuckles were swollen so that their fingers spread out like
-a fan.  There were men who worked in the cooking rooms, in the midst of
-steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the germs
-of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed
-every hour.  There were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound
-quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a fearful kind of work, that began
-at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most powerful men
-in a few years.  There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and
-whose special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could
-work in the chilling rooms was said to be five years.  There were the
-wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of
-the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid
-to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
-their bare hands, till the acid had eaten their fingers off.  There were
-those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands, too, were
-a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning.
-Some worked at the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one
-could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and
-forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off.  There were the
-"hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever
-which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter,
-peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects
-had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every
-few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one
-they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few
-years they would be walking like chimpanzees.  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!
-
-
-
-Chapter 10
-
-
-During the early part of the winter the family had had money enough
-to live and a little over to pay their debts with; but when the
-earnings of Jurgis fell from nine or ten dollars a week to five or six,
-there was no longer anything to spare.  The winter went, and the
-spring came, and found them still living thus from hand to mouth,
-hanging on day by day, with literally not a month's wages between
-them and starvation.  Marija was in despair, for there was still
-no word about the reopening of the canning factory, and her savings
-were almost entirely gone.  She had had to give up all idea of
-marrying then; the family could not get along without her--though for
-that matter she was likely soon to become a burden even upon them,
-for when her money was all gone, they would have to pay back what
-they owed her in board.  So Jurgis and Ona and Teta Elzbieta would
-hold anxious conferences until late at night, trying to figure how
-they could manage this too without starving.
-
-Such were the cruel terms upon which their life was possible,
-that they might never have nor expect a single instant's respite
-from worry, a single instant in which they were not haunted by the
-thought of money.  They would no sooner escape, as by a miracle,
-from one difficulty, than a new one would come into view.  In addition
-to all their physical hardships, there was thus a constant strain
-upon their minds; they were harried all day and nearly all night by
-worry and fear.  This was in truth not living; it was scarcely even
-existing, and they felt that it was too little for the price they paid.
-They were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best,
-ought they not to be able to keep alive?
-
-There seemed never to be an end to the things they had to buy and to
-the unforeseen contingencies.  Once their water pipes froze and burst;
-and when, in their ignorance, they thawed them out, they had a
-terrifying flood in their house.  It happened while the men were away,
-and poor Elzbieta rushed out into the street screaming for help,
-for she did not even know whether the flood could be stopped, or whether
-they were ruined for life.  It was nearly as bad as the latter, they
-found in the end, for the plumber charged them seventy-five cents
-an hour, and seventy-five cents for another man who had stood and
-watched him, and included all the time the two had been going and
-coming, and also a charge for all sorts of material and extras.
-And then again, when they went to pay their January's installment on
-the house, the agent terrified them by asking them if they had had the
-insurance attended to yet.  In answer to their inquiry he showed them
-a clause in the deed which provided that they were to keep the house
-insured for one thousand dollars, as soon as the present policy ran out,
-which would happen in a few days.  Poor Elzbieta, upon whom again fell
-the blow, demanded how much it would cost them.  Seven dollars, the man
-said; and that night came Jurgis, grim and determined, requesting that
-the agent would be good enough to inform him, once for all, as to all
-the expenses they were liable for.  The deed was signed now, he said,
-with sarcasm proper to the new way of life he had learned--the deed was
-signed, and so the agent had no longer anything to gain by keeping quiet.
-And Jurgis looked the fellow squarely in the eye, and so the fellow
-wasted no time in conventional protests, but read him the deed.
-They would have to renew the insurance every year; they would have to
-pay the taxes, about ten dollars a year; they would have to pay the
-water tax, about six dollars a year--(Jurgis silently resolved to
-shut off the hydrant).  This, besides the interest and the monthly
-installments, would be all--unless by chance the city should happen
-to decide to put in a sewer or to lay a sidewalk.  Yes, said the agent,
-they would have to have these, whether they wanted them or not, if the
-city said so.  The sewer would cost them about twenty-two dollars,
-and the sidewalk fifteen if it were wood, twenty-five if it were cement.
-
-So Jurgis went home again; it was a relief to know the worst, at any rate,
-so that he could no more be surprised by fresh demands.  He saw now
-how they had been plundered; but they were in for it, there was no
-turning back.  They could only go on and make the fight and win--
-for defeat was a thing that could not even be thought of.
-
-When the springtime came, they were delivered from the dreadful cold,
-and that was a great deal; but in addition they had counted on the
-money they would not have to pay for coal--and it was just at this
-time that Marija's board began to fail.  Then, too, the warm weather
-brought trials of its own; each season had its trials, as they found.
-In the spring there were cold rains, that turned the streets into
-canals and bogs; the mud would be so deep that wagons would sink
-up to the hubs, so that half a dozen horses could not move them.
-Then, of course, it was impossible for any one to get to work with
-dry feet; and this was bad for men that were poorly clad and shod,
-and still worse for women and children.  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.
-All day long the rivers of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun
-beating down, and the air motionless, the stench was enough to knock
-a man over; all the old smells of a generation would be drawn out by
-this heat--for there was never any washing of the walls and rafters
-and pillars, and they were caked with the filth of a lifetime.
-The men who worked on the killing beds would come to reek with foulness,
-so that you could smell one of them fifty feet away; there was simply
-no such thing as keeping decent, the most careful man gave it up in
-the end, and wallowed in uncleanness.  There was not even a place
-where a man could wash his hands, and the men ate as much raw blood as
-food at dinnertime.  When they were at work they could not even wipe off
-their faces--they were as helpless as newly born babes in that respect;
-and it may seem like a small matter, but when the sweat began to run
-down their necks and tickle them, or a fly to bother them, it was a
-torture like being burned alive.  Whether it was the slaughterhouses
-or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the
-hot weather there descended upon Packingtown a veritable Egyptian plague
-of flies; there could be no describing this--the houses would be black
-with them.  There was no escaping; you might provide all your doors
-and windows with screens, but their buzzing outside would be like
-the swarming of bees, and whenever you opened the door they would
-rush in as if a storm of wind were driving them.
-
-Perhaps the summertime suggests to you thoughts of the country,
-visions of green fields and mountains and sparkling lakes.  It had
-no such suggestion for the people in the yards.  The great packing
-machine ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields;
-and the men and women and children who were part of it never saw
-any green thing, not even a flower.  Four or five miles to the east
-of them lay the blue waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good
-it did them it might have been as far away as the Pacific Ocean.
-They had only Sundays, and then they were too tired to walk.
-They were tied to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life.
-The managers and superintendents and clerks of Packingtown were all
-recruited from another class, and never from the workers; they scorned
-the workers, the very meanest of them.  A poor devil of a bookkeeper
-who had been working in Durham's for twenty years at a salary of
-six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty more and do
-no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far removed
-as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds;
-he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town,
-and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way
-make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man.  Perhaps
-this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people
-who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it.
-
-In the late spring the canning factory started up again, and so
-once more Marija was heard to sing, and the love-music of Tamoszius
-took on a less melancholy tone.  It was not for long, however;
-for a month or two later a dreadful calamity fell upon Marija.
-Just one year and three days after she had begun work as a can-painter,
-she lost her job.
-
-It was a long story. Marija insisted that it was because of her
-activity in the union.  The packers, of course, had spies in all
-the unions, and in addition they made a practice of buying up
-a certain number of the union officials, as many as they thought
-they needed.  So every week they received reports as to what was
-going on, and often they knew things before the members of the
-union knew them.  Any one who was considered to be dangerous by them
-would find that he was not a favorite with his boss; and Marija had
-been a great hand for going after the foreign people and preaching
-to them.  However that might be, the known facts were that a few
-weeks before the factory closed, Marija had been cheated out of her
-pay for three hundred cans.  The girls worked at a long table,
-and behind them walked a woman with pencil and notebook, keeping count
-of the number they finished.  This woman was, of course, only human,
-and sometimes made mistakes; when this happened, there was no
-redress--if on Saturday you got less money than you had earned,
-you had to make the best of it.  But Marija did not understand this,
-and made a disturbance.  Marija's disturbances did not mean anything,
-and while she had known only Lithuanian and Polish, they had done no harm,
-for people only laughed at her and made her cry.  But now Marija was
-able to call names in English, and so she got the woman who made the
-mistake to disliking her.  Probably, as Marija claimed, she made
-mistakes on purpose after that; at any rate, she made them, and the
-third time it happened Marija went on the warpath and took the matter
-first to the forelady, and when she got no satisfaction there, to the
-superintendent.  This was unheard-of presumption, but the superintendent
-said he would see about it, which Marija took to mean that she was
-going to get her money; after waiting three days, she went to see
-the superintendent again.  This time the man frowned, and said that he
-had not had time to attend to it; and when Marija, against the advice
-and warning of every one, tried it once more, he ordered her back to
-her work in a passion.  Just how things happened after that Marija was
-not sure, but that afternoon the forelady told her that her services
-would not be any longer required.  Poor Marija could not have been
-more dumfounded had the woman knocked her over the head; at first she
-could not believe what she heard, and then she grew furious and swore
-that she would come anyway, that her place belonged to her.  In the end
-she sat down in the middle of the floor and wept and wailed.
-
-It was a cruel lesson; but then Marija was headstrong--she should
-have listened to those who had had experience.  The next time she
-would know her place, as the forelady expressed it; and so Marija
-went out, and the family faced the problem of an existence again.
-
-It was especially hard this time, for Ona was to be confined before long,
-and Jurgis was trying hard to save up money for this.  He had heard
-dreadful stories of the midwives, who grow as thick as fleas in
-Packingtown; and he had made up his mind that Ona must have a
-man-doctor.  Jurgis could be very obstinate when he wanted to,
-and he was in this case, much to the dismay of the women, who felt
-that a man-doctor was an impropriety, and that the matter really
-belonged to them.  The cheapest doctor they could find would charge
-them fifteen dollars, and perhaps more when the bill came in;
-and here was Jurgis, declaring that he would pay it, even if he had
-to stop eating in the meantime!
-
-Marija had only about twenty-five dollars left.  Day after day she
-wandered about the yards begging a job, but this time without hope
-of finding it.  Marija could do the work of an able-bodied man,
-when she was cheerful, but discouragement wore her out easily,
-and she would come home at night a pitiable object.  She learned
-her lesson this time, poor creature; she learned it ten times over.
-All the family learned it along with her--that when you have once
-got a job in Packingtown, you hang on to it, come what will.
-
-Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week.  Of course she
-stopped paying her dues to the union.  She lost all interest in the
-union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged
-into one.  She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul,
-when somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place
-as a "beef-trimmer."  She got this because the boss saw that she
-had the muscles of a man, and so he discharged a man and put Marija
-to do his work, paying her a little more than half what he had been
-paying before.
-
-When she first came to Packingtown, Marija would have scorned such
-work as this.  She was in another canning factory, and her work
-was to trim the meat of those diseased cattle that Jurgis had been
-told about not long before.  She was shut up in one of the rooms
-where the people seldom saw the daylight; beneath her were the
-chilling rooms, where the meat was frozen, and above her were
-the cooking rooms; and so she stood on an ice-cold floor, while her
-head was often so hot that she could scarcely breathe.  Trimming beef
-off the bones by the hundred-weight, while standing up from early
-morning till late at night, with heavy boots on and the floor
-always damp and full of puddles, liable to be thrown out of work
-indefinitely because of a slackening in the trade, liable again
-to be kept overtime in rush seasons, and be worked till she trembled
-in every nerve and lost her grip on her slimy knife, and gave herself
-a poisoned wound--that was the new life that unfolded itself before Marija.
-But because Marija was a human horse she merely laughed and went
-at it; it would enable her to pay her board again, and keep the
-family going.  And as for Tamoszius--well, they had waited a long time,
-and they could wait a little longer.  They could not possibly get
-along upon his wages alone, and the family could not live without hers.
-He could come and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her hand,
-and he must manage to be content with that.  But day by day the
-music of Tamoszius' violin became more passionate and heartbreaking;
-and Marija would sit with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and
-all her body atremble, hearing in the wailing melodies the voices
-of the unborn generations which cried out in her for life.
-
-
-Marija's lesson came just in time to save Ona from a similar fate.
-Ona, too, was dissatisfied with her place, and had far more reason
-than Marija.  She did not tell half of her story at home, because she
-saw it was a torment to Jurgis, and she was afraid of what he might do.
-For a long time Ona had seen that Miss Henderson, the forelady in
-her department, did not like her.  At first she thought it was the
-old-time mistake she had made in asking for a holiday to get married.
-Then she concluded it must be because she did not give the forelady
-a present occasionally--she was the kind that took presents from
-the girls, Ona learned, and made all sorts of discriminations in favor
-of those who gave them.  In the end, however, Ona discovered that
-it was even worse than that.  Miss Henderson was a newcomer, and it was
-some time before rumor made her out; but finally it transpired that
-she was a kept woman, the former mistress of the superintendent of
-a department in the same building.  He had put her there to keep
-her quiet, it seemed--and that not altogether with success, for once
-or twice they had been heard quarreling.  She had the temper of a hyena,
-and soon the place she ran was a witch's caldron.  There were some
-of the girls who were of her own sort, who were willing to toady
-to her and flatter her; and these would carry tales about the rest,
-and so the furies were unchained in the place.  Worse than this,
-the woman lived in a bawdyhouse downtown, with a coarse, red-faced
-Irishman named Connor, who was the boss of the loading-gang outside,
-and would make free with the girls as they went to and from their work.
-In the slack seasons some of them would go with Miss Henderson to
-this house downtown--in fact, it would not be too much to say that
-she managed her department at Brown's in conjunction with it.
-Sometimes women from the house would be given places alongside of
-decent girls, and after other decent girls had been turned off to
-make room for them.  When you worked in this woman's department
-the house downtown was never out of your thoughts all day--there were
-always whiffs of it to be caught, like the odor of the Packingtown
-rendering plants at night, when the wind shifted suddenly.  There would
-be stories about it going the rounds; the girls opposite you would be
-telling them and winking at you.  In such a place Ona would not have
-stayed a day, but for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure
-that she could stay the next day.  She understood now that the real
-reason that Miss Henderson hated her was that she was a decent
-married girl; and she knew that the talebearers and the toadies
-hated her for the same reason, and were doing their best to make her
-life miserable.
-
-But there was no place a girl could go in Packingtown, if she was
-particular about things of this sort; there was no place in it
-where a prostitute could not get along better than a decent girl.
-Here was 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
-was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the
-system of chattel slavery.  Things that were quite unspeakable
-went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken
-for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old
-slavery times, because there was no difference in color between
-master and slave.
-
-
-One morning Ona stayed home, and Jurgis had the man-doctor,
-according to his whim, and she was safely delivered of a fine baby.
-It was an enormous big boy, and Ona was such a tiny creature herself,
-that it seemed quite incredible. Jurgis would stand and gaze at the
-stranger by the hour, unable to believe that it had really happened.
-
-The coming of this boy was a decisive event with Jurgis.  It made
-him irrevocably a family man; it killed the last lingering impulse
-that he might have had to go out in the evenings and sit and talk
-with the men in the saloons.  There was nothing he cared for now
-so much as to sit and look at the baby.  This was very curious,
-for Jurgis had never been interested in babies before.  But then,
-this was a very unusual sort of a baby.  He had the brightest
-little black eyes, and little black ringlets all over his head;
-he was the living image of his father, everybody said--and Jurgis
-found this a fascinating circumstance.  It was sufficiently perplexing
-that this tiny mite of life should have come into the world at all
-in the manner that it had; that it should have come with a comical
-imitation of its father's nose was simply uncanny.
-
-Perhaps, Jurgis thought, this was intended to signify that it was
-his baby; that it was his and Ona's, to care for all its life.
-Jurgis had never possessed anything nearly so interesting--a baby was,
-when you came to think about it, assuredly a marvelous possession.
-It would grow up to be a man, a human soul, with a personality all
-its own, a will of its own!  Such thoughts would keep haunting Jurgis,
-filling him with all sorts of strange and almost painful excitements.
-He was wonderfully proud of little Antanas; he was curious about all
-the details of him--the washing and the dressing and the eating and
-the sleeping of him, and asked all sorts of absurd questions.  It took
-him quite a while to get over his alarm at the incredible shortness
-of the little creature's legs.
-
-Jurgis had, alas, very little time to see his baby; he never felt
-the chains about him more than just then.  When he came home at night,
-the baby would be asleep, and it would be the merest chance if he awoke
-before Jurgis had to go to sleep himself.  Then in the morning there
-was no time to look at him, so really the only chance the father
-had was on Sundays.  This was more cruel yet for Ona, who ought
-to have stayed home and nursed him, the doctor said, for her own
-health as well as the baby's; but Ona had to go to work, and leave him
-for Teta Elzbieta to feed upon the pale blue poison that was called
-milk at the corner grocery.  Ona's confinement lost her only a
-week's wages--she would go to the factory the second Monday, and the
-best that Jurgis could persuade her was to ride in the car, and let
-him run along behind and help her to Brown's when she alighted.
-After that it would be all right, said Ona, it was no strain sitting
-still sewing hams all day; and if she waited longer she might find
-that her dreadful forelady had put some one else in her place.
-That would be a greater calamity than ever now, Ona continued,
-on account of the baby.  They would all have to work harder now
-on his account.  It was such a responsibility--they must not have
-the baby grow up to suffer as they had.  And this indeed had been
-the first thing that Jurgis had thought of himself--he had clenched
-his hands and braced himself anew for the struggle, for the sake of
-that tiny mite of human possibility.
-
-And so Ona went back to Brown's and saved her place and a week's wages;
-and so she gave herself some one of the thousand ailments that women
-group under the title of "womb trouble," and was never again a well
-person as long as she lived.  It is difficult to convey in words all
-that this meant to Ona; it seemed such a slight offense, and the
-punishment was so out of all proportion, that neither she nor any one
-else ever connected the two.  "Womb trouble" to Ona did not mean
-a specialist's diagnosis, and a course of treatment, and perhaps
-an operation or two; it meant simply headaches and pains in the back,
-and depression and heartsickness, and neuralgia when she had to go to
-work in the rain.  The great majority of the women who worked in
-Packingtown suffered in the same way, and from the same cause,
-so it was not deemed a thing to see the doctor about; instead Ona
-would try patent medicines, one after another, as her friends told
-her about them.  As these all contained alcohol, or some other
-stimulant, she found that they all did her good while she took them;
-and so she was always chasing the phantom of good health, and losing
-it because she was too poor to continue. 
-
-
-
-Chapter 11
-
-
-During the summer the packing houses were in full activity again,
-and Jurgis made more money.  He did not make so much, however, as
-he had the previous summer, for the packers took on more hands.
-There were new men every week, it seemed--it was a regular system;
-and this number they would keep over to the next slack season,
-so that every one would have less than ever.  Sooner or later,
-by this plan, they would have all the floating labor of Chicago
-trained to do their work.  And how very cunning a trick was that!
-The men were to teach new hands, who would some day come and break
-their strike; and meantime they were kept so poor that they could
-not prepare for the trial!
-
-But let no one suppose that this superfluity of employees meant
-easier work for any one!  On the contrary, the speeding-up seemed to
-be growing more savage all the time; they were continually inventing
-new devices to crowd the work on--it was for all the world like the
-thumbscrew of the medieval torture chamber.  They would get new
-pacemakers and pay them more; they would drive the men on with new
-machinery--it was said that in the hog-killing rooms the speed at
-which the hogs moved was determined by clockwork, and that it was
-increased a little every day.  In piecework they would reduce the time,
-requiring the same work in a shorter time, and paying the same wages;
-and then, after the workers had accustomed themselves to this new speed,
-they would reduce the rate of payment to correspond with the reduction
-in time!  They had done this so often in the canning establishments
-that the girls were fairly desperate; their wages had gone down by
-a full third in the past two years, and a storm of discontent was
-brewing that was likely to break any day.  Only a month after Marija
-had become a beef-trimmer the canning factory that she had left posted
-a cut that would divide the girls' earnings almost squarely in half;
-and so great was the indignation at this that they marched out without
-even a parley, and organized in the street outside.  One of the
-girls had read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for
-oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about
-the yards, yelling with rage.  A new union was the result of this
-outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days,
-owing to the rush of new labor.  At the end of it the girl who had
-carried the red flag went downtown and got a position in a great
-department store, at a salary of two dollars and a half a week. 
-
-Jurgis and Ona heard these stories with dismay, for there was no telling
-when their own time might come. Once or twice there had been rumors
-that one of the big houses was going to cut its unskilled men to fifteen
-cents an hour, and Jurgis knew that if this was done, his turn would
-come soon.  He had learned by this time that Packingtown was really
-not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust.
-And every week the managers of it got together and compared notes,
-and there was one scale for all the workers in the yards and one
-standard of efficiency.  Jurgis was told that they also fixed the
-price they would pay for beef on the hoof and the price of all
-dressed meat in the country; but that was something he did not
-understand or care about.
-
-The only one who was not afraid of a cut was Marija, who
-congratulated herself, somewhat naively, that there had been one
-in her place only a short time before she came.  Marija was getting
-to be a skilled beef-trimmer, and was mounting to the heights again.
-During the summer and fall Jurgis and Ona managed to pay her back the
-last penny they owed her, and so she began to have a bank account.
-Tamoszius had a bank account also, and they ran a race, and began
-to figure upon household expenses once more.
-
-The possession of vast wealth entails cares and responsibilities,
-however, as poor Marija found out.  She had taken the advice of a friend
-and invested her savings in a bank on Ashland Avenue.  Of course she
-knew nothing about it, except that it was big and imposing--what
-possible chance has a poor foreign working girl to understand the
-banking business, as it is conducted in this land of frenzied finance?
-So Marija lived in a continual dread lest something should happen
-to her bank, and would go out of her way mornings to make sure that
-it was still there.  Her principal thought was of fire, for she had
-deposited her money in bills, and was afraid that if they were burned
-up the bank would not give her any others.  Jurgis made fun of her
-for this, for he was a man and was proud of his superior knowledge,
-telling her that the bank had fireproof vaults, and all its millions
-of dollars hidden safely away in them.
-
-However, one morning Marija took her usual detour, and, to her horror
-and dismay, saw a crowd of people in front of the bank, filling the
-avenue solid for half a block.  All the blood went out of her face
-for terror.  She broke into a run, shouting to the people to ask what
-was the matter, but not stopping to hear what they answered, till she had
-come to where the throng was so dense that she could no longer advance.
-There was a "run on the bank," they told her then, but she did not
-know what that was, and turned from one person to another, trying in
-an agony of fear to make out what they meant.  Had something gone wrong
-with the bank?  Nobody was sure, but they thought so.  Couldn't she get
-her money?  There was no telling; the people were afraid not, and they
-were all trying to get it.  It was too early yet to tell anything--
-the bank would not open for nearly three hours.  So in a frenzy of
-despair Marija began to claw her way toward the doors of this building,
-through a throng of men, women, and children, all as excited as
-herself.  It was a scene of wild confusion, women shrieking and
-wringing their hands and fainting, and men fighting and trampling
-down everything in their way.  In the midst of the melee Marija
-recollected that she did not have her bankbook, and could not get
-her money anyway, so she fought her way out and started on a run
-for home.  This was fortunate for her, for a few minutes later the
-police reserves arrived.
-
-In half an hour Marija was back, Teta Elzbieta with her, both of them
-breathless with running and sick with fear.  The crowd was now formed
-in a line, extending for several blocks, with half a hundred policemen
-keeping guard, and so there was nothing for them to do but to take
-their places at the end of it.  At nine o'clock the bank opened and
-began to pay the waiting throng; but then, what good did that do
-Marija, who saw three thousand people before her--enough to take out
-the last penny of a dozen banks?
-
-To make matters worse a drizzling rain came up, and soaked them
-to the skin; yet all the morning they stood there, creeping slowly
-toward the goal--all the afternoon they stood there, heartsick,
-seeing that the hour of closing was coming, and that they were going
-to be left out.  Marija made up her mind that, come what might,
-she would stay there and keep her place; but as nearly all did
-the same, all through the long, cold night, she got very little
-closer to the bank for that.  Toward evening Jurgis came; he had
-heard the story from the children, and he brought some food and
-dry wraps, which made it a little easier.
-
-The next morning, before daybreak, came a bigger crowd than ever,
-and more policemen from downtown.  Marija held on like grim death,
-and toward afternoon she got into the bank and got her money--all in
-big silver dollars, a handkerchief full.  When she had once got her
-hands on them her fear vanished, and she wanted to put them back again;
-but the man at the window was savage, and said that the bank would
-receive no more deposits from those who had taken part in the run.
-So Marija was forced to take her dollars home with her, watching to
-right and left, expecting every instant that some one would try to
-rob her; and when she got home she was not much better off.  Until she
-could find another bank there was nothing to do but sew them up in her
-clothes, and so Marija went about for a week or more, loaded down with
-bullion, and afraid to cross the street in front of the house, because
-Jurgis told her she would sink out of sight in the mud.  Weighted this
-way she made her way to the yards, again in fear, this time to see
-if she had lost her place; but fortunately about ten per cent of the
-working people of Packingtown had been depositors in that bank,
-and it was not convenient to discharge that many at once.  The cause
-of the panic had been the attempt of a policeman to arrest a drunken
-man in a saloon next door, which had drawn a crowd at the hour the people
-were on their way to work, and so started the "run."
-
-About this time Jurgis and Ona also began a bank account.  Besides
-having paid Jonas and Marija, they had almost paid for their furniture,
-and could have that little sum to count on.  So long as each of them
-could bring home nine or ten dollars a week, they were able to get
-along finely.  Also election day came round again, and Jurgis made half
-a week's wages out of that, all net profit.  It was a very close election
-that year, and the echoes of the battle reached even to Packingtown.
-The two rival sets of grafters hired halls and set off fireworks and
-made speeches, to try to get the people interested in the matter.
-Although Jurgis did not understand it all, he knew enough by this time
-to realize that it was not supposed to be right to sell your vote.
-However, as every one did it, and his refusal to join would not have
-made the slightest difference in the results, the idea of refusing would
-have seemed absurd, had it ever come into his head.
-
-
-Now chill winds and shortening days began to warn them that the winter
-was coming again.  It seemed as if the respite had been too short--
-they had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came,
-inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes
-of little Stanislovas.  The prospect struck fear to the heart of
-Jurgis also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and
-the snowdrifts this year.  And suppose that some day when a blizzard
-struck them and the cars were not running, Ona should have to give up,
-and should come the next day to find that her place had been given to
-some one who lived nearer and could be depended on?
-
-It was the week before Christmas that the first storm came, and then
-the soul of Jurgis rose up within him like a sleeping lion.  There were
-four days that the Ashland Avenue cars were stalled, and in those days,
-for the first time in his life, Jurgis knew what it was to be really
-opposed.  He had faced difficulties before, but they had been
-child's play; now there was a death struggle, and all the furies
-were unchained within him.  The first morning they set out two hours
-before dawn, Ona wrapped all in blankets and tossed upon his shoulder
-like a sack of meal, and the little boy, bundled nearly out of sight,
-hanging by his coat-tails.  There was a raging blast beating in his face,
-and the thermometer stood below zero; the snow was never short of his
-knees, and in some of the drifts it was nearly up to his armpits.
-It would catch his feet and try to trip him; it would build itself
-into a wall before him to beat him back; and he would fling himself
-into it, plunging like a wounded buffalo, puffing and snorting in rage.
-So foot by foot he drove his way, and when at last he came to Durham's
-he was staggering and almost blind, and leaned against a pillar,
-gasping, and thanking God that the cattle came late to the killing
-beds that day.  In the evening the same thing had to be done again;
-and because Jurgis could not tell what hour of the night he would
-get off, he got a saloon-keeper to let Ona sit and wait for him in
-a corner.  Once it was eleven o'clock at night, and black as the pit,
-but still they got home.
-
-That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging
-for work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for
-any one.  When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he
-had met the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of
-his fate.--So it might be with some monarch of the forest that has
-vanquished his foes in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly
-trap in the night-time.
-
-A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose.
-Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of
-the animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it
-would get upon its feet and run amuck.  Then there would be a yell
-of warning--the men would drop everything and dash for the nearest
-pillar, slipping here and there on the floor, and tumbling over
-each other.  This was bad enough in the summer, when a man could see;
-in wintertime it was enough to make your hair stand up, for the room
-would be so full of steam that you could not make anything out five
-feet in front of you.  To be sure, the steer was generally blind and
-frantic, and not especially bent on hurting any one; but think of
-the chances of running upon a knife, while nearly every man had one
-in his hand!  And then, to cap the climax, the floor boss would come
-rushing up with a rifle and begin blazing away!
-
-It was in one of these melees that Jurgis fell into his trap.  That is
-the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to
-be foreseen.  At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight
-accident--simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.
-There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not
-coddle himself.  When he came to walk home, however, he realized that
-it was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was
-swollen out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into
-his shoe.  Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little,
-and wrapped his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car.
-It chanced to be a rush day at Durham's, and all the long morning
-he limped about with his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great
-that it made him faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon
-he was fairly beaten, and had to tell the boss.  They sent for the
-company doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home
-to bed, adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by
-his folly.  The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be
-held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as
-the doctor was concerned.
-
-Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with
-an awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged
-his injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see
-her dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and
-told them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only
-be for a week or two, and that they would pull him through.
-
-When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen fire
-and talked it over in frightened whispers.  They were in for a siege,
-that was plainly to be seen.  Jurgis had only about sixty dollars in
-the bank, and the slack season was upon them.  Both Jonas and Marija
-might soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and besides
-that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the little boy.
-There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture; there was
-the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after sack of coal.
-It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face privation.
-Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her work now?
-She might lose her place--she was almost certain to lose it.  And then
-little Stanislovas began to whimper--who would take care of him?
-
-It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help,
-should have meant such suffering.  The bitterness of it was the daily
-food and drink of Jurgis.  It was of no use for them to try to
-deceive him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he
-knew that the family might literally starve to death.  The worry of it
-fairly ate him up--he began to look haggard the first two or three
-days of it.  In truth, it was almost maddening for a strong man
-like him, a fighter, to have to lie there helpless on his back.
-It was for all the world the old story of Prometheus bound.  As Jurgis
-lay on his bed, hour after hour there came to him emotions that he
-had never known before.  Before this he had met life with a welcome--
-it had its trials, but none that a man could not face.  But now,
-in the nighttime, when he lay tossing about, there would come stalking
-into his chamber a grisly phantom, the sight of which made his flesh
-curl and his hair to bristle up.  It was like seeing the world fall
-away from underneath his feet; like plunging down into a bottomless
-abyss into yawning caverns of despair.  It might be true, then,
-after all, what others had told him about life, that the best powers
-of a man might not be equal to it!  It might be true that, strive as
-he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be destroyed!
-The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the thought
-that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those who
-were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold,
-and there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them!
-It was true, it was true,--that here in this huge city, with its
-stores of heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and
-destroyed by the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever
-they were in the days of the cave men!
-
-Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas
-about thirteen.  To add to this there was the board of Jonas and
-Marija, about forty-five dollars.  Deducting from this the rent,
-interest, and installments on the furniture, they had left sixty
-dollars, and deducting the coal, they had fifty.  They did without
-everything that human beings could do without; they went in old and
-ragged clothing, that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the
-children's shoes wore out, they tied them up with string.  Half invalid
-as she was, Ona would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold
-when she ought to have ridden; they bought literally nothing but
-food--and still they could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month.
-They might have done it, if only they could have gotten pure food,
-and at fair prices; or if only they had known what to get--if they
-had not been so pitifully ignorant!  But they had come to a new country,
-where everything was different, including the food.  They had always
-been accustomed to eat a great deal of smoked sausage, and how could
-they know that what they bought in America was not the same--that its
-color was made by chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals,
-and that it was full of "potato flour" besides?  Potato flour is the
-waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted;
-it has no more food value than so much wood, and as its use as a food
-adulterant is a penal offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are
-shipped to America every year.  It was amazing what quantities of
-food such as this were needed every day, by eleven hungry persons.
-A dollar sixty-five a day was simply not enough to feed them, and there
-was no use trying; and so each week they made an inroad upon the pitiful
-little bank account that Ona had begun.  Because the account was in
-her name, it was possible for her to keep this a secret from her
-husband, and to keep the heartsickness of it for her own.
-
-It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had
-not been able to think.  For he had no resources such as most
-invalids have; all he could do was to lie there and toss about from
-side to side.  Now and then he would break into cursing, regardless
-of everything; and now and then his impatience would get the better
-of him, and he would try to get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta would
-have to plead with him in a frenzy.  Elzbieta was all alone with him
-the greater part of the time.  She would sit and smooth his forehead
-by the hour, and talk to him and try to make him forget.  Sometimes it
-would be too cold for the children to go to school, and they would
-have to play in the kitchen, where Jurgis was, because it was the
-only room that was half warm.  These were dreadful times, for Jurgis
-would get as cross as any bear; he was scarcely to be blamed, for he
-had enough to worry him, and it was hard when he was trying to take
-a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish children.
-
-Elzbieta's only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed,
-it would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if
-it had not been for little Antanas.  It was the one consolation of
-Jurgis' long imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby.
-Teta Elzbieta would put the clothesbasket in which the baby slept
-alongside of his mattress, and Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and
-watch him by the hour, imagining things.  Then little Antanas would
-open his eyes--he was beginning to take notice of things now; and he
-would smile--how he would smile!  So Jurgis would begin to forget
-and be happy because he was in a world where there was a thing so
-beautiful as the smile of little Antanas, and because such a world
-could not but be good at the heart of it.  He looked more like his
-father every hour, Elzbieta would say, and said it many times a day,
-because she saw that it pleased Jurgis; the poor little terror-stricken
-woman was planning all day and all night to soothe the prisoned giant
-who was intrusted to her care.  Jurgis, who knew nothing about the
-agelong and everlasting hypocrisy of woman, would take the bait and
-grin with delight; and then he would hold his finger in front of
-little Antanas' eyes, and move it this way and that, and laugh with
-glee to see the baby follow it.  There is no pet quite so fascinating
-as a baby; he would look into Jurgis' face with such uncanny seriousness,
-and Jurgis would start and cry: "Palauk!  Look, Muma, he knows his papa!
-He does, he does! Tu mano szirdele, the little rascal!"  
-
-
-
-Chapter 12
-
-
-For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed.  It was
-a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
-still continued.  At the end of that time, however, he could contain
-himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day,
-laboring to persuade himself that he was better.  No arguments could
-stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was going
-back to work.  He limped to the cars and got to Brown's, where he
-found that the boss had kept his place--that is, was willing to
-turn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime.
-Every now and then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he
-stuck it out till nearly an hour before closing.  Then he was forced
-to acknowledge that he could not go on without fainting; it almost
-broke his heart to do it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and
-weeping like a child.  Two of the men had to help him to the car,
-and when he got out he had to sit down and wait in the snow till some
-one came along.
-
-So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought
-to have done in the beginning.  It transpired that he had twisted a
-tendon out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention.
-Then he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together,
-and turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched
-away at his swollen ankle.  When finally the doctor left, he told
-him that he would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if he
-went to work before that time he might lame himself for life.
-
-Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and
-Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour
-before daybreak, to try to get to the yards.  About noon the last two
-came back, the boy screaming with pain.  His fingers were all frosted,
-it seemed.  They had had to give up trying to get to the yards,
-and had nearly perished in a drift.  All that they knew how to do
-was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas
-spent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis
-flew into a passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring
-that he would kill him if he did not stop.  All that day and night
-the family was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost
-their places; and in the morning they set out earlier than ever,
-after the little fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis.
-There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of
-life and death; little Stanislovas could not be expected to realize
-that he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift than lose
-his job at the lard machine.  Ona was quite certain that she would find
-her place gone, and was all unnerved when she finally got to Brown's,
-and found that the forelady herself had failed to come, and was therefore
-compelled to be lenient.  
-
-One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of
-three of the little boy's fingers were permanently disabled, and another
-that thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to work,
-whenever there was fresh snow on the ground.  Jurgis was called upon
-to do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a vengeance;
-but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper.  They say that
-the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it
-was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and
-curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.
-
-This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry,
-Jurgis could not stay angry.  The poor fellow looked like a homeless
-ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling
-into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about
-his appearance.  His muscles were wasting away, and what were left
-were soft and flabby.  He had no appetite, and they could not afford
-to tempt him with delicacies.  It was better, he said, that he should
-not eat, it was a saving.  About the end of March he had got hold of
-Ona's bankbook, and learned that there was only three dollars left
-to them in the world.
-
-But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that
-they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared.
-One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their
-efforts to get trace of him were futile.  It was said by the boss
-at Durham's that he had gotten his week's money and left there.
-That might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that
-when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for
-all concerned.  When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of
-the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless
-fertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making his
-family unhappy.  More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas
-had deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking happiness.  He had
-been discontented for a long time, and not without some cause.
-He paid good board, and was yet obliged to live in a family where
-nobody had enough to eat.  And Marija would keep giving them all
-her money, and of course he could not but feel that he was called
-upon to do the same.  Then there were crying brats, and all sorts
-of misery; a man would have had to be a good deal of a hero to stand
-it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the least a hero--he was
-simply a weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have a good supper and
-sit in the corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in peace before he
-went to bed.  Here there was not room by the fire, and through the
-winter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for comfort.  So, with
-the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea of
-escaping had come to him?  Two years he had been yoked like a horse
-to a half-ton truck in Durham's dark cellars, with never a rest,
-save on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word
-of thanks--only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog
-would have stood.  And now the winter was over, and the spring winds
-were blowing--and with a day's walk a man might put the smoke of
-Packingtown behind him forever, and be where the grass was green and
-the flowers all the colors of the rainbow!
-
-But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third,
-and the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were
-worse off than ever.  Also they were borrowing money from Marija,
-and eating up her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopes
-of marriage and happiness.  And they were even going into debt to
-Tamoszius Kuszleika and letting him impoverish himself.  Poor Tamoszius
-was a man without any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides,
-and he ought to have made money and prospered; but he had fallen
-in love, and so given hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be
-dragged down too.
-
-So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have
-to leave school.  Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was
-a girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys,
-Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten.  Both of these
-last were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family
-should starve when tens of thousands of children no older were
-earning their own livings.  So one morning they were given a quarter
-apiece and a roll with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy
-with good advice, were sent out to make their way to the city and
-learn to sell newspapers.  They came back late at night in tears,
-having walked for the five or six miles to report that a man had
-offered to take them to a place where they sold newspapers, and had
-taken their money and gone into a store to get them, and nevermore
-been seen.  So they both received a whipping, and the next moming
-set out again.  This time they found the newspaper place, and procured
-their stock; and after wandering about till nearly noontime, saying
-"Paper?" to every one they saw, they had all their stock taken away
-and received a thrashing besides from a big newsman upon whose
-territory they had trespassed.  Fortunately, however, they had
-already sold some papers, and came back with nearly as much as they
-started with.
-
-After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began
-to learn the ways of the trade--the names of the different papers,
-and how many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to,
-and where to go and where to stay away from.  After this, leaving home
-at four o'clock in the morning, and running about the streets, first
-with morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late
-at night with twenty or thirty cents apiece--possibly as much as
-forty cents.  From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the
-distance was so great; but after a while they made friends, and learned
-still more, and then they would save their carfare.  They would get
-on a car when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd;
-and three times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either
-not seeing them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask,
-they would hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either
-have their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick
-again on a new car.  All this was fair play, they felt.  Whose fault
-was it that at the hours when workingmen were going to their work
-and back, the cars were so crowded that the conductors could not
-collect all the fares?  And besides, the companies were thieves,
-people said--had stolen all their franchises with the help of
-scoundrelly politicians!
-
-Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow,
-and no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the
-children into when they cried, and enough money to get along from
-week to week with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been.
-A man can get used to anything in the course of time, and Jurgis
-had gotten used to lying about the house.  Ona saw this, and was
-very careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him know
-how very much pain she was suffering.  It was now the time of the
-spring rains, and Ona had often to ride to her work, in spite of
-the expense; she was getting paler every day, and sometimes, in spite
-of her good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis did not notice it.
-She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if all this misery
-was not wearing out his love.  She had to be away from him all the time,
-and bear her own troubles while he was bearing his; and then, when she
-came home, she was so worn out; and whenever they talked they had
-only their worries to talk of--truly it was hard, in such a life,
-to keep any sentiment alive.  The woe of this would flame up in Ona
-sometimes--at night she would suddenly clasp her big husband in her
-arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if he really
-loved her.  Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact,
-under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make of
-these things, and could only try to recollect when he had last been
-cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob herself to sleep.
-
-The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given
-a bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back
-to work.  It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however,
-for when he showed up on the killing floor of Brown's, he was told
-by the foreman that it had not been possible to keep his job for him.
-Jurgis knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some one
-else to do the work as well and did not want to bother to make a change.
-He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends
-and companions at work, and feeling like an outcast.  Then he went
-out and took his place with the mob of the unemployed.
-
-This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence,
-nor the same reason for it.  He was no longer the finest-looking
-man in the throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was
-thin and haggard, and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable.
-And there were hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who
-had been wandering about Packingtown for months begging for work.
-This was a critical time in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weaker
-man he would have gone the way the rest did.  Those out-of-work
-wretches would stand about the packing houses every morning till the
-police drove them away, and then they would scatter among the saloons.
-Very few of them had the nerve to face the rebuffs that they would
-encounter by trying to get into the buildings to interview the bosses;
-if they did not get a chance in the morning, there would be nothing
-to do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night.
-Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to be sure, because it was
-pleasant weather, and there was no need to be indoors; but mainly
-because he carried with him always the pitiful little face of his wife. 
-He must get work, he told himself, fighting the battle with despair
-every hour of the day.  He must get work!  He must have a place again
-and some money saved up, before the next winter came.
-
-But there was no work for him.  He sought out all the members of his
-union--Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this--and begged them
-to speak a word for him.  He went to every one he knew, asking for
-a chance, there or anywhere.  He wandered all day through the buildings;
-and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into
-every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not
-a job anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been
-a change in the places he had first visited, and began the round
-all over; till finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of the
-companies came to know him by sight and to order him out with threats.
-Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd in
-the morning, and keep in the front row and look eager, and when he
-failed, go back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby.
-
-The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly
-the meaning of it.  In the beginning he had been fresh and strong,
-and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand,
-a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him.  They had
-got the best of him--they had worn him out, with their speeding-up
-and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away!  And Jurgis
-would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find
-that they had all had the same experience.  There were some, of course,
-who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other
-mills; there were others who were out from their own fault--some,
-for instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without
-drink.  The vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts
-of the great merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept
-up with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally
-the time had come when they could not keep up with it any more.
-Some had been frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man
-was needed; others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness
-or incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been the same
-as with Jurgis.  They had been overworked and underfed so long,
-and finally some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cut
-themselves, and had blood poisoning, or met with some other accident.
-When a man came back after that, he would get his place back only by
-the courtesy of the boss.  To this there was no exception, save when
-the accident was one for which the firm was liable; in that case they
-would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try to get him to
-sign away his claims, but if he was too smart for that, to promise
-him that he and his should always be provided with work.  This promise
-they would keep, strictly and to the letter--for two years.  Two years
-was the "statute of limitations," and after that the victim could not sue.  
-
-What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon
-the circumstances.  If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would
-probably have enough saved up to tide him over.  The best paid men,
-the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or
-six dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest.
-A man could live and save on that; but then there were only half
-a dozen splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew
-had a family of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be
-splitters like their father.  For an unskilled man, who made ten
-dollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the dull, it all
-depended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him.
-An unmarried man could save, if he did not drink, and if he was
-absolutely selfish--that is, if he paid no heed to the demands of
-his old parents, or of his little brothers and sisters, or of any
-other relatives he might have, as well as of the members of his union,
-and his chums, and the people who might be starving to death next door.  
-
-
-
-Chapter 13
-
-
-During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the
-death of little Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta.
-Both Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter
-having lost one leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having
-congenital dislocation of the hip, which made it impossible for him
-ever to walk.  He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and
-perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know that she had
-had enough.  At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized;
-he had the rickets, and though he was over three years old, he was
-no bigger than an ordinary child of one.  All day long he would
-crawl around the floor in a filthy little dress, whining and fretting;
-because the floor was full of drafts he was always catching cold,
-and snuffling because his nose ran.  This made him a nuisance, and a
-source of endless trouble in the family.  For his mother, with
-unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children, and made
-a perpetual fuss over him--would let him do anything undisturbed,
-and would burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis wild.
-
-And now he died.  Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that
-morning--which may have been made out of some of the tubercular pork
-that was condemncd as unfit for export.  At any rate, an hour after
-eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour
-he was rolling about on the floor in convulsions.  Little Kotrina,
-who was all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a
-while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl.
-No one was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was
-inconsolable.  Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned
-the child would have to be buried by the city, since they had no
-money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost went out of
-her senses, wringing her hands and screaming with grief and despair. 
-Her child to be buried in a pauper's grave!  And her stepdaughter to
-stand by and hear it said without protesting!  It was enough to make
-Ona's father rise up out of his grave to rebuke her!  If it had come
-to this, they might as well give up at once, and be buried all of
-them together!. . .  In the end Marija said that she would help
-with ten dollars; and Jurgis being still obdurate, Elzbieta went
-in tears and begged the money from the neighbors, and so little
-Kristoforas had a mass and a hearse with white plumes on it, and a
-tiny plot in a graveyard with a wooden cross to mark the place.
-The poor mother was not the same for months after that; the mere
-sight of the floor where little Kristoforas had crawled about would
-make her weep.  He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow,
-she would say.  He had been handicapped from his birth.  If only she
-had heard about it in time, so that she might have had that great
-doctor to cure him of his lameness!. . .  Some time ago, Elzbieta
-was told, a Chicago billionaire had paid a fortune to bring a great
-European surgeon over to cure his little daughter of the same disease
-from which Kristoforas had suffered.  And because this surgeon had
-to have bodies to demonstrate upon, he announced that he would treat
-the children of the poor, a piece of magnanimity over which the papers
-became quite eloquent.  Elzbieta, alas, did not read the papers,
-and no one had told her; but perhaps it was as well, for just then they
-would not have had the carfare to spare to go every day to wait upon
-the surgeon, nor for that matter anybody with the time to take the child.  
-
-
-All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow
-hanging over Jurgis; as if a savage beast were lurking somewhere in the
-pathway of his life, and he knew it, and yet could not help approaching
-the place.  There are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown,
-and he faced in dread the prospect of reaching the lowest.  There is
-a place that waits for the lowest man--the fertilizer plant!
-
-The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers.  Not more than
-one in ten had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented
-themselves with hearsay evidence and a peep through the door.
-There were some things worse than even starving to death.  They would
-ask Jurgis if he had worked there yet, and if he meant to; and Jurgis
-would debate the matter with himself.  As poor as they were, and making
-all the sacrifices that they were, would he dare to refuse any sort
-of work that was offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could?
-Would he dare to go home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona,
-weak and complaining as she was, knowing that he had been given
-a chance, and had not had the nerve to take it?--And yet he might
-argue that way with himself all day, and one glimpse into the
-fertilizer works would send him away again shuddering.  He was a man,
-and he would do his duty; he went and made application--but surely
-he was not also required to hope for success!  
-
-The fertilizer works of Durham's lay away from the rest of the plant.
-Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out
-looking like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been
-into hell.  To this part of the yards came all the "tankage" and
-the waste products of all sorts; here they dried out the bones,--and
-in suffocating cellars where the daylight never came you might see
-men and women and children bending over whirling machines and sawing
-bits of bone into all sorts of shapes, breathing their lungs full
-of the fine dust, and doomed to die, every one of them, within a
-certain definite time.  Here they made the blood into albumen,
-and made other foul-smelling things into things still more foul-smelling.
-In the corridors and caverns where it was done you might lose yourself
-as in the great caves of Kentucky.  In the dust and the steam the
-electric lights would shine like far-off twinkling stars--red and
-blue-green and purple stars, according to the color of the mist and
-the brew from which it came.  For the odors of these ghastly charnel
-houses there may be words in Lithuanian, but there are none in English.
-The person entering would have to summon his courage as for a
-cold-water plunge.  He would go in like a man swimming under water;
-he would put his handkerchief over his face, and begin to cough and
-choke; and then, if he were still obstinate, he would find his head
-beginning to ring, and the veins in his forehead to throb, until
-finally he would be assailed by an overpowering blast of ammonia fumes,
-and would turn and run for his life, and come out half-dazed.
-
-On top of this were the rooms where they dried the "tankage," the mass
-of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the
-carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them.  This dried
-material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had
-mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which
-they brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that
-purpose, the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out
-to the world as any one of a hundred different brands of standard
-bone phosphate.  And then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas
-would buy this, at say twenty-five dollars a ton, and plant it with
-his corn; and for several days after the operation the fields would
-have a strong odor, and the farmer and his wagon and the very horses
-that had hauled it would all have it too.  In Packingtown the fertilizer
-is pure, instead of being a flavoring, and instead of a ton or so
-spread out on several acres under the open sky, there are hundreds
-and thousands of tons of it in one building, heaped here and there
-in haystack piles, covering the floor several inches deep, and filling
-the air with a choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm when
-the wind stirs.
-
-It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by
-an unseen hand.  The month of May was an exceptionally cool one,
-and his secret prayers were granted; but early in June there came
-a record-breaking hot spell, and after that there were men wanted
-in the fertilizer mill.
-
-The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time,
-and had marked him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door
-about two o'clock this breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm
-of pain shoot through him--the boss beckoned to him!  In ten minutes
-more Jurgis had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth
-together and gone to work.  Here was one more difficulty for him to
-meet and conquer!
-
-His labor took him about one minute to learn.  Before him was one
-of the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground--
-rushing forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest
-dust flung forth in clouds.  Jurgis was given a shovel, and along
-with half a dozen others it was his task to shovel this fertilizer
-into carts.  That others were at work he knew by the sound, and by
-the fact that he sometimes collided with them; otherwise they might
-as well not have been there, for in the blinding dust storm a man
-could not see six feet in front of his face.  When he had filled
-one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there
-was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived.  In five
-minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet;
-they gave him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe,
-but the sponge did not prevent his lips and eyelids from caking up
-with it and his ears from filling solid.  He looked like a brown ghost
-at twilight--from hair to shoes he became the color of the building and
-of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards outside it.
-The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew Durham and
-Company lost a great deal of fertilizer.
-
-Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over
-a hundred, the phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis'
-skin, and in five minutes he had a headache, and in fifteen was
-almost dazed.  The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's
-throbbing; there was a frightful pain in the top of his skull,
-and he could hardly control his hands.  Still, with the memory of
-his four months' siege behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy of
-determination; and half an hour later he began to vomit--he vomited
-until it seemed as if his inwards must be torn into shreds.  A man
-could get used to the fertilizer mill, the boss had said, if he would
-make up his mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was
-a question of making up his stomach.
-
-At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand.  He had
-to catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get
-his bearings.  Most of the men, when they came out, made straight
-for a saloon--they seemed to place fertilizer and rattlesnake poison
-in one class.  But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could
-only make his way to the street and stagger on to a car.  He had a
-sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to
-think it fun to board a streetcar and see what happened.  Now, however,
-he was too ill to notice it--how the people in the car began to gasp
-and sputter, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix
-him with furious glances.  Jurgis only knew that a man in front of
-him immediately got up and gave him a seat; and that half a minute
-later the two people on each side of him got up; and that in a full
-minute the crowded car was nearly empty--those passengers who could
-not get room on the platform having gotten out to walk.
-
-Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a
-minute after entering.  The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--
-his whole system was full of it, and it would have taken a week not
-merely of scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get it out of him.
-As it was, he could be compared with nothing known to men, save that
-newest discovery of the savants, a substance which emits energy for
-an unlimited time, without being itself in the least diminished
-in power.  He smelled so that he made all the food at the table taste,
-and set the whole family to vomiting; for himself it was three days
-before he could keep anything upon his stomach--he might wash his hands,
-and use a knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled
-with the poison?
-
-And still Jurgis stuck it out!  In spite of splitting headaches he
-would stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more,
-and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust.  And so at the
-end of the week he was a fertilizer man for life--he was able to
-eat again, and though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to
-be so bad that he could not work.
-
-
-So there passed another summer.  It was a summer of prosperity,
-all over the country, and the country ate generously of packing
-house products, and there was plenty of work for all the family,
-in spite of the packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor. 
-They were again able to pay their debts and to begin to save a
-little sum; but there were one or two sacrifices they considered
-too heavy to be made for long--it was too bad that the boys should
-have to sell papers at their age.  It was utterly useless to caution
-them and plead with them; quite without knowing it, they were taking
-on the tone of their new environment.  They were learning to swear
-in voluble English; they were learning to pick up cigar stumps and
-smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with pennies and
-dice and cigarette cards; they were learning the location of all
-the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names of the
-"madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state
-banquets, which the police captains and the big politicians all
-attended.  If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them,
-they could show him which was "Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could
-even point out to him by name the different gamblers and thugs and
-"hold-up men" who made the place their headquarters.  And worse yet,
-the boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at night.
-What was the use, they would ask, of wasting time and energy and
-a possible carfare riding out to the stockyards every night when
-the weather was pleasant and they could crawl under a truck or into
-an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well?  So long as they brought
-home a half dollar for each day, what mattered it when they brought it?
-But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing to come at all would
-not be a very long step, and so it was decided that Vilimas and
-Nikalojus should return to school in the fall, and that instead
-Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home being
-taken by her younger daughter.
-
-Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old;
-she had to take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also
-of the baby; she had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and
-clean house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in
-the evening.  She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she
-did all this without a murmur; and her mother went out, and after
-trudging a couple of days about the yards, settled down as a servant
-of a "sausage machine."
-
-Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one,
-for the reason that she had to stand motionless upon her feet from
-seven o'clock in the morning till half-past twelve, and again from
-one till half-past five.  For the first few days it seemed to her
-that she could not stand it--she suffered almost as much as Jurgis
-had from the fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head
-fairly reeling.  Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes,
-by electric light, and the dampness, too, was deadly--there were
-always puddles of water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist
-flesh in the room.  The people who worked here followed the ancient
-custom of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves
-in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the chameleon, who is black
-when he lies upon a stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf.
-The men and women who worked in this department were precisely the
-color of the "fresh country sausage" they made.  
-
-The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or
-three minutes, and provided that you did not look at the people;
-the machines were perhaps the most wonderful things in the entire plant.
-Presumably sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so
-it would be interesting to know how many workers had been displaced
-by these inventions.  On one side of the room were the hoppers,
-into which men shoveled loads of meat and wheelbarrows full of spices;
-in these great bowls were whirling knives that made two thousand
-revolutions a minute, and when the meat was ground fine and adulterated
-with potato flour, and well mixed with water, it was forced to the
-stuffing machines on the other side of the room.  The latter were
-tended by women; there was a sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose,
-and one of the women would take a long string of "casing" and put
-the end over the nozzle and then work the whole thing on, as one
-works on the finger of a tight glove.  This string would be twenty
-or thirty feet long, but the woman would have it all on in a jiffy;
-and when she had several on, she would press a lever, and a stream
-of sausage meat would be shot out, taking the casing with it as it came.
-Thus one might stand and see appear, miraculously born from the
-machine, a wriggling snake of sausage of incredible length.  In front
-was a big pan which caught these creatures, and two more women who
-seized them as fast as they appeared and twisted them into links.
-This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work of all; for all
-that the woman had to give was a single turn of the wrist; and in
-some way she contrived to give it so that instead of an endless chain
-of sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands a bunch
-of strings, all dangling from a single center.  It was quite like
-the feat of a prestidigitator--for the woman worked so fast that
-the eye could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist
-of motion, and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing.  In the
-midst of the mist, however, the visitor would suddenly notice the
-tense set face, with the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the
-ghastly pallor of the cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect
-that it was time he was going on.  The woman did not go on; she stayed
-right there--hour after hour, day after day, year after year, twisting
-sausage links and racing with death.  It was piecework, and she was apt
-to have a family to keep alive; and stern and ruthless economic laws
-had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as she did,
-with all her soul upon her work, and with never an instant for a glance
-at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who came to stare at her,
-as at some wild beast in a menagerie.   
-
-
-
-Chapter 14
-
-
-With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in
-a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the
-great majority of Packingtown swindles.  For it was the custom,
-as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be
-used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up
-into sausage.  With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked
-in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat
-industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old
-Packingtown jest--that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
-
-Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would
-often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take
-away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters;
-also of all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving
-to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color
-and any flavor and any odor they chose.  In the pickling of hams
-they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and
-increased the capacity of the plant--a machine consisting of a hollow
-needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat
-and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in
-a few seconds.  And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams
-found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could
-hardly bear to be in the room with them.  To pump into these the
-packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the
-odor--a process known to the workers as "giving them thirty per cent."
-Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had
-gone to the bad.  Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade,"
-but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now
-they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay,
-and insert in the hole a white-hot iron.  After this invention there
-was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there was only Number
-One Grade.  The packers were always originating such schemes--they had
-what they called "boneless hams," which were all the odds and ends of
-pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which were the
-shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out;
-and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose
-skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them--that is,
-until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!"
-
-It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the
-department of Elzbieta.  Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-
-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor
-that ever was in a ham could make any difference.  There was never
-the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would
-come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected,
-and that was moldy and white--it would be dosed with borax and
-glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home
-consumption.  There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor,
-in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit
-uncounted billions of consumption germs.  There would be meat stored
-in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip
-over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it.  It was too dark
-in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over
-these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
-These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread
-out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would
-go into the hoppers together.  This is no fairy story and no joke;
-the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the
-shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one--
-there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which
-a poisoned rat was a tidbit.  There was no place for the men to wash
-their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice
-of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage.
-There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef,
-and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be
-dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there.  Under the
-system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some
-jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these
-was the cleaning out of the waste barrels.  Every spring they did it;
-and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale
-water--and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped
-into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast.
-Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage--but as the smoking
-took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their
-chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with
-gelatine to make it brown.  All of their sausage came out of the
-same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of
-it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.
-
-
-Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was
-the work she was compelled to do.  It was stupefying, brutalizing work;
-it left her no time to think, no strength for anything.  She was part
-of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for
-the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence.  There was
-only one mercy about the cruel grind--that it gave her the gift of
-insensibility.  Little by little she sank into a torpor--she fell
-silent.  She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three
-would walk home together, often without saying a word.  Ona, too,
-was falling into a habit of silence--Ona, who had once gone about
-singing like a bird.  She was sick and miserable, and often she would
-barely have strength enough to drag herself home.  And there they
-would eat what they had to eat, and afterward, because there was
-only their misery to talk of, they would crawl into bed and fall into
-a stupor and never stir until it was time to get up again, and dress
-by candlelight, and go back to the machines.  They were so numbed
-that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only the children
-continued to fret when the food ran short.
-
-Yet the soul of Ona was not dead--the souls of none of them were dead,
-but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were
-cruel times.  The gates of memory would roll open--old joys would
-stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them,
-and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its
-forever immeasurable weight.  They could not even cry out beneath it;
-but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death.
-It was a thing scarcely to be spoken--a thing never spoken by all
-the world, that will not know its own defeat.
-
-They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside.
-It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do
-with wages and grocery bills and rents.  They had dreamed of freedom;
-of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent
-and clean, to see their child grow up to be strong.  And now it was all
-gone--it would never be!  They had played the game and they had lost.
-Six years more of toil they had to face before they could expect the
-least respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how
-cruelly certain it was that they could never stand six years of such
-a life as they were living!  They were lost, they were going down--
-and there was no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it
-gave them the vast city in which they lived might have been an ocean
-waste, a wilderness, a desert, a tomb.  So often this mood would come
-to Ona, in the nighttime, when something wakened her; she would lie,
-afraid of the beating of her own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes
-of the old primeval terror of life.  Once she cried aloud, and woke
-Jurgis, who was tired and cross.  After that she learned to weep
-silently--their moods so seldom came together now!  It was as if
-their hopes were buried in separate graves.
-
-Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own.  There was another
-specter following him.  He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow
-any one else to speak of it--he had never acknowledged its existence
-to himself.  Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--
-and once or twice, alas, a little more.  Jurgis had discovered drink.
-
-He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after
-week--until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its
-work without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his
-head day and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him
-as he went down the street.  And from all the unending horror of
-this there was a respite, a deliverance--he could drink!  He could
-forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly
-again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will.
-His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing
-and cracking jokes with his companions--he would be a man again,
-and master of his life.
-
-It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three drinks.
-With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself
-that that was economy; with the second he could eat another meal--but
-there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then to pay
-for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the agelong
-instincts of his hunger-haunted class.  One day, however, he took
-the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went
-home half "piped," as the men phrase it.  He was happier than he
-had been in a year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would
-not last, he was savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with
-the world, and with his life; and then again, beneath this, he was
-sick with the shame of himself.  Afterward, when he saw the despair
-of his family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came
-into his eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.
-
-It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one.  But Jurgis
-did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for
-reflection.  He simply knew that he was always fighting.  Steeped in
-misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was
-to be put upon the rack.  There was surely a saloon on the corner--
-perhaps on all four corners, and some in the middle of the block
-as well; and each one stretched out a hand to him each one had a
-personality of its own, allurements unlike any other.  Going and
-coming--before sunrise and after dark--there was warmth and a glow
-of light, and the steam of hot food,and perhaps music, or a friendly
-face, and a word of good cheer.  Jurgis developed a fondness for
-having Ona on his arm whenever he went out on the street, and he would
-hold her tightly, and walk fast.  It was pitiful to have Ona know
-of this--it drove him wild to think of it; the thing was not fair,
-for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not understand.
-Sometimes, in despeate hours, he would find himself wishing that
-she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in
-her presence.  They might drink together, and escape from the horror--
-escape for a while, come what would.
-
-So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis
-consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor.  He would have
-ugly moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they
-stood in his way.  He was a fool to have married; he had tied
-himself down, had made himself a slave.  It was all because he was
-a married man that he was compelled to stay in the yards; if it had
-not been for that he might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell
-with the packers.  There were few single men in the fertilizer mill--
-and those few were working only for a chance to escape.  Meantime, too,
-they had something to think about while they worked,--they had the
-memory of the last time they had been drunk, and the hope of the time
-when they would be drunk again.  As for Jurgis, he was expected to bring
-home every penny; he could not even go with the men at noontime--he was
-supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a pile of fertilizer dust.
-
-This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family.
-But just now was a time of trial.  Poor little Antanas, for instance--
-who had never failed to win him with a smile--little Antanas was
-not smiling just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples.  He had
-had all the diseases that babies are heir to, in quick succession,
-scarlet fever, mumps, and whooping cough in the first year, and now
-he was down with the measles.  There was no one to attend him but
-Kotrina; there was no doctor to help him, because they were too poor,
-and children did not die of the measles--at least not often.  Now and
-then Kotrina would find time to sob over his woes, but for the greater
-part of the time he had to be left alone, barricaded upon the bed.
-The floor was full of drafts, and if he caught cold he would die.
-At night he was tied down, lest he should kick the covers off him,
-while the family lay in their stupor of exhaustion.  He would lie
-and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when he was
-worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment.  He was
-burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime
-he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples
-and sweat, a great purple lump of misery.
-
-Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was,
-little Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family.
-He was quite able to bear his sufferings--it was as if he had all
-these complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was.  He was
-the child of his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's
-rosebush, and all the world was his oyster.  In general, he toddled
-around the kitchen all day with a lean and hungry look--the portion
-of the family's allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was
-unrestrainable in his demand for more.  Antanas was but little over
-a year old, and already no one but his father could manage him.
-
-It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left
-nothing for those that might come after him.  Ona was with child
-again now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis,
-dumb and despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet
-other agonies were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.
-
-For Ona was visibly going to pieces.  In the first place she was
-developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas.
-She had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
-streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
-beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night.  Even worse
-than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered;
-she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping;
-and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning,
-and would fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears.
-Several times she was quite beside herself and hysterical; and then
-Jurgis would go half-mad with fright.  Elzbieta would explain to him
-that it could not be helped, that a woman was subject to such things
-when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to be persuaded, and would
-beg and plead to know what had happened.  She had never been like
-this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and unthinkable.
-It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had to do,
-that was killing her by inches.  She was not fitted for it--no woman
-was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work;
-if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill
-them at once and be done with it.  They ought not to marry, to have
-children; no workingman ought to marry--if he, Jurgis, had known what
-a woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first.  So he
-would carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an
-unbearable thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together
-and fling herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be still,
-that she would be better, it would be all right.  So she would lie
-and sob out her grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her,
-as helpless as a wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.
-
-
-
-Chapter 15
-
-
-The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each
-time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not
-happen again--but in vain.  Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and
-more frightened, more disposed to distrust Elzbieta's consolations,
-and to believe that there was some terrible thing about all this
-that he was not allowed to know.  Once or twice in these outbreaks he
-caught Ona's eye, and it seemed to him like the eye of a hunted animal;
-there were broken phrases of anguish and despair now and then, amid her
-frantic weeping.  It was only because he was so numb and beaten himself
-that Jurgis did not worry more about this.  But he never thought of it,
-except when he was dragged to it--he lived like a dumb beast of burden,
-knowing only the moment in which he was.
-
-The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever.
-It was October, and the holiday rush had begun.  It was necessary
-for the packing machines to grind till late at night to provide food
-that would be eaten at Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta
-and Ona, as part of the machine, began working fifteen or sixteen
-hours a day.  There was no choice about this--whatever work there
-was to be done they had to do, if they wished to keep their places;
-besides that, it added another pittance to their incomes.  So they
-staggered on with the awful load.  They would start work every morning
-at seven, and eat their dinners at noon, and then work until ten or
-eleven at night without another mouthful of food.  Jurgis wanted to
-wait for them, to help them home at night, but they would not think
-of this; the fertilizer mill was not running overtime, and there was
-no place for him to wait save in a saloon.  Each would stagger out
-into the darkness, and make her way to the corner, where they met;
-or if the others had already gone, would get into a car, and begin
-a painful struggle to keep awake.  When they got home they were always
-too tired either to eat or to undress; they would crawl into bed with
-their shoes on, and lie like logs.  If they should fail, they would
-certainly be lost; if they held out, they might have enough coal
-for the winter.
-
-A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there came a snowstorm.  It began
-in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen.  Jurgis tried
-to wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took
-two drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon;
-there he lay down to wait for them, and instantly fell asleep.
-When he opened his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare,
-and found Elzbieta shaking him and crying out.  At first he could not
-realize what she was saying--Ona had not come home.  What time was it,
-he asked.  It was morning--time to be up.  Ona had not been home
-that night!  And it was bitter cold, and a foot of snow on the ground.
-
-Jurgis sat up with a start.  Marija was crying with fright and the
-children were wailing in sympathy--little Stanislovas in addition,
-because the terror of the snow was upon him.  Jurgis had nothing
-to put on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was
-out of the door.  Then, however, he realized that there was no need
-of haste, that he had no idea where to go.  It was still dark as
-midnight, and the thick snowflakes were sifting down--everything was
-so silent that he could hear the rustle of them as they fell.  In the
-few seconds that he stood there hesitating he was covered white.
-
-He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in
-the saloons that were open.  Ona might have been overcome on the way;
-or else she might have met with an accident in the machines.  When he
-got to the place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen--
-there had not been any accident, so far as the man had heard.  At the
-time office, which he found already open, the clerk told him that
-Ona's check had been turned in the night before, showing that she
-had left her work.
-
-After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and
-forth in the snow, meantime, to keep from freezing.  Already the yards
-were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in
-the distance, and across the way the "beef-luggers" were toiling in
-the darkness, carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into
-the refrigerator cars.  Before the first streaks of daylight there
-came the crowding throngs of workingmen, shivering, and swinging
-their dinner pails as they hurried by.  Jurgis took up his stand
-by the time-office window, where alone there was light enough for
-him to see; the snow fell so quick that it was only by peering
-closely that he could make sure that Ona did not pass him.
-
-Seven o'clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began
-to move.  Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer
-mill; but instead he was waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona.
-It was fifteen minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from
-the snow mist, and sprang toward it with a cry.  It was she, running
-swiftly; as she saw him, she staggered forward, and half fell into
-his outstretched arms.
-
-"What has been the matter?" he cried, anxiously.  "Where have you been?"
-
-It was several scconds before she could get breath to answer him.
-"I couldn't get home," she exclaimed.  "The snow--the cars had stopped."
-
-"But where were you then?" he demanded.
-
-"I had to go home with a friend," she panted--"with Jadvyga."
-
-Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing
-and trembling--as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so.
-"But what's the matter?" he cried.  "What has happened?"
-
-"Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!" she said, clinging to him wildly.
-"I have been so worried!"
-
-They were near the time station window, and people were staring at them.
-Jurgis led her away.  "How do you mean?" he asked, in perplexity.
-
-"I was afraid--I was just afraid!" sobbed Ona.  "I knew you wouldn't
-know where I was, and I didn't know what you might do.  I tried to
-get home, but I was so tired.  Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!"
-
-He was so glad to get her back that he could not think clearly about
-anything else.  It did not seem strange to him that she should be
-so very much upset; all her fright and incoherent protestations did
-not matter since he had her back.  He let her cry away her tears;
-and then, hecause it was nearly eight o'clock, and they would lose
-another hour if they delayed, he left her at the packing house door,
-with her ghastly white face and her haunted eyes of terror.
-
-There was another brief interval.  Christmas was almost come; and because
-the snow still held, and the searching cold, morning after morning
-Jurgis hall carried his wife to her post, staggering with her through
-the darkness; until at last, one night, came the end.
-
-It lacked but three days of the holidays.  About midnight Marija and
-Elzbieta came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found that Ona
-had not come.  The two had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting,
-had gone to the room where she worked; only to find that the
-ham-wrapping girls had quit work an hour before, and left.  There was
-no snow that night, nor was it especially cold; and still Ona had
-not come!  Something more serious must be wrong this time.
-
-They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story.
-She must have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived
-only two blocks from the yards, and perhaps she had been tired.
-Nothing could have happened to her--and even if there had, there was
-nothing could be done about it until morning.  Jurgis turned over
-in his bed, and was snoring again before the two had closed the door.
-
-In the morning, however, he was up and out nearly an hour before the
-usual time.  Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards,
-beyond Halsted Street, with her mother and sisters, in a single
-basement room--for Mikolas had recently lost one hand from blood
-poisoning, and their marriage had been put off forever.  The door
-of the room was in the rear, reached by a narrow court, and Jurgis
-saw a light in the window and heard something frying as he passed;
-he knocked, half expecting that Ona would answer.
-
-Instead there was one of Jadvyga's little sisters, who gazed at him
-through a crack in thc door.  "Where's Ona?" he demanded; and the child
-looked at him in perplexity.  "Ona?" she said.  
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis.  isn't she here?"
-
-"No," said the child, and Jurgis gave a start.  A moment later came
-Jadvyga, peering over the child's head.  When she saw who it was,
-she slid around out of sight, for she was not quite dressed.
-Jurgis must excuse her, she began, her mother was very ill--
-
-"Ona isn't here?" Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for her to finish.
-
-"Why, no," said Jadvyga.  "What made you think she would be here?
-Had she said she was coming?"
-
-"No," he answered.  "But she hasn't come home--and I thought she
-would be here the same as before."
-
-"As before?" echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity.
-
-"The time she spent the night here," said Jurgis.
-
-"There must be some mistake," she answered, quickly.  "Ona has never
-spent the night here."
-
-He was only half able to realize the words.  "Why--why--" he exclaimed.
-"Two weeks ago.  Jadvyga!  She told me so the night it snowed, and she
-could not get home."
-
-"There must be some mistake," declared the girl, again; "she didn't
-come here."
-
-He steadied himself by the doorsill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety--for
-she was fond of Ona--opened the door wide, holding her jacket across
-her throat.  "Are you sure you didn't misunderstand her?" she cried.
-"She must have meant somewhere else.  She--"
-
-"She said here," insisted Jurgis.  "She told me all about you, and how
-you were, and what you said.  Are you sure?  You haven't forgotten?
-You weren't away?"
-
-"No, no!" she exclaimed--and then came a peevish voice--"Jadvyga,
-you are giving the baby a cold.  Shut the door!"  Jurgis stood for
-half a minute more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth of
-an inch of crack; and then, as there was really nothing more to be said,
-he excused himself and went away.  
-
-He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went.  Ona had
-deceived him!  She had lied to him!  And what could it mean--where
-had she been?  Where was she now?  He could hardly grasp the thing--
-much less try to solve it; but a hundred wild surmises came to him,
-a sense of impending calamity overwhelmed him.
-
-Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office
-to watch again.  He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then
-went to the room where Ona worked to make inquiries of Ona's "forelady."
-The "forelady," he found, had not yet come; all the lines of cars
-that came from downtown were stalled--there had been an accident
-in the powerhouse, and no cars had been running since last night.
-Meantime, however, the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one
-else in charge of them.  The girl who answered Jurgis was busy,
-and as she talked she looked to see if she were being watched.
-Then a man came up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for Ona's husband,
-and was curious about the mystery.
-
-"Maybe the cars had something to do with it," he suggested--"maybe she
-had gone down-town."
-
-"No," said Jurgis.  "she never went down-town."
-
-"Perhaps not," said the man.  Jurgis thought he saw him exchange
-a swift glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly.
-"What do you know about it?"
-
-But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on
-again, pushing his truck.  "I don't know anything about it," he said,
-over his shoulder.  "How should I know where your wife goes?"
-
-Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and down before the building.
-All the morning he stayed there, with no thought of his work.
-About noon he went to the police station to make inquiries, and then
-came back again for another anxious vigil.  Finally, toward the middle
-of the alternoon, he set out for home once more.
-
-He was walking out Ashland Avenue.  The streetcars had begun running
-again, and several passed him, packed to the steps with people.
-The sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man's sarcastic
-remark; and half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars--
-with the result that he gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped
-short in his tracks.
-
-Then he broke into a run.  For a whole block he tore after the car,
-only a little ways behind.  That rusty black hat with the drooping
-red flower, it might not be Ona's, but there was very little likelihood
-of it.  He would know for certain very soon, for she would get out
-two blocks ahead.  He slowed down, and let the car go on.
-
-She got out: and as soon as she was out of sight on the side street
-Jurgis broke into a run.  Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was
-not ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn the corner near their home,
-and then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch steps
-of the house.  After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced
-up and down, his hands clenched tightly and his lips set, his mind
-in a turmoil.  Then he went home and entered.
-
-As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking
-for Ona, and had come home again.  She was now on tiptoe, and had
-a finger on her lips.  Jurgis waited until she was close to him.
-
-"Don't make any noise," she whispered, hurriedly.
-
-"What's the matter'?" he asked.  "Ona is asleep," she panted.
-"She's been very ill.  I'm afraid her mind's been wandering, Jurgis.
-She was lost on the street all night, and I've only just succeeded
-in getting her quiet."
-
-"When did she come in?" he asked.
-
-"Soon after you left this morning," said Elzbieta.
-
-"And has she been out since?"  "No, of course not.  She's so weak,
-Jurgis, she--"
-
-And he set his teeth hard together.  "You are lying to me," he said.
-
-Elzbieta started, and turned pale.  "Why!" she gasped.  "What do you mean?"
-
-But Jurgis did not answer.  He pushed her aside, and strode to the
-bedroom door and opened it.
-
-Ona was sitting on the bed.  She turned a startled look upon him as
-he entered.  He closed the door in Elzbieta's face, and went toward
-his wife.  "Where have you been?" he demanded.
-
-She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her
-face was as white as paper, and drawn with pain.  She gasped once or
-twice as she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low,
-and swiftly.  "Jurgis, I--I think I have been out of my mind.  I started
-to come last night, and I could not find the way.  I walked--I walked
-all night, I think, and--and I only got home--this morning."
-
-"You needed a rest," he said, in a hard tone.  "Why did you go out again?"
-
-He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden
-fear and wild uncertainty that leaped into her eyes.  "I--I had to
-go to--to the store," she gasped, almost in a whisper, "I had to go--"
-
-"You are lying to me," said Jurgis.  Then he clenched his hands and
-took a step toward her.  "Why do you lie to me?" he cried, fiercely.
-"What are you doing that you have to lie to me?"
-
-"Jurgis!" she exclaimed, starting up in fright.  "Oh, Jurgis, how
-can you?"
-
-"You have lied to me, I say!" he cried.  "You told me you had been
-to Jadvyga's house that other night, and you hadn't.  You had been
-where you were last night--somewheres downtown, for I saw you get
-off the car.  Where were you?"
-
-It was as if he had struck a knife into her.  She seemed to go all
-to pieces.  For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying,
-staring at him with horror in her eyes; then, with a cry of anguish,
-she tottered forward, stretching out her arms to him.  But he stepped
-aside, deliberately, and let her fall.  She caught herself at the
-side of the bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her hands
-and bursting into frantic weeping.
-
-There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often
-dismayed him.  Ona sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building
-themselves up into long climaxes.  Furious gusts of emotion would
-come sweeping over her, shaking her as the tempest shakes the trees
-upon the hills; all her frame would quiver and throb with them--it was
-as if some dreadful thing rose up within her and took possession of her,
-torturing her, tearing her.  This thing had been wont to set Jurgis
-quite beside himself; but now he stood with his lips set tightly and
-his hands clenched--she might weep till she killed herself, but she
-should not move him this time--not an inch, not an inch.  Because the
-sounds she made set his blood to running cold and his lips to quivering
-in spite of himself, he was glad of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta,
-pale with fright, opened the door and rushed in; yet he turned upon
-her with an oath.  "Go out!" he cried, "go out!"  And then, as she
-stood hesitating, about to speak, he seized her by the arm, and half
-flung her from the room, slamming the door and barring it with a table.
-Then he turned again and faced Ona, crying--"Now, answer me!"
-
-Yet she did not hear him--she was still in the grip of the fiend. 
-Jurgis could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching,
-roaming here and there over the bed at will, like living things;
-he could see convulsive shudderings start in her body and run through
-her limbs.  She was sobbing and choking--it was as if there were too
-many sounds for one throat, they came chasing each other, like waves
-upon the sea.  Then her voice would begin to rise into screams,
-louder and louder until it broke in wild, horrible peals of laughter.
-Jurgis bore it until he could bear it no longer, and then he sprang
-at her, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her, shouting into
-her ear: "Stop it, I say!  Stop it!"
-
-She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at
-his feet.  She caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts
-to step aside, and with her face upon the floor lay writhing.  It
-made a choking in Jurgis' throat to hear her, and he cried again,
-more savagely than before: "Stop it, I say!"
-
-This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent,
-save for the gasping sobs that wrenched all her frame.  For a long
-minute she lay there, perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized
-her husband, thinking that she was dying.  Suddenly, however,
-he heard her voice, faintly: "Jurgis!  Jurgis!"
-
-"What is it?" he said.
-
-He had to bend down to her, she was so weak.  She was pleading
-with him, in broken phrases, painfully uttered: "Have faith in me!
-Believe me!"
-
-"Believe what?" he cried.
-
-"Believe that I--that I know best--that I love you!  And do not
-ask me--what you did.  Oh, Jurgis, please, please!  It is for the
-best--it is--"
-
-He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading
-him off.  "If you will only do it!  If you will only--only believe me!
-It wasn't my fault--I couldn't help it--it will be all right--it is
-nothing--it is no harm.  Oh, Jurgis--please, please!"
-
-She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him;
-he could feel the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the
-bosom she pressed against him.  She managed to catch one of his hands
-and gripped it convulsively, drawing it to her face, and bathing it
-in her tears.  "Oh, believe me, believe me!" she wailed again; and he
-shouted in fury, "I will not!"
-
-But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: "Oh, Jurgis,
-think what you are doing!  It will ruin us--it will ruin us!  Oh, no,
-you must not do it!  No, don't, don't do it.  You must not do it!
-It will drive me mad--it will kill me--no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy--
-it is nothing.  You do not really need to know.  We can be happy--
-we can love each other just the same.  Oh, please, please, believe me!"
-
-Her words fairly drove him wild.  He tore his hands loose, and flung
-her off.  "Answer me," he cried.  "God damn it, I say--answer me!"
-
-She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again.  It was like
-listening to the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it.
-He smote his fist upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her,
-"Answer me!"
-
-She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast:
-"Ah!  Ah!  I can't!  I can't do it!"
-
-"Why can't you do it?" he shouted.
-
-"I don't know how!"
-
-He sprang and caught her by the arm, lifting her up, and glaring
-into her face.  "Tell me where you were last night!" he panted. 
-"Quick, out with it!"
-
-Then she began to whisper, one word at a time: "I--was in--a house--
-downtown--"
-
-"What house?  What do you mean?"
-
-She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her.  "Miss Henderson's
-house," she gasped.  He did not understand at first.  "Miss Henderson's
-house," he echoed.  And then suddenly, as in an explosion, the horrible
-truth burst over him, and he reeled and staggered back with a scream.
-He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his forehead,
-staring about him, and whispering, "Jesus!  Jesus!"
-
-An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet.
-He seized her by the throat.  "Tell me!" he gasped, hoarsely. 
-Quick!  Who took you to that place?"
-
-She tried to get away, making him furious; he thought it was fear,
-of the pain of his clutch--he did not understand that it was the agony
-of her shame.  Still she answered him, "Connor."
-
-"Connor," he gasped.  "Who is Connor?"
-
-"The boss," she answered.  "The man--"
-
-He tightened his grip, in his frenzy, and only when he saw her eyes
-closing did he realize that he was choking her.  Then he relaxed his
-fingers, and crouched, waiting, until she opened her lids again.
-His breath beat hot into her face.
-
-"Tell me," he whispered, at last, "tell me about it."
-
-She lay perfectly motionless, and he had to hold his breath to catch
-her words.  "I did not want--to do it," she said; "I tried--I tried
-not to do it.  I only did it--to save us.  It was our only chance."
-
-Again, for a space, there was no sound but his panting.  Ona's eyes
-closed and when she spoke again she did not open them.  "He told me--
-he would have me turned off.  He told me he would--we would all of us
-lose our places.  We could never get anything to do--here--again.
-He--he meant it--he would have ruined us."
-
-Jurgis' arms were shaking so that he could scarcely hold himself up,
-and lurched forward now and then as he listened.  "When--when did
-this begin?" he gasped.
-
-"At the very first," she said.  She spoke as if in a trance.  "It was
-all--it was their plot--Miss Henderson's plot.  She hated me.
-And he--he wanted me.  He used to speak to me--out on the platform.
-Then he began to--to make love to me.  He offered me money.  He begged
-me--he said he loved me.  Then he threatened me.  He knew all about us,
-he knew we would starve.  He knew your boss--he knew Marija's.
-He would hound us to death, he said--then he said if I would--if
-I--we would all of us be sure of work--always.  Then one day he
-caught hold of me--he would not let go--he--he--"
-
-"Where was this?"
-
-"In the hallway--at night--after every one had gone.  I could not
-help it.  I thought of you--of the baby--of mother and the children.
-I was afraid of him--afraid to cry out."
-
-A moment ago her face had been ashen gray, now it was scarlet. 
-She was beginning to breathe hard again.  Jurgis made not a sound.
-
-"That was two months ago.  Then he wanted me to come--to that house.
-He wanted me to stay there.  He said all of us--that we would not
-have to work.  He made me come there--in the evenings.  I told you--
-you thought I was at the factory.  Then--one night it snowed,
-and I couldn't get back.  And last night--the cars were stopped.
-It was such a little thing--to ruin us all.  I tried to walk, but I
-couldn't.  I didn't want you to know.  It would have--it would have
-been all right.  We could have gone on--just the same--you need never
-have known about it.  He was getting tired of me--he would have let
-me alone soon.  I am going to have a baby--I am getting ugly.  He told
-me that--twice, he told me, last night.  He kicked me--last night--too.
-And now you will kill him--you--you will kill him--and we shall die."
-
-All this she had said without a quiver; she lay still as death,
-not an eyelid moving.  And Jurgis, too, said not a word.  He lifted
-himself by the bed, and stood up.  He did not stop for another glance
-at her, but went to the door and opened it.  He did not see Elzbieta,
-crouching terrified in the corner.  He went out, hatless, leaving
-the street door open behind him.  The instant his feet were on the
-sidewalk he broke into a run.
-
-
-He ran like one possessed, blindly, furiously, looking neither to the
-right nor left.  He was on Ashland Avenue before exhaustion compelled
-him to slow down, and then, noticing a car, he made a dart for it
-and drew himself aboard.  His eyes were wild and his hair flying,
-and he was breathing hoarsely, like a wounded bull; but the people
-on the car did not notice this particularly--perhaps it seemed natural
-to them that a man who smelled as Jurgis smelled should exhibit an
-aspect to correspond.  They began to give way before him as usual.
-The conductor took his nickel gingerly, with the tips of his fingers,
-and then left him with the platform to himself.  Jurgis did not even
-notice it--his thoughts were far away.  Within his soul it was like a
-roaring furnace; he stood waiting, waiting, crouching as if for a spring.
-
-He had some of his breath back when the car came to the entrance of
-the yards, and so he leaped off and started again, racing at full speed.
-People turned and stared at him, but he saw no one--there was the
-factory, and he bounded through the doorway and down the corridor.
-He knew the room where Ona worked, and he knew Connor, the boss of the
-loading-gang outside.  He looked for the man as he sprang into the room.
-
-The truckmen were hard at work, loading the freshly packed boxes and
-barrels upon the cars.  Jurgis shot one swift glance up and down the
-platform--the man was not on it.  But then suddenly he heard a voice
-in the corridor, and started for it with a bound.  In an instant more
-he fronted the boss.  
-
-He was a big, red-faced Irishman, coarse-featured, and smelling of
-liquor.  He saw Jurgis as he crossed the threshold, and turned white.
-He hesitated one second, as if meaning to run; and in the next his
-assailant was upon him.  He put up his hands to protect his face,
-but Jurgis, lunging with all the power of his arm and body, struck him
-fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward.  The next moment he
-was on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.
-
-To Jurgis this man's whole presence reeked of the crime he had committed;
-the touch of his body was madness to him--it set every nerve of him
-atremble, it aroused all the demon in his soul.  It had worked its
-will upon Ona, this great beast--and now he had it, he had it!  It was
-his turn now!  Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud
-in his fury, lifting his victim and smashing his head upon the floor.
-
-The place, of course, was in an uproar; women fainting and shrieking,
-and men rushing in.  Jurgis was so bent upon his task that he knew
-nothing of this, and scarcely realized that people were trying to
-interfere with him; it was only when half a dozen men had seized him
-by the legs and shoulders and were pulling at him, that he understood
-that he was losing his prey.  In a flash he had bent down and sunk his
-teeth into the man's cheek; and when they tore him away he was dripping
-with blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in his mouth.
-
-They got him down upon the floor, clinging to him by his arms and legs,
-and still they could hardly hold him.  He fought like a tiger, writhing
-and twisting, half flinging them off, and starting toward his
-unconscious enemy.  But yet others rushed in, until there was a
-little mountain of twisted limbs and bodies, heaving and tossing,
-and working its way about the room.  In the end, by their sheer weight,
-they choked the breath out of him, and then they carried him to the
-company police station, where he lay still until they had summoned
-a patrol wagon to take him away.
-
-
-
-Chapter 16
-
-
-When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough.  He was exhausted
-and half-dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the policemen.
-He drove in a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching him;
-keeping as far away as possible, however, on account of the fertilizer.
-Then he stood before the sergeant's desk and gave his name and address,
-and saw a charge of assault and battery entered against him.  On his
-way to his cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down
-the wrong corridor, and then added a kick when he was not quick enough;
-nevertheless, Jurgis did not even lift his eyes--he had lived two years
-and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were.  It was
-as much as a man's very life was worth to anger them, here in their
-inmost lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at once, and pound
-his face into a pulp.  It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull
-cracked in the melee--in which case they would report that he had been
-drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to know the
-difference or to care.  
-
-So a barred door clanged upon Jurgis and he sat down upon a bench and
-buried his face in his hands.  He was alone; he had the afternoon and
-all of the night to himself.  
-
-At first he was like a wild beast that has glutted itself; he was in
-a dull stupor of satisfaction.  He had done up the scoundrel pretty
-well--not as well as he would have if they had given him a minute more,
-but pretty well, all the same; the ends of his fingers were still
-tingling from their contact with the fellow's throat.  But then,
-little by little, as his strength came back and his senses cleared,
-he began to see beyond his momentary gratification; that he had nearly
-killed the boss would not help Ona--not the horrors that she had borne,
-nor the memory that would haunt her all her days.  It would not help
-to feed her and her child; she would certainly lose her place, while
-he--what was to happen to him God only knew.
-
-Half the night he paced the floor, wrestling with this nightmare;
-and when he was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding
-instead, for the first time in his life, that his brain was too much
-for him.  In the cell next to him was a drunken wife-beater and in
-the one beyond a yelling maniac.  At midnight they opened the station
-house to the homeless wanderers who were crowded about the door,
-shivering in the winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor
-outside of the cells.  Some of them stretched themselves out on the
-bare stone floor and fell to snoring, others sat up, laughing and
-talking, cursing and quarreling.  The air was fetid with their breath,
-yet in spite of this some of them smelled Jurgis and called down the
-torments of hell upon him, while he lay in a far corner of his cell,
-counting the throbbings of the blood in his forehead.
-
-They had brought him his supper, which was "duffers and dope"--being
-hunks of dry bread on a tin plate, and coffee, called "dope" because
-it was drugged to keep the prisoners quiet.  Jurgis had not known this,
-or he would have swallowed the stuff in desperation; as it was,
-every nerve of him was aquiver with shame and rage.  Toward morning
-the place fell silent, and he got up and began to pace his cell;
-and then within the soul of him there rose up a fiend, red-eyed and
-cruel, and tore out the strings of his heart.
-
-It was not for himself that he suffered--what did a man who worked
-in Durham's fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might
-do to him!  What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny
-of the past, of the thing that had happened and could not be recalled,
-of the memory that could never be effaced!  The horror of it drove
-him mad; he stretched out his arms to heaven, crying out for deliverance
-from it--and there was no deliverance, there was no power even in
-heaven that could undo the past.  It was a ghost that would not drown;
-it followed him, it seized upon him and beat him to the ground.
-Ah, if only he could have foreseen it--but then, he would have
-foreseen it, if he had not been a fool!  He smote his hands upon
-his forehead, cursing himself because he had ever allowed Ona to work
-where she had, because he had not stood between her and a fate which
-every one knew to be so common.  He should have taken her away, even if
-it were to lie down and die of starvation in the gutters of Chicago's
-streets!  And now--oh, it could not be true; it was too monstrous,
-too horrible.  
-
-It was a thing that could not be faced; a new shuddering seized him
-every time he tried to think of it.  No, there was no bearing the
-load of it, there was no living under it.  There would be none for
-her--he knew that he might pardon her, might plead with her on his
-knees, but she would never look him in the face again, she would
-never be his wife again.  The shame of it would kill her--there
-could be no other deliverance, and it was best that she should die.
-
-This was simple and clear, and yet, with cruel inconsistency,
-whenever he escaped from this nightmare it was to suffer and cry out
-at the vision of Ona starving.  They had put him in jail, and they
-would keep him here a long time, years maybe.  And Ona would surely
-not go to work again, broken and crushed as she was.  And Elzbieta
-and Marija, too, might lose their places--if that hell fiend Connor
-chose to set to work to ruin them, they would all be turned out.
-And even if he did not, they could not live--even if the boys left
-school again, they could surely not pay all the bills without him
-and Ona.  They had only a few dollars now--they had just paid the rent
-of the house a week ago, and that after it was two weeks overdue.
-So it would be due again in a week!  They would have no money to pay
-it then--and they would lose the house, after all their long,
-heartbreaking struggle.  Three times now the agent had warned him
-that he would not tolerate another delay.  Perhaps it was very base
-of Jurgis to be thinking about the house when he had the other
-unspeakable thing to fill his mind; yet, how much he had suffered
-for this house, how much they had all of them suffered!  It was their
-one hope of respite, as long as they lived; they had put all their
-money into it--and they were working people, poor people, whose money
-was their strength, the very substance of them, body and soul,
-the thing by which they lived and for lack of which they died.
-
-And they would lose it all; they would be turned out into the streets,
-and have to hide in some icy garret, and live or die as best they could!
-Jurgis had all the night--and all of many more nights--to think about
-this, and he saw the thing in its details; he lived it all, as if he
-were there.  They would sell their furniture, and then run into debt
-at the stores, and then be refused credit; they would borrow a little
-from the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen store was tottering on the
-brink of ruin; the neighbors would come and help them a little--poor,
-sick Jadvyga would bring a few spare pennies, as she always did when
-people were starving, and Tamoszius Kuszleika would bring them the
-proceeds of a night's fiddling.  So they would struggle to hang on
-until he got out of jail--or would they know that he was in jail,
-would they be able to find out anything about him?  Would they be
-allowed to see him--or was it to be part of his punishment to be kept
-in ignorance about their fate?
-
-His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and
-tortured, Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get
-to work for the snow, the whole family turned out on the street.
-God Almighty! would they actually let them lie down in the street
-and die?  Would there be no help even then--would they wander about
-in the snow till they froze?  Jurgis had never seen any dead bodies
-in the streets, but he had seen people evicted and disappear, no one
-knew where; and though the city had a relief bureau, though there
-was a charity organization society in the stockyards district, in all
-his life there he had never heard of either of them.  They did not
-advertise their activities, having more calls than they could attend
-to without that.
-
---So on until morning.  Then he had another ride in the patrol
-wagon, along with the drunken wife-beater and the maniac, several
-"plain drunks" and "saloon fighters," a burglar, and two men who had
-been arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses.  Along with
-them he was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling
-and crowded.  In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a
-stout, florid-faced personage, with a nose broken out in purple blotches.
-
-Our friend realized vaguely that he was about to be tried.  He wondered
-what for--whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what
-they would do with him.  Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death--
-nothing would have surprised Jurgis, who knew little of the laws.
-Yet he had picked up gossip enough to have it occur to him that
-the loud-voiced man upon the bench might be the notorious Justice
-Callahan, about whom the people of Packingtown spoke with bated breath.
-
-"Pat" Callahan--"Growler" Pat, as he had been known before he
-ascended the bench--had begun life as a butcher boy and a bruiser
-of local reputation; he had gone into politics almost as soon as
-he had learned to talk, and had held two offices at once before
-he was old enough to vote.  If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan
-was the first finger of the unseen hand whereby the packers held
-down the people of the district.  No politician in Chicago ranked
-higher in their confidence; he had been at it a long time--had been
-the business agent in the city council of old Durham, the self-made
-merchant, way back in the early days, when the whole city of Chicago
-had been up at auction.  "Growler" Pat had given up holding city
-offices very early in his career--caring only for party power,
-and giving the rest of his time to superintending his dives and
-brothels.  Of late years, however, since his children were growing up,
-he had begun to value respectability, and had had himself made a
-magistrate; a position for which he was admirably fitted, because
-of his strong conservatism and his contempt for "foreigners."
-
-Jurgis sat gazing about the room for an hour or two; he was in
-hopes that some one of the family would come, but in this he was
-disappointed.  Finally, he was led before the bar, and a lawyer for
-the company appeared against him.  Connor was under the doctor's care,
-the lawyer explained briefly, and if his Honor would hold the prisoner
-for a week--"Three hundred dollars," said his Honor, promptly.
-
-Jurgis was staring from the judge to the lawyer in perplexity. 
-"Have you any one to go on your bond?" demanded the judge, and then
-a clerk who stood at Jurgis' elbow explained to him what this meant.
-The latter shook his head, and before he realized what had happened
-the policemen were leading him away again.  They took him to a room
-where other prisoners were waiting and here he stayed until court
-adjourned, when he had another long and bitterly cold ride in a
-patrol wagon to the county jail, which is on the north side of
-the city, and nine or ten miles from the stockyards.
-
-Here they searched Jurgis, leaving him only his money, which
-consisted of fifteen cents.  Then they led him to a room and told
-him to strip for a bath; after which he had to walk down a long
-gallery, past the grated cell doors of the inmates of the jail. 
-This was a great event to the latter--the daily review of the new
-arrivals, all stark naked, and many and diverting were the comments.
-Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the
-vain hope of getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids.
-The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day there was one
-left over, and he was the one.
-
-The cells were in tiers, opening upon galleries.  His cell was about
-five feet by seven in size, with a stone floor and a heavy wooden
-bench built into it.  There was no window--the only light came from
-windows near the roof at one end of the court outside.  There were
-two bunks, one above the other, each with a straw mattress and a pair
-of gray blankets--the latter stiff as boards with filth, and alive
-with fleas, bedbugs, and lice.  When Jurgis lifted up the mattress
-he discovered beneath it a layer of scurrying roaches, almost as
-badly frightened as himself.
-
-Here they brought him more "duffers and dope," with the addition of
-a bowl of soup.  Many of the prisoners had their meals brought in
-from a restaurant, but Jurgis had no money for that.  Some had books
-to read and cards to play, with candles to burn by night, but Jurgis
-was all alone in darkness and silence.  He could not sleep again;
-there was the same maddening procession of thoughts that lashed him
-like whips upon his naked back.  When night fell he was pacing up
-and down his cell like a wild beast that breaks its teeth upon the
-bars of its cage.  Now and then in his frenzy he would fling himself
-against the walls of the place, beating his hands upon them.  They cut
-him and bruised him--they were cold and merciless as the men who had
-built them.
-
-In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the hours
-one by one.  When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor
-with his head in his arms, listening.  Instead of falling silent at
-the end, the bell broke into a sudden clangor.  Jurgis raised his head;
-what could that mean--a fire?  God!  Suppose there were to be a fire
-in this jail!  But then he made out a melody in the ringing;
-there were chimes.  And they seemed to waken the city--all around,
-far and near, there were bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute
-Jurgis lay lost in wonder, before, all at once, the meaning of it
-broke over him--that this was Christmas Eve!
-
-Christmas Eve--he had forgotten it entirely!  There was a breaking
-of floodgates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into
-his mind.  In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it
-came to him as if it had been yesterday--himself a little child,
-with his lost brother and his dead father in the cabin--in the deep
-black forest, where the snow fell all day and all night and buried
-them from the world.  It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania,
-but it was not too far for peace and good will to men, for the
-wonder-bearing vision of the Christ Child.  And even in Packingtown
-they had not forgotten it--some gleam of it had never failed to break
-their darkness.  Last Christmas Eve and all Christmas Day Jurgis
-had toiled on the killing beds, and Ona at wrapping hams, and still
-they had found strength enough to take the children for a walk upon
-the avenue, to see the store windows all decorated with Christmas trees
-and ablaze with electric lights.  In one window there would be live
-geese, in another marvels in sugar--pink and white canes big enough
-for ogres, and cakes with cherubs upon them; in a third there would be
-rows of fat yellow turkeys, decorated with rosettes, and rabbits and
-squirrels hanging; in a fourth would be a fairyland of toys--lovely
-dolls with pink dresses, and woolly sheep and drums and soldier hats.
-Nor did they have to go without their share of all this, either.
-The last time they had had a big basket with them and all their
-Christmas marketing to do--a roast of pork and a cabbage and some
-rye bread, and a pair of mittens for Ona, and a rubber doll that
-squeaked, and a little green cornucopia full of candy to be hung
-from the gas jet and gazed at by half a dozen pairs of longing eyes.
-
-Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had
-not been able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was
-a choking in Jurgis' throat as he recalled that the very night Ona
-had not come home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him
-an old valentine that she had picked up in a paper store for three
-cents--dingy and shopworn, but with bright colors, and figures of
-angels and doves.  She had wiped all the specks off this, and was
-going to set it on the mantel, where the children could see it.
-Great sobs shook Jurgis at this memory--they would spend their
-Christmas in misery and despair, with him in prison and Ona ill
-and their home in desolation.  Ah, it was too cruel!  Why at least
-had they not left him alone--why, after they had shut him in jail,
-must they be ringing Christmas chimes in his ears!
-
-But no, their bells were not ringing for him--their Christmas was not
-meant for him, they were simply not counting him at all.  He was of
-no consequence--he was flung aside, like a bit of trash, the carcass
-of some animal.  It was horrible, horrible!  His wife might be dying,
-his baby might be starving, his whole family might be perishing in
-the cold--and all the while they were ringing their Christmas chimes!
-And the bitter mockery of it--all this was punishment for him!
-They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the
-cold could not eat through his bones; they brought him food and
-drink--why, in the name of heaven, if they must punish him, did they
-not put his family in jail and leave him outside--why could they find
-no better way to punish him than to leave three weak women and six
-helpless children to starve and freeze?  That was their law, that was
-their justice!
-
-Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and
-his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance.
-Ten thousand curses upon them and their law!  Their justice--it was
-a lie, it was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and
-hateful for any world but a world of nightmares.  It was a sham and
-a loathsome mockery.  There was no justice, there was no right,
-anywhere in it--it was only force, it was tyranny, the will and
-the power, reckless and unrestrained!  They had ground him beneath
-their heel, they had devoured all his substance; they had murdered
-his old father, they had broken and wrecked his wife, they had crushed
-and cowed his whole family; and now they were through with him,
-they had no further use for him--and because he had interfered
-with them, had gotten in their way, this was what they had done
-to him!  They had put him behind bars, as if he had been a wild
-beast, a thing without sense or reason, without rights, without
-affections, without feelings.  Nay, they would not even have treated
-a beast as they had treated him!  Would any man in his senses have
-trapped a wild thing in its lair, and left its young behind to die?
-
-These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was
-the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief.
-He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources--
-he could not say that it was the thing men have called "the system"
-that was crushing him to the earth that it was the packers, his masters,
-who had bought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal
-will to him from the seat of justice.  He only knew that he was wronged,
-and that the world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all
-its powers, had declared itself his foe.  And every hour his soul grew
-blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of defiance,
-of raging, frenzied hate.
-
-     The vilest deeds, like poison weeds,
-       Bloom well in prison air;
-     It is only what is good in Man
-       That wastes and withers there;
-     Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
-       And the Warder is Despair.
-
-So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice--
-
-     I know not whether Laws be right,
-       Or whether Laws be wrong;
-     All that we know who lie in gaol
-       Is that the wall is strong.
-     And they do well to hide their hell,
-       For in it things are done
-     That Son of God nor son of Man
-       Ever should look upon!
- 
-
-
-Chapter 17
-
-
-At seven o'clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water
-to wash his cell--a duty which he performed faithfully, but which
-most of the prisoners were accustomed to shirk, until their cells
-became so filthy that the guards interposed.  Then he had more
-"duffers and dope," and afterward was allowed three hours for exercise,
-in a long, cement-walked court roofed with glass.  Here were all the
-inmates of the jail crowded together.  At one side of the court was
-a place for visitors, cut off by two heavy wire screens, a foot apart,
-so that nothing could be passed in to the prisoners; here Jurgis
-watched anxiously, but there came no one to see him.
-
-Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let
-in another prisoner.  He was a dapper young fellow, with a light
-brown mustache and blue eyes, and a graceful figure.  He nodded
-to Jurgis, and then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began
-gazing critically about him.
-
-"Well, pal," he said, as his glance encountered Jurgis again,
-"good morning."
-
-"Good morning," said Jurgis.
-
-"A rum go for Christmas, eh?" added the other.
-
-Jurgis nodded.
-
-The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted
-up the mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation.  "My God!"
-he said, "that's the worst yet."
-
-He glanced at Jurgis again.  "Looks as if it hadn't been slept in
-last night.  Couldn't stand it, eh?"
-
-"I didn't want to sleep last night," said Jurgis.
-
-"When did you come in?"
-
-"Yesterday."
-
-The other had another look around, and then wrinkled up his nose. 
-"There's the devil of a stink in here," he said, suddenly.  "What is it?"
-
-"It's me," said Jurgis.
-
-"You?"
-
-"Yes, me."
-
-"Didn't they make you wash?"
-
-"Yes, but this don't wash."
-
-"What is it?"
-
-"Fertilizer."
-
-"Fertilizer!  The deuce!  What are you?"
-
-"I work in the stockyards--at least I did until the other day. 
-It's in my clothes."
-
-"That's a new one on me," said the newcomer.  "I thought I'd been up
-against 'em all.  What are you in for?"
-
-"I hit my boss."  "Oh--that's it.  What did he do?"
-
-"He--he treated me mean." 
-
-"I see.  You're what's called an honest workingman!"
-
-"What are you?" Jurgis asked.
-
-"I?"  The other laughed.  "They say I'm a cracksman," he said.
-
-"What's that?" asked Jurgis.
-
-"Safes, and such things," answered the other.
-
-"Oh," said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stated at the speaker in awe. 
-"You mean you break into them--you--you--"
-
-"Yes," laughed the other, "that's what they say."
-
-He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis
-found afterward, he was thirty.  He spoke like a man of education,
-like what the world calls a "gentleman."
-
-"Is that what you're here for?" Jurgis inquired.
-
-"No," was the answer.  "I'm here for disorderly conduct.  They were
-mad because they couldn't get any evidence.
-
-"What's your name?" the young fellow continued after a pause.
-"My name's Duane--Jack Duane.  I've more than a dozen, but that's my
-company one."  He seated himself on the floor with his back to the wall
-and his legs crossed, and went on talking easily; he soon put Jurgis
-on a friendly footing--he was evidently a man of the world, used to
-getting on, and not too proud to hold conversation with a mere
-laboring man.  He drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all
-but the one unmentionable thing; and then he told stories about his
-own life.  He was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest.
-Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness;
-he had "done time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with
-a frolic welcome.  What with women and wine and the excitement of
-his vocation, a man could afford to rest now and then.
-
-Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for Jurgis by the
-arrival of a cell mate.  He could not turn his face to the wall
-and sulk, he had to speak when he was spoken to; nor could he help
-being interested in the conversation of Duane--the first educated
-man with whom he had ever talked.  How could he help listening with
-wonder while the other told of midnight ventures and perilous escapes,
-of feastings and orgies, of fortunes squandered in a night?  The young
-fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule;
-he, too, had felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it
-patiently, he had struck back, and struck hard.  He was striking all
-the time--there was war between him and society.  He was a genial
-freebooter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame.  He was not
-always victorious, but then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need
-not break his spirit.
-
-Withal he was a goodhearted fellow--too much so, it appeared.
-His story came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the
-long hours that dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk
-and nothing to talk of but themselves.  Jack Duane was from the East;
-he was a college-bred man--had been studying electrical engineering.
-Then his father had met with misfortune in business and killed himself;
-and there had been his mother and a younger brother and sister.
-Also, there was an invention of Duane's; Jurgis could not understand
-it clearly, but it had to do with telegraphing, and it was a very
-important thing--there were fortunes in it, millions upon millions
-of dollars.  And Duane had been robbed of it by a great company,
-and got tangled up in lawsuits and lost all his money.  Then somebody
-had given him a tip on a horse race, and he had tried to retrieve
-his fortune with another person's money, and had to run away,
-and all the rest had come from that.  The other asked him what had
-led him to safebreaking--to Jurgis a wild and appalling occupation
-to think about.  A man he had met, his cell mate had replied--one
-thing leads to another.  Didn't he ever wonder about his family,
-Jurgis asked.  Sometimes, the other answered, but not often--he didn't
-allow it.  Thinking about it would make it no better.  This wasn't
-a world in which a man had any business with a family; sooner or
-later Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight and
-shift for himself.
-
-Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate
-was as open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him adventures,
-he was so full of wonder and admiration, he was so new to the ways
-of the country.  Duane did not even bother to keep back names and
-places--he told all his triumphs and his failures, his loves and
-his griefs.  Also he introduced Jurgis to many of the other prisoners,
-nearly half of whom he knew by name.  The crowd had already given
-Jurgis a name--they called him "he stinker."  This was cruel,
-but they meant no harm by it, and he took it with a goodnatured grin.
-
-Our friend had caught now and then a whiff from the sewers over
-which he lived, but this was the first time that he had ever been
-splashed by their filth.  This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's
-crime--there were murderers, "hold-up men" and burglars, embezzlers,
-counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, "shoplifters," "confidence men,"
-petty thieves and pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers,
-beggars, tramps and drunkards; they were black and white, old and
-young, Americans and natives of every nation under the sun.  There were
-hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men,
-and boys literally not yet in their teens.  They were the drainage
-of the great festering ulcer of society; they were hideous to look
-upon, sickening to talk to.  All life had turned to rottenness and
-stench in them--love was a beastliness, joy was a snare, and God was
-an imprecation.  They strolled here and there about the courtyard,
-and Jurgis listened to them.  He was ignorant and they were wise;
-they had been everywhere and tried everything.  They could tell the
-whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in
-which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for
-sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and
-fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were
-raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and
-stewing and wallowing in its own corruption.  Into this wild-beast
-tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken
-part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail
-was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice
-were loaded.  They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes,
-and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers
-and thieves of millions of dollars.
-
-
-To most of this Jurgis tried not to listen.  They frightened him
-with their savage mockery; and all the while his heart was far away,
-where his loved ones were calling.  Now and then in the midst of it
-his thoughts would take flight; and then the tears would come into
-his eyes--and he would be called back by the jeering laughter of
-his companions.
-
-He spent a week in this company, and during all that time he had
-no word from his home.  He paid one of his fifteen cents for a
-postal card, and his companion wrote a note to the family, telling
-them where he was and when he would be tried.  There came no answer
-to it, however, and at last, the day before New Year's, Jurgis bade
-good-by to Jack Duane.  The latter gave him his address, or rather
-the address of his mistress, and made Jurgis promise to look him up.
-"Maybe I could help you out of a hole some day," he said, and added
-that he was sorry to have him go.  Jurgis rode in the patrol wagon
-back to Justice Callahan's court for trial.
-
-One of the first things he made out as he entered the room was Teta
-Elzbieta and little Kotrina, looking pale and frightened, seated far
-in the rear.  His heart began to pound, but he did not dare to try
-to signal to them, and neither did Elzbieta.  He took his seat in
-the prisoners' pen and sat gazing at them in helpless agony.
-He saw that Ona was not with them, and was full of foreboding as to
-what that might mean.  He spent half an hour brooding over this--
-and then suddenly he straightened up and the blood rushed into
-his face.  A man had come in--Jurgis could not see his features for
-the bandages that swathed him, but he knew the burly figure.
-It was Connor!  A trembling seized him, and his limbs bent as if
-for a spring.  Then suddenly he felt a hand on his collar, and heard
-a voice behind him: "Sit down, you son of a--!"
-
-He subsided, but he never took his eyes off his enemy.  The fellow
-was still alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it
-was pleasant to see him, all in penitential plasters.  He and the
-company lawyer, who was with him, came and took seats within the
-judge's railing; and a minute later the clerk called Jurgis' name,
-and the policeman jerked him to his feet and led him before the bar,
-gripping him tightly by the arm, lest he should spring upon the boss.  
-
-Jurgis listened while the man entered the witness chair, took the oath,
-and told his story.  The wife of the prisoner had been employed in
-a department near him, and had been discharged for impudence to him.
-Half an hour later he had been violently attacked, knocked down,
-and almost choked to death.  He had brought witnesses--
-
-"They will probably not be necessary," observed the judge and he
-turned to Jurgis.  "You admit attacking the plaintiff?" he asked.
-
-"Him?" inquired Jurgis, pointing at the boss.
-
-"Yes," said the judge.  "I hit him, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Say 'your Honor,'" said the officer, pinching his arm hard.
-
-"Your Honor," said Jurgis, obediently.
-
-"You tried to choke him?"
-
-"Yes, sir, your Honor."
-
-"Ever been arrested before?"
-
-"No, sir, your Honor."
-
-"What have you to say for yourself?"
-
-Jurgis hesitated.  What had he to say?  In two years and a half he
-had learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had
-never included the statement that some one had intimidated and
-seduced his wife.  He tried once or twice, stammering and balking,
-to the annoyance of the judge, who was gasping from the odor of
-fertilizer.  Finally, the prisoner made it understood that his
-vocabulary was inadequate, and there stepped up a dapper young man
-with waxed mustaches, bidding him speak in any language he knew.
-
-Jurgis began; supposing that he would be given time, he explained
-how the boss had taken advantage of his wife's position to make
-advances to her and had threatened her with the loss of her place.
-When the interpreter had translated this, the judge, whose calendar
-was crowded, and whose automobile was ordered for a certain hour,
-interrupted with the remark: "Oh, I see.  Well, if he made love to
-your wife, why didn't she complain to the superintendent or leave
-the place?"
-
-Jurgis hesitated, somewhat taken aback; he began to explain that
-they were very poor--that work was hard to get--
-
-"I see," said Justice Callahan; "so instead you thought you would
-knock him down."  He turned to the plaintiff, inquiring, "Is there
-any truth in this story, Mr. Connor?"
-
-"Not a particle, your Honor," said the boss.  "It is very unpleasant--
-they tell some such tale every time you have to discharge a woman--"
-
-"Yes, I know," said the judge.  "I hear it often enough.  The fellow
-seems to have handled you pretty roughly.  Thirty days and costs.
-Next case."
-
-Jurgis had been listening in perplexity.  It was only when the
-policeman who had him by the arm turned and started to lead him away
-that he realized that sentence had been passed.  He gazed round him
-wildly.  "Thirty days!" he panted and then he whirled upon the judge.
-"What will my family do?" he cried frantically.  "I have a wife and baby,
-sir, and they have no money--my God, they will starve to death!"
-
-"You would have done well to think about them before you committed
-the assault," said the judge dryly, as he turned to look at the
-next prisoner.
-
-Jurgis would have spoken again, but the policeman had seized him by
-the collar and was twisting it, and a second policeman was making
-for him with evidently hostile intentions.  So he let them lead
-him away.  Far down the room he saw Elzbieta and Kotrina, risen from
-their seats, staring in fright; he made one effort to go to them,
-and then, brought back by another twist at his throat, he bowed his
-head and gave up the struggle.  They thrust him into a cell room,
-where other prisoners were waiting; and as soon as court had adjourned
-they led him down with them into the "Black Maria," and drove him away.
-
-This time Jurgis was bound for the "Bridewell," a petty jail where
-Cook County prisoners serve their time.  It was even filthier and
-more crowded than the county jail; all the smaller fry out of the
-latter had been sifted into it--the petty thieves and swindlers,
-the brawlers and vagrants.  For his cell mate Jurgis had an Italian
-fruit seller who had refused to pay his graft to the policeman,
-and been arrested for carrying a large pocketknife; as he did not
-understand a word of English our friend was glad when he left.
-He gave place to a Norwegian sailor, who had lost half an ear in
-a drunken brawl, and who proved to be quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis
-because he moved in his bunk and caused the roaches to drop upon
-the lower one.  It would have been quite intolerable, staying in
-a cell with this wild beast, but for the fact that all day long
-the prisoners were put at work breaking stone.
-
-Ten days of his thirty Jurgis spent thus, without hearing a word
-from his family; then one day a keeper came and informed him that
-there was a visitor to see him.  Jurgis turned white, and so weak
-at the knees that he could hardly leave his cell.
-
-The man led him down the corridor and a flight of steps to the
-visitors' room, which was barred like a cell.  Through the grating
-Jurgis could see some one sitting in a chair; and as he came into the
-room the person started up, and he saw that it was little Stanislovas.
-At the sight of some one from home the big fellow nearly went to
-pieces--he had to steady himself by a chair, and he put his other hand
-to his forehead, as if to clear away a mist.  "Well?" he said, weakly.
-
-Little Stanislovas was also trembling, and all but too frightened
-to speak.  "They--they sent me to tell you--" he said, with a gulp.
-
-"Well?" Jurgis repeated.  He followed the boy's glance to where the
-keeper was standing watching them.  "Never mind that," Jurgis cried,
-wildly.  "How are they?"
-
-"Ona is very sick," Stanislovas said; "and we are almost starving.
-We can't get along; we thought you might be able to help us."
-
-Jurgis gripped the chair tighter; there were beads of perspiration
-on his forehead, and his hand shook.  "I--can't help you," he said.
-
-"Ona lies in her room all day," the boy went on, breathlessly.
-"She won't eat anything, and she cries all the time.  She won't tell
-what is the matter and she won't go to work at all.  Then a long time
-ago the man came for the rent.  He was very cross.  He came again
-last week.  He said he would turn us out of the house.  And then Marija--"
-
-A sob choked Stanislovas, and he stopped.  "What's the matter with
-Marija?" cried Jurgis.
-
-"She's cut her hand!" said the boy.  "She's cut it bad, this time,
-worse than before.  She can't work and it's all turning green,
-and the company doctor says she may--she may have to have it cut off.
-And Marija cries all the time--her money is nearly all gone, too,
-and we can't pay the rent and the interest on the house; and we have
-no coal and nothing more to eat, and the man at the store, he says--"
-
-The little fellow stopped again, beginning to whimper.  "Go on!"
-the other panted in frenzy--"Go on!"
-
-"I--I will," sobbed Stanislovas.  "It's so--so cold all the time. 
-And last Sunday it snowed again--a deep, deep snow--and I couldn't--
-couldn't get to work."
-
-"God!" Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child. 
-There was an old hatred between them because of the snow--ever since
-that dreadful morning when the boy had had his fingers frozen and
-Jurgis had had to beat him to send him to work.  Now he clenched
-his hands, looking as if he would try to break through the grating.
-"You little villain," he cried, "you didn't try!"
-
-"I did--I did!" wailed Stanislovas, shrinking from him in terror. 
-"I tried all day--two days.  Elzbieta was with me, and she couldn't
-either.  We couldn't walk at all, it was so deep.  And we had nothing
-to eat, and oh, it was so cold!  I tried, and then the third day Ona
-went with me--"
-
-"Ona!"
-
-"Yes.  She tried to get to work, too.  She had to.  We were all
-starving.  But she had lost her place--"
-
-Jurgis reeled, and gave a gasp.  "She went back to that place?"
-he screamed.  "She tried to," said Stanislovas, gazing at him in
-perplexity.  "Why not, Jurgis?"
-
-The man breathed hard, three or four times.  "Go--on," he panted,
-finally.
-
-"I went with her," said Stanislovas, "but Miss Henderson wouldn't take
-her back.  And Connor saw her and cursed her.  He was still bandaged
-up--why did you hit him, Jurgis?"  (There was some fascinating mystery
-about this, the little fellow knew; but he could get no satisfaction.)
-
-Jurgis could not speak; he could only stare, his eyes starting out.
-"She has been trying to get other work," the boy went on; "but she's
-so weak she can't keep up.  And my boss would not take me back,
-either--Ona says he knows Connor, and that's the reason; they've all
-got a grudge against us now.  So I've got to go downtown and sell
-papers with the rest of the boys and Kotrina--"
-
-"Kotrina!"
-
-"Yes, she's been selling papers, too.  She does best, because she's
-a girl.  Only the cold is so bad--it's terrible coming home at night,
-Jurgis.  Sometimes they can't come home at all--I'm going to try to
-find them tonight and sleep where they do, it's so late and it's such
-a long ways home.  I've had to walk, and I didn't know where it was--
-I don't know how to get back, either.  Only mother said I must come,
-because you would want to know, and maybe somebody would help your
-family when they had put you in jail so you couldn't work.  And I
-walked all day to get here--and I only had a piece of bread for
-breakfast, Jurgis.  Mother hasn't any work either, because the
-sausage department is shut down; and she goes and begs at houses
-with a basket, and people give her food.  Only she didn't get much
-yesterday; it was too cold for her fingers, and today she was crying--"
-
-So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood,
-gripping the table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his
-head would burst; it was like having weights piled upon him, one after
-another, crushing the life out of him.  He struggled and fought
-within himself--as if in some terrible nightmare, in which a man
-suffers an agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry out, but feels
-that he is going mad, that his brain is on fire--
-
-Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would
-kill him, little Stanislovas stopped.  "You cannot help us?" he
-said weakly.
-
-Jurgis shook his head.
-
-"They won't give you anything here?"
-
-He shook it again.
-
-"When are you coming out?"
-
-"Three weeks yet," Jurgis answered.
-
-And the boy gazed around him uncertainly.  "Then I might as well go,"
-he said.
-
-Jurgis nodded.  Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into
-his pocket and drew it out, shaking.  "Here," he said, holding out
-the fourteen cents.  "Take this to them."
-
-And Stanislovas took it, and after a little more hesitation, started
-for the door.  "Good-by, Jurgis," he said, and the other noticed
-that he walked unsteadily as he passed out of sight.
-
-For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to his chair, reeling and
-swaying; then the keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and
-went back to breaking stone.
-
-
-
-Chapter 18
-
-
-Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had
-expected.  To his sentence there were added "court costs" of a dollar
-and a half--he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him
-in jail, and not having the money, was obliged to work it off by
-three days more of toil.  Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him
-this--only after counting the days and looking forward to the end
-in an agony of impatience, when the hour came that he expected to
-be free he found himself still set at the stone heap, and laughed
-at when he ventured to protest.  Then he concluded he must have
-counted wrong; but as another day passed, he gave up all hope--
-and was sunk in the depths of despair, when one morning after
-breakfast a keeper came to him with the word that his time was up
-at last.  So he doffed his prison garb, and put on his old fertilizer
-clothing, and heard the door of the prison clang behind him.  
-
-He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that
-it was true,--that the sky was above him again and the open street
-before him; that he was a free man.  But then the cold began to
-strike through his clothes, and he started quickly away.
-
-There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; fine sleety
-rain was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone.
-He had not stopped for his-overcoat when he set out to "do up" Connor,
-and so his rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences;
-his clothing was old and worn thin, and it never had been very warm.
-Now as he trudged on the rain soon wet it through; there were six inches
-of watery slush on the sidewalks, so that his feet would soon have
-been soaked, even had there been no holes in his shoes.
-
-Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been
-the least trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago;
-but even so, he had not grown strong--the fear and grief that had
-preyed upon his mind had worn him thin.  Now he shivered and shrunk
-from the rain, hiding his hands in his pockets and hunching his
-shoulders together.  The Bridewell grounds were on the outskirts
-of the city and the country around them was unsettled and wild--
-on one side was the big drainage canal, and on the other a maze of
-railroad tracks, and so the wind had full sweep.
-
-After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed:
-"Hey, sonny!"  The boy cocked one eye at him--he knew that Jurgis
-was a "jailbird" by his shaven head.  "Wot yer want?" he queried.
-
-"How do you go to the stockyards?" Jurgis demanded.
-
-"I don't go," replied the boy.
-
-Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed.  Then he said, "I mean which
-is the way?"
-
-"Why don't yer say so then?" was the response, and the boy pointed
-to the northwest, across the tracks.  "That way."
-
-"How far is it?" Jurgis asked.  "I dunno," said the other.
-"Mebbe twenty miles or so."
-
-"Twenty miles!" Jurgis echoed, and his face fell.  He had to walk
-every foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny
-in his pockets.
-
-Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking,
-he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts.  All the dreadful
-imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his
-mind at once.  The agony was almost over--he was going to find out;
-and he clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his
-flying desire, almost at a run.  Ona--the baby--the family--the house--
-he would know the truth about them all!  And he was coming to the
-rescue--he was free again!  His hands were his own, and he could
-help them, he could do battle for them against the world.
-
-For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him.
-He seemed to be leaving the city altogether.  The street was turning
-into a country road, leading out to the westward; there were
-snow-covered fields on either side of him.  Soon he met a farmer
-driving a two-horse wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.
-
-"Is this the way to the stockyards?" he asked.
-
-The farmer scratched his head.  "I dunno jest where they be," he said.
-"But they're in the city somewhere, and you're going dead away from
-it now."
-
-Jurgis looked dazed.  "I was told this was the way," he said.
-
-"Who told you?"
-
-"A boy."
-
-"Well, mebbe he was playing a joke on ye.  The best thing ye kin do
-is to go back, and when ye git into town ask a policeman.  I'd take
-ye in, only I've come a long ways an' I'm loaded heavy.  Git up!"
-
-So Jurgis turned and followed, and toward the end of the morning
-he began to see Chicago again.  Past endless blocks of two-story
-shanties he walked, along wooden sidewalks and unpaved pathways
-treacherous with deep slush holes.  Every few blocks there would be
-a railroad crossing on the level with the sidewalk, a deathtrap for
-the unwary; long freight trains would be passing, the cars clanking
-and crashing together, and Jurgis would pace about waiting, burning up
-with a fever of impatience.  Occasionally the cars would stop for
-some minutes, and wagons and streetcars would crowd together waiting,
-the drivers swearing at each other, or hiding beneath umbrellas out
-of the rain; at such times Jurgis would dodge under the gates and run
-across the tracks and between the cars, taking his life into his hands.
-
-He crossed a long bridge over a river frozen solid and covered
-with slush.  Not even on the river bank was the snow white--the rain
-which fell was a diluted solution of smoke, and Jurgis' hands and
-face were streaked with black.  Then he came into the business
-part of the city, where the streets were sewers of inky blackness,
-with horses sleeping and plunging, and women and children flying
-across in panic-stricken droves.  These streets were huge canyons
-formed by towering black buildings, echoing with the clang of car
-gongs and the shouts of drivers; the people who swarmed in them were
-as busy as ants--all hurrying breathlessly, never stopping to look at
-anything nor at each other.  The solitary trampish-looking foreigner,
-with water-soaked clothing and haggard face and anxious eyes, was as
-much alone as he hurried past them, as much unheeded and as lost,
-as if he had been a thousand miles deep in a wilderness.
-
-A policeman gave him his direction and told him that he had five miles
-to go.  He came again to the slum districts, to avenues of saloons
-and cheap stores, with long dingy red factory buildings, and coalyards
-and railroad tracks; and then Jurgis lifted up his head and began
-to sniff the air like a startled animal--scenting the far-off odor
-of home.  It was late afternoon then, and he was hungry, but the dinner
-invitations hung out of the saloons were not for him.
-
-So he came at last to the stockyards, to the black volcanoes of smoke
-and the lowing cattle and the stench.  Then, seeing a crowded car,
-his impatience got the better of him and he jumped aboard, hiding
-behind another man, unnoticed by the conductor.  In ten minutes more
-he had reached his street, and home.
-
-He was half running as he came round the corner.  There was the house,
-at any rate--and then suddenly he stopped and stared.  What was the
-matter with the house?
-
-Jurgis looked twice, bewildered; then he glanced at the house next
-door and at the one beyond--then at the saloon on the corner.
-Yes, it was the right place, quite certainly--he had not made
-any mistake.  But the house--the house was a different color!
-
-He came a couple of steps nearer.  Yes; it had been gray and now it
-was yellow!  The trimmings around the windows had been red, and now
-they were green!  It was all newly painted!  How strange it made it seem!
-
-Jurgis went closer yet, but keeping on the other side of the street.
-A sudden and horrible spasm of fear had come over him.  His knees
-were shaking beneath him, and his mind was in a whirl.  New paint on
-the house, and new weatherboards, where the old had begun to rot off,
-and the agent had got after them!  New shingles over the hole in
-the roof, too, the hole that had for six months been the bane of his
-soul--he having no money to have it fixed and no time to fix it himself,
-and the rain leaking in, and overflowing the pots and pans he put to
-catch it, and flooding the attic and loosening the plaster.  And now
-it was fixed!  And the broken windowpane replaced!  And curtains in
-the windows!  New, white curtains, stiff and shiny!
-
-Then suddenly the front door opened.  Jurgis stood, his chest heaving
-as he struggled to catch his breath.  A boy had come out, a stranger
-to him; a big, fat, rosy-cheeked youngster, such as had never been
-seen in his home before.
-
-Jurgis stared at the boy, fascinated.  He came down the steps
-whistling, kicking off the snow.  He stopped at the foot, and picked
-up some, and then leaned against the railing, making a snowball.
-A moment later he looked around and saw Jurgis, and their eyes met;
-it was a hostile glance, the boy evidently thinking that the other
-had suspicions of the snowball.  When Jurgis started slowly across
-the street toward him, he gave a quick glance about, meditating
-retreat, but then he concluded to stand his ground.
-
-Jurgis took hold of the railing of the steps, for he was a little
-unsteady.  "What--what are you doing here?" he managed to gasp.
-
-"Go on!" said the boy.
-
-"You--" Jurgis tried again.  "What do you want here?"
-
-"Me?" answered the boy, angrily.  "I live here."
-
-"You live here!" Jurgis panted.  He turned white and clung more
-tightly to the railing.  "You live here!  Then where's my family?"
-
-The boy looked surprised.  "Your family!" he echoed.
-
-And Jurgis started toward him.  "I--this is my house!" he cried.
-
-"Come off!" said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened,
-and he called: "Hey, ma!  Here's a fellow says he owns this house."
-
-A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps.  "What's that?"
-she demanded.
-
-Jurgis turned toward her.  "Where is my family?" he cried, wildly.
-"I left them here!  This is my home!  What are you doing in my home?"
-
-The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought
-she was dealing with a maniac--Jurgis looked like one.  "Your home!"
-she echoed.
-
-"My home!" he half shrieked.  "I lived here, I tell you."
-
-"You must be mistaken," she answered him.  "No one ever lived here.
-This is a new house.  They told us so.  They--"
-
-"What have they done with my family?" shouted Jurgis, frantically.
-
-A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts
-of what "they" had told her.  "I don't know where your family is,"
-she said.  "I bought the house only three days ago, and there was
-nobody here, and they told me it was all new.  Do you really mean
-you had ever rented it?"
-
-"Rented it!" panted Jurgis.  "I bought it!  I paid for it!  I own it!
-And they--my God, can't you tell me where my people went?"
-
-She made him understand at last that she knew nothing.  Jurgis' brain
-was so confused that he could not grasp the situation.  It was as if
-his family had been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving
-to be dream people, who never had existed at all.  He was quite
-lost--but then suddenly he thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene,
-who lived in the next block.  She would know!  He turned and
-started at a run.
-
-Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself.  She cried out when
-she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking.  Yes, yes, she could tell him.
-The family had moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they
-had been turned out into the snow, and the house had been repainted
-and sold again the next week.  No, she had not heard how they were,
-but she could tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene,
-with whom they had stayed when they first came to the yards.
-Wouldn't Jurgis come in and rest?  It was certainly too bad--if only
-he had not got into jail--
-
-And so Jurgis turned and staggered away.  He did not go very far
-round the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps
-of a saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry,
-racking sobs.
-
-Their home!  Their home!  They had lost it!  Grief, despair, rage,
-overwhelmed him--what was any imagination of the thing to this
-heartbreaking, crushing reality of it--to the sight of strange people
-living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring
-at him with hostile eyes!  It was monstrous, it was unthinkable--
-they could not do it--it could not be true!  Only think what he
-had suffered for that house--what miseries they had all suffered
-for it--the price they had paid for it!
-
-The whole long agony came back to him.  Their sacrifices in the
-beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped
-together, all they owned in the world, all that stood between them
-and starvation!  And then their toil, month by month, to get together
-the twelve dollars, and the interest as well, and now and then the
-taxes, and the other charges, and the repairs, and what not!  Why,
-they had put their very souls into their payments on that house,
-they had paid for it with their sweat and tears--yes, more, with their
-very lifeblood.  Dede Antanas had died of the struggle to earn that
-money--he would have been alive and strong today if he had not had
-to work in Durham's dark cellars to earn his share.  And Ona, too,
-had given her health and strength to pay for it--she was wrecked and
-ruined because of it; and so was he, who had been a big, strong man
-three years ago, and now sat here shivering, broken, cowed, weeping
-like a hysterical child.  Ah! they had cast their all into the fight;
-and they had lost, they had lost!  All that they had paid was gone--
-every cent of it.  And their house was gone--they were back where
-they had started from, flung out into the cold to starve and freeze!
-
-Jurgis could see all the truth now--could see himself, through the
-whole long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that
-had torn into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had
-racked and tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face.
-Ah, God, the horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal
-wickedness of it!  He and his family, helpless women and children,
-struggling to live, ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they
-were--and the enemies that had been lurking for them, crouching upon
-their trail and thirsting for their blood!  That first lying circular,
-that smooth-tongued slippery agent!  That trap of the extra payments,
-the interest, and all the other charges that they had not the means
-to pay, and would never have attempted to pay!  And then all the
-tricks of the packers, their masters, the tyrants who ruled them--
-the shutdowns and the scarcity of work, the irregular hours and
-the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of wages, the raising of prices!
-The mercilessness of nature about them, of heat and cold, rain and snow;
-the mercilessness of the city, of the country in which they lived,
-of its laws and customs that they did not understand!  All of these
-things had worked together for the company that had marked them for
-its prey and was waiting for its chance.  And now, with this last
-hideous injustice, its time had come, and it had turned them out
-bag and baggage, and taken their house and sold it again!  And they
-could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot--the law was against
-them, the whole machinery of society was at their oppressors' command!
-If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them, back he would go
-into that wild-beast pen from which he had just escaped!
-
-To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave
-the strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering
-in the rain for hours before he could do that, had it not been for
-the thought of his family.  It might be that he had worse things yet
-to learn--and so he got to his feet and started away, walking on,
-wearily, half-dazed.
-
-To Aniele's house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles;
-the distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw
-the familiar dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast.  He ran
-up the steps and began to hammer upon the door.
-
-The old woman herself came to open it.  She had shrunk all up with
-her rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow
-parchment face stared up at him from a little above the level of
-the doorknob.  She gave a start when she saw him.  "Is Ona here?"
-he cried, breathlessly.
-
-"Yes," was the answer, "she's here."
-
-"How--" Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching convulsively
-at the side of the door.  From somewhere within the house had come
-a sudden cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish.  And the voice
-was Ona's.  For a moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright;
-then he bounded past the old woman and into the room.
-
-It was Aniele's kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a
-dozen women, pale and frightened.  One of them started to her feet
-as Jurgis entered; she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one
-arm tied up in bandages--he hardly realized that it was Marija.
-He looked first for Ona; then, not seeing her, he stared at the women,
-expecting them to speak.  But they sat dumb, gazing back at him,
-panic-stricken; and a second later came another piercing scream.
-
-It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs.  Jurgis bounded to
-a door of the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading
-through a trap door to the garret, and he was at the foot of it when
-suddenly he heard a voice behind him, and saw Marija at his heels.
-She seized him by the sleeve with her good hand, panting wildly,
-"No, no, Jurgis!  Stop!"
-
-"What do you mean?" he gasped.
-
-"You mustn't go up," she cried.
-
-Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright.  "What's the
-matter?" he shouted.  "What is it?"
-
-Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning
-above, and he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for
-her reply.  "No, no," she rushed on.  "Jurgis!  You mustn't go up!
-It's--it's the child!"
-
-"The child?" he echoed in perplexity.  "Antanas?"
-
-Marija answered him, in a whisper: "The new one!"
-
-And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder.  He stared
-at her as if she were a ghost.  "The new one!" he gasped.  "But it
-isn't time," he added, wildly.
-
-Marija nodded.  "I know," she said; "but it's come."
-
-And then again came Ona's scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
-making him wince and turn white.  Her voice died away into a wail--
-then he heard her sobbing again, "My God--let me die, let me die!"
-And Marija hung her arms about him, crying: "Come out!  Come away!"
-
-
-She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had
-gone all to pieces.  It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen
-in--he was blasted with horror.  In the room he sank into a chair,
-trembling like a leaf, Marija still holding him, and the women staring
-at him in dumb, helpless fright.
-
-And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here,
-and he staggered to his feet.  "How long has this been going on?"
-he panted.
-
-"Not very long," Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele,
-she rushed on: "You go away, Jurgis you can't help--go away and come
-back later.  It's all right--it's--"
-
-"Who's with her?" Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating,
-he cried again, "Who's with her?"
-
-"She's--she's all right," she answered.  "Elzbieta's with her."
-
-"But the doctor!" he panted.  "Some one who knows!"
-
-He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath
-a whisper as she replied, "We--we have no money."  Then, frightened
-at the look on his face, she exclaimed: "It's all right, Jurgis!
-You don't understand--go away--go away!  Ah, if you only had waited!"
-
-Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of
-his mind.  It was all new to him, raw and horrible--it had fallen
-upon him like a lightning stroke.  When little Antanas was born he
-had been at work, and had known nothing about it until it was over;
-and now he was not to be controlled.  The frightened women were at
-their wits' end; one after another they tried to reason with him,
-to make him understand that this was the lot of woman.  In the end
-they half drove him out into the rain, where he began to pace up
-and down, bareheaded and frantic.  Because he could hear Ona from
-the street, he would first go away to escape the sounds, and then
-come back because he could not help it.  At the end of a quarter
-of an hour he rushed up the steps again, and for fear that he would
-break in the door they had to open it and let him in.
-
-There was no arguing with him.  They could not tell him that all
-was going well--how could they know, he cried--why, she was dying,
-she was being torn to pieces!  Listen to her--listen!  Why, it was
-monstrous--it could not be allowed--there must be some help for it!
-Had they tried to get a doctor?  They might pay him afterward--they
-could promise--
-
-"We couldn't promise, Jurgis," protested Marija.  "We had no money--
-we have scarcely been able to keep alive."
-
-"But I can work," Jurgis exclaimed.  "I can earn money!"
-
-"Yes," she answered--"but we thought you were in jail.  How could we
-know when you would return?  They will not work for nothing."
-
-Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how
-they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that
-in cash.  "And I had only a quarter," she said.  "I have spent every
-cent of my money--all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor
-who has been coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks
-I don't mean to pay him.  And we owe Aniele for two weeks' rent,
-and she is nearly starving, and is afraid of being turned out.
-We have been borrowing and begging to keep alive, and there is nothing
-more we can do--"
-
-"And the children?" cried Jurgis.
-
-"The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been
-so bad.  They could not know what is happening--it came suddenly,
-two months before we expected it."
-
-Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand;
-his head sank and his arms shook--it looked as if he were going to
-collapse.  Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him,
-fumbling in her skirt pocket.  She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner
-of which she had something tied.
-
-"Here, Jurgis!" she said, "I have some money.  Palauk!  See!"
-
-She unwrapped it and counted it out--thirty-four cents.  "You go, now,"
-she said, "and try and get somebody yourself.  And maybe the rest can
-help--give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day, and it
-will do him good to have something to think about, even if he doesn't
-succeed.  When he comes back, maybe it will be over."
-
-And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks;
-most of them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all.
-Mrs. Olszewski, who lived next door, and had a husband who was a
-skilled cattle butcher, but a drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar,
-enough to raise the whole sum to a dollar and a quarter.  Then Jurgis
-thrust it into his pocket, still holding it tightly in his fist,
-and started away at a run.
-
-
-
-Chapter 19
-
-
-"Madame Haupt, Hebamme, ran a sign, swinging from a second-story
-window over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign,
-with a hand pointing up a dingy flight of stairs.  Jurgis went up them,
-three at a time.
-
-Madame Haupt was frying pork and onions, and had her door half open
-to let out the smoke.  When he tried to knock upon it, it swung open
-the rest of the way, and he had a glimpse of her, with a black bottle
-turned up to her lips.  Then he knocked louder, and she started and
-put it away.  She was a Dutchwoman, enormously fat--when she walked
-she rolled like a small boat on the ocean, and the dishes in the
-cupboard jostled each other.  She wore a filthy blue wrapper, and her
-teeth were black.
-
-"Vot is it?" she said, when she saw Jurgis.
-
-He had run like mad all the way and was so out of breath he could
-hardly speak.  His hair was flying and his eyes wild--he looked
-like a man that had risen from the tomb.  "My wife!" he panted.
-"Come quickly!"  Madame Haupt set the frying pan to one side and
-wiped her hands on her wrapper.
-
-"You vant me to come for a case?" she inquired.
-
-"Yes," gasped Jurgis.
-
-"I haf yust come back from a case," she said.  "I haf had no time to
-eat my dinner.  Still--if it is so bad--"
-
-"Yes--it is!" cried he.  "Vell, den, perhaps--vot you pay?"
-
-"I--I--how much do you want?" Jurgis stammered.
-
-"Tventy-five dollars." His face fell.  "I can't pay that," he said.  
-
-The woman was watching him narrowly.  "How much do you pay?" she demanded.
-
-"Must I pay now--right away?"
-
-"Yes; all my customers do."
-
-"I--I haven't much money," Jurgis began in an agony of dread.
-"I've been in--in trouble--and my money is gone.  But I'll pay you--
-every cent--just as soon as I can; I can work--"
-
-"Vot is your work?"
-
-"I have no place now.  I must get one.  But I--"
-
-"How much haf you got now?"
-
-He could hardly bring himself to reply.  When he said "A dollar and
-a quarter," the woman laughed in his face.
-
-"I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter," she said.
-
-"It's all I've got," he pleaded, his voice breaking.  "I must get
-some one--my wife will die.  I can't help it--I--"
-
-Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove.  She turned
-to him and answered, out of the steam and noise: "Git me ten dollars
-cash, und so you can pay me the rest next mont'."
-
-"I can't do it--I haven't got it!" Jurgis protested.  "I tell you I
-have only a dollar and a quarter."
-
-The woman turned to her work.  "I don't believe you," she said. 
-"Dot is all to try to sheat me.  Vot is de reason a big man like
-you has got only a dollar und a quarter?"
-
-"I've just been in jail," Jurgis cried--he was ready to get down upon
-his knees to the woman--"and I had no money before, and my family has
-almost starved."
-
-"Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?"
-
-"They are all poor," he answered.  "They gave me this.  I have done
-everything I can--"
-
-"Haven't you got notting you can sell?"
-
-"I have nothing, I tell you--I have nothing," he cried,
-frantically.
-
-"Can't you borrow it, den?  Don't your store people trust you?"
-Then, as he shook his head, she went on: "Listen to me--if you git
-me you vill be glad of it.  I vill save your wife und baby for you,
-and it vill not seem like mooch to you in de end.  If you loose dem
-now how you tink you feel den?  Und here is a lady dot knows her
-business--I could send you to people in dis block, und dey vould
-tell you--"
-
-Madame Haupt was pointing her cooking-fork at Jurgis persuasively;
-but her words were more than he could bear.  He flung up his hands
-with a gesture of despair and turned and started away.  "It's no use,"
-he exclaimed--but suddenly he heard the woman's voice behind him again--
-
-"I vill make it five dollars for you."
-
-She followed behind him, arguing with him.  "You vill be foolish not
-to take such an offer," she said.  "You von't find nobody go out on
-a rainy day like dis for less.  Vy, I haf never took a case in my life
-so sheap as dot.  I couldn't pay mine room rent--"
-
-Jurgis interrupted her with an oath of rage.  "If I haven't got it,"
-he shouted, "how can I pay it?  Damn it, I would pay you if I could,
-but I tell you I haven't got it.  I haven't got it!  Do you hear me
-I haven't got it!"
-
-He turned and started away again.  He was halfway down the stairs
-before Madame Haupt could shout to him: "Vait!  I vill go mit you!
-Come back!"
-
-He went back into the room again.
-
-"It is not goot to tink of anybody suffering," she said, in a
-melancholy voice.  "I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot
-you offer me, but I vill try to help you.  How far is it?"
-
-"Three or four blocks from here."
-
-"Tree or four!  Und so I shall get soaked!  Gott in Himmel, it ought
-to be vorth more!  Vun dollar und a quarter, und a day like dis!--
-But you understand now--you vill pay me de rest of twenty-five
-dollars soon?"
-
-"As soon as I can."
-
-"Some time dis mont'?"
-
-"Yes, within a month," said poor Jurgis.  "Anything!  Hurry up!"
-
-"Vere is de dollar und a quarter?" persisted Madame Haupt, relentlessly.
-
-Jurgis put the money on the table and the woman counted it and stowed
-it away.  Then she wiped her greasy hands again and proceeded to
-get ready, complaining all the time; she was so fat that it was
-painful for her to move, and she grunted and gasped at every step.
-She took off her wrapper without even taking the trouble to turn her
-back to Jurgis, and put on her corsets and dress.  Then there was
-a black bonnet which had to be adjusted carefully, and an umbrella
-which was mislaid, and a bag full of necessaries which had to be
-collected from here and there--the man being nearly crazy with
-anxiety in the meantime.  When they were on the street he kept about
-four paces ahead of her, turning now and then, as if he could hurry
-her on by the force of his desire.  But Madame Haupt could only go
-so far at a step, and it took all her attention to get the needed
-breath for that.
-
-They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women
-in the kitchen.  It was not over yet, Jurgis learned--he heard Ona
-crying still; and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid
-it on the mantelpiece, and got out of her bag, first an old dress
-and then a saucer of goose grease, which she proceeded to rub upon
-her hands.  The more cases this goose grease is used in, the better
-luck it brings to the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her kitchen
-mantelpiece or stowed away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes,
-for months, and sometimes even for years.
-
-Then they escorted her to the ladder, and Jurgis heard her give an
-exclamation of dismay.  "Gott in Himmel, vot for haf you brought me
-to a place like dis?  I could not climb up dot ladder.  I could not
-git troo a trap door!  I vill not try it--vy, I might kill myself
-already.  Vot sort of a place is dot for a woman to bear a child in--
-up in a garret, mit only a ladder to it?  You ought to be ashamed of
-yourselves!"  Jurgis stood in the doorway and listened to her scolding,
-half drowning out the horrible moans and screams of Ona.
-
-At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent;
-then, however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned
-her about the floor of the garret.  They had no real floor--they had
-laid old boards in one part to make a place for the family to live;
-it was all right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had
-only the joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling
-below, and if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe.
-As it was half dark up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up
-first with a candle.  Then there were more outcries and threatening,
-until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs
-disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as
-Madame Haupt started to walk.  Then suddenly Aniele came to him and
-took him by the arm.
-
-"Now," she said, "you go away.  Do as I tell you--you have done all
-you can, and you are only in the way.  Go away and stay away."
-
-"But where shall I go?" Jurgis asked, helplessly.
-
-"I don't know where," she answered.  "Go on the street, if there is
-no other place--only go!  And stay all night!"
-
-In the end she and Marija pushed him out of the door and shut it
-behind him.  It was just about sundown, and it was turning cold--
-the rain had changed to snow, and the slush was freezing.  Jurgis
-shivered in his thin clothing, and put his hands into his pockets
-and started away.  He had not eaten since morning, and he felt weak
-and ill; with a sudden throb of hope he recollected he was only a few
-blocks from the saloon where he had been wont to eat his dinner.
-They might have mercy on him there, or he might meet a friend.  He set
-out for the place as fast as he could walk.
-
-"Hello, Jack," said the saloonkeeper, when he entered--they call all
-foreigners and unskilled men "Jack" in Packingtown.  "Where've you been?"
-
-Jurgis went straight to the bar.  "I've been in jail," he said,
-"and I've just got out.  I walked home all the way, and I've not
-a cent, and had nothing to eat since this morning.  And I've lost
-my home, and my wife's ill, and I'm done up."
-
-The saloonkeeper gazed at him, with his haggard white face and
-his blue trembling lips.  Then he pushed a big bottle toward him. 
-"Fill her up!" he said.
-
-Jurgis could hardly hold the bottle, his hands shook so.
-
-"Don't be afraid," said the saloonkeeper, "fill her up!"
-
-So Jurgis drank a large glass of whisky, and then turned to the
-lunch counter, in obedience to the other's suggestion.  He ate all
-he dared, stuffing it in as fast as he could; and then, after trying
-to speak his gratitude, he went and sat down by the big red stove
-in the middle of the room.
-
-It was too good to last, however--like all things in this hard world.
-His soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of
-fertilizer to fill the room.  In an hour or so the packing houses
-would be closing and the men coming in from their work; and they
-would not come into a place that smelt of Jurgis.  Also it was
-Saturday night, and in a couple of hours would come a violin and
-a cornet, and in the rear part of the saloon the families of the
-neighborhood would dance and feast upon wienerwurst and lager,
-until two or three o'clock in the morning.  The saloon-keeper coughed
-once or twice, and then remarked, "Say, Jack, I'm afraid you'll have
-to quit."
-
-He was used to the sight of human wrecks, this saloonkeeper; he "fired"
-dozens of them every night, just as haggard and cold and forlorn as
-this one.  But they were all men who had given up and been counted out,
-while Jurgis was still in the fight, and had reminders of decency
-about him.  As he got up meekly, the other reflected that he had
-always been a steady man, and might soon be a good customer again.
-"You've been up against it, I see," he said.  "Come this way."
-
-In the rear of the saloon were the cellar stairs.  There was a door
-above and another below, both safely padlocked, making the stairs
-an admirable place to stow away a customer who might still chance
-to have money, or a political light whom it was not advisable to
-kick out of doors.
-
-So Jurgis spent the night.  The whisky had only half warmed him,
-and he could not sleep, exhausted as he was; he would nod forward,
-and then start up, shivering with the cold, and begin to remember
-again.  Hour after hour passed, until he could only persuade himself
-that it was not morning by the sounds of music and laughter and singing
-that were to be heard from the room.  When at last these ceased,
-he expected that he would be turned out into the street; as this did
-not happen, he fell to wondering whether the man had forgotten him.
-
-In the end, when the silence and suspense were no longer to be borne,
-he got up and hammered on the door; and the proprietor came, yawning
-and rubbing his eyes.  He was keeping open all night, and dozing
-between customers.
-
-"I want to go home," Jurgis said.  "I'm worried about my wife--I can't
-wait any longer."
-
-"Why the hell didn't you say so before?" said the man.  "I thought
-you didn't have any home to go to."  Jurgis went outside.  It was
-four o'clock in the morning, and as black as night.  There were three
-or four inches of fresh snow on the ground, and the flakes were falling
-thick and fast.  He turned toward Aniele's and started at a run.
-
-
-There was a light burning in the kitchen window and the blinds
-were drawn.  The door was unlocked and Jurgis rushed in.
-
-Aniele, Marija, and the rest of the women were huddled about the stove,
-exactly as before; with them were several newcomers, Jurgis noticed--
-also he noticed that the house was silent.
-
-"Well?" he said.
-
-No one answered him, they sat staring at him with their pale faces.
-He cried again: "Well?"
-
-And then, by the light of the smoky lamp, he saw Marija who sat
-nearest him, shaking her head slowly.  "Not yet," she said.
-
-And Jurgis gave a cry of dismay.  "Not yet?"
-
-Again Marija's head shook.  The poor fellow stood dumfounded.  "I don't
-hear her," he gasped.
-
-"She's been quiet a long time," replied the other.
-
-There was another pause--broken suddenly by a voice from the attic:
-"Hello, there!"
-
-Several of the women ran into the next room, while Marija sprang
-toward Jurgis.  "Wait here!" she cried, and the two stood, pale and
-trembling, listening.  In a few moments it became clear that Madame
-Haupt was engaged in descending the ladder, scolding and exhorting
-again, while the ladder creaked in protest.  In a moment or two she
-reached the ground, angry and breathless, and they heard her coming
-into the room.  Jurgis gave one glance at her, and then turned white
-and reeled.  She had her jacket off, like one of the workers on the
-killing beds.  Her hands and arms were smeared with blood, and blood
-was splashed upon her clothing and her face.
-
-She stood breathing hard, and gazing about her; no one made a sound.
-"I haf done my best," she began suddenly.  "I can do noffing more--
-dere is no use to try."
-
-Again there was silence.
-
-"It ain't my fault," she said.  "You had ought to haf had a doctor,
-und not vaited so long--it vas too late already ven I come."  Once more
-there was deathlike stillness.  Marija was clutching Jurgis with all
-the power of her one well arm.
-
-Then suddenly Madame Haupt turned to Aniele.  "You haf not got
-something to drink, hey?" she queried.  "Some brandy?"
-
-Aniele shook her head.
-
-"Herr Gott!" exclaimed Madame Haupt.  "Such people!  Perhaps you vill
-give me someting to eat den--I haf had noffing since yesterday morning,
-und I haf vorked myself near to death here.  If I could haf known it
-vas like dis, I vould never haf come for such money as you gif me."
-At this moment she chanced to look round, and saw Jurgis: She shook
-her finger at him.  "You understand me," she said, "you pays me dot
-money yust de same!  It is not my fault dat you send for me so late
-I can't help your vife.  It is not my fault if der baby comes mit
-one arm first, so dot I can't save it.  I haf tried all night,
-und in dot place vere it is not fit for dogs to be born, und mit
-notting to eat only vot I brings in mine own pockets."
-
-Here Madame Haupt paused for a moment to get her breath; and Marija,
-seeing the beads of sweat on Jurgis's forehead, and feeling the
-quivering of his frame, broke out in a low voice: "How is Ona?"
-
-"How is she?" echoed Madame Haupt.  "How do you tink she can be ven
-you leave her to kill herself so?  I told dem dot ven they send for
-de priest.  She is young, und she might haf got over it, und been
-vell und strong, if she had been treated right.  She fight hard,
-dot girl--she is not yet quite dead."
-
-And Jurgis gave a frantic scream.  "Dead!"
-
-"She vill die, of course," said the other angrily.  "Der baby is
-dead now."
-
-The garret was lighted by a candle stuck upon a board; it had almost
-burned itself out, and was sputtering and smoking as Jurgis rushed
-up the ladder.  He could make out dimly in one corner a pallet of
-rags and old blankets, spread upon the floor; at the foot of it was
-a crucifix, and near it a priest muttering a prayer.  In a far corner
-crouched Elzbieta, moaning and wailing.  Upon the pallet lay Ona.
-
-She was covered with a blanket, but he could see her shoulders and
-one arm lying bare; she was so shrunken he would scarcely have known
-her--she was all but a skeleton, and as white as a piece of chalk.
-Her eyelids were closed, and she lay still as death.  He staggered
-toward her and fell upon his knees with a cry of anguish: "Ona!  Ona!"
-
-She did not stir.  He caught her hand in his, and began to clasp it
-frantically, calling: "Look at me!  Answer me!  It is Jurgis come
-back--don't you hear me?"
-
-There was the faintest quivering of the eyelids, and he called again
-in frenzy: "Ona!  Ona!"
-
-Then suddenly her eyes opened one instant.  One instant she looked
-at him--there was a flash of recognition between them, he saw her
-afar off, as through a dim vista, standing forlorn.  He stretched out
-his arms to her, he called her in wild despair; a fearful yearning
-surged up in him, hunger for her that was agony, desire that was a
-new being born within him, tearing his heartstrings, torturing him.
-But it was all in vain--she faded from him, she slipped back and
-was gone.  And a wail of anguish burst from him, great sobs shook
-all his frame, and hot tears ran down his cheeks and fell upon her.
-He clutched her hands, he shook her, he caught her in his arms and
-pressed her to him but she lay cold and still--she was gone--she was gone!
-
-The word rang through him like the sound of a bell, echoing in the far
-depths of him, making forgotten chords to vibrate, old shadowy fears
-to stir--fears of the dark, fears of the void, fears of annihilation.
-She was dead!  She was dead!  He would never see her again, never hear
-her again!  An icy horror of loneliness seized him; he saw himself
-standing apart and watching all the world fade away from him--a world
-of shadows, of fickle dreams.  He was like a little child, in his
-fright and grief; he called and called, and got no answer, and his
-cries of despair echoed through the house, making the women downstairs
-draw nearer to each other in fear.  He was inconsolable, beside
-himself--the priest came and laid his hand upon his shoulder and
-whispered to him, but he heard not a sound.  He was gone away himself,
-stumbling through the shadows, and groping after the soul that had fled.
-
-
-So he lay.  The gray dawn came up and crept into the attic.
-The priest left, the women left, and he was alone with the still,
-white figure--quieter now, but moaning and shuddering, wrestling with
-the grisly fiend.  Now and then he would raise himself and stare at
-the white mask before him, then hide his eyes because he could not
-bear it.  Dead! dead!  And she was only a girl, she was barely
-eighteen!  Her life had hardly begun--and here she lay murdered--
-mangled, tortured to death!
-
-It was morning when he rose up and came down into the kitchen--
-haggard and ashen gray, reeling and dazed.  More of the neighbors
-had come in, and they stared at him in silence as he sank down upon
-a chair by the table and buried his face in his arms.
-
-A few minutes later the front door opened; a blast of cold and snow
-rushed in, and behind it little Kotrina, breathless from running,
-and blue with the cold.  "I'm home again!" she exclaimed.  "I could
-hardly--"
-
-And then, seeing Jurgis, she stopped with an exclamation.  Looking
-from one to another she saw that something had happened, and she asked,
-in a lower voice: "What's the matter?"
-
-Before anyone could reply, Jurgis started up; he went toward her,
-walking unsteadily.  "Where have you been?" he demanded.
-
-"Selling papers with the boys," she said.  "The snow--"
-
-"Have you any money?" he demanded.
-
-"Yes."
-
-"How much?"
-
-"Nearly three dollars, Jurgis."
-
-"Give it to me."
-
-Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the others.  "Give it
-to me!" he commanded again, and she put her hand into her pocket and
-pulled out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag.  Jurgis took it
-without a word, and went out of the door and down the street.
-
-Three doors away was a saloon.  "Whisky," he said, as he entered,
-and as the man pushed him some, he tore at the rag with his teeth
-and pulled out half a dollar.  "How much is the bottle?" he said. 
-"I want to get drunk."  
-
-
-
-Chapter 20
-
-
-But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars.  That was
-Sunday morning, and Monday night Jurgis came home, sober and sick,
-realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not
-bought a single instant's forgetfulness with it.
-
-Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified, and on the
-morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the
-potter's field.  Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from
-each of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her;
-and the children were upstairs starving to death, while he,
-good-for-nothing rascal, had been spending their money on drink.
-So spoke Aniele, scornfully, and when he started toward the fire
-she added the information that her kitchen was no longer for him
-to fill with his phosphate stinks.  She had crowded all her boarders
-into one room on Ona's account, but now he could go up in the garret
-where he belonged--and not there much longer, either, if he did not
-pay her some rent.
-
-Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping
-boarders in the next room, ascended the ladder.  It was dark up above;
-they could not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as outdoors.
-In a corner, as far away from the corpse as possible, sat Marija,
-holding little Antanas in her one good arm and trying to soothe him
-to sleep.  In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing
-because he had had nothing to eat all day.  Marija said not a word
-to Jurgis; he crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down
-by the body.
-
-Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children,
-and upon his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself
-up again to the luxury of grief.  He shed no tears, being ashamed
-to make a sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish.
-He had never dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone;
-until now that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would
-take her away, and that he would never lay eyes upon her again--never
-all the days of his life.  His old love, which had been starved
-to death, beaten to death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of
-memory were lifted--he saw all their life together, saw her as he
-had seen her in Lithuania, the first day at the fair, beautiful as
-the flowers, singing like a bird.  He saw her as he had married her,
-with all her tenderness, with her heart of wonder; the very words
-she had spoken seemed to ring now in his ears, the tears she had shed
-to be wet upon his cheek.  The long, cruel battle with misery and
-hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not changed her--
-she had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching out her arms
-to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and tenderness.
-And she had suffered--so cruelly she had suffered, such agonies,
-such infamies--ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne.
-What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been!
-Every angry word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut
-him like a knife; every selfish act that he had done--with what
-torments he paid for them now!  And such devotion and awe as welled
-up in his soul--now that it could never be spoken, now that it was
-too late, too late!  His bosom-was choking with it, bursting with it;
-he crouched here in the darkness beside her, stretching out his arms
-to her--and she was gone forever, she was dead!  He could have
-screamed aloud with the horror and despair of it; a sweat of agony
-beaded his forehead, yet he dared not make a sound--he scarcely dared
-to breathe, because of his shame and loathing of himself.
-
-Late at night came Elzbieta, having gotten the money for a mass,
-and paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely
-at home.  She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that some one
-had given her, and with that they quieted the children and got them
-to sleep.  Then she came over to Jurgis and sat down beside him.
-
-She said not a word of reproach--she and Marija had chosen that
-course before; she would only plead with him, here by the corpse of
-his dead wife.  Already Elzbieta had choked down her tears, grief
-being crowded out of her soul by fear.  She had to bury one of her
-children--but then she had done it three times before, and each time
-risen up and gone back to take up the battle for the rest.  Elzbieta
-was one of the primitive creatures: like the angleworm, which goes
-on living though cut in half; like a hen, which, deprived of her
-chickens one by one, will mother the last that is left her.  She did
-this because it was her nature--she asked no questions about the
-justice of it, nor the worth-whileness of life in which destruction
-and death ran riot.
-
-And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis,
-pleading with him with tears in her eyes.  Ona was dead, but the
-others were left and they must be saved.  She did not ask for her
-own children.  She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there
-was Antanas, his own son.  Ona had given Antanas to him--the little
-fellow was the only remembrance of her that he had; he must treasure
-it and protect it, he must show himself a man.  He knew what Ona would
-have had him do, what she would ask of him at this moment, if she
-could speak to him.  It was a terrible thing that she should have
-died as she had; but the life had been too hard for her, and she
-had to go.  It was terrible that they were not able to bury her,
-that he could not even have a day to mourn her--but so it was.
-Their fate was pressing; they had not a cent, and the children would
-perish--some money must be had.  Could he not be a man for Ona's sake,
-and pull himself together?  In a little while they would be out of
-danger--now that they had given up the house they could live more
-cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along,
-if only he would not go to pieces.  So Elzbieta went on, with feverish
-intensity.  It was a struggle for life with her; she was not afraid
-that Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that,
-but she was wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them,
-might take to the road, as Jonas had done.
-
-But with Ona's dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well
-think of treason to his child.  Yes, he said, he would try, for the
-sake of Antanas.  He would give the little fellow his chance--would
-get to work at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be
-buried.  They might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might.
-
-And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache,
-heartache, and all.  He went straight to Graham's fertilizer mill,
-to see if he could get back his job.  But the boss shook his head
-when he saw him--no, his place had been filled long ago, and there
-was no room for him.
-
-"Do you think there will be?" Jurgis asked.  "I may have to wait."
-
-"No," said the other, "it will not be worth your while to wait--there
-will be nothing for you here."
-
-Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity.  "What is the matter?"
-he asked.  "Didn't I do my work?"
-
-The other met his look with one of cold indifference, and answered,
-"There will be nothing for you here, I said."
-
-Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident,
-and he went away with a sinking at the heart.  He went and took his
-stand with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in
-the snow before the time station.  Here he stayed, breakfastless,
-for two hours, until the throng was driven away by the clubs of
-the police.  There was no work for him that day.
-
-Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the
-yards--there were saloonkeepers who would trust him for a drink and a
-sandwich, and members of his old union who would lend him a dime at
-a pinch.  It was not a question of life and death for him, therefore;
-he might hunt all day, and come again on the morrow, and try hanging
-on thus for weeks, like hundreds and thousands of others.  Meantime,
-Teta Elzbieta would go and beg, over in the Hyde Park district,
-and the children would bring home enough to pacify Aniele, and keep
-them all alive.
-
-It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about
-in the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on
-a chance in one of the cellars of Jones's big packing plant.  He saw
-a foreman passing the open doorway, and hailed him for a job.
-
-"Push a truck?" inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, "Yes, sir!"
-before the words were well out of his mouth.
-
-"What's your name?" demanded the other.
-
-"Jurgis Rudkus."
-
-"Worked in the yards before?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"Whereabouts?"
-
-"Two places--Brown's killing beds and Durham's fertilizer mill."
-
-"Why did you leave there?"
-
-"The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was sent up
-for a month."
-
-"I see.  Well, I'll give you a trial.  Come early tomorrow and ask
-for Mr. Thomas."
-
-So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job--that
-the terrible siege was over.  The remnants of the family had quite
-a celebration that night; and in the morning Jurgis was at the place
-half an hour before the time of opening.  The foreman came in shortly
-afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned.
-
-"Oh," he said, "I promised you a job, didn't I?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Well, I'm sorry, but I made a mistake.  I can't use you."
-
-Jurgis stared, dumfounded.  "What's the matter?" he gasped.
-
-"Nothing," said the man, "only I can't use you."
-
-There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss
-of the fertilizer mill.  He knew that there was no use in saying
-a word, and he turned and went away.
-
-Out in the saloons the men could tell him all about the meaning of it;
-they gazed at him with pitying eyes--poor devil, he was blacklisted!
-What had he done? they asked--knocked down his boss?  Good heavens,
-then he might have known!  Why, he stood as much chance of getting
-a job in Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago.  Why had
-he wasted his time hunting?  They had him on a secret list in every
-office, big and little, in the place.  They had his name by this time
-in St. Louis and New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and
-St. Joseph.  He was condemned and sentenced, without trial and
-without appeal; he could never work for the packers again--he could
-not even clean cattle pens or drive a truck in any place where they
-controlled.  He might try it, if he chose, as hundreds had tried it,
-and found out for themselves.  He would never be told anything about it;
-he would never get any more satisfaction than he had gotten just now;
-but he would always find when the time came that he was not needed.
-It would not do for him to give any other name, either--they had
-company "spotters" for just that purpose, and he wouldn't keep a job
-in Packingtown three days.  It was worth a fortune to the packers to
-keep their blacklist effective, as a warning to the men and a means
-of keeping down union agitation and political discontent.
-
-Jurgis went home, carrying these new tidings to the family council.
-It was a most cruel thing; here in this district was his home,
-such as it was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew--
-and now every possibility of employment in it was closed to him.
-There was nothing in Packingtown but packing houses; and so it was
-the same thing as evicting him from his home.
-
-He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it.
-It would be convenient, downtown, to the children's place of work;
-but then Marija was on the road to recovery, and had hopes of getting
-a job in the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover
-once a month, because of the misery of their state, yet she could
-not make up her mind to go away and give him up forever.  Then, too,
-Elzbieta had heard something about a chance to scrub floors in
-Durham's offices and was waiting every day for word.  In the end
-it was decided that Jurgis should go downtown to strike out for
-himself, and they would decide after he got a job.  As there was
-no one from whom he could borrow there, and he dared not beg for
-fear of being arrested, it was arranged that every day he should
-meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of their earnings,
-upon which he could keep going.  Then all day he was to pace the
-streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches
-inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance; and at
-night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a truck,
-and hide there until midnight, when he might get into one of the
-station houses, and spread a newspaper upon the floor, and lie down
-in the midst of a throng of "bums" and beggars, reeking with alcohol
-and tobacco, and filthy with vermin and disease.
-
-
-So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair.
-Once he got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he
-carried an old woman's valise and was given a quarter.  This let
-him into a lodginghouse on several nights when he might otherwise
-have frozen to death; and it also gave him a chance now and then
-to buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals
-were watching and waiting for a paper to be thrown away.  This, however,
-was really not the advantage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements
-were a cause of much loss of precious time and of many weary journeys.
-A full half of these were "fakes," put in by the endless variety of
-establishments which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the
-unemployed.  If Jurgis lost only his time, it was because he had
-nothing else to lose; whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell
-him of the wonderful positions he had on hand, he could only shake
-his head sorrowfully and say that he had not the necessary dollar
-to deposit; when it was explained to him what "big money" he and all
-his family could make by coloring photographs, he could only promise
-to come in again when he had two dollars to invest in the outfit.
-
-In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with
-an old-time acquaintance of his union days.  He met this man on his
-way to work in the giant factories of the Harvester Trust; and his
-friend told him to come along and he would speak a good word for him
-to his boss, whom he knew well.  So Jurgis trudged four or five miles,
-and passed through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under
-the escort of his friend.  His knees nearly gave way beneath him when
-the foreman, after looking him over and questioning him, told him
-that he could find an opening for him.
-
-How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages;
-for he found that the harvester works were the sort of place to
-which philanthropists and reformers pointed with pride.  It had
-some thought for its employees; its workshops were big and roomy,
-it provided a restaurant where the workmen could buy good food
-at cost, it had even a reading room, and decent places where its
-girl-hands could rest; also the work was free from many of the
-elements of filth and repulsiveness that prevailed at the stockyards.
-Day after day Jurgis discovered these things--things never expected
-nor dreamed of by him--until this new place came to seem a kind of
-a heaven to him.
-
-It was an enormous establishment, covering a hundred and sixty acres
-of ground, employing five thousand people, and turning out over
-three hundred thousand machines every year--a good part of all the
-harvesting and mowing machines used in the country.  Jurgis saw very
-little of it, of course--it was all specialized work, the same as at
-the stockyards; each one of the hundreds of parts of a mowing machine
-was made separately, and sometimes handled by hundreds of men.
-Where Jurgis worked there was a machine which cut and stamped a
-certain piece of steel about two square inches in size; the pieces
-came tumbling out upon a tray, and all that human hands had to do
-was to pile them in regular rows, and change the trays at intervals.
-This was done by a single boy, who stood with eyes and thought
-centered upon it, and fingers flying so fast that the sounds of the
-bits of steel striking upon each other was like the music of an
-express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night.  This was
-"piece-work," of course; and besides it was made certain that the boy
-did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest possible
-speed of human hands.  Thirty thousand of these pieces he handled
-every day, nine or ten million every year--how many in a lifetime
-it rested with the gods to say.  Near by him men sat bending over
-whirling grindstones, putting the finishing touches to the steel
-knives of the reaper; picking them out of a basket with the right
-hand, pressing first one side and then the other against the stone
-and finally dropping them with the left hand into another basket.
-One of these men told Jurgis that he had sharpened three thousand
-pieces of steel a day for thirteen years.  In the next room were
-wonderful machines that ate up long steel rods by slow stages,
-cutting them off, seizing the pieces, stamping heads upon them,
-grinding them and polishing them, threading them, and finally
-dropping them into a basket, all ready to bolt the harvesters
-together.  From yet another machine came tens of thousands of steel
-burs to fit upon these bolts.  In other places all these various
-parts were dipped into troughs of paint and hung up to dry, and then
-slid along on trolleys to a room where men streaked them with red
-and yellow, so that they might look cheerful in the harvest fields.
-
-Jurgis's friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task
-was to make the molds of a certain part.  He shoveled black sand
-into an iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to
-harden; then it would be taken out, and molten iron poured into it.
-This man, too, was paid by the mold--or rather for perfect castings,
-nearly half his work going for naught.  You might see him, along with
-dozens of others, toiling like one possessed by a whole community
-of demons; his arms working like the driving rods of an engine,
-his long, black hair flying wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat
-rolling in rivers down his face.  When he had shoveled the mold full
-of sand, and reached for the pounder to pound it with, it was after
-the manner of a canoeist running rapids and seizing a pole at sight
-of a submerged rock.  All day long this man would toil thus, his whole
-being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of
-twenty-two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be
-reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry
-would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers
-are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country.  If we
-are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be
-mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this
-pitch of frenzy; though there are a few other things that are great
-among us including our drink-bill, which is a billion and a quarter
-of dollars a year, and doubling itself every decade.
-
-
-There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then
-another which, with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the
-sitting-down portion of the American farmer.  Then they were piled
-upon a truck, and it was Jurgis's task to wheel them to the room
-where the machines were "assembled."  This was child's play for him,
-and he got a dollar and seventy-five cents a day for it; on Saturday
-he paid Aniele the seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use
-of her garret, and also redeemed his overcoat, which Elzbieta had
-put in pawn when he was in jail.
-
-This last was a great blessing.  A man cannot go about in midwinter
-in Chicago with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Jurgis had to
-walk or ride five or six miles back and forth to his work.  lt so
-happened that half of this was in one direction and half in another,
-necessitating a change of cars; the law required that transfers be
-given at all intersecting points, but the railway corporation had
-gotten round this by arranging a pretense at separate ownership.
-So whenever he wished to ride, he had to pay ten cents each way,
-or over ten per cent of his income to this power, which had gotten
-its franchises long ago by buying up the city council, in the face
-of popular clamor amounting almost to a rebellion.  Tired as he felt
-at night, and dark and bitter cold as it was in the morning, Jurgis
-generally chose to walk; at the hours other workmen were traveling,
-the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few cars that there
-would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them and often
-crouching upon the snow-covered roof.  Of course the doors could
-never be closed, and so the cars were as cold as outdoors; Jurgis,
-like many others, found it better to spend his fare for a drink and
-a free lunch, to give him strength to walk.
-
-These, however, were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from
-Durham's fertilizer mill.  Jurgis began to pick up heart again and
-to make plans.  He had lost his house but then the awful load of
-the rent and interest was off his shoulders, and when Marija was
-well again they could start over and save.  In the shop where he
-worked was a man, a Lithuanian like himself, whom the others spoke
-of in admiring whispers, because of the mighty feats he was performing.
-All day he sat at a machine turning bolts; and then in the evening
-he went to the public school to study English and learn to read.
-In addition, because he had a family of eight children to support
-and his earnings were not enough, on Saturdays and Sundays he served
-as a watchman; he was required to press two buttons at opposite ends
-of a building every five minutes, and as the walk only took him two
-minutes, he had three minutes to study between each trip.  Jurgis felt
-jealous of this fellow; for that was the sort of thing he himself
-had dreamed of, two or three years ago.  He might do it even yet,
-if he had a fair chance--he might attract attention and become
-a skilled man or a boss, as some had done in this place.  Suppose
-that Marija could get a job in the big mill where they made binder
-twine--then they would move into this neighborhood, and he would
-really have a chance.  With a hope like that, there was some use
-in living; to find a place where you were treated like a human being--
-by God! he would show them how he could appreciate it.  He laughed
-to himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job!
-
-And then one afternoon, the ninth of his work in the place, when he
-went to get his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a
-placard on the door, and when he went over and asked what it was,
-they told him that beginning with the morrow his department of the
-harvester works would be closed until further notice!
-
-
-
-
-Chapter 21
-
-
-That was the way they did it!  There was not half an hour's
-warning--the works were closed!  It had happened that way before,
-said the men, and it would happen that way forever.  They had
-made all the harvesting machines that the world needed, and now
-they had to wait till some wore out!  It was nobody's fault--
-that was the way of it; and thousands of men and women were turned out
-in the dead of winter, to live upon their savings if they had
-any, and otherwise to die.  So many tens of thousands already in
-the city, homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand
-more added to them!
-
-Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket,
-heartbroken, overwhelmed.  One more bandage had been torn from
-his eyes, one more pitfall was revealed to him!  Of what help was
-kindness and decency on the part of employers--when they could
-not keep a job for him, when there were more harvesting machines
-made than the world was able to buy!  What a hellish mockery it
-was, anyway, that a man should slave to make harvesting machines
-for the country, only to be turned out to starve for doing his
-duty too well!
-
-It took him two days to get over this heartsickening
-disappointment.  He did not drink anything, because Elzbieta got
-his money for safekeeping, and knew him too well to be in the
-least frightened by his angry demands.  He stayed up in the
-garret however, and sulked--what was the use of a man's hunting a
-job when it was taken from him before he had time to learn the
-work?  But then their money was going again, and little Antanas
-was hungry, and crying with the bitter cold of the garret.
-Also Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after him for some money. 
-So he went out once more.
-
-For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge
-city, sick and hungry, begging for any work.  He tried in stores
-and offices, in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in
-the railroad yards, in warehouses and mills and factories where
-they made products that went to every corner of the world.  There
-were often one or two chances--but there were always a hundred
-men for every chance, and his turn would not come.  At night he
-crept into sheds and cellars and doorways--until there came a
-spell of belated winter weather, with a raging gale, and the
-thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and falling all
-night.  Then Jurgis fought like a wild beast to get into the big
-Harrison Street police station, and slept down in a corridor,
-crowded with two other men upon a single step.
-
-He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the
-factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street.  He
-found, for instance, that the business of carrying satchels for
-railroad passengers was a pre-empted one--whenever he essayed it,
-eight or ten men and boys would fall upon him and force him to
-run for his life.  They always had the policeman "squared," and
-so there was no use in expecting protection.
-
-That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the
-pittance the children brought him.  And even this was never
-certain.  For one thing the cold was almost more than the
-children could bear; and then they, too, were in perpetual peril
-from rivals who plundered and beat them.  The law was against
-them, too--little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did not
-look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady
-in spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be working
-and that if he did not stop selling papers she would send a
-truant officer after him.  Also one night a strange man caught
-little Kotrina by the arm and tried to persuade her into a dark
-cellarway, an experience which filled her with such terror that
-she was hardly to be kept at work.
-
-At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work,
-Jurgis went home by stealing rides on the cars.  He found that
-they had been waiting for him for three days--there was a chance
-of a job for him.
-
-It was quite a story.  Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with
-hunger these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. 
-Juozapas had only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a
-little child, but he had got himself a broomstick, which he put
-under his arm for a crutch.  He had fallen in with some other
-children and found the way to Mike Scully's dump, which lay three
-or four blocks away.  To this place there came every day many
-hundreds of wagonloads of garbage and trash from the lake front,
-where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the children raked
-for food--there were hunks of bread and potato peelings and apple
-cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite unspoiled. 
-Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a newspaper
-full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in. 
-Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out
-of the dumps was fit to eat.  The next day, however, when no harm
-came of it and Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and
-said that he might go again.  And that afternoon he came home
-with a story of how while he had been digging away with a stick,
-a lady upon the street had called him.  A real fine lady,
-the little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and she wanted to know
-all about him, and whether he got the garbage for chickens,
-and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona had died, and how
-Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the matter with
-Marija, and everything.  In the end she had asked where he lived,
-and said that she was coming to see him, and bring him a new
-crutch to walk with.  She had on a hat with a bird upon it,
-Juozapas added, and a long fur snake around her neck.
-
-She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to
-the garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the
-sight of the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died.  She
-was a "settlement worker," she explained to Elzbieta--she lived
-around on Ashland Avenue.  Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed
-store; somebody had wanted her to go there, but she had not cared
-to, for she thought that it must have something to do with
-religion, and the priest did not like her to have anything to do
-with strange religions.  They were rich people who came to live
-there to find out about the poor people; but what good they
-expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine.  So
-spoke Elzbieta, naively, and the young lady laughed and was
-rather at a loss for an answer--she stood and gazed about her,
-and thought of a cynical remark that had been made to her, that
-she was standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing
-in snowballs to lower the temperature.
-
-Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all
-their woes--what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss
-of their home, and Marija's accident, and how Ona had died, and
-how Jurgis could get no work.  As she listened the pretty young
-lady's eyes filled with tears, and in the midst of it she burst
-into weeping and hid her face on Elzbieta's shoulder, quite
-regardless of the fact that the woman had on a dirty old wrapper
-and that the garret was full of fleas.  Poor Elzbieta was ashamed
-of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other had to
-beg and plead with her to get her to go on.  The end of it was
-that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left
-a letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was
-superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelworks in
-South Chicago.  "He will get Jurgis something to do," the young
-lady had said, and added, smiling through her tears--"If he
-doesn't, he will never marry me."
-
-The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so
-contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there.  Far and
-wide the sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows
-of towering chimneys--for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. 
-The vast works, a city in themselves, were surrounded by a
-stockade; and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate
-where new hands were taken on.  Soon after daybreak whistles
-began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of men appeared,
-streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the way, leaping
-from trolley cars that passed--it seemed as if they rose out of
-the ground, in the dim gray light.  A river of them poured in
-through the gate--and then gradually ebbed away again, until
-there were only a few late ones running, and the watchman pacing
-up and down, and the hungry strangers stamping and shivering.
-
-Jurgis presented his precious letter.  The gatekeeper was surly,
-and put him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew
-nothing, and as he had taken the precaution to seal his letter,
-there was nothing for the gatekeeper to do but send it to the
-person to whom it was addressed.  A messenger came back to say
-that Jurgis should wait, and so he came inside of the gate,
-perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less fortunate
-watching him with greedy eyes.  The great mills were getting
-under way--one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling
-and hammering.  Little by little the scene grew plain: towering,
-black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds,
-little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot
-and oceans of billowing black smoke above.  On one side of the
-grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side
-lay the lake, where steamers came to load.
-
-Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two
-hours before he was summoned.  He went into the office building,
-where a company timekeeper interviewed him.  The superintendent
-was busy, he said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find
-Jurgis a job.  He had never worked in a steel mill before?  But
-he was ready for anything?  Well, then, they would go and see.
-
-So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. 
-He wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like
-this, where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles
-shrieked warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature
-steam engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering,
-white-hot masses of metal sped past him, and explosions of fire
-and flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face.  Then men
-in these mills were all black with soot, and hollow-eyed and
-gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here and there,
-and never lifting their eyes from their tasks.  Jurgis clung to
-his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter
-hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another
-unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled.
-
-He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of
-steel--a domelike building, the size of a big theater.  Jurgis
-stood where the balcony of the theater would have been, 
-and opposite, by the stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough
-for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of
-something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as
-if volcanoes were blowing through it--one had to shout to be
-heard in the place.  Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons
-and scatter like bombs below--and men were working there, seeming
-careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright.  Then a
-whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would
-come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped
-into one of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot,
-down by the stage, and another train would back up--and suddenly,
-without an instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to
-tilt and topple, flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. 
-Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an accident;
-there fell a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing
-like a huge tree falling in the forest.  A torrent of sparks
-swept all the way across the building, overwhelming everything,
-hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked through the fingers
-of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a cascade of
-living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth,
-scorching the eyeballs.  Incandescent rainbows shone above it,
-blue, red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream
-itself was white, ineffable.  Out of regions of wonder it
-streamed, the very river of life; and the soul leaped up at the
-sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and resistless, back into
-far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell.  Then the great
-caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief
-that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide out into
-the sunlight.
-
-They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where
-bars of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. 
-All around and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels
-were turning, great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked
-and groaned overhead, reaching down iron hands and seizing iron
-prey--it was like standing in the center of the earth, where the
-machinery of time was revolving.
-
-By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and
-Jurgis heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a
-car with a white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body. 
-There was a sudden crash and the car came to a halt, and the
-ingot toppled out upon a moving platform, where steel fingers and
-arms seized hold of it, punching it and prodding it into place,
-and hurrying it into the grip of huge rollers.  Then it came out
-upon the other side, and there were more crashings and
-clatterings, and over it was flopped, like a pancake on a
-gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through another
-squeezer.  So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro,
-growing thinner and flatter and longer.  The ingot seemed almost
-a living thing; it did not want to run this mad course, but it
-was in the grip of fate, it was tumbled on, screeching and
-clanking and shivering in protest.  By and by it was long and
-thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory; and then, as it
-slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it was
-alive--it writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed
-out through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. 
-There was no rest for it until it was cold and black--and then it
-needed only to be cut and straightened to be ready for a
-railroad.
-
-It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgis got his
-chance.  They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss
-here could use another man.  So he took off his coat and set to
-work on the spot.
-
-
-It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him
-a dollar and twenty cents a week.  As this was out of the
-question, he wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with
-him, and one of his fellow workingmen introduced him to a Polish
-lodginghouse, where he might have the privilege of sleeping upon
-the floor for ten cents a night.  He got his meals at free-lunch
-counters, and every Saturday night he went home--bedding and
-all--and took the greater part of his money to the family. 
-Elzbieta was sorry for this arrangement, for she feared that it
-would get him into the habit of living without them, and once a
-week was not very often for him to see his baby; but there was no
-other way of arranging it.  There was no chance for a woman at
-the steelworks, and Marija was now ready for work again, and
-lured on from day to day by the hope of finding it at the yards.
-
-
-In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and
-bewilderment in the rail mill.  He learned to find his way about
-and to take all the miracles and terrors for granted, to work
-without hearing the rumbling and crashing.  From blind fear he
-went to the other extreme; he became reckless and indifferent,
-like all the rest of the men, who took but little thought of
-themselves in the ardor of their work.  It was wonderful, when
-one came to think of it, that these men should have taken an
-interest in the work they did--they had no share in it--they were
-paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested.  Also
-they knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and
-forgotten--and still they would hurry to their task by dangerous
-short cuts, would use methods that were quicker and more
-effective in spite of the fact that they were also risky.  His
-fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man stumble while running in
-front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and before he had
-been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful
-accident.  There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white
-through every crack with the molten steel inside.  Some of these
-were bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing
-blue glasses when they opened and shut the doors.  One morning as
-Jurgis was passing, a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a
-shower of liquid fire.  As they lay screaming and rolling upon
-the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed to help them, and as a result
-he lost a good part of the skin from the inside of one of his
-hands.  The company doctor bandaged it up, but he got no other
-thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days
-without any pay.
-
-Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited
-chance to go at five o'clock in the morning and help scrub the
-office floors of one of the packers.  Jurgis came home and
-covered himself with blankets to keep warm, and divided his time
-between sleeping and playing with little Antanas.  Juozapas was
-away raking in the dump a good part of the time, and Elzbieta and
-Marija were hunting for more work.
-
-Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect
-talking machine.  He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis
-came home it seemed to him as if he had a new child.  He would
-sit down and listen and stare at him, and give vent to delighted
-exclamations--"Palauk!  Muma!  Tu mano szirdele!"  The little
-fellow was now really the one delight that Jurgis had in the
-world--his one hope, his one victory.  Thank God, Antanas was a
-boy!  And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the appetite
-of a wolf.  Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him; he
-had come through all the suffering and deprivation
-unscathed--only shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip
-upon life.  He was a terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but
-his father did not mind that--he would watch him and smile to
-himself with satisfaction.  The more of a fighter he was the
-better--he would need to fight before he got through.
-
-Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he
-had the money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five
-cents, a whole armful, with all the news of the world set forth
-in big headlines, that Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the
-children to help him at the long words.  There was battle and
-murder and sudden death--it was marvelous how they ever heard
-about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings; the stories
-must be all true, for surely no man could have made such things
-up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as
-life.  One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as
-good as a spree--certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman, 
-who was tired out and stupefied, and had never had any 
-education, and whose work was one dull, sordid grind, day
-after day, and year after year, with never a sight of a green
-field nor an hour's entertainment, nor anything but liquor to
-stimulate his imagination.  Among other things, these papers had
-pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy in
-life to little Antanas.  He treasured them up, and would drag
-them out and make his father tell him about them; there were all
-sorts of animals among them, and Antanas could tell the names of
-all of them, lying upon the floor for hours and pointing them out
-with his chubby little fingers.  Whenever the story was plain
-enough for Jurgis to make out, Antanas would have it repeated to
-him, and then he would remember it, prattling funny little
-sentences and mixing it up with other stories in an irresistible
-fashion.  Also his quaint pronunciation of words was such a
-delight--and the phrases he would pick up and remember, the most
-outlandish and impossible things!  The first time that the little
-rascal burst out with "God damn," his father nearly rolled off
-the chair with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this, for
-Antanas was soon "God-damning" everything and everybody.
-
-And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his
-bedding again and went back to his task of shifting rails.  It
-was now April, and the snow had given place to cold rains, and
-the unpaved street in front of Aniele's house was turned into a
-canal.  Jurgis would have to wade through it to get home, and if
-it was late he might easily get stuck to his waist in the mire. 
-But he did not mind this much--it was a promise that summer was
-coming.  Marija had now gotten a place as beef-trimmer in one of
-the smaller packing plants; and he told himself that he had
-learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more accidents--
-so that at last there was prospect of an end to their long agony. 
-They could save money again, and when another winter came they
-would have a comfortable place; and the children would be off the
-streets and in school again, and they might set to work to nurse
-back into life their habits of decency and kindness.  So once
-more Jurgis began to make plans and dream dreams.
-
-And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started
-home, with the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds
-that had been pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. 
-There was a rainbow in the sky, and another in his breast--for he
-had thirty-six hours' rest before him, and a chance to see his
-family.  Then suddenly he came in sight of the house, and noticed
-that there was a crowd before the door.  He ran up the steps and
-pushed his way in, and saw Aniele's kitchen crowded with excited
-women.  It reminded him so vividly of the time when he had come
-home from jail and found Ona dying, that his heart almost stood
-still.  "What's the matter?" he cried.
-
-A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one
-was staring at him.  "What's the matter?" he exclaimed again.
-
-And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in
-Marija's voice.  He started for the ladder--and Aniele seized him
-by the arm.  "No, no!" she exclaimed.  "Don't go up there!"
-
-"What is it?" he shouted.
-
-And the old woman answered him weakly: "It's Antanas.  He's dead. 
-He was drowned out in the street!" 
-
-
-Chapter 22
-
-
-Jurgis took the news in a peculiar way.  He turned deadly pale,
-but he caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle
-of the room, clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. 
-Then he pushed Aniele aside and strode into the next room and
-climbed the ladder.
-
-In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it;
-and beside it lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis
-could not tell.  Marija was pacing the room, screaming and
-wringing her hands.  He clenched his hands tighter yet, and his
-voice was hard as he spoke.
-
-"How did it happen?" he asked.
-
-Marija scarcely heard him in her agony.  He repeated the
-question, louder and yet more harshly.  "He fell off the
-sidewalk!" she wailed.  The sidewalk in front of the house was a
-platform made of half-rotten boards, about five feet above the
-level of the sunken street.
-
-"How did he come to be there?" he demanded.
-
-"He went--he went out to play," Marija sobbed, her voice choking
-her.  "We couldn't make him stay in.  He must have got caught in
-the mud!"
-
-"Are you sure that he is dead?" he demanded.
-
-"Ai!  ai!" she wailed.  "Yes; we had the doctor."
-
-Then Jurgis stood a few seconds, wavering.  He did not shed a
-tear.  He took one glance more at the blanket with the little
-form beneath it, and then turned suddenly to the ladder and
-climbed down again.  A silence fell once more in the room as he
-entered.  He went straight to the door, passed out, and started
-down the street.
-
-When his wife had died, Jurgis made for the nearest saloon, but
-he did not do that now, though he had his week's wages in his
-pocket.  He walked and walked, seeing nothing, splashing through
-mud and water.  Later on he sat down upon a step and hid his face
-in his hands and for half an hour or so he did not move.  Now and
-then he would whisper to himself: "Dead!  Dead!"
-
-Finally, he got up and walked on again.  It was about sunset, and
-he went on and on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a
-railroad crossing.  The gates were down, and a long train of
-freight cars was thundering by.  He stood and watched it; and all
-at once a wild impulse seized him, a thought that had been
-lurking within him, unspoken, unrecognized, leaped into sudden
-life.  He started down the track, and when he was past the
-gate-keeper's shanty he sprang forward and swung himself on to
-one of the cars.
-
-By and by the train stopped again, and Jurgis sprang down and ran
-under the car, and hid himself upon the truck.  Here he sat, and
-when the train started again, he fought a battle with his soul. 
-He gripped his hands and set his teeth together--he had not wept,
-and he would not--not a tear!  It was past and over, and he was
-done with it--he would fling it off his shoulders, be free of it,
-the whole business, that night.  It should go like a black,
-hateful nightmare, and in the morning he would be a new man.  And
-every time that a thought of it assailed him--a tender memory, a
-trace of a tear--he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it
-down.
-
-He was fighting for his life; he gnashed his teeth together in
-his desperation.  He had been a fool, a fool!  He had wasted his
-life, he had wrecked himself, with his accursed weakness; and now
-he was done with it--he would tear it out of him, root and
-branch!  There should be no more tears and no more tenderness;
-he had had enough of them--they had sold him into slavery!  Now he
-was going to be free, to tear off his shackles, to rise up and
-fight.  He was glad that the end had come--it had to come some
-time, and it was just as well now.  This was no world for women
-and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better for
-them.  Whatever Antanas might suffer where he was, he could
-suffer no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth.  
-And meantime his father had thought the last thought about him that
-he meant to; he was going to think of himself, he was going to
-fight for himself, against the world that had baffled him and
-tortured him!
-
-So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his
-soul, and setting his heel upon them.  The train thundered
-deafeningly, and a storm of dust blew in his face; but though it
-stopped now and then through the night, he clung where he was--
-he would cling there until he was driven off, for every mile that he
-got from Packingtown meant another load from his mind.
-
-Whenever the cars stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze
-laden with the perfume of fresh fields, of honeysuckle and
-clover.  He snuffed it, and it made his heart beat wildly--he was
-out in the country again!  He was going to live in the country! 
-When the dawn came he was peering out with hungry eyes, getting
-glimpses of meadows and woods and rivers.  At last he could stand
-it no longer, and when the train stopped again he crawled out. 
-Upon the top of the car was a brakeman, who shook his fist and
-swore; Jurgis waved his hand derisively, and started across the
-country.
-
-Only think that he had been a countryman all his life; and for
-three long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a
-country sound!  Excepting for that one walk when he left jail,
-when he was too much worried to notice anything, and for a few
-times that he had rested in the city parks in the winter time
-when he was out of work, he had literally never seen a tree!  
-And now he felt like a bird lifted up and borne away upon a gale; 
-he stopped and stared at each new sight of wonder--at a herd of
-cows, and a meadow full of daisies, at hedgerows set thick with
-June roses, at little birds singing in the trees.
-
-Then he came to a farm-house, and after getting himself a stick
-for protection, he approached it.  The farmer was greasing a
-wagon in front of the barn, and Jurgis went to him.  "I would
-like to get some breakfast, please," he said.
-
-"Do you want to work?" said the farmer.
-
-"No," said Jurgis.  "I don't."
-
-"Then you can't get anything here," snapped the other.
-
-"I meant to pay for it," said Jurgis.
-
-"Oh," said the farmer; and then added sarcastically, "We don't
-serve breakfast after 7 A.M."
-
-"I am very hungry," said Jurgis gravely; "I would like to buy
-some food."
-
-"Ask the woman," said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder.  The
-"woman" was more tractable, and for a dime Jurgis secured two
-thick sandwiches and a piece of pie and two apples.  He walked
-off eating the pie, as the least convenient thing to carry.  In a
-few minutes he came to a stream, and he climbed a fence and
-walked down the bank, along a woodland path.  By and by he found
-a comfortable spot, and there he devoured his meal, slaking his
-thirst at the stream.  Then he lay for hours, just gazing and
-drinking in joy; until at last he felt sleepy, and lay down in
-the shade of a bush.
-
-When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face.  He sat up and
-stretched his arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. 
-There was a deep pool, sheltered and silent, below him, and a
-sudden wonderful idea rushed upon him.  He might have a bath! 
-The water was free, and he might get into it--all the way into
-it!  It would be the first time that he had been all the way into
-the water since he left Lithuania!
-
-When Jurgis had first come to the stockyards he had been as clean
-as any workingman could well be.  But later on, what with
-sickness and cold and hunger and discouragement, and the
-filthiness of his work, and the vermin in his home, he had given
-up washing in winter, and in summer only as much of him as would
-go into a basin.  He had had a shower bath in jail, but nothing
-since--and now he would have a swim!
-
-The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his
-glee.  Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank, and
-proceeded to scrub himself--soberly and methodically, scouring
-every inch of him with sand.  While he was doing it he would do
-it thoroughly, and see how it felt to be clean.  He even scrubbed
-his head with sand, and combed what the men called "crumbs" out
-of his long, black hair, holding his head under water as long as
-he could, to see if he could not kill them all.  Then, seeing
-that the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the bank 
-and proceeded to wash them, piece by piece; as the dirt and grease
-went floating off downstream he grunted with satisfaction and
-soused the clothes again, venturing even to dream that he might
-get rid of the fertilizer.
-
-He hung them all up, and while they were drying he lay down in
-the sun and had another long sleep.  They were hot and stiff as
-boards on top, and a little damp on the underside, when he
-awakened; but being hungry, he put them on and set out again.
-He had no knife, but with some labor he broke himself a good stout
-club, and, armed with this, he marched down the road again.
-
-Before long he came to a big farmhouse, and turned up the lane
-that led to it.  It was just suppertime, and the farmer was
-washing his hands at the kitchen door.  "Please, sir," said
-Jurgis, "can I have something to eat?  I can pay."  To which the
-farmer responded promptly, "We don't feed tramps here.  Get out!"
-
-Jurgis went without a word; but as he passed round the barn he
-came to a freshly ploughed and harrowed field, in which the
-farmer had set out some young peach trees; and as he walked he
-jerked up a row of them by the roots, more than a hundred trees
-in all, before he reached the end of the field.  That was his
-answer, and it showed his mood; from now on he was fighting,
-and the man who hit him would get all that he gave, every time.
-
-Beyond the orchard Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and
-then a field of winter grain, and came at last to another road. 
-Before long he saw another farmhouse, and, as it was beginning
-to cloud over a little, he asked here for shelter as well as food. 
-Seeing the farmer eying him dubiously, he added, "I'll be glad 
-to sleep in the barn."
-
-"Well, I dunno," said the other.  "Do you smoke?"
-
-"Sometimes," said Jurgis, "but I'll do it out of doors." When the
-man had assented, he inquired, "How much will it cost me?  I
-haven't very much money."
-
-"I reckon about twenty cents for supper," replied the farmer.  "I
-won't charge ye for the barn."
-
-So Jurgis went in, and sat down at the table with the farmer's
-wife and half a dozen children.  It was a bountiful meal--there
-were baked beans and mashed potatoes and asparagus chopped and
-stewed, and a dish of strawberries, and great, thick slices of
-bread, and a pitcher of milk.  Jurgis had not had such a feast
-since his wedding day, and he made a mighty effort to put in his
-twenty cents' worth.
-
-They were all of them too hungry to talk; but afterward they sat
-upon the steps and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. 
-When Jurgis had explained that he was a workingman from Chicago,
-and that he did not know just whither he was bound, the other
-said, "Why don't you stay here and work for me?"
-
-"I'm not looking for work just now," Jurgis answered.
-
-"I'll pay ye good," said the other, eying his big form--"a dollar
-a day and board ye.  Help's terrible scarce round here."
-
-"Is that winter as well as summer?" Jurgis demanded quickly.
-
-"N--no," said the farmer; "I couldn't keep ye after November--I
-ain't got a big enough place for that."
-
-"I see," said the other, "that's what I thought.  When you get
-through working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in
-the snow?" (Jurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays.)
-
-"It ain't quite the same," the farmer answered, seeing the point. 
-"There ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do,
-in the cities, or some place, in the winter time."
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's what they all think; and so they
-crowd into the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to
-live, then people ask 'em why they don't go into the country,
-where help is scarce."  The farmer meditated awhile.
-
-"How about when your money's gone?" he inquired, finally. 
-"You'll have to, then, won't you?"
-
-"Wait till she's gone," said Jurgis; "then I'll see."
-
-He had a long sleep in the barn and then a big breakfast of
-coffee and bread and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the
-man charged him only fifteen cents, perhaps having been
-influenced by his arguments.  Then Jurgis bade farewell, and went
-on his way.
-
-
-Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp.  It was seldom he
-got as fair treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time
-went on he learned to shun the houses and to prefer sleeping in
-the fields.  When it rained he would find a deserted building, 
-if he could, and if not, he would wait until after dark and then,
-with his stick ready, begin a stealthy approach upon a barn. 
-Generally he could get in before the dog got scent of him, and
-then he would hide in the hay and be safe until morning; if not,
-and the dog attacked him, he would rise up and make a retreat in
-battle order.  Jurgis was not the mighty man he had once been,
-but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he
-needed to hit more than once.
-
-Before long there came raspberries, and then blackberries, to
-help him save his money; and there were apples in the orchards
-and potatoes in the ground--he learned to note the places and
-fill his pockets after dark.  Twice he even managed to capture a
-chicken, and had a feast, once in a deserted barn and the other
-time in a lonely spot alongside of a stream.  When all of these
-things failed him he used his money carefully, but without worry
---for he saw that he could earn more whenever he chose.  Half an
-hour's chopping wood in his lively fashion was enough to bring
-him a meal, and when the farmer had seen him working he would
-sometimes try to bribe him to stay.
-
-But Jurgis was not staying.  He was a free man now, a buccaneer. 
-The old wanderlust had got into his blood, the joy of the unbound
-life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.  There were
-mishaps and discomforts--but at least there was always something
-new; and only think what it meant to a man who for years had been
-penned up in one place, seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of
-shanties and factories, to be suddenly set loose beneath the open
-sky, to behold new landscapes, new places, and new people every
-hour!  To a man whose whole life had consisted of doing one
-certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted that he could
-only lie down and sleep until the next day--and to be now his own
-master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a
-new adventure every hour!
-
-Then, too, his health came back to him, all his lost youthful
-vigor, his joy and power that he had mourned and forgotten!  
-It came with a sudden rush, bewildering him, startling him; it was
-as if his dead childhood had come back to him, laughing and
-calling!  What with plenty to eat and fresh air and exercise that
-was taken as it pleased him, he would waken from his sleep and
-start off not knowing what to do with his energy, stretching his
-arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back to him. 
-Now and then, of course, he could not help but think of little
-Antanas, whom he should never see again, whose little voice he
-should never hear; and then he would have to battle with himself. 
-Sometimes at night he would waken dreaming of Ona, and stretch
-out his arms to her, and wet the ground with his tears.  But in
-the morning he would get up and shake himself, and stride away
-again to battle with the world.
-
-He never asked where he was nor where he was going; the country
-was big enough, he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to
-the end of it.  And of course he could always have company for
-the asking--everywhere he went there were men living just as he
-lived, and whom he was welcome to join.  He was a stranger at the
-business, but they were not clannish, and they taught him all
-their tricks--what towns and villages it was best to keep away
-from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and when
-to beg and when to steal, and just how to do both.  They laughed
-at his ideas of paying for anything with money or with work--for
-they got all they wanted without either.  Now and then Jurgis
-camped out with a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and
-foraged with them in the neighborhood at night.  And then among
-them some one would "take a shine" to him, and they would go off
-together and travel for a week, exchanging reminiscences.
-
-Of these professional tramps a great many had, of course, been
-shiftless and vicious all their lives.  But the vast majority of
-them had been workingmen, had fought the long fight as Jurgis
-had, and found that it was a losing fight, and given up.  Later
-on he encountered yet another sort of men, those from whose ranks
-the tramps were recruited, men who were homeless and wandering,
-but still seeking work--seeking it in the harvest fields.  Of
-these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of society;
-called into being under the stern system of nature, to do the
-casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and
-irregular, and yet which had to be done.  They did not know that
-they were such, of course; they only knew that they sought the
-job, and that the job was fleeting.  In the early summer they
-would be in Texas, and as the crops were ready they would follow
-north with the season, ending with the fall in Manitoba.  Then
-they would seek out the big lumber camps, where there was winter
-work; or failing in this, would drift to the cities, and live
-upon what they had managed to save, with the help of such
-transient work as was there the loading and unloading of
-steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the shoveling 
-of snow.  If there were more of them on hand than chanced to be
-needed, the weaker ones died off of cold and hunger, again
-according to the stern system of nature.
-
-It was in the latter part of July, when Jurgis was in Missouri,
-that he came upon the harvest work.  Here were crops that men had
-worked for three or four months to prepare, and of which they
-would lose nearly all unless they could find others to help them
-for a week or two.  So all over the land there was a cry for
-labor--agencies were set up and all the cities were drained of
-men, even college boys were brought by the carload, and hordes of
-frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry off wagonloads of
-men by main force.  Not that they did not pay them well--any man
-could get two dollars a day and his board, and the best men could
-get two dollars and a half or three.
-
-The harvest-fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit
-in him could be in that region and not catch it.  Jurgis joined a
-gang and worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for
-two weeks without a break.  Then he had a sum of money that would
-have been a fortune to him in the old days of misery--but what
-could he do with it now?  To be sure he might have put it in a
-bank, and, if he were fortunate, get it back again when he wanted
-it.  But Jurgis was now a homeless man, wandering over a
-continent; and what did he know about banking and drafts and
-letters of credit?  If he carried the money about with him, he
-would surely be robbed in the end; and so what was there for him
-to do but enjoy it while he could?  On a Saturday night he
-drifted into a town with his fellows; and because it was raining,
-and there was no other place provided for him, he went to a
-saloon.  And there were some who treated him and whom he had to
-treat, and there was laughter and singing and good cheer; 
-and then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl's face,
-red-cheeked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped
-suddenly in his throat.  He nodded to her, and she came and sat
-by him, and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a
-room with her, and the wild beast rose up within him and
-screamed, as it has screamed in the Jungle from the dawn of time. 
-And then because of his memories and his shame, he was glad when
-others joined them, men and women; and they had more drink and
-spent the night in wild rioting and debauchery.  In the van of
-the surplus-labor army, there followed another, an army of women,
-they also struggling for life under the stern system of nature. 
-Because there were rich men who sought pleasure, there had been
-ease and plenty for them so long as they were young and
-beautiful; and later on, when they were crowded out by others
-younger and more beautiful, they went out to follow upon the
-trail of the workingmen.  Sometimes they came of themselves,
-and the saloon-keepers shared with them; or sometimes they were
-handled by agencies, the same as the labor army.  They were in
-the towns in harvest time, near the lumber camps in the winter,
-in the cities when the men came there; if a regiment were
-encamped, or a railroad or canal being made, or a great
-exposition getting ready, the crowd of women were on hand, living
-in shanties or saloons or tenement rooms, sometimes eight or ten
-of them together.
-
-In the morning Jurgis had not a cent, and he went out upon the
-road again.  He was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of
-his life, he crushed his feelings down.  He had made a fool of
-himself, but he could not help it now--all he could do was to see
-that it did not happen again.  So he tramped on until exercise
-and fresh air banished his headache, and his strength and joy
-returned.  This happened to him every time, for Jurgis was still
-a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had not yet become
-business.  It would be a long time before he could be like the
-majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger
-for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with
-a purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a
-spree.
-
-On the contrary, try as he would, Jurgis could not help being
-made miserable by his conscience.  It was the ghost that would
-not down.  It would come upon him in the most unexpected
-places--sometimes it fairly drove him to drink.
-
-One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter
-in a little house just outside of a town.  It was a working-man's
-home, and the owner was a Slav like himself, a new emigrant from
-White Russia; he bade Jurgis welcome in his home language, and
-told him to come to the kitchen-fire and dry himself.  He had no
-bed for him, but there was straw in the garret, and he could make
-out.  The man's wife was cooking the supper, and their children
-were playing about on the floor.  Jurgis sat and exchanged
-thoughts with him about the old country, and the places where
-they had been and the work they had done.  Then they ate, and
-afterward sat and smoked and talked more about America, and how
-they found it.  In the middle of a sentence, however, Jurgis
-stopped, seeing that the woman had brought a big basin of water
-and was proceeding to undress her youngest baby.  The rest had
-crawled into the closet where they slept, but the baby was to
-have a bath, the workingman explained.  The nights had begun to
-be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the climate in America,
-had sewed him up for the winter; then it had turned warm again,
-and some kind of a rash had broken out on the child.  The doctor
-had said she must bathe him every night, and she, foolish woman,
-believed him.
-
-Jurgis scarcely heard the explanation; he was watching the baby. 
-He was about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft
-fat legs, and a round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as
-coals.  His pimples did not seem to bother him much, and he was
-wild with glee over the bath, kicking and squirming and chuckling
-with delight, pulling at his mother's face and then at his own
-little toes.  When she put him into the basin he sat in the midst
-of it and grinned, splashing the water over himself and squealing
-like a little pig.  He spoke in Russian, of which Jurgis knew
-some; he spoke it with the quaintest of baby accents--and every
-word of it brought back to Jurgis some word of his own dead
-little one, and stabbed him like a knife.  He sat perfectly
-motionless, silent, but gripping his hands tightly, while a storm
-gathered in his bosom and a flood heaped itself up behind his
-eyes.  And in the end he could bear it no more, but buried his
-face in his hands and burst into tears, to the alarm and
-amazement of his hosts.  Between the shame of this and his woe
-Jurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed out into the
-rain.
-
-He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods,
-where he hid and wept as if his heart would break.  Ah, what
-agony was that, what despair, when the tomb of memory was rent
-open and the ghosts of his old life came forth to scourge him! 
-What terror to see what he had been and now could never be--to
-see Ona and his child and his own dead self stretching out their
-arms to him,calling to him across a bottomless abyss--and to know
-that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing and
-suffocating in the mire of his own vileness!
-
-
-Chapter 23
-
-
-Early in the fall Jurgis set out for Chicago again.  All the joy
-went out of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the
-hay; and, like many thousands of others, he deluded himself with
-the hope that by coming early he could avoid the rush.  He
-brought fifteen dollars with him, hidden away in one of his
-shoes, a sum which had been saved from the saloon-keepers, not so
-much by his conscience, as by the fear which filled him at the
-thought of being out of work in the city in the winter time.
-
-He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in
-freight cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time,
-regardless of the speed of the train.  When he reached the city
-he left the rest, for he had money and they did not, and he meant
-to save himself in this fight.  He would bring to it all the
-skill that practice had brought him, and he would stand, whoever
-fell.  On fair nights he would sleep in the park or on a truck or
-an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy or cold he would
-stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodginghouse, or pay
-three cents for the privileges of a "squatter" in a tenement
-hallway.  He would eat at free lunches, five cents a meal, and
-never a cent more--so he might keep alive for two months and
-more, and in that time he would surely find a job.  He would have
-to bid farewell to his summer cleanliness, of course, for he
-would come out of the first night's lodging with his clothes
-alive with vermin.  There was no place in the city where he could
-wash even his face, unless he went down to the lake front--
-and there it would soon be all ice.
-
-First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and
-found that his places there had been filled long ago.  He was
-careful to keep away from the stockyards--he was a single man
-now, he told himself, and he meant to stay one, to have his wages
-for his own when he got a job.  He began the long, weary round of
-factories and warehouses, tramping all day, from one end of the
-city to the other, finding everywhere from ten to a hundred men
-ahead of him.  He watched the newspapers, too--but no longer was
-he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents.  He had been told of
-all those tricks while "on the road."
-
-In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after
-nearly a month of seeking.  It was a call for a hundred laborers,
-and though he thought it was a "fake," he went because the place
-was near by.  He found a line of men a block long, but as a wagon
-chanced to come out of an alley and break the line, he saw his
-chance and sprang to seize a place.  Men threatened him and tried
-to throw him out, but he cursed and made a disturbance to attract
-a policeman, upon which they subsided, knowing that if the latter
-interfered it would be to "fire" them all.
-
-An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big
-Irishman behind a desk.
-
-"Ever worked in Chicago before?" the man inquired; and whether it
-was a good angel that put it into Jurgis's mind, or an intuition
-of his sharpened wits, he was moved to answer, "No, sir."
-
-"Where do you come from?"
-
-"Kansas City, sir."
-
-"Any references?"
-
-"No, sir.  I'm just an unskilled man.  I've got good arms."
-
-"I want men for hard work--it's all underground, digging tunnels
-for telephones.  Maybe it won't suit you."
-
-"I'm willing, sir--anything for me.  What's the pay?"
-
-"Fifteen cents an hour."
-
-"I'm willing, sir."
-
-"All right; go back there and give your name."
-
-So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets
-of the city.  The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires;
-it was about eight feet high, and with a level floor nearly as
-wide.  It had innumerable branches--a perfect spider web beneath
-the city; Jurgis walked over half a mile with his gang to the
-place where they were to work.  Stranger yet, the tunnel was
-lighted by electricity, and upon it was laid a double-tracked,
-narrow-gauge railroad!
-
-But Jurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give
-the matter a thought.  It was nearly a year afterward that he
-finally learned the meaning of this whole affair.  The City
-Council had passed a quiet and innocent little bill allowing a
-company to construct telephone conduits under the city streets;
-and upon the strength of this, a great corporation had proceeded
-to tunnel all Chicago with a system of railway freight-subways. 
-In the city there was a combination of employers, representing
-hundreds of millions of capital, and formed for the purpose of
-crushing the labor unions.  The chief union which troubled it was
-the teamsters'; and when these freight tunnels were completed,
-connecting all the big factories and stores with the railroad
-depots, they would have the teamsters' union by the throat.
-Now and then there were rumors and murmurs in the Board of Aldermen,
-and once there was a committee to investigate--but each time
-another small fortune was paid over, and the rumors died away;
-until at last the city woke up with a start to find the work
-completed.  There was a tremendous scandal, of course; it was
-found that the city records had been falsified and other crimes
-committed, and some of Chicago's big capitalists got into
-jail--figuratively speaking.  The aldermen declared that they had
-had no idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main
-entrance to the work had been in the rear of the saloon of one of
-them.
-
-It was in a newly opened cut that Jurgis worked, and so he knew
-that he had an all-winter job.  He was so rejoiced that he
-treated himself to a spree that night, and with the balance of
-his money he hired himself a place in a tenement room, where he
-slept upon a big homemade straw mattress along with four other
-workingmen.  This was one dollar a week, and for four more he got
-his food in a boardinghouse near his work.  This would leave him
-four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum for him.  At the
-outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to buy a
-pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, 
-and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in
-shreds.  He spent a week meditating whether or not he should also
-buy an overcoat.  There was one belonging to a Hebrew collar
-button peddler, who had died in the room next to him, and which
-the landlady was holding for her rent; in the end, however,
-Jurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by
-day and in bed at night.
-
-This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more
-quickly than ever into the saloons.  From now on Jurgis worked
-from seven o'clock until half-past five, with half an hour for
-dinner; which meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays. 
-In the evenings there was no place for him to go except a
-barroom; no place where there was light and warmth, where he
-could hear a little music or sit with a companion and talk. 
-He had now no home to go to; he had no affection left in his
-life--only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice. 
-On Sundays the churches were open--but where was there a church
-in which an ill-smelling workingman, with vermin crawling upon
-his neck, could sit without seeing people edge away and look
-annoyed?  He had, of course, his corner in a close though
-unheated room, with a window opening upon a blank wall two feet
-away; and also he had the bare streets, with the winter gales
-sweeping through them; besides this he had only the saloons--and,
-of course, he had to drink to stay in them.  If he drank now and
-then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or
-a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money,
-or to look at a beer-stained pink "sporting paper," with pictures
-of murderers and half-naked women.  It was for such pleasures as
-these that he spent his money; and such was his life during the
-six weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago,
-to enable them to break the grip of their teamsters' union.
-
-In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the
-welfare of the laborers.  On an average, the tunneling cost a
-life a day and several manglings; it was seldom, however, that
-more than a dozen or two men heard of any one accident.  The work
-was all done by the new boring machinery, with as little blasting
-as possible; but there would be falling rocks and crushed
-supports, and premature explosions--and in addition all the
-dangers of railroading.  So it was that one night, as Jurgis was
-on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car dashed
-round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
-upon the shoulder, hurling him against the concrete wall and
-knocking him senseless.
-
-When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell
-of an ambulance.  He was lying in it, covered by a blanket, and
-it was threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping
-crowds.  They took him to the county hospital, where a young
-surgeon set his arm; then he was washed and laid upon a bed in a
-ward with a score or two more of maimed and mangled men.
-
-Jurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the
-pleasantest Christmas he had had in America.  Every year there
-were scandals and investigations in this institution, the
-newspapers charging that doctors were allowed to try fantastic
-experiments upon the patients; but Jurgis knew nothing of
-this--his only complaint was that they used to feed him upon
-tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in Packingtown
-would feed to his dog.  Jurgis had often wondered just who ate
-the canned corned beef and "roast beef" of the stockyards; now he
-began to understand--that it was what you might call "graft
-meat," put up to be sold to public officials and contractors, 
-and eaten by soldiers and sailors, prisoners and inmates of
-institutions, "shantymen" and gangs of railroad laborers.
-
-Jurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. 
-This did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to
-go back to work, but simply that he could get along without
-further attention, and that his place was needed for some one
-worse off than he.  That he was utterly helpless, and had no
-means of keeping himself alive in the meantime, was something
-which did not concern the hospital authorities, nor any one else
-in the city.
-
-As it chanced, he had been hurt on a Monday, and had just paid
-for his last week's board and his room rent, and spent nearly all
-the balance of his Saturday's pay.  He had less than seventy-five
-cents in his pockets, and a dollar and a half due him for the
-day's work he had done before he was hurt.  He might possibly
-have sued the company, and got some damages for his injuries, 
-but he did not know this, and it was not the company's business to
-tell him.  He went and got his pay and his tools, which he left
-in a pawnshop for fifty cents.  Then he went to his landlady,
-who had rented his place and had no other for him; and then to his
-boardinghouse keeper, who looked him over and questioned him.  
-As he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months, and had
-boarded there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it
-would not be worth the risk to keep him on trust.
-
-So Jurgis went out into the streets, in a most dreadful plight. 
-It was bitterly cold, and a heavy snow was falling, beating into
-his face.  He had no overcoat, and no place to go, and two
-dollars and sixty-five cents in his pocket, with the certainty
-that he could not earn another cent for months.  The snow meant
-no chance to him now; he must walk along and see others
-shoveling, vigorous and active--and he with his left arm bound to
-his side!  He could not hope to tide himself over by odd jobs of
-loading trucks; he could not even sell newspapers or carry
-satchels, because he was now at the mercy of any rival.  Words
-could not paint the terror that came over him as he realized all
-this.  He was like a wounded animal in the forest; he was forced
-to compete with his enemies upon unequal terms.  There would be
-no consideration for him because of his weakness--it was no one's
-business to help him in such distress, to make the fight the
-least bit easier for him.  Even if he took to begging, he would
-be at a disadvantage, for reasons which he was to discover in
-good time.
-
-In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting
-out of the awful cold.  He went into one of the saloons he had
-been wont to frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the
-fire shivering and waiting to be ordered out.  According to an
-unwritten law, the buying a drink included the privilege of
-loafing for just so long; then one had to buy another drink or
-move on.  That Jurgis was an old customer entitled him to a
-somewhat longer stop; but then he had been away two weeks,
-and was evidently "on the bum."  He might plead and tell his
-"hard luck story," but that would not help him much; a saloon-keeper
-who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place
-jammed to the doors with "hoboes" on a day like this.
-
-So Jurgis went out into another place, and paid another nickel. 
-He was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef
-stew, an indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable
-time.  When he was again told to move on, he made his way to a
-"tough" place in the "Levee" district, where now and then he had
-gone with a certain rat-eyed Bohemian workingman of his
-acquaintance, seeking a woman.  It was Jurgis's vain hope that
-here the proprietor would let him remain as a "sitter."  In
-low-class places, in the dead of winter, saloon-keepers would
-often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered
-with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look
-miserable to attract custom.  A workingman would come in, feeling
-cheerful after his day's work was over, and it would trouble him
-to have to take his glass with such a sight under his nose; and
-so he would call out: "Hello, Bub, what's the matter?  You look
-as if you'd been up against it!" And then the other would begin
-to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, "Come
-have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up."  And so they would
-drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently
-wretched-looking, or good enough at the "gab," they might have
-two; and if they were to discover that they were from the same
-country, or had lived in the same city or worked at the same
-trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in
-talk--and before they got through the saloon-keeper would have
-taken in a dollar.  All of this might seem diabolical, but the
-saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it.  He was in the same
-plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent
-his product.  If he does not, some one else will; and the 
-saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to
-the big brewers, and on the verge of being sold out.
-
-The market for "sitters" was glutted that afternoon, however,
-and there was no place for Jurgis.  In all he had to spend six
-nickels in keeping a shelter over him that frightful day, and
-then it was just dark, and the station houses would not open
-until midnight!  At the last place, however, there was a
-bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him doze at one of
-the tables until the boss came back; and also, as he was going
-out, the man gave him a tip--on the next block there was a
-religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing,
-and hundreds of hoboes would go there for the shelter and warmth.
-
-Jurgis went straightway, and saw a sign hung out, saying that the
-door would open at seven-thirty; then he walked, or half ran,
-a block, and hid awhile in a doorway and then ran again, and so on
-until the hour.  At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his
-way in with the rest of the throng (at the risk of having his arm
-broken again), and got close to the big stove.
-
-By eight o'clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought
-to have been flattered; the aisles were filled halfway up, and at
-the door men were packed tight enough to walk upon.  There were
-three elderly gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young
-lady who played the piano in front.  First they sang a hymn, and
-then one of the three, a tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and
-wearing black spectacles, began an address.  Jurgis heard
-smatterings of it, for the reason that terror kept him awake--
-he knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put out just
-then would have been like a sentence of death to him.
-
-The evangelist was preaching "sin and redemption," the infinite
-grace of God and His pardon for human frailty.  He was very much
-in earnest, and he meant well, but Jurgis, as he listened, found
-his soul filled with hatred.  What did he know about sin and
-suffering--with his smooth, black coat and his neatly starched
-collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his
-pocket--and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives,
-men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and
-cold!--This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these
-men were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they
-were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were
-part of the problem--they were part of the order established that
-was crushing men down and beating them!  They were of the
-triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire,
-and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to
-hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen!  They
-were trying to save their souls--and who but a fool could fail to
-see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they
-had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
-
-At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out
-into the snow, muttering curses upon the few traitors who had got
-repentance and gone up on the platform.  It was yet an hour
-before the station house would open, and Jurgis had no
-overcoat--and was weak from a long illness.  During that hour he
-nearly perished.  He was obliged to run hard to keep his blood
-moving at all--and then he came back to the station house and
-found a crowd blocking the street before the door!  This was in
-the month of January, 1904, when the country was on the verge of
-"hard times," and the newspapers were reporting the shutting down
-of factories every day--it was estimated that a million and a
-half men were thrown out of work before the spring.  So all the
-hiding places of the city were crowded, and before that station
-house door men fought and tore each other like savage beasts. 
-When at last the place was jammed and they shut the doors, half
-the crowd was still outside; and Jurgis, with his helpless arm,
-was among them.  There was no choice then but to go to a
-lodginghouse and spend another dime.  It really broke his heart
-to do this, at half-past twelve o'clock, after he had wasted the
-night at the meeting and on the street.  He would be turned out
-of the lodginghouse promptly at seven they had the shelves which
-served as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any
-man who was slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the
-floor.
-
-This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. 
-At the end of six days every cent of Jurgis' money was gone; 
-and then he went out on the streets to beg for his life.
-
-He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. 
-He would sally forth from a saloon, and, after making sure there
-was no policeman in sight, would approach every likely-looking
-person who passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for
-a nickel or a dime.  Then when he got one, he would dart round
-the corner and return to his base to get warm; and his victim,
-seeing him do this, would go away, vowing that he would never
-give a cent to a beggar again.  The victim never paused to ask
-where else Jurgis could have gone under the circumstances--where
-he, the victim, would have gone.  At the saloon Jurgis could not
-only get more food and better food than he could buy in any
-restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm
-him up.  Also he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and
-could chat with a companion until he was as warm as toast.  At
-the saloon, too, he felt at home.  Part of the saloon-keeper's
-business was to offer a home and refreshments to beggars in
-exchange for the proceeds of their foragings; and was there any
-one else in the whole city who would do this--would the victim
-have done it himself?
-
-Poor Jurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. 
-He was just out of the hospital, and desperately sick-looking,
-and with a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered
-pitifully.  But, alas, it was again the case of the honest
-merchant, who finds that the genuine and unadulterated article is
-driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit.  Jurgis, as a
-beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in competition with
-organized and scientific professionalism.  He was just out of the
-hospital--but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he
-prove it?  He had his arm in a sling--and it was a device a
-regular beggar's little boy would have scorned.  He was pale and
-shivering--but they were made up with cosmetics, and had studied
-the art of chattering their teeth.  As to his being without an
-overcoat, among them you would meet men you could swear had on
-nothing but a ragged linen duster and a pair of cotton
-trousers--so cleverly had they concealed the several suits of
-all-wool underwear beneath.  Many of these professional
-mendicants had comfortable homes, and families, and thousands of
-dollars in the bank; some of them had retired upon their
-earnings, and gone into the business of fitting out and doctoring
-others, or working children at the trade.  There were some who
-had both their arms bound tightly to their sides, and padded
-stumps in their sleeves, and a sick child hired to carry a cup
-for them.  There were some who had no legs, and pushed themselves
-upon a wheeled platform--some who had been favored with
-blindness, and were led by pretty little dogs.  Some less
-fortunate had mutilated themselves or burned themselves, or had
-brought horrible sores upon themselves with chemicals; you might
-suddenly encounter upon the street a man holding out to you a
-finger rotting and discolored with gangrene--or one with livid
-scarlet wounds half escaped from their filthy bandages.  These
-desperate ones were the dregs of the city's cesspools, wretches
-who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of old ramshackle
-tenements, in "stale-beer dives" and opium joints, with abandoned
-women in the last stages of the harlot's progress--women who had
-been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die.  Every day
-the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and
-in the detention hospital you might see them, herded together in
-a miniature inferno, with hideous, beastly faces, bloated and
-leprous with disease, laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages
-of drunkenness, barking like dogs, gibbering like apes, raving
-and tearing themselves in delirium.
-
-
-
-Chapter 24
-
-
-In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the
-price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under
-penalty of freezing to death.  Day after day he roamed about in
-the arctic cold, his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. 
-He saw the world of civilization then more plainly than ever he
-had seen it before; a world in which nothing counted but brutal
-might, an order devised by those who possessed it for the
-subjugation of those who did not.  He was one of the latter; and
-all outdoors, all life, was to him one colossal prison, which he
-paced like a pent-up tiger, trying one bar after another, and
-finding them all beyond his power.  He had lost in the fierce
-battle of greed, and so was doomed to be exterminated; and all
-society was busied to see that he did not escape the sentence. 
-Everywhere that he turned were prison bars, and hostile eyes
-following him; the well-fed, sleek policemen, from whose glances
-he shrank, and who seemed to grip their clubs more tightly when
-they saw him; the saloon-keepers, who never ceased to watch him
-while he was in their places, who were jealous of every moment he
-lingered after he had paid his money; the hurrying throngs upon
-the streets, who were deaf to his entreaties, oblivious of his
-very existence--and savage and contemptuous when he forced
-himself upon them.  They had their own affairs, and there was no
-place for him among them.  There was no place for him anywhere
---every direction he turned his gaze, this fact was forced upon
-him: Everything was built to express it to him: the residences,
-with their heavy walls and bolted doors, and basement windows
-barred with iron; the great warehouses filled with the products
-of the whole world, and guarded by iron shutters and heavy gates;
-the banks with their unthinkable billions of wealth, all buried
-in safes and vaults of steel.
-
-
-And then one day there befell Jurgis the one adventure of his
-life.  It was late at night, and he had failed to get the price
-of a lodging.  Snow was falling, and he had been out so long that
-he was covered with it, and was chilled to the bone.  He was
-working among the theater crowds, flitting here and there, taking
-large chances with the police, in his desperation half hoping to
-be arrested.  When he saw a bluecoat start toward him, however,
-his heart failed him, and he dashed down a side street and fled a
-couple of blocks.  When he stopped again he saw a man coming
-toward him, and placed himself in his path.
-
-"Please, sir," he began, in the usual formula, "will you give me
-the price of a lodging?  I've had a broken arm, and I can't work,
-and I've not a cent in my pocket.  I'm an honest working-man,
-sir, and I never begged before!  It's not my fault, sir--"
-
-Jurgis usually went on until he was interrupted, but this man did
-not interrupt, and so at last he came to a breathless stop.  The
-other had halted, and Jurgis suddenly noticed that he stood a
-little unsteadily.  "Whuzzat you say?" he queried suddenly, in a
-thick voice.
-
-Jurgis began again, speaking more slowly and distinctly; before
-he was half through the other put out his hand and rested it upon
-his shoulder.  "Poor ole chappie!" he said.  "Been
-up--hic--up--against it, hey?"
-
-Then he lurched toward Jurgis, and the hand upon his shoulder
-became an arm about his neck.  "Up against it myself, ole sport,"
-he said.  "She's a hard ole world."
-
-They were close to a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the
-other.  He was a young fellow--not much over eighteen, with a
-handsome boyish face.  He wore a silk hat and a rich soft
-overcoat with a fur collar; and he smiled at Jurgis with
-benignant sympathy.  "I'm hard up, too, my goo' fren'," he said. 
-"I've got cruel parents, or I'd set you up.  Whuzzamatter
-whizyer?"
-
-"I've been in the hospital."
-
-"Hospital!" exclaimed the young fellow, still smiling sweetly,
-"thass too bad!  Same's my Aunt Polly--hic--my Aunt Polly's in
-the hospital, too--ole auntie's been havin' twins!  Whuzzamatter
-whiz you?"
-
-"I've got a broken arm--" Jurgis began.
-
-"So," said the other, sympathetically.  "That ain't so bad--you
-get over that.  I wish somebody'd break my arm, ole chappie--
-damfidon't!  Then they'd treat me better--hic--hole me up, ole
-sport!  Whuzzit you wammme do?"
-
-"I'm hungry, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Hungry!  Why don't you hassome supper?"
-
-"I've got no money, sir."
-
-"No money!  Ho, ho--less be chums, ole boy--jess like me!  No
-money, either--a'most busted!  Why don't you go home, then,
-same's me?"
-
-"I haven't any home," said Jurgis.
-
-"No home!  Stranger in the city, hey?  Goo' God, thass bad! 
-Better come home wiz me--yes, by Harry, thass the trick, you'll
-come home an' hassome supper--hic--wiz me!  Awful
-lonesome--nobody home!  Guv'ner gone abroad--Bubby on's
-honeymoon--Polly havin' twins--every damn soul gone away! 
-Nuff--hic--nuff to drive a feller to drink, I say!  Only ole Ham
-standin' by, passin' plates--damfican eat like that, no sir!  The
-club for me every time, my boy, I say.  But then they won't lemme
-sleep there--guv'ner's orders, by Harry--home every night, sir! 
-Ever hear anythin' like that?  'Every mornin' do?' I asked him. 
-'No, sir, every night, or no allowance at all, sir.'  Thass my
-guv'ner--'nice as nails, by Harry!  Tole ole Ham to watch me,
-too--servants spyin' on me--whuzyer think that, my fren'?  A
-nice, quiet--hic--goodhearted young feller like me, an' his daddy
-can't go to Europe--hup!--an' leave him in peace!  Ain't that a
-shame, sir?  An' I gotter go home every evenin' an' miss all the
-fun, by Harry!  Thass whuzzamatter now--thass why I'm here! 
-Hadda come away an' leave Kitty--hic--left her cryin',
-too--whujja think of that, ole sport?  'Lemme go, Kittens,' 
-says I--'come early an' often--I go where duty--hic--calls me. 
-Farewell, farewell, my own true love--farewell, farewehell,
-my--own true--love!'"
-
-This last was a song, and the young gentleman's voice rose
-mournful and wailing, while he swung upon Jurgis's neck.  The
-latter was glancing about nervously, lest some one should
-approach.  They were still alone, however.
-
-"But I came all right, all right," continued the youngster,
-aggressively, "I can--hic--I can have my own way when I want it,
-by Harry--Freddie Jones is a hard man to handle when he gets
-goin'!  'No, sir,' says I, 'by thunder, and I don't need anybody
-goin' home with me, either--whujja take me for, hey?  Think I'm
-drunk, dontcha, hey?--I know you!  But I'm no more drunk than you
-are, Kittens,' says I to her.  And then says she, 'Thass true,
-Freddie dear' (she's a smart one, is Kitty), 'but I'm stayin' in
-the flat, an' you're goin' out into the cold, cold night!' 'Put
-it in a pome, lovely Kitty,' says I.  'No jokin', Freddie, my
-boy,' says she.  'Lemme call a cab now, like a good dear'--but I
-can call my own cabs, dontcha fool yourself--and I know what I'm
-a-doin', you bet!  Say, my fren', whatcha say--willye come home
-an' see me, an' hassome supper?  Come 'long like a good
-feller--don't be haughty!  You're up against it, same as me, an'
-you can unerstan' a feller; your heart's in the right place, by
-Harry--come 'long, ole chappie, an' we'll light up the house, an'
-have some fizz, an' we'll raise hell, we will--whoop-la! 
-S'long's I'm inside the house I can do as I please--the guv'ner's
-own very orders, b'God!  Hip!  hip!"
-
-They had started down the street, arm in arm, the young man
-pushing Jurgis along, half dazed.  Jurgis was trying to think
-what to do--he knew he could not pass any crowded place with his
-new acquaintance without attracting attention and being stopped. 
-It was only because of the falling snow that people who passed
-here did not notice anything wrong.
-
-Suddenly, therefore, Jurgis stopped.  "Is it very far?" he
-inquired.
-
-"Not very," said the other, "Tired, are you, though?  Well, we'll
-ride--whatcha say?  Good!  Call a cab!"
-
-And then, gripping Jurgis tight with one hand, the young fellow
-began searching his pockets with the other.  "You call, ole
-sport, an' I'll pay," he suggested.  "How's that, hey?"
-
-And he pulled out from somewhere a big roll of bills.  It was
-more money than Jurgis had ever seen in his life before, and he
-stared at it with startled eyes.
-
-"Looks like a lot, hey?" said Master Freddie, fumbling with it. 
-"Fool you, though, ole chappie--they're all little ones!  I'll be
-busted in one week more, sure thing--word of honor.  An' not a
-cent more till the first--hic--guv'ner's orders--hic--not a cent,
-by Harry!  Nuff to set a feller crazy, it is.  I sent him a
-cable, this af'noon--thass one reason more why I'm goin' home. 
-'Hangin' on the verge of starvation,' I says--'for the honor of
-the family--hic--sen' me some bread.  Hunger will compel me to
-join you--Freddie.' Thass what I wired him, by Harry, an' I mean
-it--I'll run away from school, b'God, if he don't sen' me some."
-
-After this fashion the young gentleman continued to prattle
-on--and meantime Jurgis was trembling with excitement.  He might
-grab that wad of bills and be out of sight in the darkness before
-the other could collect his wits.  Should he do it?  What better
-had he to hope for, if he waited longer?  But Jurgis had never
-committed a crime in his life, and now he hesitated half a second
-too long.  "Freddie" got one bill loose, and then stuffed the
-rest back into his trousers' pocket.
-
-"Here, ole man," he said, "you take it."  He held it out
-fluttering.  They were in front of a saloon; and by the light of
-the window Jurgis saw that it was a hundred-dollar bill!  "You
-take it," the other repeated.  "Pay the cabbie an' keep the
-change--I've got--hic--no head for business!  Guv'ner says so
-hisself, an' the guv'ner knows--the guv'ner's got a head for
-business, you bet!  'All right, guv'ner,' I told him, 'you run
-the show, and I'll take the tickets!'  An' so he set Aunt Polly
-to watch me--hic--an' now Polly's off in the hospital havin'
-twins, an' me out raisin' Cain!  Hello, there!  Hey!  Call him!"
-
-A cab was driving by; and Jurgis sprang and called, and it swung
-round to the curb.  Master Freddie clambered in with some
-difficulty, and Jurgis had started to follow, when the driver
-shouted: "Hi, there!  Get out--you!"
-
-Jurgis hesitated, and was half obeying; but his companion broke
-out: "Whuzzat?  Whuzzamatter wiz you, hey?"
-
-And the cabbie subsided, and Jurgis climbed in.  Then Freddie
-gave a number on the Lake Shore Drive, and the carriage started
-away.  The youngster leaned back and snuggled up to Jurgis,
-murmuring contentedly; in half a minute he was sound asleep,
-Jurgis sat shivering, speculating as to whether he might not
-still be able to get hold of the roll of bills.  He was afraid to
-try to go through his companion's pockets, however; and besides
-the cabbie might be on the watch.  He had the hundred safe, and
-he would have to be content with that.
-
-
-At the end of half an hour or so the cab stopped.  They were out
-on the waterfront, and from the east a freezing gale was blowing
-off the ice-bound lake.  "Here we are," called the cabbie, and
-Jurgis awakened his companion.
-
-Master Freddie sat up with a start.
-
-"Hello!" he said.  "Where are we?  Whuzzis?  Who are you, hey? 
-Oh, yes, sure nuff!  Mos' forgot you--hic--ole chappie!  Home,
-are we?  Lessee!  Br-r-r--it's cold!  Yes--come 'long--we're
-home--it ever so--hic--humble!"
-
-Before them there loomed an enormous granite pile, set far back
-from the street, and occupying a whole block.  By the light of
-the driveway lamps Jurgis could see that it had towers and huge
-gables, like a medieval castle.  He thought that the young fellow
-must have made a mistake--it was inconceivable to him that any
-person could have a home like a hotel or the city hall.  But he
-followed in silence, and they went up the long flight of steps,
-arm in arm.
-
-"There's a button here, ole sport," said Master Freddie.  "Hole
-my arm while I find her!  Steady, now--oh, yes, here she is! 
-Saved!"
-
-A bell rang, and in a few seconds the door was opened.  A man in
-blue livery stood holding it, and gazing before him, silent as a
-statue.
-
-They stood for a moment blinking in the light.  Then Jurgis felt
-his companion pulling, and he stepped in, and the blue automaton
-closed the door.  Jurgis's heart was beating wildly; it was a
-bold thing for him to do--into what strange unearthly place he
-was venturing he had no idea.  Aladdin entering his cave could
-not have been more excited.
-
-The place where he stood was dimly lighted; but he could see a
-vast hall, with pillars fading into the darkness above, and a
-great staircase opening at the far end of it.  The floor was of
-tesselated marble, smooth as glass, and from the walls strange
-shapes loomed out, woven into huge portieres in rich, harmonious
-colors, or gleaming from paintings, wonderful and
-mysterious-looking in the half-light, purple and red and golden,
-like sunset glimmers in a shadowy forest.
-
-The man in livery had moved silently toward them; Master Freddie
-took off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of
-Jurgis' arm, tried to get out of his overcoat.  After two or
-three attempts he accomplished this, with the lackey's help, 
-and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and portly
-personage, solemn as an executioner.  He bore straight down upon
-Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm
-without a word, and started toward the door with him.  Then
-suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton!  My fren' will
-remain wiz me."
-
-The man paused and half released Jurgis.  "Come 'long ole
-chappie," said the other, and Jurgis started toward him.
-
-"Master Frederick!" exclaimed the man.
-
-"See that the cabbie--hic--is paid," was the other's response;
-and he linked his arm in Jurgis'.  Jurgis was about to say, 
-"I have the money for him," but he restrained himself.  The stout
-man in uniform signaled to the other, who went out to the cab,
-while he followed Jurgis and his young master.
-
-They went down the great hall, and then turned.  Before them were
-two huge doors.
-
-"Hamilton," said Master Freddie.
-
-"Well, sir?" said the other.
-
-"Whuzzamatter wizze dinin'-room doors?"
-
-"Nothing is the matter, sir."
-
-"Then why dontcha openum?"
-
-The man rolled them back; another vista lost itself in the
-darkness.  "Lights," commanded Master Freddie; and the butler
-pressed a button, and a flood of brilliant incandescence streamed
-from above, half-blinding Jurgis.  He stared; and little by
-little he made out the great apartment, with a domed ceiling from
-which the light poured, and walls that were one enormous
-painting--nymphs and dryads dancing in a flower-strewn
-glade--Diana with her hounds and horses, dashing headlong through
-a mountain streamlet--a group of maidens bathing in a forest
-pool--all life-size, and so real that Jurgis thought that it was
-some work of enchantment, that he was in a dream palace.  Then
-his eye passed to the long table in the center of the hall, 
-a table black as ebony, and gleaming with wrought silver and gold. 
-In the center of it was a huge carven bowl, with the glistening
-gleam of ferns and the red and purple of rare orchids, glowing
-from a light hidden somewhere in their midst.
-
-"This's the dinin' room," observed Master Freddie.  "How you like
-it, hey, ole sport?"
-
-He always insisted on having an answer to his remarks, leaning
-over Jurgis and smiling into his face.  Jurgis liked it.
-
-"Rummy ole place to feed in all 'lone, though," was Freddie's
-comment--"rummy's hell!  Whuzya think, hey?" Then another idea
-occurred to him and he went on, without waiting: "Maybe you never
-saw anythin--hic--like this 'fore?  Hey, ole chappie?"
-
-"No," said Jurgis.
-
-"Come from country, maybe--hey?"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis.
-
-"Aha!  I thosso!  Lossa folks from country never saw such a
-place.  Guv'ner brings 'em--free show--hic--reg'lar circus!  
-Go home tell folks about it.  Ole man lones's place--lones the
-packer--beef-trust man.  Made it all out of hogs, too, damn ole
-scoundrel.  Now we see where our pennies go--rebates, an' private
-car lines--hic--by Harry!  Bully place, though--worth seein' ! 
-Ever hear of lones the packer, hey, ole chappie?"
-
-Jurgis had started involuntarily; the other, whose sharp eyes
-missed nothing, demanded: "Whuzzamatter, hey?  Heard of him?"
-
-And Jurgis managed to stammer out: "I have worked for him in the
-yards."
-
-"What!" cried Master Freddie, with a yell.  "You!  In the yards? 
-Ho, ho!  Why, say, thass good!  Shake hands on it, ole man--by
-Harry!  Guv'ner ought to be here--glad to see you.  Great fren's
-with the men, guv'ner--labor an' capital, commun'ty 'f int'rests,
-an' all that--hic!  Funny things happen in this world, don't
-they, ole man?  Hamilton, lemme interduce you--fren' the
-family--ole fren' the guv'ner's--works in the yards.  Come to
-spend the night wiz me, Hamilton--have a hot time.  Me fren',
-Mr.--whuzya name, ole chappie?  Tell us your name."
-
-"Rudkus--Jurgis Rudkus."
-
-"My fren', Mr. Rednose, Hamilton--shake han's."
-
-The stately butler bowed his head, but made not a sound; and
-suddenly Master Freddie pointed an eager finger at him.  "I know
-whuzzamatter wiz you, Hamilton--lay you a dollar I know!  You
-think--hic--you think I'm drunk!  Hey, now?"
-
-And the butler again bowed his head.  "Yes, sir," he said, at
-which Master Freddie hung tightly upon Jurgis's neck and went
-into a fit of laughter.  "Hamilton, you damn ole scoundrel," he
-roared, "I'll 'scharge you for impudence, you see 'f I don't! 
-Ho, ho, ho!  I'm drunk!  Ho, ho!"
-
-The two waited until his fit had spent itself, to see what new
-whim would seize him.  "Whatcha wanta do?" he queried suddenly. 
-"Wanta see the place, ole chappie?  Wamme play the guv'ner--show
-you roun'?  State parlors--Looee Cans--Looee Sez--chairs cost
-three thousand apiece.  Tea room Maryanntnet--picture of
-shepherds dancing--Ruysdael--twenty-three thousan'! 
-Ballroom--balc'ny pillars--hic--imported--special
-ship--sixty-eight thousan'!  Ceilin' painted in Rome--whuzzat
-feller's name, Hamilton--Mattatoni?  Macaroni?  Then this
-place--silver bowl--Benvenuto Cellini--rummy ole Dago!  An' the
-organ--thirty thousan' dollars, sir--starter up, Hamilton, let
-Mr. Rednose hear it.  No--never mind--clean forgot--says he's
-hungry, Hamilton--less have some supper.  Only--hic--don't less
-have it here--come up to my place, ole sport--nice an' cosy. 
-This way--steady now, don't slip on the floor.  Hamilton, we'll
-have a cole spread, an' some fizz--don't leave out the fizz, by
-Harry.  We'll have some of the eighteen-thirty Madeira.  Hear me,
-sir?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said the butler, "but, Master Frederick, your father
-left orders--"
-
-And Master Frederick drew himself up to a stately height.  "My
-father's orders were left to me--hic--an' not to you," he said. 
-Then, clasping Jurgis tightly by the neck, he staggered out of
-the room; on the way another idea occurred to him, and he asked:
-"Any--hic--cable message for me, Hamilton?"
-
-"No, sir," said the butler.
-
-"Guv'ner must be travelin'.  An' how's the twins, Hamilton?"
-
-"They are doing well, sir."
-
-"Good!" said Master Freddie; and added fervently: "God bless 'em,
-the little lambs!"
-
-They went up the great staircase, one step at a time; at the top
-of it there gleamed at them out of the shadows the figure of a
-nymph crouching by a fountain, a figure ravishingly beautiful,
-the flesh warm and glowing with the hues of life.  Above was a
-huge court, with domed roof, the various apartments opening into
-it.  The butler had paused below but a few minutes to give
-orders, and then followed them; now he pressed a button, and the
-hall blazed with light.  He opened a door before them, and then
-pressed another button, as they staggered into the apartment.
-
-It was fitted up as a study.  In the center was a mahogany table,
-covered with books, and smokers' implements; the walls were
-decorated with college trophies and colors--flags, posters,
-photographs and knickknacks--tennis rackets, canoe paddles, golf
-clubs, and polo sticks.  An enormous moose head, with horns six
-feet across, faced a buffalo head on the opposite wall, while
-bear and tiger skins covered the polished floor.  There were
-lounging chairs and sofas, window seats covered with soft
-cushions of fantastic designs; there was one corner fitted in
-Persian fashion, with a huge canopy and a jeweled lamp beneath. 
-Beyond, a door opened upon a bedroom, and beyond that was a
-swimming pool of the purest marble, that had cost about forty
-thousand dollars.
-
-Master Freddie stood for a moment or two, gazing about him; then
-out of the next room a dog emerged, a monstrous bulldog, the most
-hideous object that Jurgis had ever laid eyes upon.  He yawned,
-opening a mouth like a dragon's; and he came toward the young
-man, wagging his tail.  "Hello, Dewey!" cried his master.  "Been
-havin' a snooze, ole boy?  Well, well--hello there,
-whuzzamatter?" (The dog was snarling at Jurgis.) "Why,
-Dewey--this' my fren', Mr. Rednose--ole fren' the guv'ner's! 
-Mr. Rednose, Admiral Dewey; shake han's--hic.  Ain't he a daisy,
-though--blue ribbon at the New York show--eighty-five hundred at
-a clip!  How's that, hey?"
-
-The speaker sank into one of the big armchairs, and Admiral Dewey
-crouched beneath it; he did not snarl again, but he never took
-his eyes off Jurgis.  He was perfectly sober, was the Admiral.
-
-The butler had closed the door, and he stood by it, watching
-Jurgis every second.  Now there came footsteps outside, and,
-as he opened the door a man in livery entered, carrying a folding
-table, and behind him two men with covered trays.  They stood
-like statues while the first spread the table and set out the
-contents of the trays upon it.  There were cold pates, and thin
-slices of meat, tiny bread and butter sandwiches with the crust
-cut off, a bowl of sliced peaches and cream (in January), little
-fancy cakes, pink and green and yellow and white, and half a
-dozen ice-cold bottles of wine.
-
-"Thass the stuff for you!" cried Master Freddie, exultantly, 
-as he spied them.  "Come 'long, ole chappie, move up."
-
-And he seated himself at the table; the waiter pulled a cork, 
-and he took the bottle and poured three glasses of its contents in
-succession down his throat.  Then he gave a long-drawn sigh, and
-cried again to Jurgis to seat himself.
-
-The butler held the chair at the opposite side of the table, 
-and Jurgis thought it was to keep him out of it; but finally he
-understand that it was the other's intention to put it under him,
-and so he sat down, cautiously and mistrustingly.  Master Freddie
-perceived that the attendants embarrassed him, and he remarked
-with a nod to them, "You may go."
-
-They went, all save the butler.
-
-"You may go too, Hamilton," he said.
-
-"Master Frederick--" the man began.
-
-"Go!" cried the youngster, angrily.  "Damn you, don't you hear me?"
-
-The man went out and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as
-he, observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that
-he might peer through the keyhole.
-
-Master Frederick turned to the table again.  "Now," he said, "go
-for it."
-
-Jurgis gazed at him doubtingly.  "Eat!" cried the other.  "Pile
-in, ole chappie!"
-
-"Don't you want anything?" Jurgis asked.
-
-"Ain't hungry," was the reply--"only thirsty.  Kitty and me had
-some candy--you go on."
-
-So Jurgis began, without further parley.  He ate as with two
-shovels, his fork in one hand and his knife in the other; when he
-once got started his wolf-hunger got the better of him, and he
-did not stop for breath until he had cleared every plate. 
-"Gee whiz!" said the other, who had been watching him in wonder.
-
-Then he held Jurgis the bottle.  "Lessee you drink now," he said;
-and Jurgis took the bottle and turned it up to his mouth, and a
-wonderfully unearthly liquid ecstasy poured down his throat,
-tickling every nerve of him, thrilling him with joy.  He drank
-the very last drop of it, and then he gave vent to a long-drawn
-"Ah!"
-
-"Good stuff, hey?" said Freddie, sympathetically; he had leaned
-back in the big chair, putting his arm behind his head and gazing
-at Jurgis.
-
-And Jurgis gazed back at him.  He was clad in spotless evening
-dress, was Freddie, and looked very handsome--he was a beautiful
-boy, with light golden hair and the head of an Antinous.  He
-smiled at Jurgis confidingly, and then started talking again,
-with his blissful insouciance.  This time he talked for ten
-minutes at a stretch, and in the course of the speech he told
-Jurgis all of his family history.  His big brother Charlie was in
-love with the guileless maiden who played the part of "Little
-Bright-Eyes" in "The Kaliph of Kamskatka." He had been on the
-verge of marrying her once, only "the guv'ner" had sworn to
-disinherit him, and had presented him with a sum that would
-stagger the imagination, and that had staggered the virtue of
-"Little Bright-Eyes." Now Charlie had got leave from college,
-and had gone away in his automobile on the next best thing to a
-honeymoon.  "The guv'ner" had made threats to disinherit another
-of his children also, sister Gwendolen, who had married an
-Italian marquis with a string of titles and a dueling record. 
-They lived in his chateau, or rather had, until he had taken to
-firing the breakfast dishes at her; then she had cabled for help,
-and the old gentleman had gone over to find out what were his
-Grace's terms.  So they had left Freddie all alone, and he with
-less than two thousand dollars in his pocket.  Freddie was up in
-arms and meant serious business, as they would find in the
-end--if there was no other way of bringing them to terms he would
-have his "Kittens" wire that she was about to marry him, and see
-what happened then.
-
-So the cheerful youngster rattled on, until he was tired out.
-He smiled his sweetest smile at Jurgis, and then he closed his eyes,
-sleepily.  Then he opened them again, and smiled once more, and
-finally closed them and forgot to open them.
-
-For several minutes Jurgis sat perfectly motionless, watching
-him, and reveling in the strange sensation of the champagne. 
-Once he stirred, and the dog growled; after that he sat almost
-holding his breath--until after a while the door of the room
-opened softly, and the butler came in.
-
-He walked toward Jurgis upon tiptoe, scowling at him; and Jurgis
-rose up, and retreated, scowling back.  So until he was against
-the wall, and then the butler came close, and pointed toward the
-door.  "Get out of here!" he whispered.
-
-Jurgis hesitated, giving a glance at Freddie, who was snoring
-softly.  "If you do, you son of a--" hissed the butler, "I'll
-mash in your face for you before you get out of here!"
-
-And Jurgis wavered but an instant more.  He saw "Admiral Dewey"
-coming up behind the man and growling softly, to back up his
-threats.  Then he surrendered and started toward the door.
-
-They went out without a sound, and down the great echoing
-staircase, and through the dark hall.  At the front door he
-paused, and the butler strode close to him.
-
-"Hold up your hands," he snarled.  Jurgis took a step back,
-clinching his one well fist.
-
-"What for?" he cried; and then understanding that the fellow
-proposed to search him, he answered, "I'll see you in hell
-first."
-
-"Do you want to go to jail?" demanded the butler, menacingly. 
-"I'll have the police--"
-
-"Have 'em!" roared Jurgis, with fierce passion.  "But you won't
-put your hands on me till you do!  I haven't touched anything in
-your damned house, and I'll not have you touch me!"
-
-So the butler, who was terrified lest his young master should
-waken, stepped suddenly to the door, and opened it.  "Get out of
-here!" he said; and then as Jurgis passed through the opening, he
-gave him a ferocious kick that sent him down the great stone
-steps at a run, and landed him sprawling in the snow at the
-bottom.   
-
-
-Chapter 25
-
-
-Jurgis got up, wild with rage, but the door was shut and the
-great castle was dark and impregnable.  Then the icy teeth of the
-blast bit into him, and he turned and went away at a run.
-
-When he stopped again it was because he was coming to frequented
-streets and did not wish to attract attention.  In spite of that
-last humiliation, his heart was thumping fast with triumph. 
-He had come out ahead on that deal!  He put his hand into his
-trousers' pocket every now and then, to make sure that the
-precious hundred-dollar bill was still there.
-
-Yet he was in a plight--a curious and even dreadful plight, when
-he came to realize it.  He had not a single cent but that one
-bill!  And he had to find some shelter that night he had to
-change it!
-
-Jurgis spent half an hour walking and debating the problem. 
-There was no one he could go to for help--he had to manage it all
-alone.  To get it changed in a lodging-house would be to take his
-life in his hands--he would almost certainly be robbed, and
-perhaps murdered, before morning.  He might go to some hotel or  
-railroad depot and ask to have it changed; but what would they
-think, seeing a "bum" like him with a hundred dollars?  He would
-probably be arrested if he tried it; and what story could he
-tell?  On the morrow Freddie Jones would discover his loss,
-and there would be a hunt for him, and he would lose his money.
-The only other plan he could think of was to try in a saloon. 
-He might pay them to change it, if it could not be done otherwise.
-
-He began peering into places as he walked; he passed several as
-being too crowded--then finally, chancing upon one where the
-bartender was all alone, he gripped his hands in sudden
-resolution and went in.
-
-"Can you change me a hundred-dollar bill?" he demanded.
-
-The bartender was a big, husky fellow, with the jaw of a prize
-fighter, and a three weeks' stubble of hair upon it.  He stared
-at Jurgis.  "What's that youse say?" he demanded.
-
-"I said, could you change me a hundred-dollar bill?"
-
-"Where'd youse get it?" he inquired incredulously.
-
-"Never mind," said Jurgis; "I've got it, and I want it changed. 
-I'll pay you if you'll do it."
-
-The other stared at him hard.  "Lemme see it," he said.
-
-"Will you change it?" Jurgis demanded, gripping it tightly in his
-pocket.
-
-"How the hell can I know if it's good or not?" retorted the
-bartender.  "Whatcher take me for, hey?"
-
-Then Jurgis slowly and warily approached him; he took out the
-bill, and fumbled it for a moment, while the man stared at him
-with hostile eyes across the counter.  Then finally he handed it
-over.
-
-The other took it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it
-between his fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it
-over, and upside down, and edgeways.  It was new and rather
-stiff, and that made him dubious.  Jurgis was watching him like a
-cat all the time.
-
-"Humph," he said, finally, and gazed at the stranger, sizing him
-up--a ragged, ill-smelling tramp, with no overcoat and one arm in
-a sling--and a hundred-dollar bill!  "Want to buy anything?" he
-demanded.
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "I'll take a glass of beer."
-
-"All right," said the other, "I'll change it." And he put the
-bill in his pocket, and poured Jurgis out a glass of beer, 
-and set it on the counter.  Then he turned to the cash register, 
-and punched up five cents, and began to pull money out of the drawer. 
-Finally, he faced Jurgis, counting it out--two dimes, a quarter,
-and fifty cents.  "There," he said.
-
-For a second Jurgis waited, expecting to see him turn again.  "My
-ninety-nine dollars," he said.
-
-"What ninety-nine dollars?" demanded the bartender.
-
-"My change!" he cried--"the rest of my hundred!"
-
-"Go on," said the bartender, "you're nutty!"
-
-And Jurgis stared at him with wild eyes.  For an instant horror
-reigned in him--black, paralyzing, awful horror, clutching him at
-the heart; and then came rage, in surging, blinding floods--
-he screamed aloud, and seized the glass and hurled it at the other's
-head.  The man ducked, and it missed him by half an inch; he rose
-again and faced Jurgis, who was vaulting over the bar with his
-one well arm, and dealt him a smashing blow in the face, hurling
-him backward upon the floor.  Then, as Jurgis scrambled to his
-feet again and started round the counter after him, he shouted at
-the top of his voice, "Help!  help!"
-
-Jurgis seized a bottle off the counter as he ran; and as the
-bartender made a leap he hurled the missile at him with all his
-force.  It just grazed his head, and shivered into a thousand
-pieces against the post of the door.  Then Jurgis started back,
-rushing at the man again in the middle of the room.  This time,
-in his blind frenzy, he came without a bottle, and that was all
-the bartender wanted--he met him halfway and floored him with a
-sledgehammer drive between the eyes.  An instant later the screen
-doors flew open, and two men rushed in--just as Jurgis was
-getting to his feet again, foaming at the mouth with rage, 
-and trying to tear his broken arm out of its bandages.
-
-"Look out!" shouted the bartender.  "He's got a knife!" Then,
-seeing that the two were disposed to join the fray, he made
-another rush at Jurgis, and knocked aside his feeble defense and
-sent him tumbling again; and the three flung themselves upon him,
-rolling and kicking about the place.
-
-A second later a policeman dashed in, and the bartender yelled
-once more--"Look out for his knife!" Jurgis had fought himself
-half to his knees, when the policeman made a leap at him, and
-cracked him across the face with his club.  Though the blow
-staggered him, the wild-beast frenzy still blazed in him, and he
-got to his feet, lunging into the air.  Then again the club
-descended, full upon his head, and he dropped like a log to the
-floor.  
-
-The policeman crouched over him, clutching his stick, waiting for
-him to try to rise again; and meantime the barkeeper got up, and
-put his hand to his head.  "Christ!" he said, "I thought I was
-done for that time.  Did he cut me?"
-
-"Don't see anything, Jake," said the policeman.  "What's the
-matter with him?"
-
-"Just crazy drunk," said the other.  "A lame duck, too--but he
-'most got me under the bar.  Youse had better call the wagon,
-Billy."
-
-"No," said the officer.  "He's got no more fight in him, I
-guess--and he's only got a block to go." He twisted his hand in
-Jurgis's collar and jerked at him.  "Git up here, you!" he
-commanded.
-
-But Jurgis did not move, and the bartender went behind the bar,
-and after stowing the hundred-dollar bill away in a safe hiding
-place, came and poured a glass of water over Jurgis.  Then, as
-the latter began to moan feebly, the policeman got him to his
-feet and dragged him out of the place.  The station house was
-just around the corner, and so in a few minutes Jurgis was in a
-cell.
-
-He spent half the night lying unconscious, and the balance
-moaning in torment, with a blinding headache and a racking
-thirst.  Now and then he cried aloud for a drink of water,
-but there was no one to hear him.  There were others in that same
-station house with split heads and a fever; there were hundreds
-of them in the great city, and tens of thousands of them in the
-great land, and there was no one to hear any of them.
-
-In the morning Jurgis was given a cup of water and a piece of
-bread, and then hustled into a patrol wagon and driven to the
-nearest police court.  He sat in the pen with a score of others
-until his turn came.
-
-The bartender--who proved to be a well-known bruiser--was called
-to the stand, He took the oath and told his story.  The prisoner
-had come into his saloon after midnight, fighting drunk, and had
-ordered a glass of beer and tendered a dollar bill in payment. 
-He had been given ninety-five cents' change, and had demanded
-ninety-nine dollars more, and before the plaintiff could even
-answer had hurled the glass at him and then attacked him with a
-bottle of bitters, and nearly wrecked the place.
-
-Then the prisoner was sworn--a forlorn object, haggard and
-unshorn, with an arm done up in a filthy bandage, a cheek and
-head cut, and bloody, and one eye purplish black and entirely
-closed.  "What have you to say for yourself?" queried the
-magistrate.
-
-"Your Honor," said Jurgis, "I went into his place and asked the
-man if he could change me a hundred-dollar bill.  And he said he
-would if I bought a drink.  I gave him the bill and then he
-wouldn't give me the change."
-
-The magistrate was staring at him in perplexity.  "You gave him a
-hundred-dollar bill!" he exclaimed.
-
-"Yes, your Honor," said Jurgis.
-
-"Where did you get it?"
-
-"A man gave it to me, your Honor."
-
-"A man?  What man, and what for?"
-
-"A young man I met upon the street, your Honor.  I had been
-begging."
-
-There was a titter in the courtroom; the officer who was holding
-Jurgis put up his hand to hide a smile, and the magistrate smiled
-without trying to hide it.  "It's true, your Honor!" cried
-Jurgis, passionately.
-
-"You had been drinking as well as begging last night, had you
-not?" inquired the magistrate.  "No, your Honor--" protested
-Jurgis.  "I--"
-
-"You had not had anything to drink?"
-
-"Why, yes, your Honor, I had--"
-
-"What did you have?"
-
-"I had a bottle of something--I don't know what it was--something
-that burned--"
-
-There was again a laugh round the courtroom, stopping suddenly as
-the magistrate looked up and frowned.  "Have you ever been
-arrested before?" he asked abruptly.
-
-The question took Jurgis aback.  "I--I--" he stammered.
-
-"Tell me the truth, now!" commanded the other, sternly.
-
-"Yes, your Honor," said Jurgis.
-
-"How often?"
-
-"Only once, your Honor."
-
-"What for?"
-
-"For knocking down my boss, your Honor.  I was working in the
-stockyards, and he--"
-
-"I see," said his Honor; "I guess that will do.  You ought to
-stop drinking if you can't control yourself.  Ten days and costs. 
-Next case."
-
-Jurgis gave vent to a cry of dismay, cut off suddenly by the
-policeman, who seized him by the collar.  He was jerked out of
-the way, into a room with the convicted prisoners, where he sat
-and wept like a child in his impotent rage.  It seemed monstrous
-to him that policemen and judges should esteem his word as
-nothing in comparison with the bartender's--poor Jurgis could not
-know that the owner of the saloon paid five dollars each week to
-the policeman alone for Sunday privileges and general favors--
-nor that the pugilist bartender was one of the most trusted henchmen
-of the Democratic leader of the district, and had helped only a
-few months before to hustle out a record-breaking vote as a
-testimonial to the magistrate, who had been made the target of
-odious kid-gloved reformers.
-
-Jurgis was driven out to the Bridewell for the second time.  In
-his tumbling around he had hurt his arm again, and so could not
-work, but had to be attended by the physician.  Also his head and
-his eye had to be tied up--and so he was a pretty-looking object
-when, the second day after his arrival, he went out into the
-exercise court and encountered--Jack Duane!
-
-The young fellow was so glad to see Jurgis that he almost hugged
-him.  "By God, if it isn't 'the Stinker'!" he cried.  "And what
-is it--have you been through a sausage machine?"
-
-"No," said Jurgis, "but I've been in a railroad wreck and a
-fight." And then, while some of the other prisoners gathered
-round he told his wild story; most of them were incredulous, 
-but Duane knew that Jurgis could never have made up such a yarn 
-as that.
-
-"Hard luck, old man," he said, when they were alone; "but maybe
-it's taught you a lesson."
-
-"I've learned some things since I saw you last," said Jurgis
-mournfully.  Then he explained how he had spent the last summer,
-"hoboing it," as the phrase was.  "And you?" he asked finally. 
-"Have you been here ever since?"
-
-"Lord, no!" said the other.  "I only came in the day before
-yesterday.  It's the second time they've sent me up on a
-trumped-up charge--I've had hard luck and can't pay them what
-they want.  Why don't you quit Chicago with me, Jurgis?"
-
-"I've no place to go," said Jurgis, sadly.
-
-"Neither have I," replied the other, laughing lightly.  "But
-we'll wait till we get out and see."
-
-In the Bridewell Jurgis met few who had been there the last time,
-but he met scores of others, old and young, of exactly the same
-sort.  It was like breakers upon a beach; there was new water,
-but the wave looked just the same.  He strolled about and talked
-with them, and the biggest of them told tales of their prowess,
-while those who were weaker, or younger and inexperienced,
-gathered round and listened in admiring silence.  The last time
-he was there, Jurgis had thought of little but his family;
-but now he was free to listen to these men, and to realize that he
-was one of them--that their point of view was his point of view,
-and that the way they kept themselves alive in the world was the
-way he meant to do it in the future.
-
-And so, when he was turned out of prison again, without a penny
-in his pocket, he went straight to Jack Duane.  He went full of
-humility and gratitude; for Duane was a gentleman, and a man with
-a profession--and it was remarkable that he should be willing to
-throw in his lot with a humble workingman, one who had even been
-a beggar and a tramp.  Jurgis could not see what help he could be
-to him; but he did not understand that a man like himself--who
-could be trusted to stand by any one who was kind to him--was as
-rare among criminals as among any other class of men.
-
-The address Jurgis had was a garret room in the Ghetto district,
-the home of a pretty little French girl, Duane's mistress, who
-sewed all day, and eked out her living by prostitution.  He had
-gone elsewhere, she told Jurgis--he was afraid to stay there now,
-on account of the police.  The new address was a cellar dive,
-whose proprietor said that he had never heard of Duane; but after
-he had put Jurgis through a catechism he showed him a back stairs
-which led to a "fence" in the rear of a pawnbroker's shop, and
-thence to a number of assignation rooms, in one of which Duane
-was hiding.
-
-Duane was glad to see him; he was without a cent of money,
-he said, and had been waiting for Jurgis to help him get some. 
-He explained his plan--in fact he spent the day in laying bare to
-his friend the criminal world of the city, and in showing him how
-he might earn himself a living in it.  That winter he would have
-a hard time, on account of his arm, and because of an unwonted
-fit of activity of the police; but so long as he was unknown to
-them he would be safe if he were careful.  Here at "Papa"
-Hanson's (so they called the old man who kept the dive) he might
-rest at ease, for "Papa" Hanson was "square"--would stand by him
-so long as he paid, and gave him an hour's notice if there were
-to be a police raid.  Also Rosensteg, the pawnbroker, would buy
-anything he had for a third of its value, and guarantee to keep
-it hidden for a year.
-
-There was an oil stove in the little cupboard of a room, and they
-had some supper; and then about eleven o'clock at night they
-sallied forth together, by a rear entrance to the place, Duane
-armed with a slingshot.  They came to a residence district, 
-and he sprang up a lamppost and blew out the light, and then the two
-dodged into the shelter of an area step and hid in silence.
-
-Pretty soon a man came by, a workingman--and they let him go. 
-Then after a long interval came the heavy tread of a policeman,
-and they held their breath till he was gone.  Though half-frozen,
-they waited a full quarter of an hour after that--and then again
-came footsteps, walking briskly.  Duane nudged Jurgis, and the
-instant the man had passed they rose up.  Duane stole out as
-silently as a shadow, and a second later Jurgis heard a thud and
-a stifled cry.  He was only a couple of feet behind, and he
-leaped to stop the man's mouth, while Duane held him fast by the
-arms, as they had agreed.  But the man was limp and showed a
-tendency to fall, and so Jurgis had only to hold him by the
-collar, while the other, with swift fingers, went through his
-pockets--ripping open, first his overcoat, and then his coat,
-and then his vest, searching inside and outside, and transferring the
-contents into his own pockets.  At last, after feeling of the
-man's fingers and in his necktie, Duane whispered, "That's all!"
-and they dragged him to the area and dropped him in.  Then Jurgis
-went one way and his friend the other, walking briskly.
-
-The latter arrived first, and Jurgis found him examining the
-"swag." There was a gold watch, for one thing, with a chain and
-locket; there was a silver pencil, and a matchbox, and a handful
-of small change, and finally a cardcase.  This last Duane opened
-feverishly--there were letters and checks, and two
-theater-tickets, and at last, in the back part, a wad of bills. 
-He counted them--there was a twenty, five tens, four fives, and
-three ones.  Duane drew a long breath.  "That lets us out!" he
-said.
-
-After further examination, they burned the cardcase and its
-contents, all but the bills, and likewise the picture of a little
-girl in the locket.  Then Duane took the watch and trinkets
-downstairs, and came back with sixteen dollars.  "The old
-scoundrel said the case was filled," he said.  "It's a lie, but
-he knows I want the money."
-
-They divided up the spoils, and Jurgis got as his share
-fifty-five dollars and some change.  He protested that it was too
-much, but the other had agreed to divide even.  That was a good
-haul, he said, better than average.
-
-When they got up in the morning, Jurgis was sent out to buy a
-paper; one of the pleasures of committing a crime was the reading
-about it afterward.  "I had a pal that always did it," Duane
-remarked, laughing--"until one day he read that he had left three
-thousand dollars in a lower inside pocket of his party's vest!"
-
-There was a half-column account of the robbery--it was evident
-that a gang was operating in the neighborhood, said the paper,
-for it was the third within a week, and the police were
-apparently powerless.  The victim was an insurance agent, and he
-had lost a hundred and ten dollars that did not belong to him. 
-He had chanced to have his name marked on his shirt, otherwise he
-would not have been identified yet.  His assailant had hit him
-too hard, and he was suffering from concussion of the brain; 
-and also he had been half-frozen when found, and would lose three
-fingers on his right hand.  The enterprising newspaper reporter
-had taken all this information to his family, and told how they
-had received it.
-
-Since it was Jurgis's first experience, these details naturally
-caused him some worriment; but the other laughed coolly--it was
-the way of the game, and there was no helping it.  Before long
-Jurgis would think no more of it than they did in the yards of
-knocking out a bullock.  "It's a case of us or the other fellow,
-and I say the other fellow, every time," he observed.
-
-"Still," said Jurgis, reflectively, "he never did us any harm."
-
-"He was doing it to somebody as hard as he could, you can be sure
-of that," said his friend.
-
-
-Duane had already explained to Jurgis that if a man of their
-trade were known he would have to work all the time to satisfy
-the demands of the police.  Therefore it would be better for
-Jurgis to stay in hiding and never be seen in public with his
-pal.  But Jurgis soon got very tired of staying in hiding.  In a
-couple of weeks he was feeling strong and beginning to use his
-arm, and then he could not stand it any longer.  Duane, who had
-done a job of some sort by himself, and made a truce with the
-powers, brought over Marie, his little French girl, to share with
-him; but even that did not avail for long, and in the end he had
-to give up arguing, and take Jurgis out and introduce him to the
-saloons and "sporting houses" where the big crooks and "holdup
-men" hung out.
-
-And so Jurgis got a glimpse of the high-class criminal world of
-Chicago.  The city, which was owned by an oligarchy of
-businessmen, being nominally ruled by the people, a huge army of
-graft was necessary for the purpose of effecting the transfer of
-power.  Twice a year, in the spring and fall elections, millions
-of dollars were furnished by the businessmen and expended by this
-army; meetings were held and clever speakers were hired, bands
-played and rockets sizzled, tons of documents and reservoirs of
-drinks were distributed, and tens of thousands of votes were
-bought for cash.  And this army of graft had, of course, to be
-maintained the year round.  The leaders and organizers were
-maintained by the businessmen directly--aldermen and legislators
-by means of bribes, party officials out of the campaign funds,
-lobbyists and corporation lawyers in the form of salaries,
-contractors by means of jobs, labor union leaders by subsidies,
-and newspaper proprietors and editors by advertisements.  The
-rank and file, however, were either foisted upon the city, or
-else lived off the population directly.  There was the police
-department, and the fire and water departments, and the whole
-balance of the civil list, from the meanest office boy to the
-head of a city department; and for the horde who could find no
-room in these, there was the world of vice and crime, there was
-license to seduce, to swindle and plunder and prey.  The law
-forbade Sunday drinking; and this had delivered the saloon-
-keepers into the hands of the police, and made an alliance
-between them necessary.  The law forbade prostitution; and this
-had brought the "madames" into the combination.  It was the same
-with the gambling-house keeper and the poolroom man, and the same
-with any other man or woman who had a means of getting "graft,"
-and was willing to pay over a share of it: the green-goods man
-and the highwayman, the pickpocket and the sneak thief, and the
-receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated milk, of
-stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary
-tenements, the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the
-"pushcart man," the prize fighter and the professional slugger,
-the race-track "tout," the procurer, the white-slave agent, and
-the expert seducer of young girls.  All of these agencies of
-corruption were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood
-with the politician and the police; more often than not they were
-one and the same person,--the police captain would own the
-brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his
-headquarters in his saloon.  "Hinkydink" or "Bathhouse John," 
-or others of that ilk, were proprietors of the most notorious dives
-in Chicago, and also the "gray wolves" of the city council, 
-who gave away the streets of the city to the businessmen; and those
-who patronized their places were the gamblers and prize fighters
-who set the law at defiance, and the burglars and holdup men who
-kept the whole city in terror.  On election day all these powers
-of vice and crime were one power; they could tell within one per
-cent what the vote of their district would be, and they could
-change it at an hour's notice.
-
-A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the
-streets; and now suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had
-entered into a world where money and all the good things of life
-came freely.  He was introduced by his friend to an Irishman
-named "Buck" Halloran, who was a political "worker" and on the
-inside of things.  This man talked with Jurgis for a while, and
-then told him that he had a little plan by which a man who looked
-like a workingman might make some easy money; but it was a
-private affair, and had to be kept quiet.  Jurgis expressed
-himself as agreeable, and the other took him that afternoon
-(it was Saturday) to a place where city laborers were being paid off. 
-The paymaster sat in a little booth, with a pile of envelopes
-before him, and two policemen standing by.  Jurgis went,
-according to directions, and gave the name of "Michael
-O'Flaherty," and received an envelope, which he took around the
-corner and delivered to Halloran, who was waiting for him in a
-saloon.  Then he went again; and gave the name of "Johann
-Schmidt," and a third time, and give the name of "Serge
-Reminitsky." Halloran had quite a list of imaginary workingmen,
-and Jurgis got an envelope for each one.  For this work he
-received five dollars, and was told that he might have it every
-week, so long as he kept quiet.  As Jurgis was excellent at
-keeping quiet, he soon won the trust of "Buck" Halloran, and was
-introduced to others as a man who could be depended upon.
-
-This acquaintance was useful to him in another way, also before
-long Jurgis made his discovery of the meaning of "pull," and just
-why his boss, Connor, and also the pugilist bartender, had been
-able to send him to jail.  One night there was given a ball, the
-"benefit" of "One-eyed Larry," a lame man who played the violin
-in one of the big "high-class" houses of prostitution on Clark
-Street, and was a wag and a popular character on the "Levee."
-This ball was held in a big dance hall, and was one of the
-occasions when the city's powers of debauchery gave themselves up
-to madness.  Jurgis attended and got half insane with drink, 
-and began quarreling over a girl; his arm was pretty strong by then,
-and he set to work to clean out the place, and ended in a cell in
-the police station.  The police station being crowded to the
-doors, and stinking with "bums," Jurgis did not relish staying
-there to sleep off his liquor, and sent for Halloran, who called
-up the district leader and had Jurgis bailed out by telephone at
-four o'clock in the morning.  When he was arraigned that same
-morning, the district leader had already seen the clerk of the
-court and explained that Jurgis Rudkus was a decent fellow, who
-had been indiscreet; and so Jurgis was fined ten dollars and the
-fine was "suspended"--which meant that he did not have to pay for
-it, and never would have to pay it, unless somebody chose to
-bring it up against him in the future.
-
-Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according
-to an entirely different standard from that of the people of
-Packingtown; yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal
-less drinking than he had as a workingman.  He had not the same
-provocations of exhaustion and hopelessness; he had now something
-to work for, to struggle for.  He soon found that if he kept his
-wits about him, he would come upon new opportunities; and being
-naturally an active man, he not only kept sober himself, but
-helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal fonder of both
-wine and women than he.
-
-One thing led to another.  In the saloon where Jurgis met "Buck"
-Halloran he was sitting late one night with Duane, when a
-"country customer" (a buyer for an out-of-town merchant) came in,
-a little more than half "piped." There was no one else in the
-place but the bartender, and as the man went out again Jurgis and
-Duane followed him; he went round the corner, and in a dark place
-made by a combination of the elevated railroad and an unrented
-building, Jurgis leaped forward and shoved a revolver under his
-nose, while Duane, with his hat pulled over his eyes, went
-through the man's pockets with lightning fingers.  They got his
-watch and his "wad," and were round the corner again and into the
-saloon before he could shout more than once.  The bartender, to
-whom they had tipped the wink, had the cellar door open for them,
-and they vanished, making their way by a secret entrance to a
-brothel next door.  From the roof of this there was access to
-three similar places beyond.  By means of these passages the
-customers of any one place could be gotten out of the way, in
-case a falling out with the police chanced to lead to a raid; 
-and also it was necessary to have a way of getting a girl out of
-reach in case of an emergency.  Thousands of them came to Chicago
-answering advertisements for "servants" and "factory hands," and
-found themselves trapped by fake employment agencies, and locked
-up in a bawdyhouse.  It was generally enough to take all their
-clothes away from them; but sometimes they would have to be
-"doped" and kept prisoners for weeks; and meantime their parents
-might be telegraphing the police, and even coming on to see why
-nothing was done.  Occasionally there was no way of satisfying
-them but to let them search the place to which the girl had been
-traced.
-
-For his help in this little job, the bartender received twenty
-out of the hundred and thirty odd dollars that the pair secured;
-and naturally this put them on friendly terms with him, and a few
-days later he introduced them to a little "sheeny" named
-Goldberger, one of the "runners" of the "sporting house" where
-they had been hidden.  After a few drinks Goldberger began, with
-some hesitation, to narrate how he had had a quarrel over his
-best girl with a professional "cardsharp," who had hit him in the
-jaw.  The fellow was a stranger in Chicago, and if he was found
-some night with his head cracked there would be no one to care
-very much.  Jurgis, who by this time would cheerfully have
-cracked the heads of all the gamblers in Chicago, inquired what
-would be coming to him; at which the Jew became still more
-confidential, and said that he had some tips on the New Orleans
-races, which he got direct from the police captain of the
-district, whom he had got out of a bad scrape, and who "stood in"
-with a big syndicate of horse owners.  Duane took all this in at
-once, but Jurgis had to have the whole race-track situation
-explained to him before he realized the importance of such an
-opportunity.
-
-There was the gigantic Racing Trust.  It owned the legislatures
-in every state in which it did business; it even owned some of
-the big newspapers, and made public opinion--there was no power
-in the land that could oppose it unless, perhaps, it were the
-Poolroom Trust.  It built magnificent racing parks all over the
-country, and by means of enormous purses it lured the people to
-come, and then it organized a gigantic shell game, whereby it
-plundered them of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. 
-Horse racing had once been a sport, but nowadays it was a
-business; a horse could be "doped" and doctored, undertrained or
-overtrained; it could be made to fall at any moment--or its gait
-could be broken by lashing it with the whip, which all the
-spectators would take to be a desperate effort to keep it in the
-lead.  There were scores of such tricks; and sometimes it was the
-owners who played them and made fortunes, sometimes it was the
-jockeys and trainers, sometimes it was outsiders, who bribed
-them--but most of the time it was the chiefs of the trust.  Now
-for instance, they were having winter racing in New Orleans and a
-syndicate was laying out each day's program in advance, and its
-agents in all the Northern cities were "milking" the poolrooms. 
-The word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a
-little while before each race; and any man who could get the
-secret had as good as a fortune.  If Jurgis did not believe it,
-he could try it, said the little Jew--let them meet at a certain
-house on the morrow and make a test.  Jurgis was willing, and so
-was Duane, and so they went to one of the high-class poolrooms
-where brokers and merchants gambled (with society women in a
-private room), and they put up ten dollars each upon a horse
-called "Black Beldame," a six to one shot, and won.  For a secret
-like that they would have done a good many sluggings--but the
-next day Goldberger informed them that the offending gambler had
-got wind of what was coming to him, and had skipped the town.
-
-
-There were ups and downs at the business; but there was always a
-living, inside of a jail, if not out of it.  Early in April the
-city elections were due, and that meant prosperity for all the
-powers of graft.  Jurgis, hanging round in dives and gambling
-houses and brothels, met with the heelers of both parties,
-and from their conversation he came to understand all the ins and
-outs of the game, and to hear of a number of ways in which he
-could make himself useful about election time.  "Buck" Halloran
-was a "Democrat," and so Jurgis became a Democrat also; but he
-was not a bitter one--the Republicans were good fellows, too,
-and were to have a pile of money in this next campaign.  At the last
-election the Republicans had paid four dollars a vote to the
-Democrats' three; and "Buck" Halloran sat one night playing cards
-with Jurgis and another man, who told how Halloran had been
-charged with the job voting a "bunch" of thirty-seven newly
-landed Italians, and how he, the narrator, had met the Republican
-worker who was after the very same gang, and how the three had
-effected a bargain, whereby the Italians were to vote half and
-half, for a glass of beer apiece, while the balance of the fund
-went to the conspirators!
-
-Not long after this, Jurgis, wearying of the risks and
-vicissitudes of miscellaneous crime, was moved to give up the
-career for that of a politician.  Just at this time there was a
-tremendous uproar being raised concerning the alliance between
-the criminals and the police.  For the criminal graft was one in
-which the businessmen had no direct part--it was what is called a
-"side line," carried by the police.  "Wide open" gambling and
-debauchery made the city pleasing to "trade," but burglaries and
-holdups did not.  One night it chanced that while Jack Duane was
-drilling a safe in a clothing store he was caught red-handed by 
-the night watchman, and turned over to a policeman, who chanced
-to know him well, and who took the responsibility of letting him
-make his escape.  Such a howl from the newspapers followed this
-that Duane was slated for sacrifice, and barely got out of town
-in time.  And just at that juncture it happened that Jurgis was
-introduced to a man named Harper whom he recognized as the night
-watchman at Brown's, who had been instrumental in making him an
-American citizen, the first year of his arrival at the yards. 
-The other was interested in the coincidence, but did not remember
-Jurgis--he had handled too many "green ones" in his time, he
-said.  He sat in a dance hall with Jurgis and Halloran until one
-or two in the morning, exchanging experiences.  He had a long
-story to tell of his quarrel with the superintendent of his
-department, and how he was now a plain workingman, and a good
-union man as well.  It was not until some months afterward that
-Jurgis understood that the quarrel with the superintendent had
-been prearranged, and that Harper was in reality drawing a salary
-of twenty dollars a week from the packers for an inside report of
-his union's secret proceedings.  The yards were seething with
-agitation just then, said the man, speaking as a unionist.  The
-people of Packingtown had borne about all that they would bear,
-and it looked as if a strike might begin any week.
-
-After this talk the man made inquiries concerning Jurgis, and a
-couple of days later he came to him with an interesting
-proposition.  He was not absolutely certain, he said, but he
-thought that he could get him a regular salary if he would come
-to Packingtown and do as he was told, and keep his mouth shut. 
-Harper--"Bush" Harper, he was called--was a right-hand man of
-Mike Scully, the Democratic boss of the stockyards; and in the
-coming election there was a peculiar situation.  There had come
-to Scully a proposition to nominate a certain rich brewer who
-lived upon a swell boulevard that skirted the district, and who
-coveted the big badge and the "honorable" of an alderman.  The
-brewer was a Jew, and had no brains, but he was harmless, and
-would put up a rare campaign fund.  Scully had accepted the
-offer, and then gone to the Republicans with a proposition.  He
-was not sure that he could manage the "sheeny," and he did not
-mean to take any chances with his district; let the Republicans
-nominate a certain obscure but amiable friend of Scully's, who
-was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an Ashland Avenue
-saloon, and he, Scully, would elect him with the "sheeny's"
-money, and the Republicans might have the glory, which was more
-than they would get otherwise.  In return for this the
-Republicans would agree to put up no candidate the following
-year, when Scully himself came up for reelection as the other
-alderman from the ward.  To this the Republicans had assented 
-at once; but the hell of it was--so Harper explained--that the
-Republicans were all of them fools--a man had to be a fool to be
-a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was king.  And they
-didn't know how to work, and of course it would not do for the
-Democratic workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League,
-to support the Republican openly.  The difficulty would not have
-been so great except for another fact--there had been a curious
-development in stockyards politics in the last year or two, a new
-party having leaped into being.  They were the Socialists; and it
-was a devil of a mess, said "Bush" Harper.  The one image which
-the word "Socialist" brought to Jurgis was of poor little
-Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself one, and would go out
-with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and shout himself
-hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights.  Tamoszius had tried
-to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was
-not of an imaginative turn, had never quire got it straight; at
-present he was content with his companion's explanation that the
-Socialists were the enemies of American institutions--could not
-be bought, and would not combine or make any sort of a "dicker."
-Mike Scully was very much worried over the opportunity which his
-last deal gave to them--the stockyards Democrats were furious at
-the idea of a rich capitalist for their candidate, and while they
-were changing they might possibly conclude that a Socialist
-firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.  And so right here
-was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in the world,
-explained "Bush" Harper; he had been a union man, and he was
-known in the yards as a workingman; he must have hundreds of
-acquaintances, and as he had never talked politics with them he
-might come out as a Republican now without exciting the least
-suspicion.  There were barrels of money for the use of those who
-could deliver the goods; and Jurgis might count upon Mike Scully,
-who had never yet gone back on a friend.  Just what could he do? 
-Jurgis asked, in some perplexity, and the other explained in
-detail.  To begin with, he would have to go to the yards and
-work, and he mightn't relish that; but he would have what he
-earned, as well as the rest that came to him.  He would get
-active in the union again, and perhaps try to get an office, as
-he, Harper, had; he would tell all his friends the good points of
-Doyle, the Republican nominee, and the bad ones of the "sheeny";
-and then Scully would furnish a meeting place, and he would start
-the "Young Men's Republican Association," or something of that
-sort, and have the rich brewer's best beer by the hogshead, and
-fireworks and speeches, just like the War Whoop League.  Surely
-Jurgis must know hundreds of men who would like that sort of fun;
-and there would be the regular Republican leaders and workers to
-help him out, and they would deliver a big enough majority on
-election day.
-
-When he had heard all this explanation to the end, Jurgis
-demanded: "But how can I get a job in Packingtown?  I'm
-blacklisted."
-
-At which "Bush" Harper laughed.  "I'll attend to that all right,"
-he said.
-
-And the other replied, "It's a go, then; I'm your man." So Jurgis
-went out to the stockyards again, and was introduced to the
-political lord of the district, the boss of Chicago's mayor.  It
-was Scully who owned the brickyards and the dump and the ice
-pond--though Jurgis did not know it.  It was Scully who was to
-blame for the unpaved street in which Jurgis's child had been
-drowned; it was Scully who had put into office the magistrate who
-had first sent Jurgis to jail; it was Scully who was principal
-stockholder in the company which had sold him the ramshackle
-tenement, and then robbed him of it.  But Jurgis knew none of
-these things--any more than he knew that Scully was but a tool
-and puppet of the packers.  To him Scully was a mighty power, the
-"biggest" man he had ever met.
-
-He was a little, dried-up Irishman, whose hands shook.  He had a
-brief talk with his visitor, watching him with his ratlike eyes,
-and making up his mind about him; and then he gave him a note to
-Mr. Harmon, one of the head managers of Durham's--
-
-"The bearer, Jurgis Rudkus, is a particular friend of mine, and I
-would like you to find him a good place, for important reasons. 
-He was once indiscreet, but you will perhaps be so good as to
-overlook that."
-
-Mr. Harmon looked up inquiringly when he read this.  "What does
-he mean by 'indiscreet'?" he asked.
-
-"I was blacklisted, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-At which the other frowned.  "Blacklisted?" he said.  "How do you
-mean?" And Jurgis turned red with embarrassment.
-
-He had forgotten that a blacklist did not exist.  "I--that is--I
-had difficulty in getting a place," he stammered.
-
-"What was the matter?"
-
-"I got into a quarrel with a foreman--not my own boss, sir--and
-struck him."
-
-"I see," said the other, and meditated for a few moments.  "What
-do you wish to do?" he asked.
-
-"Anything, sir," said Jurgis--"only I had a broken arm this
-winter, and so I have to be careful."
-
-"How would it suit you to be a night watchman?"
-
-"That wouldn't do, sir.  I have to be among the men at night."
-
-"I see--politics.  Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?"
-
-"Yes, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, "Take this man to
-Pat Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow."
-
-And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where,
-in the days gone by, he had come begging for a job.  Now he
-walked jauntily, and smiled to himself, seeing the frown that
-came to the boss's face as the timekeeper said, "Mr. Harmon says
-to put this man on." It would overcrowd his department and spoil
-the record he was trying to make--but he said not a word except
-"All right."
-
-And so Jurgis became a workingman once more; and straightway he
-sought out his old friends, and joined the union, and began to
-"root" for "Scotty" Doyle.  Doyle had done him a good turn once,
-he explained, and was really a bully chap; Doyle was a workingman
-himself, and would represent the workingmen--why did they want to
-vote for a millionaire "sheeny," and what the hell had Mike
-Scully ever done for them that they should back his candidates
-all the time?  And meantime Scully had given Jurgis a note to the
-Republican leader of the ward, and he had gone there and met the
-crowd he was to work with.  Already they had hired a big hall,
-with some of the brewer's money, and every night Jurgis brought
-in a dozen new members of the "Doyle Republican Association."
-Pretty soon they had a grand opening night; and there was a brass
-band, which marched through the streets, and fireworks and bombs
-and red lights in front of the hall; and there was an enormous
-crowd, with two overflow meetings--so that the pale and trembling
-candidate had to recite three times over the little speech which
-one of Scully's henchmen had written, and which he had been a
-month learning by heart.  Best of all, the famous and eloquent
-Senator Spareshanks, presidential candidate, rode out in an
-automobile to discuss the sacred privileges of American
-citizenship, and protection and prosperity for the American
-workingman.  His inspiriting address was quoted to the extent of
-half a column in all the morning newspapers, which also said that
-it could be stated upon excellent authority that the unexpected
-popularity developed by Doyle, the Republican candidate for
-alderman, was giving great anxiety to Mr. Scully, the chairman of
-the Democratic City Committee.
-
-The chairman was still more worried when the monster torchlight
-procession came off, with the members of the Doyle Republican
-Association all in red capes and hats, and free beer for every
-voter in the ward--the best beer ever given away in a political
-campaign, as the whole electorate testified.  During this parade,
-and at innumerable cart-tail meetings as well, Jurgis labored
-tirelessly.  He did not make any speeches--there were lawyers and
-other experts for that--but he helped to manage things;
-distributing notices and posting placards and bringing out the
-crowds; and when the show was on he attended to the fireworks and
-the beer.  Thus in the course of the campaign he handled many
-hundreds of dollars of the Hebrew brewer's money, administering
-it with naive and touching fidelity.  Toward the end, however, 
-he learned that he was regarded with hatred by the rest of the
-"boys," because he compelled them either to make a poorer showing
-than he or to do without their share of the pie.  After that
-Jurgis did his best to please them, and to make up for the time
-he had lost before he discovered the extra bungholes of the
-campaign barrel.
-
-He pleased Mike Scully, also.  On election morning he was out at
-four o'clock, "getting out the vote"; he had a two-horse carriage
-to ride in, and he went from house to house for his friends, and
-escorted them in triumph to the polls.  He voted half a dozen
-times himself, and voted some of his friends as often; he brought
-bunch after bunch of the newest foreigners--Lithuanians, Poles,
-Bohemians, Slovaks--and when he had put them through the mill he
-turned them over to another man to take to the next polling
-place.  When Jurgis first set out, the captain of the precinct
-gave him a hundred dollars, and three times in the course of the
-day he came for another hundred, and not more than twenty-five
-out of each lot got stuck in his own pocket.  The balance all
-went for actual votes, and on a day of Democratic landslides they
-elected "Scotty" Doyle, the ex-tenpin setter, by nearly a
-thousand plurality--and beginning at five o'clock in the
-afternoon, and ending at three the next morning, Jurgis treated
-himself to a most unholy and horrible "jag." Nearly every one
-else in Packingtown did the same, however, for there was
-universal exultation over this triumph of popular government,
-this crushing defeat of an arrogant plutocrat by the power of the
-common people.
-
-
-
-Chapter 26
-
-
-After the elections Jurgis stayed on in Packingtown and kept his
-job.  The agitation to break up the police protection of
-criminals was continuing, and it seemed to him best to "lay low"
-for the present.  He had nearly three hundred dollars in the
-bank, and might have considered himself entitled to a vacation;
-but he had an easy job, and force of habit kept him at it. 
-Besides, Mike Scully, whom he consulted, advised him that
-something might "turn up" before long.
-
-Jurgis got himself a place in a boardinghouse with some congenial
-friends.  He had already inquired of Aniele, and learned that
-Elzbieta and her family had gone downtown, and so he gave no
-further thought to them.  He went with a new set, now, young
-unmarried fellows who were "sporty." Jurgis had long ago cast off
-his fertilizer clothing, and since going into politics he had
-donned a linen collar and a greasy red necktie.  He had some
-reason for thinking of his dress, for he was making about eleven
-dollars a week, and two-thirds of it he might spend upon his
-pleasures without ever touching his savings.
-
-Sometimes he would ride down-town with a party of friends to the
-cheap theaters and the music halls and other haunts with which
-they were familiar.  Many of the saloons in Packingtown had pool
-tables, and some of them bowling alleys, by means of which he
-could spend his evenings in petty gambling.  Also, there were
-cards and dice.  One time Jurgis got into a game on a Saturday
-night and won prodigiously, and because he was a man of spirit he
-stayed in with the rest and the game continued until late Sunday
-afternoon, and by that time he was "out" over twenty dollars.  On
-Saturday nights, also, a number of balls were generally given in
-Packingtown; each man would bring his "girl" with him, paying
-half a dollar for a ticket, and several dollars additional for
-drinks in the course of the festivities, which continued until
-three or four o'clock in the morning, unless broken up by
-fighting.  During all this time the same man and woman would
-dance together, half-stupefied with sensuality and drink.
-
-Before long Jurgis discovered what Scully had meant by something
-"turning up." In May the agreement between the packers and the
-unions expired, and a new agreement had to be signed. 
-Negotiations were going on, and the yards were full of talk of a
-strike.  The old scale had dealt with the wages of the skilled
-men only; and of the members of the Meat Workers' Union about
-two-thirds were unskilled men.  In Chicago these latter were
-receiving, for the most part, eighteen and a half cents an hour,
-and the unions wished to make this the general wage for the next
-year.  It was not nearly so large a wage as it seemed--in the
-course of the negotiations the union officers examined time
-checks to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and they found that
-the highest wages paid had been fourteen dollars a week, and the
-lowest two dollars and five cents, and the average of the whole,
-six dollars and sixty-five cents.  And six dollars and sixty-five
-cents was hardly too much for a man to keep a family on, 
-considering the fact that the price of dressed meat had increased
-nearly fifty per cent in the last five years, while the price of
-"beef on the hoof" had decreased as much, it would have seemed
-that the packers ought to be able to pay it; but the packers were
-unwilling to pay it--they rejected the union demand, and to show
-what their purpose was, a week or two after the agreement expired
-they put down the wages of about a thousand men to sixteen and a
-half cents, and it was said that old man Jones had vowed he would
-put them to fifteen before he got through.  There were a million
-and a half of men in the country looking for work, a hundred
-thousand of them right in Chicago; and were the packers to let
-the union stewards march into their places and bind them to a
-contract that would lose them several thousand dollars a day for
-a year?  Not much!
-
-All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted
-to a referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. 
-It was the same in all the packing house cities; and suddenly the
-newspapers and public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a
-meat famine.  All sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made,
-but the packers were obdurate; and all the while they were
-reducing wages, and heading off shipments of cattle, and rushing
-in wagonloads of mattresses and cots.  So the men boiled over,
-and one night telegrams went out from the union headquarters to
-all the big packing centers--to St.  Paul, South Omaha, Sioux
-City, St.  Joseph, Kansas City, East St.  Louis, and New
-York--and the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand
-men drew off their working clothes and marched out of the
-factories, and the great "Beef Strike" was on.
-
-Jurgis went to his dinner, and afterward he walked over to see
-Mike Scully, who lived in a fine house, upon a street which had
-been decently paved and lighted for his especial benefit.  Scully
-had gone into semiretirement, and looked nervous and worried. 
-"What do you want?" he demanded, when he saw Jurgis.
-
-"I came to see if maybe you could get me a place during the
-strike," the other replied.
-
-And Scully knit his brows and eyed him narrowly.  In that
-morning's papers Jurgis had read a fierce denunciation of the
-packers by Scully, who had declared that if they did not treat
-their people better the city authorities would end the matter by
-tearing down their plants.  Now, therefore, Jurgis was not a
-little taken aback when the other demanded suddenly, "See here,
-Rudkus, why don't you stick by your job?"
-
-Jurgis started.  "Work as a scab?" he cried.
-
-"Why not?" demanded Scully.  "What's that to you?"
-
-"But--but--" stammered Jurgis.  He had somehow taken it for
-granted that he should go out with his union.  "The packers need
-good men, and need them bad," continued the other, "and they'll
-treat a man right that stands by them.  Why don't you take your
-chance and fix yourself?"
-
-"But," said Jurgis, "how could I ever be of any use to you--in
-politics?"
-
-"You couldn't be it anyhow," said Scully, abruptly.
-
-"Why not?" asked Jurgis.
-
-"Hell, man!" cried the other.  "Don't you know you're a
-Republican?  And do you think I'm always going to elect
-Republicans?  My brewer has found out already how we served him,
-and there is the deuce to pay."
-
-Jurgis looked dumfounded.  He had never thought of that aspect of
-it before.  "I could be a Democrat," he said.
-
-"Yes," responded the other, "but not right away; a man can't
-change his politics every day.  And besides, I don't need
-you--there'd be nothing for you to do.  And it's a long time to
-election day, anyhow; and what are you going to do meantime?"
-
-"I thought I could count on you," began Jurgis.
-
-"Yes," responded Scully, "so you could--I never yet went back on
-a friend.  But is it fair to leave the job I got you and come to
-me for another?  I have had a hundred fellows after me today,
-and what can I do?  I've put seventeen men on the city payroll to
-clean streets this one week, and do you think I can keep that up
-forever?  It wouldn't do for me to tell other men what I tell
-you, but you've been on the inside, and you ought to have sense
-enough to see for yourself.  What have you to gain by a strike?"
-
-"I hadn't thought," said Jurgis.
-
-"Exactly," said Scully, "but you'd better.  Take my word for it,
-the strike will be over in a few days, and the men will be
-beaten; and meantime what you can get out of it will belong to
-you.  Do you see?"
-
-And Jurgis saw.  He went back to the yards, and into the
-workroom.  The men had left a long line of hogs in various stages
-of preparation, and the foreman was directing the feeble efforts
-of a score or two of clerks and stenographers and office boys to
-finish up the job and get them into the chilling rooms.  Jurgis
-went straight up to him and announced, "I have come back to work,
-Mr. Murphy."
-
-The boss's face lighted up.  "Good man!" he cried.  "Come ahead!"
-
-"Just a moment," said Jurgis, checking his enthusiasm.  "I think
-I ought to get a little more wages."
-
-"Yes," replied the other, "of course.  What do you want?" 
-
-Jurgis had debated on the way.  His nerve almost failed him now,
-but he clenched his hands.  "I think I ought to have' three
-dollars a day," he said.
-
-"All right," said the other, promptly; and before the day was out
-our friend discovered that the clerks and stenographers and
-office boys were getting five dollars a day, and then he could
-have kicked himself!  
-
-
-So Jurgis became one of the new "American heroes," a man whose
-virtues merited comparison with those of the martyrs of Lexington
-and Valley Forge.  The resemblance was not complete, of course,
-for Jurgis was generously paid and comfortably clad, and was
-provided with a spring cot and a mattress and three substantial
-meals a day; also he was perfectly at ease, and safe from all
-peril of life and limb, save only in the case that a desire for
-beer should lead him to venture outside of the stockyards gates. 
-And even in the exercise of this privilege he was not left
-unprotected; a good part of the inadequate police force of
-Chicago was suddenly diverted from its work of hunting criminals,
-and rushed out to serve him.  The police, and the strikers also,
-were determined that there should be no violence; but there was
-another party interested which was minded to the contrary--and
-that was the press.  On the first day of his life as a
-strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a spirit of bravado
-he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and get
-a drink.  They accepted, and went through the big Halsted Street
-gate, where several policemen were watching, and also some union
-pickets, scanning sharply those who passed in and out.  Jurgis
-and his companions went south on Halsted Street; past the hotel,
-and then suddenly half a dozen men started across the street
-toward them and proceeded to argue with them concerning the error
-of their ways.  As the arguments were not taken in the proper
-spirit, they went on to threats; and suddenly one of them jerked
-off the hat of one of the four and flung it over the fence.  The
-man started after it, and then, as a cry of "Scab!" was raised
-and a dozen people came running out of saloons and doorways, 
-a second man's heart failed him and he followed.  Jurgis and the
-fourth stayed long enough to give themselves the satisfaction of
-a quick exchange of blows, and then they, too, took to their
-heels and fled back of the hotel and into the yards again. 
-Meantime, of course, policemen were coming on a run, and as a
-crowd gathered other police got excited and sent in a riot call. 
-Jurgis knew nothing of this, but went back to "Packers' Avenue,"
-and in front of the "Central Time Station" he saw one of his
-companions, breathless and wild with excitement, narrating to an
-ever growing throng how the four had been attacked and surrounded
-by a howling mob, and had been nearly torn to pieces.  While he
-stood listening, smiling cynically, several dapper young men
-stood by with notebooks in their hands, and it was not more than
-two hours later that Jurgis saw newsboys running about with
-armfuls of newspapers, printed in red and black letters six
-inches high:
-
-VIOLENCE IN THE YARDS!  STRIKEBREAKERS SURROUNDED BY FRENZIED MOB!
-
-If he had been able to buy all of the newspapers of the United
-States the next morning, he might have discovered that his
-beer-hunting exploit was being perused by some two score millions
-of people, and had served as a text for editorials in half the
-staid and solemn businessmen's newspapers in the land.
-
-Jurgis was to see more of this as time passed.  For the present,
-his work being over, he was free to ride into the city, by a
-railroad direct from the yards, or else to spend the night in a
-room where cots had been laid in rows.  He chose the latter, 
-but to his regret, for all night long gangs of strikebreakers kept
-arriving.  As very few of the better class of workingmen could be
-got for such work, these specimens of the new American hero
-contained an assortment of the criminals and thugs of the city,
-besides Negroes and the lowest foreigners-Greeks, Roumanians,
-Sicilians, and Slovaks.  They had been attracted more by the
-prospect of disorder than, by the big wages; and they made the
-night hideous with singing and carousing, and only went to sleep
-when the time came for them to get up to work.
-
-In the morning before Jurgis had finished his breakfast, "Pat"
-Murphy ordered him to one of the superintendents, who questioned
-him as to his experience in the work of the killing room.  His
-heart began to thump with excitement, for he divined instantly
-that his hour had come--that he was to be a boss!
-
-Some of the foremen were union members, and many who were not had
-gone out with the men.  It was in the killing department that the
-packers had been left most in the lurch, and precisely here that
-they could least afford it; the smoking and canning and salting
-of meat might wait, and all the by-products might be wasted--but
-fresh meats must be had, or the restaurants and hotels and
-brownstone houses would feel the pinch, and then "public opinion"
-would take a startling turn.
-
-An opportunity such as this would not come twice to a man; and
-Jurgis seized it.  Yes, he knew the work, the whole of it, and he
-could teach it to others.  But if he took the job and gave
-satisfaction he would expect to keep it--they would not turn him
-off at the end of the strike?  To which the superintendent
-replied that he might safely trust Durham's for that--they
-proposed to teach these unions a lesson, and most of all those
-foremen who had gone back on them.  Jurgis would receive five
-dollars a day during the strike, and twenty-five a week after it
-was settled.
-
-So our friend got a pair of "slaughter pen" boots and "jeans,"
-and flung himself at his task.  It was a weird sight, there on
-the killing beds--a throng of stupid black Negroes, and
-foreigners who could not understand a word that was said to them,
-mixed with pale-faced, hollow-chested bookkeepers and clerks,
-half-fainting for the tropical heat and the sickening stench of
-fresh blood--and all struggling to dress a dozen or two cattle in
-the same place where, twenty-four hours ago, the old killing gang
-had been speeding, with their marvelous precision, turning out
-four hundred carcasses every hour!
-
-The Negroes and the "toughs" from the Levee did not want to work,
-and every few minutes some of them would feel obliged to retire
-and recuperate.  In a couple of days Durham and Company had
-electric fans up to cool off the rooms for them, and even couches
-for them to rest on; and meantime they could go out and find a
-shady corner and take a "snooze," and as there was no place for
-any one in particular, and no system, it might be hours before
-their boss discovered them.  As for the poor office employees,
-they did their best, moved to it by terror; thirty of them had
-been "fired" in a bunch that first morning for refusing to serve,
-besides a number of women clerks and typewriters who had declined
-to act as waitresses.
-
-It was such a force as this that Jurgis had to organize.  He did
-his best, flying here and there, placing them in rows and showing
-them the tricks; he had never given an order in his life before,
-but he had taken enough of them to know, and he soon fell into
-the spirit of it, and roared and stormed like any old stager. 
-He had not the most tractable pupils, however.  "See hyar, boss,"
-a big black "buck" would begin, "ef you doan' like de way Ah does
-dis job, you kin get somebody else to do it." Then a crowd would
-gather and listen, muttering threats.  After the first meal
-nearly all the steel knives had been missing, and now every Negro
-had one, ground to a fine point, hidden in his boots.
-
-There was no bringing order out of such a chaos, Jurgis soon
-discovered; and he fell in with the spirit of the thing--there
-was no reason why he should wear himself out with shouting.  If
-hides and guts were slashed and rendered useless there was no way
-of tracing it to any one; and if a man lay off and forgot to come
-back there was nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the
-rest would quit in the meantime.  Everything went, during the
-strike, and the packers paid.  Before long Jurgis found that the
-custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the
-possibility of registering at more than one place and earning
-more than one five dollars a day.  When he caught a man at this
-he "fired" him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the
-man tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and he took them. 
-Of course, before long this custom spread, and Jurgis was soon
-making quite a good income from it.
-
-In the face of handicaps such as these the packers counted
-themselves lucky if they could kill off the cattle that had been
-crippled in transit and the hogs that had developed disease. 
-Frequently, in the course of a two or three days' trip, in hot
-weather and without water, some hog would develop cholera, and
-die; and the rest would attack him before he had ceased kicking,
-and when the car was opened there would be nothing of him left
-but the bones.  If all the hogs in this carload were not killed
-at once, they would soon be down with the dread disease, and
-there would be nothing to do but make them into lard.  It was the
-same with cattle that were gored and dying, or were limping with
-broken bones stuck through their flesh--they must be killed, even
-if brokers and buyers and superintendents had to take off their
-coats and help drive and cut and skin them.  And meantime, agents
-of the packers were gathering gangs of Negroes in the country
-districts of the far South, promising them five dollars a day and
-board, and being careful not to mention there was a strike;
-already carloads of them were on the way, with special rates from
-the railroads, and all traffic ordered out of the way.  Many
-towns and cities were taking advantage of the chance to clear out
-their jails and workhouses--in Detroit the magistrates would
-release every man who agreed to leave town within twenty-four
-hours, and agents of the packers were in the courtrooms to ship
-them right.  And meantime trainloads of supplies were coming in
-for their accommodation, including beer and whisky, so that they
-might not be tempted to go outside.  They hired thirty young
-girls in Cincinnati to "pack fruit," and when they arrived put
-them at work canning corned beef, and put cots for them to sleep
-in a public hallway, through which the men passed.  As the gangs
-came in day and night, under the escort of squads of police, 
-they stowed away in unused workrooms and storerooms, and in the car
-sheds, crowded so closely together that the cots touched.  In
-some places they would use the same room for eating and sleeping,
-and at night the men would put their cots upon the tables, to
-keep away from the swarms of rats.
-
-But with all their best efforts, the packers were demoralized. 
-Ninety per cent of the men had walked out; and they faced the
-task of completely remaking their labor force--and with the price
-of meat up thirty per cent, and the public clamoring for a
-settlement.  They made an offer to submit the whole question at
-issue to arbitration; and at the end of ten days the unions
-accepted it, and the strike was called off.  It was agreed that
-all the men were to be re-employed within forty-five days, and
-that there was to be "no discrimination against union men."
-
-This was an anxious time for Jurgis.  If the men were taken back
-"without discrimination," he would lose his present place.  He
-sought out the superintendent, who smiled grimly and bade him
-"wait and see." Durham's strikebreakers were few of them leaving.
-
-Whether or not the "settlement" was simply a trick of the packers
-to gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike
-and cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that
-night there went out from the office of Durham and Company a
-telegram to all the big packing centers, "Employ no union
-leaders." And in the morning, when the twenty thousand men
-thronged into the yards, with their dinner pails and working
-clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room,
-where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager
-men, with a score or two of policemen watching them; and he saw a
-superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man
-after man that pleased him; and one after another came, and there
-were some men up near the head of the line who were never
-picked--they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men
-Jurgis had heard making speeches at the meetings.  Each time, of
-course, there were louder murmurings and angrier looks.  Over
-
-where the cattle butchers were waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and
-saw a crowd, and he hurried there.  One big butcher, who was
-president of the Packing Trades Council, had been passed over
-five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had appointed a
-committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and the
-committee had made three attempts, and each time the police had
-clubbed them back from the door.  Then there were yells and
-hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to the
-door.  "We all go back or none of us do!" cried a hundred voices. 
-And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, "You went out
-of here like cattle, and like cattle you'll come back!"
-
-Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of
-stones and yelled: "It's off, boys.  We'll all of us quit again!"
-And so the cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot; 
-and gathering their members from the other plants, where the same
-trick had been played, they marched down Packers' Avenue, which
-was thronged with a dense mass of workers, cheering wildly.  Men
-who had already got to work on the killing beds dropped their
-tools and joined them; some galloped here and there on horseback,
-shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of
-Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury.
-
-There was quite a different tone in Packingtown after this--the
-place was a seething caldron of passion, and the "scab" who
-ventured into it fared badly.  There were one or two of these
-incidents each day, the newspapers detailing them, and always
-blaming them upon the unions.  Yet ten years before, when there
-were no unions in Packingtown, there was a strike, and national
-troops had to be called, and there were pitched battles fought at
-night, by the light of blazing freight trains.  Packingtown was
-always a center of violence; in "Whisky Point," where there were
-a hundred saloons and one glue factory, there was always
-fighting, and always more of it in hot weather.  Any one who had
-taken the trouble to consult the station house blotter would have
-found that there was less violence that summer than ever
-before--and this while twenty thousand men were out of work, 
-and with nothing to do all day but brood upon bitter wrongs.  
-There was no one to picture the battle the union leaders were
-fighting--to hold this huge army in rank, to keep it from
-straggling and pillaging, to cheer and encourage and guide a
-hundred thousand people, of a dozen different tongues, through
-six long weeks of hunger and disappointment and despair.
-
-Meantime the packers had set themselves definitely to the task of
-making a new labor force.  A thousand or two of strikebreakers
-were brought in every night, and distributed among the various
-plants.  Some of them were experienced workers,--butchers,
-salesmen, and managers from the packers' branch stores, and a few
-union men who had deserted from other cities; but the vast
-majority were "green" Negroes from the cotton districts of the
-far South, and they were herded into the packing plants like
-sheep.  There was a law forbidding the use of buildings as
-lodginghouses unless they were licensed for the purpose, 
-and provided with proper windows, stairways, and fire escapes; 
-but here, in a "paint room," reached only by an enclosed "chute,"
-a room without a single window and only one door, a hundred men
-were crowded upon mattresses on the floor.  Up on the third story
-of the "hog house" of Jones's was a storeroom, without a window,
-into which they crowded seven hundred men, sleeping upon the bare
-springs of cots, and with a second shift to use them by day.  And
-when the clamor of the public led to an investigation into these
-conditions, and the mayor of the city was forced to order the
-enforcement of the law, the packers got a judge to issue an
-injunction forbidding him to do it!
-
-Just at this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end
-to gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of
-professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to
-fleece the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space
-in front of Brown's, one might see brawny Negroes stripped to the
-waist and pounding each other for money, while a howling throng
-of three or four thousand surged about, men and women, young
-white girls from the country rubbing elbows with big buck Negroes
-with daggers in their boots, while rows of woolly heads peered
-down from every window of the surrounding factories.  The
-ancestors of these black people had been savages in Africa; and
-since then they had been chattel slaves, or had been held down by
-a community ruled by the traditions of slavery.  Now for the
-first time they were free--free to gratify every passion, free to
-wreck themselves.  They were wanted to break a strike, and when
-it was broken they would be shipped away, and their present
-masters would never see them again; and so whisky and women were
-brought in by the carload and sold to them, and hell was let
-loose in the yards.  Every night there were stabbings and
-shootings; it was said that the packers had blank permits, which
-enabled them to ship dead bodies from the city without troubling
-the authorities.  They lodged men and women on the same floor;
-and with the night there began a saturnalia of debauchery--scenes
-such as never before had been witnessed in America.  And as the
-women were the dregs from the brothels of Chicago, and the men
-were for the most part ignorant country Negroes, the nameless
-diseases of vice were soon rife; and this where food was being
-handled which was sent out to every corner of the civilized
-world.
-
-The "Union Stockyards" were never a pleasant place; but now they
-were not only a collection of slaughterhouses, but also the
-camping place of an army of fifteen or twenty thousand human
-beasts.  All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon
-that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of
-cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed
-contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks,
-and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine
-passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and
-there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and car-loads of moist
-flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and
-fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell--there were
-also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry
-of the workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with
-food and black with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.
-
-And then at night, when this throng poured out into the streets
-to play--fighting, gambling, drinking and carousing, cursing and
-screaming, laughing and singing, playing banjoes and dancing! 
-They were worked in the yards all the seven days of the week, and
-they had their prize fights and crap games on Sunday nights as
-well; but then around the corner one might see a bonfire blazing,
-and an old, gray-headed Negress, lean and witchlike, her hair
-flying wild and her eyes blazing, yelling and chanting of the
-fires of perdition and the blood of the "Lamb," while men and
-women lay down upon the ground and moaned and screamed in
-convulsions of terror and remorse.
-
-Such were the stockyards during the strike; while the unions
-watched in sullen despair, and the country clamored like a greedy
-child for its food, and the packers went grimly on their way. 
-Each day they added new workers, and could be more stern with the
-old ones--could put them on piecework, and dismiss them if they
-did not keep up the pace.  Jurgis was now one of their agents in
-this process; and he could feel the change day by day, like the
-slow starting up of a huge machine.  He had gotten used to being
-a master of men; and because of the stifling heat and the stench,
-and the fact that he was a "scab" and knew it and despised
-himself.  He was drinking, and developing a villainous temper,
-and he stormed and cursed and raged at his men, and drove them
-until they were ready to drop with exhaustion.
-
-
-Then one day late in August, a superintendent ran into the place
-and shouted to Jurgis and his gang to drop their work and come. 
-They followed him outside, to where, in the midst of a dense
-throng, they saw several two-horse trucks waiting, and three
-patrol-wagon loads of police.  Jurgis and his men sprang upon one
-of the trucks, and the driver yelled to the crowd, and they went
-thundering away at a gallop.  Some steers had just escaped from
-the yards, and the strikers had got hold of them, and there would
-be the chance of a scrap!
-
-They went out at the Ashland Avenue gate, and over in the
-direction of the "dump." There was a yell as soon as they were
-sighted, men and women rushing out of houses and saloons as they
-galloped by.  There were eight or ten policemen on the truck,
-however, and there was no disturbance until they came to a place
-where the street was blocked with a dense throng.  Those on the
-flying truck yelled a warning and the crowd scattered pell-mell,
-disclosing one of the steers lying in its blood.  There were a
-good many cattle butchers about just then, with nothing much to
-do, and hungry children at home; and so some one had knocked out
-the steer--and as a first-class man can kill and dress one in a
-couple of minutes, there were a good many steaks and roasts
-already missing.  This called for punishment, of course; and the
-police proceeded to administer it by leaping from the truck and
-cracking at every head they saw.  There were yells of rage and
-pain, and the terrified people fled into houses and stores,
-or scattered helter-skelter down the street.  Jurgis and his gang
-joined in the sport, every man singling out his victim, and
-striving to bring him to bay and punch him.  If he fled into a
-house his pursuer would smash in the flimsy door and follow him
-up the stairs, hitting every one who came within reach, and
-finally dragging his squealing quarry from under a bed or a pile
-of old clothes in a closet.
-
-Jurgis and two policemen chased some men into a bar-room.  One of
-them took shelter behind the bar, where a policeman cornered him
-and proceeded to whack him over the back and shoulders, until he
-lay down and gave a chance at his head.  The others leaped a
-fence in the rear, balking the second policeman, who was fat; 
-and as he came back, furious and cursing, a big Polish woman,
-the owner of the saloon, rushed in screaming, and received a poke in
-the stomach that doubled her up on the floor.  Meantime Jurgis,
-who was of a practical temper, was helping himself at the bar;
-and the first policeman, who had laid out his man, joined him,
-handing out several more bottles, and filling his pockets
-besides, and then, as he started to leave, cleaning off all the
-balance with a sweep of his club.  The din of the glass crashing
-to the floor brought the fat Polish woman to her feet again, 
-but another policeman came up behind her and put his knee into
-her back and his hands over her eyes--and then called to his
-companion, who went back and broke open the cash drawer and
-filled his pockets with the contents.  Then the three went
-outside, and the man who was holding the woman gave her a shove
-and dashed out himself.  The gang having already got the carcass
-on to the truck, the party set out at a trot, followed by screams
-and curses, and a shower of bricks and stones from unseen
-enemies.  These bricks and stones would figure in the accounts of
-the "riot" which would be sent out to a few thousand newspapers
-within an hour or two; but the episode of the cash drawer would
-never be mentioned again, save only in the heartbreaking legends
-of Packingtown.
-
-
-It was late in the afternoon when they got back, and they dressed
-out the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had
-been killed, and then knocked off for the day.  Jurgis went
-downtown to supper, with three friends who had been on the other
-trucks, and they exchanged reminiscences on the way.  Afterward
-they drifted into a roulette parlor, and Jurgis, who was never
-lucky at gambling, dropped about fifteen dollars.  To console
-himself he had to drink a good deal, and he went back to
-Packingtown about two o'clock in the morning, very much the worse
-for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, entirely deserving
-the calamity that was in store for him.
-
-As he was going to the place where he slept, he met a painted-
-cheeked woman in a greasy "kimono," and she put her arm about his
-waist to steady him; they turned into a dark room they were
-passing--but scarcely had they taken two steps before suddenly a
-door swung open, and a man entered, carrying a lantern.  "Who's
-there?" he called sharply.  And Jurgis started to mutter some
-reply; but at the same instant the man raised his light, which
-flashed in his face, so that it was possible to recognize him. 
-Jurgis stood stricken dumb, and his heart gave a leap like a mad
-thing.  The man was Connor!
-
-Connor, the boss of the loading gang!  The man who had seduced
-his wife--who had sent him to prison, and wrecked his home,
-ruined his life!  He stood there, staring, with the light shining
-full upon him.
-
-Jurgis had often thought of Connor since coming back to
-Packingtown, but it had been as of something far off, that no
-longer concerned him.  Now, however, when he saw him, alive and
-in the flesh, the same thing happened to him that had happened
-before--a flood of rage boiled up in him, a blind frenzy seized
-him.  And he flung himself at the man, and smote him between the
-eyes--and then, as he fell, seized him by the throat and began to
-pound his head upon the stones.
-
-The woman began screaming, and people came rushing in.  The
-lantern had been upset and extinguished, and it was so dark they
-could not see a thing; but they could hear Jurgis panting, and
-hear the thumping of his victim's skull, and they rushed there
-and tried to pull him off.  Precisely as before, Jurgis came away
-with a piece of his enemy's flesh between his teeth; and, 
-as before, he went on fighting with those who had interfered with
-him, until a policeman had come and beaten him into
-insensibility.
-
-
-And so Jurgis spent the balance of the night in the stockyards
-station house.  This time, however, he had money in his pocket,
-and when he came to his senses he could get something to drink,
-and also a messenger to take word of his plight to "Bush" Harper. 
-Harper did not appear, however, until after the prisoner, feeling
-very weak and ill, had been hailed into court and remanded at
-five hundred dollars' bail to await the result of his victim's
-injuries.  Jurgis was wild about this, because a different
-magistrate had chanced to be on the bench, and he had stated that
-he had never been arrested before, and also that he had been
-attacked first--and if only someone had been there to speak a
-good word for him, he could have been let off at once.
-
-But Harper explained that he had been downtown, and had not got
-the message.  "What's happened to you?" he asked.
-
-"I've been doing a fellow up," said Jurgis, "and I've got to get
-five hundred dollars' bail."
-
-"I can arrange that all right," said the other--"though it may
-cost you a few dollars, of course.  But what was the trouble?"
-
-"It was a man that did me a mean trick once," answered Jurgis.
-
-"Who is he?"
-
-"He's a foreman in Brown's or used to be.  His name's Connor."
-
-And the other gave a start.  "Connor!" he cried.  "Not Phil
-Connor!"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the fellow.  Why?"
-
-"Good God!" exclaimed the other, ''then you're in for it, old
-man!  I can't help you!"
-
-"Not help me!  Why not?"
-
-"Why, he's one of Scully's biggest men--he's a member of the
-War-Whoop League, and they talked of sending him to the
-legislature!  Phil Connor!  Great heavens!"
-
-Jurgis sat dumb with dismay.
-
-"Why, he can send you to Joliet, if he wants to!" declared the
-other.
-
-"Can't I have Scully get me off before he finds out about it?"
-asked Jurgis, at length.
-
-"But Scully's out of town," the other answered.  "I don't even
-know where he is--he's run away to dodge the strike."
-
-That was a pretty mess, indeed.  Poor Jurgis sat half-dazed.  His
-pull had run up against a bigger pull, and he was down and out! 
-"But what am I going to do?'' he asked, weakly.
-
-"How should I know?" said the other.  "I shouldn't even dare to
-get bail for you--why, I might ruin myself for life!"
-
-Again there was silence.  "Can't you do it for me," Jurgis asked,
-"and pretend that you didn't know who I'd hit?"
-
-"But what good would that do you when you came to stand trial?"
-asked Harper.  Then he sat buried in thought for a minute or two. 
-"There's nothing--unless it's this," he said.  "I could have your
-bail reduced; and then if you had the money you could pay it and
-skip."
-
-"How much will it be?" Jurgis asked, after he had had this
-explained more in detail.
-
-"I don't know," said the other.  "How much do you own?"
-
-"I've got about three hundred dollars," was the answer.
-
-"Well," was Harper's reply, "I'm not sure, but I'll try and get
-you off for that.  I'll take the risk for friendship's sake--for
-I'd hate to see you sent to state's prison for a year or two."
-
-And so finally Jurgis ripped out his bankbook--which was sewed up
-in his trousers--and signed an order, which "Bush" Harper wrote,
-for all the money to be paid out.  Then the latter went and got
-it, and hurried to the court, and explained to the magistrate
-that Jurgis was a decent fellow and a friend of Scully's, who had
-been attacked by a strike-breaker.  So the bail was reduced to
-three hundred dollars, and Harper went on it himself; he did not
-tell this to Jurgis, however--nor did he tell him that when the
-time for trial came it would be an easy matter for him to avoid
-the forfeiting of the bail, and pocket the three hundred dollars
-as his reward for the risk of offending Mike Scully!  All that he
-told Jurgis was that he was now free, and that the best thing he
-could do was to clear out as quickly as possible; and so Jurgis
-overwhelmed with gratitude and relief, took the dollar and
-fourteen cents that was left him out of all his bank account,
-and put it with the two dollars and quarter that was left from his
-last night's celebration, and boarded a streetcar and got off at
-the other end of Chicago.
-
-
-Chapter 27
-
-
-Poor Jurgis was now an outcast and a tramp once more.  He was
-crippled--he was as literally crippled as any wild animal which
-has lost its claws, or been torn out of its shell.  He had been
-shorn, at one cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had
-been able to make a living easily and to escape the consequences
-of his actions.  He could no longer command a job when he wanted
-it; he could no longer steal with impunity--he must take his
-chances with the common herd.  Nay worse, he dared not mingle
-with the herd--he must hide himself, for he was one marked out
-for destruction.  His old companions would betray him, for the
-sake of the influence they would gain thereby; and he would be
-made to suffer, not merely for the offense he had committed,
-but for others which would be laid at his door, just as had been 
-done for some poor devil on the occasion of that assault upon the
-"country customer" by him and Duane.
-
-And also he labored under another handicap now.  He had acquired
-new standards of living, which were not easily to be altered. 
-When he had been out of work before, he had been content if he
-could sleep in a doorway or under a truck out of the rain, and if
-he could get fifteen cents a day for saloon lunches.  But now he
-desired all sorts of other things, and suffered because he had to
-do without them.  He must have a drink now and then, a drink for
-its own sake, and apart from the food that came with it.  The
-craving for it was strong enough to master every other
-consideration--he would have it, though it were his last nickel
-and he had to starve the balance of the day in consequence.
-
-Jurgis became once more a besieger of factory gates.  But never
-since he had been in Chicago had he stood less chance of getting
-a job than just then.  For one thing, there was the economic
-crisis, the million or two of men who had been out of work in the
-spring and summer, and were not yet all back, by any means.  And
-then there was the strike, with seventy thousand men and women
-all over the country idle for a couple of months--twenty thousand
-in Chicago, and many of them now seeking work throughout the
-city.  It did not remedy matters that a few days later the strike
-was given up and about half the strikers went back to work;
-for every one taken on, there was a "scab" who gave up and fled.  
-The ten or fifteen thousand "green" Negroes, foreigners, and
-criminals were now being turned loose to shift for themselves. 
-Everywhere Jurgis went he kept meeting them, and he was in an
-agony of fear lest some one of them should know that he was
-"wanted." He would have left Chicago, only by the time he had
-realized his danger he was almost penniless; and it would be
-better to go to jail than to be caught out in the country in the
-winter time.
-
-At the end of about ten days Jurgis had only a few pennies left;
-and he had not yet found a job--not even a day's work at
-anything, not a chance to carry a satchel.  Once again, as when
-he had come out of the hospital, he was bound hand and foot, and
-facing the grisly phantom of starvation.  Raw, naked terror
-possessed him, a maddening passion that would never leave him,
-and that wore him down more quickly than the actual want of food. 
-He was going to die of hunger!  The fiend reached out its scaly
-arms for him--it touched him, its breath came into his face; and
-he would cry out for the awfulness of it, he would wake up in the
-night, shuddering, and bathed in perspiration, and start up and
-flee.  He would walk, begging for work, until he was exhausted;
-he could not remain still--he would wander on, gaunt and haggard,
-gazing about him with restless eyes.  Everywhere he went, from
-one end of the vast city to the other, there were hundreds of
-others like him; everywhere was the sight of plenty and the
-merciless hand of authority waving them away.  There is one kind
-of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he
-desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things
-are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
-
-When he was down to his last quarter, Jurgis learned that before
-the bakeshops closed at night they sold out what was left at half
-price, and after that he would go and get two loaves of stale
-bread for a nickel, and break them up and stuff his pockets with
-them, munching a bit from time to time.  He would not spend a
-penny save for this; and, after two or three days more, he even
-became sparing of the bread, and would stop and peer into the ash
-barrels as he walked along the streets, and now and then rake out
-a bit of something, shake it free from dust, and count himself
-just so many minutes further from the end.
-
-So for several days he had been going about, ravenous all the
-time, and growing weaker and weaker, and then one morning he had
-a hideous experience, that almost broke his heart.  He was
-passing down a street lined with warehouses, and a boss offered
-him a job, and then, after he had started to work, turned him off
-because he was not strong enough.  And he stood by and saw
-another man put into his place, and then picked up his coat, and
-walked off, doing all that he could to keep from breaking down
-and crying like a baby.  He was lost!  He was doomed!  There was
-no hope for him!  But then, with a sudden rush, his fear gave
-place to rage.  He fell to cursing.  He would come back there
-after dark, and he would show that scoundrel whether he was good
-for anything or not!
-
-He was still muttering this when suddenly, at the corner, he came
-upon a green-grocery, with a tray full of cabbages in front of
-it.  Jurgis, after one swift glance about him, stooped and seized
-the biggest of them, and darted round the corner with it.  There
-was a hue and cry, and a score of men and boys started in chase
-of him; but he came to an alley, and then to another branching
-off from it and leading him into another street, where he fell
-into a walk, and slipped his cabbage under his coat and went off
-unsuspected in the crowd.  When he had gotten a safe distance
-away he sat down and devoured half the cabbage raw, stowing the
-balance away in his pockets till the next day.
-
-Just about this time one of the Chicago newspapers, which made
-much of the "common people," opened a "free-soup kitchen" for the
-benefit of the unemployed.  Some people said that they did this
-for the sake of the advertising it gave them, and some others
-said that their motive was a fear lest all their readers should
-be starved off; but whatever the reason, the soup was thick and
-hot, and there was a bowl for every man, all night long.  When
-Jurgis heard of this, from a fellow "hobo," he vowed that he
-would have half a dozen bowls before morning; but, as it proved,
-he was lucky to get one, for there was a line of men two blocks
-long before the stand, and there was just as long a line when the
-place was finally closed up.
-
-This depot was within the danger line for Jurgis--in the "Levee"
-district, where he was known; but he went there, all the same,
-for he was desperate, and beginning to think of even the
-Bridewell as a place of refuge.  So far the weather had been
-fair, and he had slept out every night in a vacant lot; but now
-there fell suddenly a shadow of the advancing winter, a chill
-wind from the north and a driving storm of rain.  That day Jurgis
-bought two drinks for the sake of the shelter, and at night he
-spent his last two pennies in a "stale-beer dive." This was a
-place kept by a Negro, who went out and drew off the old dregs of
-beer that lay in barrels set outside of the saloons; and after he
-had doctored it with chemicals to make it "fizz," he sold it for
-two cents a can, the purchase of a can including the privilege of
-sleeping the night through upon the floor, with a mass of
-degraded outcasts, men and women.
-
-All these horrors afflicted Jurgis all the more cruelly, because
-he was always contrasting them with the opportunities he had
-lost.  For instance, just now it was election time again--within
-five or six weeks the voters of the country would select a
-President; and he heard the wretches with whom he associated
-discussing it, and saw the streets of the city decorated with
-placards and banners--and what words could describe the pangs of
-grief and despair that shot through him?
-
-For instance, there was a night during this cold spell.  He had
-begged all day, for his very life, and found not a soul to heed
-him, until toward evening he saw an old lady getting off a
-streetcar and helped her down with her umbrellas and bundles and
-then told her his "hard-luck story," and after answering all her
-suspicious questions satisfactorily, was taken to a restaurant
-and saw a quarter paid down for a meal.  And so he had soup and
-bread, and boiled beef and potatoes and beans, and pie and
-coffee, and came out with his skin stuffed tight as a football. 
-And then, through the rain and the darkness, far down the street
-he saw red lights flaring and heard the thumping of a bass drum;
-and his heart gave a leap, and he made for the place on the
-run--knowing without the asking that it meant a political
-meeting.
-
-The campaign had so far been characterized by what the newspapers
-termed "apathy." For some reason the people refused to get
-excited over the struggle, and it was almost impossible to get
-them to come to meetings, or to make any noise when they did
-come.  Those which had been held in Chicago so far had proven
-most dismal failures, and tonight, the speaker being no less a
-personage than a candidate for the vice-presidency of the nation,
-the political managers had been trembling with anxiety.  But a
-merciful providence had sent this storm of cold rain--and now all
-it was necessary to do was to set off a few fireworks, and thump
-awhile on a drum, and all the homeless wretches from a mile
-around would pour in and fill the hall!  And then on the morrow
-the newspapers would have a chance to report the tremendous
-ovation, and to add that it had been no "silk-stocking" audience,
-either, proving clearly that the high tariff sentiments of the
-distinguished candidate were pleasing to the wage-earners of the
-nation.
-
-So Jurgis found himself in a large hall, elaborately decorated
-with flags and bunting; and after the chairman had made his
-little speech, and the orator of the evening rose up, amid an
-uproar from the band--only fancy the emotions of Jurgis upon
-making the discovery that the personage was none other than the
-famous and eloquent Senator Spareshanks, who had addressed the
-"Doyle Republican Association" at the stockyards, and helped to
-elect Mike Scully's tenpin setter to the Chicago Board of
-Aldermen!
-
-In truth, the sight of the senator almost brought the tears into
-Jurgis's eyes.  What agony it was to him to look back upon those
-golden hours, when he, too, had a place beneath the shadow of the
-plum tree!  When he, too, had been of the elect, through whom the
-country is governed--when he had had a bung in the campaign
-barrel for his own!  And this was another election in which the
-Republicans had all the money; and but for that one hideous
-accident he might have had a share of it, instead of being where
-he was!
-
-
-The eloquent senator was explaining the system of protection; an
-ingenious device whereby the workingman permitted the
-manufacturer to charge him higher prices, in order that he might
-receive higher wages; thus taking his money out of his pocket
-with one hand, and putting a part of it back with the other.
-To the senator this unique arrangement had somehow become identified
-with the higher verities of the universe.  It was because of it
-that Columbia was the gem of the ocean; and all her future
-triumphs, her power and good repute among the nations, depended
-upon the zeal and fidelity with which each citizen held up the
-hands of those who were toiling to maintain it.  The name of this
-heroic company was "the Grand Old Party"--
-
-And here the band began to play, and Jurgis sat up with a violent
-start.  Singular as it may seem, Jurgis was making a desperate
-effort to understand what the senator was saying--to comprehend
-the extent of American prosperity, the enormous expansion of
-American commerce, and the Republic's future in the Pacific and
-in South America, and wherever else the oppressed were groaning. 
-The reason for it was that he wanted to keep awake.  He knew that
-if he allowed himself to fall asleep he would begin to snore
-loudly; and so he must listen--he must be interested!  But he had
-eaten such a big dinner, and he was so exhausted, and the hall
-was so warm, and his seat was so comfortable!  The senator's
-gaunt form began to grow dim and hazy, to tower before him and
-dance about, with figures of exports and imports.  Once his
-neighbor gave him a savage poke in the ribs, and he sat up with a
-start and tried to look innocent; but then he was at it again,
-and men began to stare at him with annoyance, and to call out in
-vexation.  Finally one of them called a policeman, who came and
-grabbed Jurgis by the collar, and jerked him to his feet,
-bewildered and terrified.  Some of the audience turned to see the
-commotion, and Senator Spareshanks faltered in his speech; but a
-voice shouted cheerily: "We're just firing a bum!  Go ahead, old
-sport!" And so the crowd roared, and the senator smiled genially,
-and went on; and in a few seconds poor Jurgis found himself
-landed out in the rain, with a kick and a string of curses.
-
-He got into the shelter of a doorway and took stock of himself. 
-He was not hurt, and he was not arrested--more than he had any
-right to expect.  He swore at himself and his luck for a while,
-and then turned his thoughts to practical matters.  He had no
-money, and no place to sleep; he must begin begging again.
-
-He went out, hunching his shoulders together and shivering at the
-touch of the icy rain.  Coming down the street toward him was a
-lady, well dressed, and protected by an umbrella; and he turned
-and walked beside her.  "Please, ma'am," he began, "could you
-lend me the price of a night's lodging?  I'm a poor working-
-man--"
-
-Then, suddenly, he stopped short.  By the light of a street lamp
-he had caught sight of the lady's face.  He knew her.
-
-It was Alena Jasaityte, who had been the belle of his wedding
-feast!  Alena Jasaityte, who had looked so beautiful, and danced
-with such a queenly air, with Juozas Raczius, the teamster! 
-Jurgis had only seen her once or twice afterward, for Juozas had
-thrown her over for another girl, and Alena had gone away from
-Packingtown, no one knew where.  And now he met her here!
-
-She was as much surprised as he was.  "Jurgis Rudkus!" she
-gasped.  "And what in the world is the matter with you?"
-
-"I--I've had hard luck," he stammered.  "I'm out of work, and
-I've no home and no money.  And you, Alena--are you married?"
-
-"No," she answered, "I'm not married, but I've got a good place."
-
-They stood staring at each other for a few moments longer. 
-Finally Alena spoke again.  "Jurgis," she said, "I'd help you if
-I could, upon my word I would, but it happens that I've come out
-without my purse, and I honestly haven't a penny with me: I can
-do something better for you, though--I can tell you how to get
-help.  I can tell you where Marija is."
-
-Jurgis gave a start.  "Marija!" he exclaimed.
-
-"Yes," said Alena; "and she'll help you.  She's got a place,
-and she's doing well; she'll be glad to see you."
-
-It was not much more than a year since Jurgis had left
-Packingtown, feeling like one escaped from jail; and it had been
-from Marija and Elzbieta that he was escaping.  But now, at the
-mere mention of them, his whole being cried out with joy.  He
-wanted to see them; he wanted to go home!  They would help
-him--they would be kind to him.  In a flash he had thought over
-the situation.  He had a good excuse for running away--his grief
-at the death of his son; and also he had a good excuse for not
-returning--the fact that they had left Packingtown.  "All right,"
-he said, "I'll go."
-
-So she gave him a number on Clark Street, adding, "There's no
-need to give you my address, because Marija knows it." And Jurgis
-set out, without further ado.  He found a large brownstone house
-of aristocratic appearance, and rang the basement bell.  A young
-colored girl came to the door, opening it about an inch, 
-and gazing at him suspiciously.
-
-"What do you want?" she demanded.
-
-"Does Marija Berczynskas live here?" he inquired.
-
-"I dunno," said the girl.  "What you want wid her?"
-
-"I want to see her," said he; "she's a relative of mine."
-
-The girl hesitated a moment.  Then she opened the door and said,
-"Come in." Jurgis came and stood in the hall, and she continued:
-"I'll go see.  What's yo' name?"
-
-"Tell her it's Jurgis," he answered, and the girl went upstairs. 
-She came back at the end of a minute or two, and replied, "Dey
-ain't no sich person here."
-
-Jurgis's heart went down into his boots.  "I was told this was
-where she lived!" he cried.  But the girl only shook her head. 
-"De lady says dey ain't no sich person here," she said.
-
-And he stood for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. 
-Then he turned to go to the door.  At the same instant, however,
-there came a knock upon it, and the girl went to open it.  Jurgis
-heard the shuffling of feet, and then heard her give a cry;
-and the next moment she sprang back, and past him, her eyes shining
-white with terror, and bounded up the stairway, screaming at the
-top of her lungs: "Police!  Police!  We're pinched!"
-
-Jurgis stood for a second, bewildered.  Then, seeing blue-coated
-forms rushing upon him, he sprang after the Negress.  Her cries
-had been the signal for a wild uproar above; the house was full
-of people, and as he entered the hallway he saw them rushing
-hither and thither, crying and screaming with alarm.  There were
-men and women, the latter clad for the most part in wrappers,
-the former in all stages of dishabille.  At one side Jurgis caught a
-glimpse of a big apartment with plush-covered chairs, and tables
-covered with trays and glasses.  There were playing cards
-scattered all over the floor--one of the tables had been upset,
-and bottles of wine were rolling about, their contents running
-out upon the carpet.  There was a young girl who had fainted,
-and two men who were supporting her; and there were a dozen others
-crowding toward the front door.
-
-Suddenly, however, there came a series of resounding blows upon
-it, causing the crowd to give back.  At the same instant a stout
-woman, with painted cheeks and diamonds in her ears, came running
-down the stairs, panting breathlessly: "To the rear!  Quick!"
-
-She led the way to a back staircase, Jurgis following; in the
-kitchen she pressed a spring, and a cupboard gave way and opened,
-disclosing a dark passageway.  "Go in!" she cried to the crowd,
-which now amounted to twenty or thirty, and they began to pass
-through.  Scarcely had the last one disappeared, however, before
-there were cries from in front, and then the panic-stricken
-throng poured out again, exclaiming: "They're there too!  We're
-trapped!"
-
-"Upstairs!" cried the woman, and there was another rush of the
-mob, women and men cursing and screaming and fighting to be
-first.  One flight, two, three--and then there was a ladder to
-the roof, with a crowd packed at the foot of it, and one man at
-the top, straining and struggling to lift the trap door.  It was
-not to be stirred, however, and when the woman shouted up to
-unhook it, he answered: "It's already unhooked.  There's somebody
-sitting on it!"
-
-And a moment later came a voice from downstairs: "You might as
-well quit, you people.  We mean business, this time."
-
-So the crowd subsided; and a few moments later several policemen
-came up, staring here and there, and leering at their victims. 
-Of the latter the men were for the most part frightened and
-sheepish-looking.  The women took it as a joke, as if they were
-used to it--though if they had been pale, one could not have
-told, for the paint on their cheeks.  One black-eyed young girl
-perched herself upon the top of the balustrade, and began to kick
-with her slippered foot at the helmets of the policemen, until
-one of them caught her by the ankle and pulled her down.  On the
-floor below four or five other girls sat upon trunks in the hall,
-making fun of the procession which filed by them.  They were
-noisy and hilarious, and had evidently been drinking; one of
-them, who wore a bright red kimono, shouted and screamed in a
-voice that drowned out all the other sounds in the hall--and
-Jurgis took a glance at her, and then gave a start, and a cry,
-"Marija!"
-
-She heard him, and glanced around; then she shrank back and half
-sprang to her feet in amazement.  "Jurgis!" she gasped.
-
-For a second or two they stood staring at each other.  "How did
-you come here?" Marija exclaimed.
-
-"I came to see you," he answered.
-
-"When?"
-
-"Just now."
-
-"But how did you know--who told you I was here?"
-
-"Alena Jasaityte.  I met her on the street."
-
-Again there was a silence, while they gazed at each other.  The
-rest of the crowd was watching them, and so Marija got up and
-came closer to him.  "And you?" Jurgis asked.  "You live here?"
-
-"Yes," said Marija, "I live here." Then suddenly came a hail from
-below: "Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along.  You'd
-best begin, or you'll be sorry--it's raining outside."
-
-"Br-r-r!" shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the
-various doors which lined the hallway.
-
-"Come," said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a
-tiny place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a
-dressing stand and some dresses hanging behind the door.  There
-were clothes scattered about on the floor, and hopeless confusion
-everywhere--boxes of rouge and bottles of perfume mixed with hats
-and soiled dishes on the dresser, and a pair of slippers and a
-clock and a whisky bottle on a chair.
-
-Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings;
-yet she proceeded to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the
-trouble to close the door.  He had by this time divined what sort
-of a place he was in; and he had seen a great deal of the world
-since he had left home, and was not easy to shock--and yet it
-gave him a painful start that Marija should do this.  They had
-always been decent people at home, and it seemed to him that the
-memory of old times ought to have ruled her.  But then he laughed
-at himself for a fool.  What was he, to be pretending to decency!
-
-"How long have you been living here?" he asked.
-
-"Nearly a year," she answered.
-
-"Why did you come?"
-
-"I had to live," she said; "and I couldn't see the children
-starve."
-
-He paused for a moment, watching her.  "You were out of work?" he
-asked, finally.
-
-"I got sick," she replied.  "and after that I had no money.  And
-then Stanislovas died--"
-
-"Stanislovas dead!"
-
-"Yes," said Marija, "I forgot.  You didn't know about it."
-
-"How did he die?"
-
-"Rats killed him," she answered.
-
-Jurgis gave a gasp.  "Rats killed him!"
-
-"Yes," said the other; she was bending over, lacing her shoes as
-she spoke.  "He was working in an oil factory--at least he was
-hired by the men to get their beer.  He used to carry cans on a
-long pole; and he'd drink a little out of each can, and one day
-he drank too much, and fell asleep in a corner, and got locked up
-in the place all night.  When they found him the rats had killed
-him and eaten him nearly all up."
-
-Jurgis sat, frozen with horror.  Marija went on lacing up her
-shoes.  There was a long silence.
-
-Suddenly a big policeman came to the door.  "Hurry up, there," he
-said.
-
-"As quick as I can," said Marija, and she stood up and began
-putting on her corsets with feverish haste.
-
-"Are the rest of the people alive?" asked Jurgis, finally.
-
-"Yes," she said.
-
-"Where are they?"
-
-"They live not far from here.  They're all right now."
-
-"They are working?" he inquired.
-
-"Elzbieta is," said Marija, "when she can.  I take care of them
-most of the time--I'm making plenty of money now."
-
-Jurgis was silent for a moment.  "Do they know you live here--how
-you live?" he asked.
-
-"Elzbieta knows," answered Marija.  "I couldn't lie to her.  And
-maybe the children have found out by this time.  It's nothing to
-be ashamed of--we can't help it."
-
-"And Tamoszius?" he asked.  "Does he know?"
-
-Marija shrugged her shoulders.  "How do I know?" she said. 
-"I haven't seen him for over a year.  He got blood poisoning and
-lost one finger, and couldn't play the violin any more; and then
-he went away."
-
-Marija was standing in front of the glass fastening her dress. 
-Jurgis sat staring at her.  He could hardly believe that she was
-the same woman he had known in the old days; she was so quiet--so
-hard!  It struck fear to his heart to watch her.
-
-Then suddenly she gave a glance at him.  "You look as if you had
-been having a rough time of it yourself," she said.
-
-"I have," he answered.  "I haven't a cent in my pockets, and
-nothing to do."
-
-"Where have you been?"
-
-"All over.  I've been hoboing it.  Then I went back to the
-yards--just before the strike." He paused for a moment,
-hesitating.  "I asked for you," he added.  "I found you had gone
-away, no one knew where.  Perhaps you think I did you a dirty
-trick.  running away as I did, Marija--"
-
-"No," she answered, "I don't blame you.  We never have--any of
-us.  You did your best--the job was too much for us." She paused
-a moment, then added: "We were too ignorant--that was the
-trouble.  We didn't stand any chance.  If I'd known what I know
-now we'd have won out."
-
-"You'd have come here?" said Jurgis.
-
-"Yes," she answered; "but that's not what I meant.  I meant
-you--how differently you would have behaved--about Ona."
-
-Jurgis was silent; he had never thought of that aspect of it.
-
-"When people are starving," the other continued, "and they have
-anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say.  I guess you
-realize it now when it's too late.  Ona could have taken care of
-us all, in the beginning." Marija spoke without emotion, as one
-who had come to regard things from the business point of view.
-
-"I--yes, I guess so," Jurgis answered hesitatingly.  He did not
-add that he had paid three hundred dollars, and a foreman's job,
-for the satisfaction of knocking down "Phil" Connor a second
-time.
-
-The policeman came to the door again just then.  "Come on, now,"
-he said.  "Lively!"
-
-"All right," said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big
-enough to be a drum major's, and full of ostrich feathers.  
-She went out into the hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman
-remaining to look under the bed and behind the door
-
-"What's going to come of this?" Jurgis asked, as they started
-down the steps.
-
-"The raid, you mean?  Oh, nothing--it happens to us every now and
-then.  The madame's having some sort of time with the police; 
-I don't know what it is, but maybe they'll come to terms before
-morning.  Anyhow, they won't do anything to you.  They always let
-the men off."
-
-"Maybe so," he responded, "but not me--I'm afraid I'm in for it."
-
-"How do you mean?"
-
-"I'm wanted by the police," he said, lowering his voice, though
-of course their conversation was in Lithuanian.  "They'll send me
-up for a year or two, I'm afraid."
-
-"Hell!" said Marija.  "That's too bad.  I'll see if I can't get
-you off."
-
-Downstairs, where the greater part of the prisoners were now
-massed, she sought out the stout personage with the diamond
-earrings, and had a few whispered words with her.  The latter
-then approached the police sergeant who was in charge of the
-raid.  "Billy," she said, pointing to Jurgis, "there's a fellow
-who came in to see his sister.  He'd just got in the door when
-you knocked.  You aren't taking hoboes, are you?"
-
-The sergeant laughed as he looked at Jurgis.  "Sorry," he said,
-"but the orders are every one but the servants."
-
-So Jurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging
-behind each other like sheep that have smelled a wolf.  There
-were old men and young men, college boys and gray-beards old
-enough to be their grandfathers; some of them wore evening
-dress--there was no one among them save Jurgis who showed any
-signs of poverty.
-
-When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the
-party marched out.  Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the
-curb, and the whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport;
-there was much chaffing, and a universal craning of necks.  The
-women stared about them with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked,
-while the men kept their heads bowed, and their hats pulled over
-their faces.  They were crowded into the patrol wagons as if into
-streetcars, and then off they went amid a din of cheers.  At the
-station house Jurgis gave a Polish name and was put into a cell
-with half a dozen others; and while these sat and talked in
-whispers, he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his
-thoughts.
-
-Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit, 
-and grown used to the sights in them.  Yet when he had thought of all
-humanity as vile and hideous, he had somehow always excepted his
-own family.  that he had loved; and now this sudden horrible
-discovery--Marija a whore, and Elzbieta and the children living
-off her shame!  Jurgis might argue with himself all he chose,
-that he had done worse, and was a fool for caring--but still he
-could not get over the shock of that sudden unveiling, he could
-not help being sunk in grief because of it.  The depths of him
-were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him that had
-been sleeping so long he had counted them dead.  Memories of the
-old life--his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of
-decency and independence!  He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle
-voice pleading with him.  He saw little Antanas, whom he had
-meant to make a man.  He saw his trembling old father, who had
-blessed them all with his wonderful love.  He lived again through
-that day of horror when he had discovered Ona's shame--God, how
-he had suffered, what a madman he had been!  How dreadful it had
-all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat and listened, and
-half agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool!  Yes--told
-him that he ought to have sold his wife's honor and lived by
-it!--And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate--that
-brief story which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull
-indifference!  The poor little fellow, with his frostbitten
-fingers and his terror of the snow--his wailing voice rang in
-Jurgis's ears, as he lay there in the darkness, until the sweat
-started on his forehead.  Now and then he would quiver with a
-sudden spasm of horror, at the picture of little Stanislovas shut
-up in the deserted building and fighting for his life with the
-rats!
-
-All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis; 
-it was so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to
-think they might ever trouble him again.  Helpless, trapped, 
-as he was, what good did they do him--why should he ever have
-allowed them to torment him?  It had been the task of his recent
-life to fight them down, to crush them out of him, never in his
-life would he have suffered from them again, save that they had
-caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he could protect
-himself.  He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its old
-ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him!  But
-they were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was
-black and bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the
-past once more.  Their voices would die, and never again would he
-hear them--and so the last faint spark of manhood in his soul
-would flicker out.
-
-
-Chapter 28
-
-
-After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded
-with the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in
-the hope of recognizing one of the men and getting a case for
-blackmail.  The men were called up first, and reprimanded in a
-bunch, and then dismissed; but, Jurgis to his terror, was called
-separately, as being a suspicious-looking case.  It was in this
-very same court that he had been tried, that time when his
-sentence had been "suspended"; it was the same judge, and the
-same clerk.  The latter now stared at Jurgis, as if he half
-thought that he knew him; but the judge had no suspicions--just
-then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was expecting
-from a friend of the police captain of the district, telling what
-disposition he should make of the case of "Polly" Simpson, as the
-"madame" of the house was known.  Meantime, he listened to the
-story of how Jurgis had been looking for his sister, and advised
-him dryly to keep his sister in a better place; then he let him
-go, and proceeded to fine each of the girls five dollars, which
-fines were paid in a bunch from a wad of bills which Madame Polly
-extracted from her stocking.
-
-Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija.  The police
-had left the house, and already there were a few visitors; 
-by evening the place would be running again, exactly as if nothing
-had happened.  Meantime, Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room,
-and they sat and talked.  By daylight, Jurgis was able to observe
-that the color on her cheeks was not the old natural one of
-abounding health; her complexion was in reality a parchment
-yellow, and there were black rings under her eyes.
-
-"Have you been sick?" he asked.
-
-"Sick?" she said.  "Hell!" (Marija had learned to scatter her
-conversation with as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule
-driver.) "How can I ever be anything but sick, at this life?"
-
-She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her gloomily. 
-"It's morphine," she said, at last.  "I seem to take more of it
-every day."
-
-"What's that for?" he asked.
-
-"It's the way of it; I don't know why.  If it isn't that, it's
-drink.  If the girls didn't booze they couldn't stand it any time
-at all.  And the madame always gives them dope when they first
-come, and they learn to like it; or else they take it for
-headaches and such things, and get the habit that way.  I've got
-it, I know; I've tried to quit, but I never will while I'm here."
-
-"How long are you going to stay?" he asked.
-
-"I don't know," she said.  "Always, I guess.  What else could I
-do?"
-
-"Don't you save any money?"
-
-"Save!" said Marija.  "Good Lord, no!  I get enough, I suppose,
-but it all goes.  I get a half share, two dollars and a half for
-each customer, and sometimes I make twenty-five or thirty dollars
-a night, and you'd think I ought to save something out of that! 
-But then I am charged for my room and my meals--and such prices
-as you never heard of; and then for extras, and drinks--for
-everything I get, and some I don't.  My laundry bill is nearly
-twenty dollars each week alone--think of that!  Yet what can I
-do?  I either have to stand it or quit, and it would be the same
-anywhere else.  It's all I can do to save the fifteen dollars I
-give Elzbieta each week, so the children can go to school."
-
-Marija sat brooding in silence for a while; then, seeing that
-Jurgis was interested, she went on: "That's the way they keep the
-girls--they let them run up debts, so they can't get away.  A
-young girl comes from abroad, and she doesn't know a word of
-English, and she gets into a place like this, and when she wants
-to go the madame shows her that she is a couple of hundred
-dollars in debt, and takes all her clothes away, and threatens to
-have her arrested if she doesn't stay and do as she's told.  So
-she stays, and the longer she stays, the more in debt she gets. 
-Often, too, they are girls that didn't know what they were coming
-to, that had hired out for housework.  Did you notice that little
-French girl with the yellow hair, that stood next to me in the
-court?"
-
-Jurgis answered in the affirmative.
-
-"Well, she came to America about a year ago.  She was a store
-clerk, and she hired herself to a man to be sent here to work in
-a factory.  There were six of them, all together, and they were
-brought to a house just down the street from here, and this girl
-was put into a room alone, and they gave her some dope in her
-food, and when she came to she found that she had been ruined. 
-She cried, and screamed, and tore her hair, but she had nothing
-but a wrapper, and couldn't get away, and they kept her half
-insensible with drugs all the time, until she gave up.  She never
-got outside of that place for ten months, and then they sent her
-away, because she didn't suit.  I guess they'll put her out of
-here, too--she's getting to have crazy fits, from drinking
-absinthe.  Only one of the girls that came out with her got away,
-and she jumped out of a second-story window one night.  There was
-a great fuss about that--maybe you heard of it."
-
-"I did," said Jurgis, "I heard of it afterward." (It had happened
-in the place where he and Duane had taken refuge from their
-"country customer." The girl had become insane, fortunately for
-the police.)
-
-"There's lots of money in it," said Marija--"they get as much as
-forty dollars a head for girls, and they bring them from all
-over.  There are seventeen in this place, and nine different
-countries among them.  In some places you might find even more. 
-We have half a dozen French girls--I suppose it's because the
-madame speaks the language.  French girls are bad, too, the worst
-of all, except for the Japanese.  There's a place next door
-that's full of Japanese women, but I wouldn't live in the same
-house with one of them."
-
-Marija paused for a moment or two, and then she added: "Most of
-the women here are pretty decent--you'd be surprised.  I used to
-think they did it because they liked to; but fancy a woman
-selling herself to every kind of man that comes, old or young,
-black or white--and doing it because she likes to!"
-
-"Some of them say they do," said Jurgis.
-
-"I know," said she; "they say anything.  They're in, and they
-know they can't get out.  But they didn't like it when they
-began--you'd find out--it's always misery!  There's a little
-Jewish girl here who used to run errands for a milliner, and got
-sick and lost her place; and she was four days on the streets
-without a mouthful of food, and then she went to a place just
-around the corner and offered herself, and they made her give up
-her clothes before they would give her a bite to eat!"
-
-Marija sat for a minute or two, brooding somberly.  "Tell me
-about yourself, Jurgis," she said, suddenly.  "Where have you
-been?"
-
-So he told her the long story of his adventures since his flight
-from home; his life as a tramp, and his work in the freight
-tunnels, and the accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his
-political career in the stockyards, and his downfall and
-subsequent failures.  Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy
-to believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed
-it all.  "You found me just in the nick of time," she said. 
-"I'll stand by you--I'll help you till you can get some work."
-
-"I don't like to let you--" he began.
-
-"Why not?  Because I'm here?"
-
-"No, not that," he said.  "But I went off and left you--"
-
-"Nonsense!" said Marija.  "Don't think about it.  I don't blame
-you."
-
-"You must be hungry," she said, after a minute or two.  "You stay
-here to lunch--I'll have something up in the room."
-
-She pressed a button, and a colored woman came to the door and
-took her order.  "It's nice to have somebody to wait on you," 
-she observed, with a laugh, as she lay back on the bed.
-
-As the prison breakfast had not been liberal, Jurgis had a good
-appetite, and they had a little feast together, talking meanwhile
-of Elzbieta and the children and old times.  Shortly before they
-were through, there came another colored girl, with the message
-that the "madame" wanted Marija--"Lithuanian Mary," as they
-called her here.
-
-"That means you have to go," she said to Jurgis.
-
-So he got up, and she gave him the new address of the family, a
-tenement over in the Ghetto district.  "You go there," she said. 
-"They'll be glad to see you."
-
-But Jurgis stood hesitating.
-
-"I--I don't like to," he said.  "Honest, Marija, why don't you
-just give me a little money and let me look for work first?"
-
-"How do you need money?" was her reply.  "All you want is
-something to eat and a place to sleep, isn't it?"
-
-"Yes," he said; "but then I don't like to go there after I left
-them--and while I have nothing to do, and while you--you--"
-
-"Go on!" said Marija, giving him a push.  "What are you
-talking?--I won't give you money," she added, as she followed him
-to the door, "because you'll drink it up, and do yourself harm. 
-Here's a quarter for you now, and go along, and they'll be so
-glad to have you back, you won't have time to feel ashamed. 
-Good-by!"
-
-
-So Jurgis went out, and walked down the street to think it over. 
-He decided that he would first try to get work, and so he put in
-the rest of the day wandering here and there among factories and
-warehouses without success.  Then, when it was nearly dark, 
-he concluded to go home, and set out; but he came to a restaurant,
-and went in and spent his quarter for a meal; and when he came
-out he changed his mind--the night was pleasant, and he would
-sleep somewhere outside, and put in the morrow hunting, and so
-have one more chance of a job.  So he started away again, when
-suddenly he chanced to look about him, and found that he was
-walking down the same street and past the same hall where he had
-listened to the political speech the night 'before.  There was no
-red fire and no band now, but there was a sign out, announcing a
-meeting, and a stream of people pouring in through the entrance. 
-In a flash Jurgis had decided that he would chance it once more,
-and sit down and rest while making up his mind what to do.  There
-was no one taking tickets, so it must be a free show again.
-
-He entered.  There were no decorations in the hall this time; 
-but there was quite a crowd upon the platform, and almost every seat
-in the place was filled.  He took one of the last, far in the
-rear, and straightway forgot all about his surroundings.  Would
-Elzbieta think that he had come to sponge off her, or would she
-understand that he meant to get to work again and do his share? 
-Would she be decent to him, or would she scold him?  If only he
-could get some sort of a job before he went--if that last boss
-had only been willing to try him!
-
---Then suddenly Jurgis looked up.  A tremendous roar had burst
-from the throats of the crowd, which by this time had packed the
-hall to the very doors.  Men and women were standing up, waving
-handkerchiefs, shouting, yelling.  Evidently the speaker had
-arrived, thought Jurgis; what fools they were making of
-themselves!  What were they expecting to get out of it
-anyhow--what had they to do with elections, with governing the
-country?  Jurgis had been behind the scenes in politics.
-
-He went back to his thoughts, but with one further fact to reckon
-with--that he was caught here.  The hall was now filled to the
-doors; and after the meeting it would be too late for him to go
-home, so he would have to make the best of it outside.  Perhaps
-it would be better to go home in the morning, anyway, for the
-children would be at school, and he and Elzbieta could have a
-quiet explanation.  She always had been a reasonable person;
-and he really did mean to do right.  He would manage to persuade her
-of it--and besides, Marija was willing, and Marija was furnishing
-the money.  If Elzbieta were ugly, he would tell her that in so
-many words.
-
-So Jurgis went on meditating; until finally, when he had been an
-hour or two in the hall, there began to prepare itself a
-repetition of the dismal catastrophe of the night before. 
-Speaking had been going on all the time, and the audience was
-clapping its hands and shouting, thrilling with excitement; 
-and little by little the sounds were beginning to blur in Jurgis's
-ears, and his thoughts were beginning to run together, and his
-head to wobble and nod.  He caught himself many times, as usual,
-and made desperate resolutions; but the hall was hot and close,
-and his long walk and is dinner were too much for him--in the end
-his head sank forward and he went off again.
-
-And then again someone nudged him, and he sat up with his old
-terrified start!  He had been snoring again, of course!  And now
-what?  He fixed his eyes ahead of him, with painful intensity,
-staring at the platform as if nothing else ever had interested
-him, or ever could interest him, all his life.  He imagined the
-angry exclamations, the hostile glances; he imagined the
-policeman striding toward him--reaching for his neck.  Or was he
-to have one more chance?  Were they going to let him alone this
-time?  He sat trembling; waiting--
-
-And then suddenly came a voice in his ear, a woman's voice,gentle
-and sweet, "If you would try to listen, comrade, perhaps you
-would be interested."
-
-Jurgis was more startled by that than he would have been by the
-touch of a policeman.  He still kept his eyes fixed ahead, and
-did not stir; but his heart gave a great leap.  Comrade!  Who was
-it that called him "comrade"?
-
-He waited long, long; and at last, when he was sure that he was
-no longer watched, he stole a glance out of the corner of his
-eyes at the woman who sat beside him.  She was young and
-beautiful; she wore fine clothes, and was what is called a
-"lady." And she called him "comrade"!
-
-He turned a little, carefully, so that he could see her better;
-then he began to watch her, fascinated.  She had apparently
-forgotten all about him, and was looking toward the platform.  
-A man was speaking there--Jurgis heard his voice vaguely; but all
-his thoughts were for this woman's face.  A feeling of alarm
-stole over him as he stared at her.  It made his flesh creep. 
-What was the matter with her, what could be going on, to affect
-any one like that?  She sat as one turned to stone, her hands
-clenched tightly in her lap, so tightly that he could see the
-cords standing out in her wrists.  There was a look of excitement
-upon her face, of tense effort, as of one struggling mightily, 
-or witnessing a struggle.  There was a faint quivering of her
-nostrils; and now and then she would moisten her lips with
-feverish haste.  Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed, and her
-excitement seemed to mount higher and higher, and then to sink
-away again, like a boat tossing upon ocean surges.  What was it? 
-What was the matter?  It must be something that the man was
-saying, up there on the platform.  What sort of a man was he? 
-And what sort of thing was this, anyhow?"--So all at once it
-occurred to Jurgis to  look at the speaker.
-
-It was like coming suddenly upon some wild sight of nature--a
-mountain forest lashed by a tempest, a ship tossed about upon a 
-stormy sea.  Jurgis had an unpleasant sensation, a sense of
-confusion, of disorder, of wild and meaningless uproar.  The man
-was tall and gaunt, as haggard as his auditor himself; a thin
-black beard covered half of his face, and one could see only two
-black hollows where the eyes were.  He was speaking rapidly, in
-great excitement; he used many gestures--he spoke he moved here
-and there upon the stage, reaching with his long arms as if to
-seize each person in his audience.  His voice was deep, like an
-organ; it was some time, however, before Jurgis thought of the
-voice--he was too much occupied with his eyes to think of what
-the man was saying.  But suddenly it seemed as if the speaker had
-begun pointing straight at him, as if he had singled him out
-particularly for his remarks; and so Jurgis became suddenly aware
-of his voice, trembling, vibrant with emotion, with pain and
-longing, with a burden of things unutterable, not to be compassed
-by words.  To hear it was to be suddenly arrested, to be gripped,
-transfixed.
-
-"You listen to these things," the man was saying, "and you say,
-'Yes, they are true, but they have been that way always.' Or you
-say, 'Maybe it will come, but not in my time--it will not help
-me.' And so you return to your daily round of toil, you go back
-to be ground up for profits in the world-wide mill of economic
-might!  To toil long hours for another's advantage; to live in
-mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful
-places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger and privation,
-to take your chances of accident, disease, and death.  And each day
-the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day you
-have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of
-circumstance close upon you a little tighter.  Months pass, years
-maybe--and then you come again; and again I am here to plead with
-you, to know if want and misery have yet done their work with
-you, if injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes!  I
-shall still be waiting--there is nothing else that I can do. 
-There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things, there
-is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends
-of the earth, I find the same accursed system--I find that all
-the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and
-the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of
-organized and predatory Greed!  And therefore I cannot rest, I
-cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness,
-health and good repute--and go out into the world and cry out the
-pain of my spirit!  Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty
-and sickness, not by hatred and obloquy, by threats and
-ridicule--not by prison and persecution, if they should come--not
-by any power that is upon the earth or above the earth, that was,
-or is, or ever can be created.  If I fail tonight, I can only try
-tomorrow; knowing that the fault must be mine--that if once the
-vision of my soul were spoken upon earth, if once the anguish of
-its defeat were uttered in human speech, it would break the
-stoutest barriers of prejudice, it would shake the most sluggish
-soul to action!  It would abash the most cynical, it would
-terrify the most selfish; and the voice of mockery would be
-silenced, and fraud and falsehood would slink back into their
-dens, and the truth would stand forth alone!  For I speak with
-the voice of the millions who are voiceless!  Of them that are
-oppressed and have no comforter!  Of the disinherited of life,
-for whom there is no respite and no deliverance, to whom the
-world is a prison, a dungeon of torture, a tomb!  With the voice
-of the little child who toils tonight in a Southern cotton mill,
-staggering with exhaustion, numb with agony, and knowing no hope
-but the grave!  Of the mother who sews by candlelight in her
-tenement garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the mortal
-hunger of her babes!  Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags,
-wrestling in his last sickness and leaving his loved ones to
-perish!  Of the young girl who, somewhere at this moment, is
-walking the streets of this horrible city, beaten and starving,
-and making her choice between the brothel and the lake!  With the
-voice of those, whoever and wherever they may be, who are caught
-beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of Greed!  With the voice of
-humanity, calling for deliverance!  Of the everlasting soul of
-Man, arising from the dust; breaking its way out of its
-prison--rending the bands of oppression and ignorance--groping
-its way to the light!"
-
-The speaker paused.  There was an instant of silence, while men
-caught their breaths, and then like a single sound there came a
-cry from a thousand people.  Through it all Jurgis sat still,
-motionless and rigid, his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was
-trembling, smitten with wonder.
-
-Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence fell, and he began
-again.
-
-"I plead with you," he said, "whoever you may be, provided that
-you care about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-
-man, with those to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters
-of sentiment, to be dallied and toyed with, and then perhaps put
-aside and forgotten--to whom they are the grim and relentless
-realities of the daily grind, the chains upon their limbs, the
-lash upon their backs, the iron in their souls.  To you, working-
-men!  To you, the toilers, who have made this land, and have no
-voice in its councils!  To you, whose lot it is to sow that
-others may reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the
-wages of a beast of burden, the food and shelter to keep you
-alive from day to day.  It is to you that I come with my message
-of salvation, it is to you that I appeal.  I know how much it is
-to ask of you--I know, for I have been in your place, I have
-lived your life, and there is no man before me here tonight who
-knows it better.  I have known what it is to be a street-waif, 
-a bootblack, living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar
-stairways and under empty wagons.  I have known what it is to
-dare and to aspire, to dream mighty dreams and to see them
-perish--to see all the fair flowers of my spirit trampled into
-the mire by the wild-beast powers of my life.  I know what is the
-price that a working-man pays for knowledge--I have paid for it
-with food and sleep, with agony of body and mind, with health,
-almost with life itself; and so, when I come to you with a story
-of hope and freedom, with the vision of a new earth to be
-created, of a new labor to be dared, I am not surprised that I
-find you sordid and material, sluggish and incredulous.  That I
-do not despair is because I know also the forces that are driving
-behind you--because I know the raging lash of poverty, the sting
-of contempt and mastership, 'the insolence of office and the
-spurns.' Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to
-me tonight, no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no
-matter how many may have come out of idle curiosity, or in order
-to ridicule--there will be some one man whom pain and suffering
-have made desperate, whom some chance vision of wrong and horror
-has startled and shocked into attention.  And to him my words
-will come like a sudden flash of lightning to one who travels in
-darkness--revealing the way before him, the perils and the
-obstacles--solving all problems, making all difficulties clear! 
-The scales will fall from his eyes, the shackles will be torn
-from his limbs--he will leap up with a cry of thankfulness, he
-will stride forth a free man at last!  A man delivered from his
-self-created slavery!  A man who will never more be trapped--whom
-no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten; who
-from tonight on will move forward, and not backward, who will
-study and understand, who will gird on his sword and take his
-place in the army of his comrades and brothers.  Who will carry
-the good tidings to others, as I have carried them to
-him--priceless gift of liberty and light that is neither mine nor
-his, but is the heritage of the soul of man!  Working-men,
-working-men--comrades!  open your eyes and look about you!  You
-have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are
-dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives
-this world in which you dwell--tear off the rags of its customs
-and conventions--behold it as it is, in all its hideous
-nakedness!  Realize it, realize it!  Realize that out upon the
-plains of Manchuria tonight two hostile armies are facing each
-other--that now, while we are seated here, a million human beings
-may be hurled at each other's throats, striving with the fury of
-maniacs to tear each other to pieces!  And this in the twentieth
-century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince of Peace was
-born on earth!  Nineteen hundred years that his words have been
-preached as divine, and here two armies of men are rending and
-tearing each other like the wild beasts of the forest! 
-Philosophers have reasoned, prophets have denounced, poets have
-wept and pleaded--and still this hideous Monster roams at large! 
-We have schools and colleges, newspapers and books; we have
-searched the heavens and the earth, we have weighed and probed
-and reasoned--and all to equip men to destroy each other!  We
-call it War, and pass it by--but do not put me off with
-platitudes and conventions--come with me, come with me--realize
-it!  See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces
-by bursting shells!  Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged
-into human flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the
-faces of men crazed by pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate! 
-Put your hand upon that piece of flesh--it is hot and
-quivering--just now it was a part of a man!  This blood is still
-steaming--it was driven by a human heart!  Almighty God!  and
-this goes on--it is systematic, organized, premeditated!  And we
-know it, and read of it, and take it for granted; our papers tell
-of it, and the presses are not stopped--our churches know of it,
-and do not close their doors--the people behold it, and do not
-rise up in horror and revolution!
-
-"Or perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you--come home with me
-then, come here to Chicago.  Here in this city to-night ten
-thousand women are shut up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to
-sell their bodies to live.  And we know it, we make it a jest! 
-And these women are made in the image of your mothers, they may
-be your sisters, your daughters; the child whom you left at home
-tonight, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the morning--that
-fate may be waiting for her!  To-night in Chicago there are ten
-thousand men, homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging
-for a chance, yet starving, and fronting in terror the awful
-winter cold!  Tonight in Chicago there are a hundred thousand
-children wearing out their strength and blasting their lives in
-the effort to earn their bread!  There are a hundred thousand
-mothers who are living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn
-enough to feed their little ones!  There are a hundred thousand
-old people, cast off and helpless, waiting for death to take them
-from their torments!  There are a million people, men and women
-and children, who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil
-every hour they can stand and see, for just enough to keep them
-alive; who are condemned till the end of their days to monotony
-and weariness, to hunger and misery, to heat and cold, to dirt
-and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice!  And then
-turn over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of the
-picture.  There are a thousand--ten thousand, maybe--who are the
-masters of these slaves, who own their toil.  They do nothing to
-earn what they receive, they do not even have to ask for it--it
-comes to them of itself, their only care is to dispose of it. 
-They live in palaces, they riot in luxury and extravagance--such
-as no words can describe, as makes the imagination reel and
-stagger, makes the soul grow sick and faint.  They spend hundreds
-of dollars for a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they
-spend millions for horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces
-and banquets, for little shiny stones with which to deck their
-bodies.  Their life is a contest among themselves for supremacy
-in ostentation and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and
-necessary things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of
-their fellow creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, 
-the sweat and tears and blood of the human race!  It is all
-theirs--it comes to them; just as all the springs pour into
-streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and the rivers into
-the oceans--so, automatically and inevitably, all the wealth of
-society comes to them.  The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs
-in the earth, the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the
-stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise
-man studies, the inspired man sings--and all the result, the
-products of the labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into one
-stupendous stream and poured into their laps!  The whole of
-society is in their grip, the whole labor of the world lies at
-their mercy--and like fierce wolves they rend and destroy, like
-ravening vultures they devour and tear!  The whole power of
-mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond recall--do what it
-can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and dies for
-them!  They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought
-the governments; and everywhere they use their raped and stolen
-power to intrench themselves in their privileges, to dig wider
-and deeper the channels through which the river of profits flows
-to them!--And you, workingmen, workingmen!  You have been brought
-up to it, you plod on like beasts of burden, thinking only of the
-day and its pain--yet is there a man among you who can believe
-that such a system will continue forever--is there a man here in
-this audience tonight so hardened and debased that he dare rise
-up before me and say that he believes it can continue forever;
-that the product of the labor of society, the means of existence
-of the human race, will always belong to idlers and parasites, to
-be spent for the gratification of vanity and lust--to be spent
-for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any individual
-will whatever--that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity
-will not belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of
-humanity, to be controlled by the will of humanity?  And if this
-is ever to be, how is it to be--what power is there that will
-bring it about?  Will it be the task of your masters, do you
-think--will they write the charter of your liberties?  Will they
-forge you the sword of your deliverance, will they marshal you
-the army and lead it to the fray?  Will their wealth be spent for
-the purpose--will they build colleges and churches to teach you,
-will they print papers to herald your progress, and organize
-political parties to guide and carry on the struggle?  Can you
-not see that the task is your task--yours to dream, yours to
-resolve, yours to execute?  That if ever it is carried out, it
-will be in the face of every obstacle that wealth and mastership
-can oppose--in the face of ridicule and slander, of hatred and
-persecution, of the bludgeon and the jail?  That it will be by
-the power of your naked bosoms, opposed to the rage of
-oppression!  By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and
-merciless affliction!  By the painful gropings of the untutored
-mind, by the feeble stammerings of the uncultured voice!  By the
-sad and lonely hunger of the spirit; by seeking and striving and
-yearning, by heartache and despairing, by agony and sweat of
-blood!  It will be by money paid for with hunger, by knowledge
-stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated under the shadow of
-the gallows!  It will be a movement beginning in the far-off
-past, a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing easy to ridicule,
-easy to despise; a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of
-vengeance and hate--but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave,
-calling with a voice insistent, imperious--with a voice that you
-cannot escape, wherever upon the earth you may be!  With the
-voice of all your wrongs, with the voice of all your desires;
-with the voice of your duty and your hope--of everything in the
-world that is worth while to you!  The voice of the poor,
-demanding that poverty shall cease!  The voice of the oppressed,
-pronouncing the doom of oppression!  The voice of power, wrought
-out of suffering--of resolution, crushed out of weakness--of joy
-and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! 
-The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying
-prostrate--mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound, and
-ignorant of his strength.  And now a dream of resistance haunts
-him, hope battling with fear; until suddenly he stirs, and a
-fetter snaps--and a thrill shoots through him, to the farthest
-ends of his huge body, and in a flash the dream becomes an act! 
-He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered, the
-burdens roll off him--he rises--towering, gigantic; he springs to
-his feet, he shouts in his newborn exultation--"
-
-And the speaker's voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his
-feelings; he stood with his arms stretched out above him, and the
-power of his vision seemed to lift him from the floor.  The
-audience came to its feet with a yell; men waved their arms,
-laughing aloud in their excitement.  And Jurgis was with them, he
-was shouting to tear his throat; shouting because he could not
-help it, because the stress of his feeling was more than he could
-bear.  It was not merely the man's words, the torrent of his
-eloquence.  It was his presence, it was his voice: a voice with
-strange intonations that rang through the chambers of the soul
-like the clanging of a bell--that gripped the listener like a
-mighty hand about his body, that shook him and startled him with
-sudden fright, with a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries
-never spoken before, of presences of awe and terror!  There was
-an unfolding of vistas before him, a breaking of the ground
-beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring, a trembling; he felt
-himself suddenly a mere man no longer--there were powers within
-him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending, agelong
-wonders struggling to be born; and he sat oppressed with pain and
-joy, while a tingling stole down into his finger tips, and his
-breath came hard and fast.  The sentences of this man were to
-Jurgis like the crashing of thunder in his soul; a flood of
-emotions surged up in him--all his old hopes and longings, his
-old griefs and rages and despairs.  All that he had ever felt in
-his whole life seemed to come back to him at once, and with one
-new emotion, hardly to be described.  That he should have
-suffered such oppressions and such horrors was bad enough;
-but that he should have been crushed and beaten by them, that he
-should have submitted, and forgotten, and lived in peace--ah,
-truly that was a thing not to be put into words, a thing not to
-be borne by a human creature, a thing of terror and madness! 
-"What," asks the prophet, "is the murder of them that kill the
-body, to the murder of them that kill the soul?" And Jurgis was a
-man whose soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to
-struggle--who had made terms with degradation and despair; and
-now, suddenly, in one awful convulsion, the black and hideous
-fact was made plain to him!  There was a falling in of all the
-pillars of his soul, the sky seemed to split above him--he stood
-there, with his clenched hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot, and
-the veins standing out purple in his face, roaring in the voice
-of a wild beast, frantic, incoherent, maniacal.  And when he
-could shout no more he still stood there, gasping, and whispering
-hoarsely to himself: "By God!  By God!  By God!"
-
-
-Chapter 29
-
-
-The man had gone back to a seat upon the platform, and Jurgis
-realized that his speech was over.  The applause continued for
-several minutes; and then some one started a song, and the crowd
-took it up, and the place shook with it.  Jurgis had never heard
-it, and he could not make out the words, but the wild and
-wonderful spirit of it seized upon him--it was the
-"Marseillaise!" As stanza after stanza of it thundered forth, he
-sat with his hands clasped, trembling in every nerve.  He had
-never been so stirred in his life--it was a miracle that had been
-wrought in him.  He could not think at all, he was stunned; yet
-he knew that in the mighty upheaval that had taken place in his
-soul, a new man had been born.  He had been torn out of the jaws
-of destruction, he had been delivered from the thraldom of
-despair; the whole world had been changed for him--he was free,
-he was free!  Even if he were to suffer as he had before, even if
-he were to beg and starve, nothing would be the same to him; he
-would understand it, and bear it.  He would no longer be the
-sport of circumstances, he would be a man, with a will and a
-purpose; he would have something to fight for, something to die
-for, if need be!  Here were men who would show him and help him;
-and he would have friends and allies, he would dwell in the sight
-of justice, and walk arm in arm with power.
-
-The audience subsided again, and Jurgis sat back.  The chairman
-of the meeting came forward and began to speak.  His voice
-sounded thin and futile after the other's, and to Jurgis it
-seemed a profanation.  Why should any one else speak, after that
-miraculous man--why should they not all sit in silence?  The
-chairman was explaining that a collection would now be taken up
-to defray the expenses of the meeting, and for the benefit of the
-campaign fund of the party.  Jurgis heard; but he had not a penny
-to give, and so his thoughts went elsewhere again.
-
-He kept his eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his
-head leaning on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion. 
-But suddenly he stood up again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of
-the meeting saying that the speaker would now answer any
-questions which the audience might care to put to him.  The man
-came forward, and some one--a woman--arose and asked about some
-opinion the speaker had expressed concerning Tolstoy.  Jurgis had
-never heard of Tolstoy, and did not care anything about him.  Why
-should any one want to ask such questions, after an address like
-that?  The thing was not to talk, but to do; the thing was to get
-bold of others and rouse them, to organize them and prepare for
-the fight!  But still the discussion went on, in ordinary
-conversational tones, and it brought Jurgis back to the everyday
-world.  A few minutes ago he had felt like seizing the hand of
-the beautiful lady by his side, and kissing it; he had felt like
-flinging his arms about the neck of the man on the other side of
-him.  And now he began to realize again that he was a "hobo,"
-that he was ragged and dirty, and smelled bad, and had no place
-to sleep that night!
-
-And so, at last, when the meeting broke up, and the audience
-started to leave, poor Jurgis was in an agony of uncertainty.
-He had not thought of leaving--he had thought that the vision must
-last forever, that he had found comrades and brothers.  But now
-he would go out, and the thing would fade away, and he would
-never be able to find it again!  He sat in his seat, frightened
-and wondering; but others in the same row wanted to get out, and
-so he had to stand up and move along.  As he was swept down the
-aisle he looked from one person to another, wistfully; they were
-all excitedly discussing the address--but there was nobody who
-offered to discuss it with him.  He was near enough to the door
-to feel the night air, when desperation seized him.  He knew
-nothing at all about that speech he had heard, not even the name
-of the orator; and he was to go away--no, no, it was
-preposterous, he must speak to some one; he must find that man
-himself and tell him.  He would not despise him, tramp as he was!
-
-So he stepped into an empty row of seats and watched, and when
-the crowd had thinned out, he started toward the platform.  The
-speaker was gone; but there was a stage door that stood open,
-with people passing in and out, and no one on guard.  Jurgis
-summoned up his courage and went in, and down a hallway, and to
-the door of a room where many people were crowded.  No one paid
-any attention to him, and he pushed in, and in a corner he saw
-the man he sought.  The orator sat in a chair, with his shoulders
-sunk together and his eyes half closed; his face was ghastly
-pale, almost greenish in hue, and one arm lay limp at his side. 
-A big man with spectacles on stood near him, and kept pushing
-back the crowd, saying, "Stand away a little, please; can't you
-see the comrade is worn out?"
-
-So Jurgis stood watching, while five or ten minutes passed.  Now
-and then the man would look up, and address a word or two to
-those who were near him; and, at last, on one of these occasions,
-his glance rested on Jurgis.  There seemed to be a slight hint of
-inquiry about it, and a sudden impulse seized the other.  He
-stepped forward.
-
-"I wanted to thank you, sir!" he began, in breathless haste.  "I
-could not go away without telling you how much--how glad I am I
-heard you.  I--I didn't know anything about it all--"
-
-The big man with the spectacles, who had moved away, came back at
-this moment.  "The comrade is too tired to talk to any one--" he
-began; but the other held up his hand.
-
-"Wait," he said.  "He has something to say to me." And then he
-looked into Jurgis's face.  "You want to know more about
-Socialism?" he asked.
-
-Jurgis started.  "I--I--" he stammered.  "Is it Socialism?  I
-didn't know.  I want to know about what you spoke of--I want to
-help.  I have been through all that."
-
-"Where do you live?" asked the other.
-
-"I have no home," said Jurgis, "I am out of work."
-
-"You are a foreigner, are you not?"
-
-"Lithuanian, sir."
-
-The man thought for a moment, and then turned to his friend. 
-"Who is there, Walters?" he asked.  "There is Ostrinski--but he
-is a Pole--"
-
-"Ostrinski speaks Lithuanian," said the other.  "All right, then;
-would you mind seeing if he has gone yet?"
-
-The other started away, and the speaker looked at Jurgis again. 
-He had deep, black eyes, and a face full of gentleness and pain. 
-"You must excuse me, comrade," he said.  "I am just tired out--I
-have spoken every day for the last month.  I will introduce you
-to some one who will be able to help you as well as I could--"
-
-The messenger had had to go no further than the door, he came
-back, followed by a man whom he introduced to Jurgis as "Comrade
-Ostrinski." Comrade Ostrinski was a little man, scarcely up to
-Jurgis's shoulder, wizened and wrinkled, very ugly, and slightly
-lame.  He had on a long-tailed black coat, worn green at the
-seams and the buttonholes; his eyes must have been weak, for he
-wore green spectacles that gave him a grotesque appearance.  
-But his handclasp was hearty, and he spoke in Lithuanian, which
-warmed Jurgis to him.
-
-"You want to know about Socialism?" he said.  "Surely.  Let us go
-out and take a stroll, where we can be quiet and talk some."
-
-And so Jurgis bade farewell to the master wizard, and went out. 
-Ostrinski asked where he lived, offering to walk in that
-direction; and so he had to explain once more that he was without
-a home.  At the other's request he told his story; how he had
-come to America, and what had happened to him in the stockyards,
-and how his family had been broken up, and how he had become a
-wanderer.  So much the little man heard, and then he pressed
-Jurgis's arm tightly.  "You have been through the mill, comrade!"
-he said.  "We will make a fighter out of you!"
-
-Then Ostrinski in turn explained his circumstances.  He would
-have asked Jurgis to his home--but he had only two rooms, and had
-no bed to offer.  He would have given up his own bed, but his
-wife was ill.  Later on, when he understood that otherwise Jurgis
-would have to sleep in a hallway, he offered him his kitchen
-floor, a chance which the other was only too glad to accept. 
-"Perhaps tomorrow we can do better," said Ostrinski.  "We try not
-to let a comrade starve."
-
-Ostrinski's home was in the Ghetto district, where he had two
-rooms in the basement of a tenement.  There was a baby crying as
-they entered, and he closed the door leading into the bedroom. 
-He had three young children, he explained, and a baby had just
-come.  He drew up two chairs near the kitchen stove, adding that
-Jurgis must excuse the disorder of the place, since at such a
-time one's domestic arrangements were upset.  Half of the kitchen
-was given up to a workbench, which was piled with clothing, and
-Ostrinski explained that he was a "pants finisher." He brought
-great bundles of clothing here to his home, where he and his wife
-worked on them.  He made a living at it, but it was getting
-harder all the time, because his eyes were failing.  What would
-come when they gave out he could not tell; there had been no
-saving anything--a man could barely keep alive by twelve or
-fourteen hours' work a day.  The finishing of pants did not take
-much skill, and anybody could learn it, and so the pay was
-forever getting less.  That was the competitive wage system; and
-if Jurgis wanted to understand what Socialism was, it was there
-he had best begin.  The workers were dependent upon a job to
-exist from day to day, and so they bid against each other, and no
-man could get more than the lowest man would consent to work for. 
-And thus the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death
-struggle with poverty.  That was "competition," so far as it
-concerned the wage-earner, the man who had only his labor to
-sell; to those on top, the exploiters, it appeared very
-differently, of course--there were few of them, and they could
-combine and dominate, and their power would be unbreakable.  And
-so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged
-chasm between them--the capitalist class, with its enormous
-fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen
-chains.  The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they
-were ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of
-their exploiters until they were organized--until they had become
-"class-conscious." It was a slow and weary process, but it would
-go on--it was like the movement of a glacier, once it was started
-it could never be stopped.  Every Socialist did his share, and
-lived upon the vision of the "good time coming,"--when the
-working class should go to the polls and seize the powers of
-government, and put an end to private property in the means of
-production.  No matter how poor a man was, or how much he
-suffered, he could never be really unhappy while he knew of that
-future; even if he did not live to see it himself, his children
-would, and, to a Socialist, the victory of his class was his
-victory.  Also he had always the progress to encourage him; 
-here in Chicago, for instance, the movement was growing by leaps and
-bounds.  Chicago was the industrial center of the country, and
-nowhere else were the unions so strong; but their organizations
-did the workers little good, for the employers were organized,
-also; and so the strikes generally failed, and as fast as the
-unions were broken up the men were coming over to the Socialists.
-
-Ostrinski explained the organization of the party, the machinery
-by which the proletariat was educating itself.  There were
-"locals" in every big city and town, and they were being
-organized rapidly in the smaller places; a local had anywhere
-from six to a thousand members, and there were fourteen hundred
-of them in all, with a total of about twenty-five thousand
-members, who paid dues to support the organization.  "Local Cook
-County," as the city organization was called, had eighty branch
-locals, and it alone was spending several thousand dollars in the
-campaign.  It published a weekly in English, and one each in
-Bohemian and German; also there was a monthly published in
-Chicago, and a cooperative publishing house, that issued a
-million and a half of Socialist books and pamphlets every year. 
-All this was the growth of the last few years--there had been
-almost nothing of it when Ostrinski first came to Chicago.
-
-Ostrinski was a Pole, about fifty years of age.  He had lived in
-Silesia, a member of a despised and persecuted race, and had
-taken part in the proletarian movement in the early seventies,
-when Bismarck, having conquered France, had turned his policy of
-blood and iron upon the "International." Ostrinski himself had
-twice been in jail, but he had been young then, and had not
-cared.  He had had more of his share of the fight, though, for
-just when Socialism had broken all its barriers and become the
-great political force of the empire, he had come to America, and
-begun all over again.  In America every one had laughed at the
-mere idea of Socialism then--in America all men were free.  As if
-political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!  said
-Ostrinski.
-
-The little tailor sat tilted back in his stiff kitchen chair,
-with his feet stretched out upon the empty stove, and speaking in
-low whispers, so as not to waken those in the next room.  To
-Jurgis he seemed a scarcely less wonderful person than the
-speaker at the meeting; he was poor, the lowest of the low,
-hunger-driven and miserable--and yet how much he knew, how much
-he had dared and achieved, what a hero he had been!  There were
-others like him, too--thousands like him, and all of them
-workingmen!  That all this wonderful machinery of progress had
-been created by his fellows--Jurgis could not believe it, it
-seemed too good to be true.
-
-That was always the way, said Ostrinski; when a man was first
-converted to Socialism he was like a crazy person--he could not'
-understand how others could fail to see it, and he expected to
-convert all the world the first week.  After a while he would
-realize how hard a task it was; and then it would be fortunate
-that other new hands kept coming, to save him from settling down
-into a rut.  Just now Jurgis would have plenty of chance to vent
-his excitement, for a presidential campaign was on, and everybody
-was talking politics.  Ostrinski would take him to the next
-meeting of the branch local, and introduce him, and he might join
-the party.  The dues were five cents a week, but any one who
-could not afford this might be excused from paying.  The
-Socialist party was a really democratic political
-organization--it was controlled absolutely by its own membership,
-and had no bosses.  All of these things Ostrinski explained, as
-also the principles of the party.  You might say that there was
-really but one Socialist principle--that of "no compromise,"
-which was the essence of the proletarian movement all over the
-world.  When a Socialist was elected to office he voted with old
-party legislators for any measure that was likely to be of help
-to the working class, but he never forgot that these concessions,
-whatever they might be, were trifles compared with the great
-purpose--the organizing of the working class for the revolution. 
-So far, the rule in America had been that one Socialist made
-another Socialist once every two years; and if they should
-maintain the same rate they would carry the country in
-1912--though not all of them expected to succeed as quickly as
-that.
-
-The Socialists were organized in every civilized nation; it was
-an international political party, said Ostrinski, the greatest
-the world had ever known.  It numbered thirty million of
-adherents, and it cast eight million votes.  It had started its
-first newspaper in Japan, and elected its first deputy in
-Argentina; in France it named members of cabinets, and in Italy
-and Australia it held the balance of power and turned out
-ministries.  In Germany, where its vote was more than a third of
-the total vote of the empire, all other parties and powers had
-united to fight it.  It would not do, Ostrinski explained, 
-for the proletariat of one nation to achieve the victory, for that
-nation would be crushed by the military power of the others; 
-and so the Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization
-of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity.  It was the
-new religion of humanity--or you might say it was the fulfillment
-of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application
-of all the teachings of Christ.
-
-
-Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of
-his new acquaintance.  It was a most wonderful experience to
-him--an almost supernatural experience.  It was like encountering
-an inhabitant of the fourth dimension of space, a being who was
-free from all one's own limitations.  For four years, now, Jurgis
-had been wondering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness;
-and here, suddenly, a hand reached down and seized him, and
-lifted him out of it, and set him upon a mountain-top, from which
-he could survey it all--could see the paths from which he had
-wandered, the morasses into which he had stumbled, the hiding
-places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him.  There
-were his Packingtown experiences, for instance--what was there
-about Packingtown that Ostrinski could not explain!  To Jurgis
-the packers had been equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him
-that they were the Beef Trust.  They were a gigantic combination
-of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the
-laws of the land, and was preying upon the people.  Jurgis
-recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had
-stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and
-savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was
-not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was
-just what he had been--one of the packers' hogs.  What they
-wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of
-him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also
-that was what they wanted from the public.  What the hog thought
-of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was
-it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat.  That was
-true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in
-Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of
-slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity--it was
-literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred
-human lives did not balance a penny of profit.  When Jurgis had
-made himself familiar with the Socialist literature, as he would
-very quickly, he would get glimpses of the Beef Trust from all
-sorts of aspects, and he would find it everywhere the same;
-it was the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed.  It was a
-monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a
-thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the spirit of
-Capitalism made flesh.  Upon the ocean of commerce it sailed as a
-pirate ship; it had hoisted the black flag and declared war upon
-civilization.  Bribery and corruption were its everyday methods. 
-In Chicago the city government was simply one of its branch
-offices; it stole billions of gallons of city water openly, it
-dictated to the courts the sentences of disorderly strikers, it
-forbade the mayor to enforce the building laws against it.  In
-the national capital it had power to prevent inspection of its
-product, and to falsify government reports; it violated the
-rebate laws, and when an investigation was threatened it burned
-its books and sent its criminal agents out of the country.  
-In the commercial world it was a Juggernaut car; it wiped out
-thousands of businesses every year, it drove men to madness and
-suicide.  It had forced the price of cattle so low as to destroy
-the stock-raising industry, an occupation upon which whole states
-existed; it had ruined thousands of butchers who had refused to
-handle its products.  It divided the country into districts, and
-fixed the price of meat in all of them; and it owned all the
-refrigerator cars, and levied an enormous tribute upon all
-poultry and eggs and fruit and vegetables.  With the millions of
-dollars a week that poured in upon it, it was reaching out for
-the control of other interests, railroads and trolley lines, gas
-and electric light franchises--it already owned the leather and
-the grain business of the country.  The people were tremendously
-stirred up over its encroachments, but nobody had any remedy to
-suggest; it was the task of Socialists to teach and organize
-them, and prepare them for the time when they were to seize the
-huge machine called the Beef Trust, and use it to produce food
-for human beings and not to heap up fortunes for a band of
-pirates.  It was long after midnight when Jurgis lay down upon
-the floor of Ostrinski's kitchen; and yet it was an hour before
-he could get to sleep, for the glory of that joyful vision of the
-people of Packingtown marching in and taking possession of the
-Union Stockyards!
-
-
-Chapter 30
-
-
-Jurgis had breakfast with Ostrinski and his family, and then he
-went home to Elzbieta.  He was no longer shy about it--when he
-went in, instead of saying all the things he had been planning to
-say, he started to tell Elzbieta about the revolution!  At first
-she thought he was out of his mind, and it was hours before she
-could really feel certain that he was himself.  When, however,
-she had satisfied herself that he was sane upon all subjects
-except politics, she troubled herself no further about it. 
-Jurgis was destined to find that Elzbieta's armor was absolutely
-impervious to Socialism.  Her soul had been baked hard in the
-fire of adversity, and there was no altering it now; life to her
-was the hunt for daily bread, and ideas existed for her only as
-they bore upon that.  All that interested her in regard to this
-new frenzy which had seized hold of her son-in-law was whether or
-not it had a tendency to make him sober and industrious; and when
-she found he intended to look for work and to contribute his
-share to the family fund, she gave him full rein to convince her
-of anything.  A wonderfully wise little woman was Elzbieta; 
-she could think as quickly as a hunted rabbit, and in half an hour
-she had chosen her life-attitude to the Socialist movement.  She
-agreed in everything with Jurgis, except the need of his paying
-his dues; and she would even go to a meeting with him now and
-then, and sit and plan her next day's dinner amid the storm.
-
-For a week after he became a convert Jurgis continued to wander
-about all day, looking for work; until at last he met with a
-strange fortune.  He was passing one of Chicago's innumerable
-small hotels, and after some hesitation he concluded to go in.
-A man he took for the proprietor was standing in the lobby, and he
-went up to him and tackled him for a job.
-
-"What can you do?" the man asked.
-
-"Anything, sir," said Jurgis, and added quickly: "I've been out
-of work for a long time, sir.  I'm an honest man, and I'm strong
-and willing--"
-
-The other was eying him narrowly.  "Do you drink?" he asked.
-
-"No, sir," said Jurgis.
-
-"Well, I've been employing a man as a porter, and he drinks. 
-I've discharged him seven times now, and I've about made up my
-mind that's enough.  Would you be a porter?"
-
-"Yes, sir."
-
-"It's hard work.  You'll have to clean floors and wash spittoons
-and fill lamps and handle trunks--"
-
-"I'm willing, sir."
-
-"All right.  I'll pay you thirty a month and board, and you can
-begin now, if you feel like it.  You can put on the other
-fellow's rig."
-
-And so Jurgis fell to work, and toiled like a Trojan till night. 
-Then he went and told Elzbieta, and also, late as it was, he paid
-a visit to Ostrinski to let him know of his good fortune.  Here
-he received a great surprise, for when he was describing the
-location of the hotel Ostrinski interrupted suddenly, "Not
-Hinds's!"
-
-"Yes," said Jurgis, "that's the name."
-
-To which the other replied, "Then you've got the best boss in
-Chicago--he's a state organizer of our party, and one of our
-best-known speakers!"
-
-So the next morning Jurgis went to his employer and told him;
-and the man seized him by the hand and shook it.  "By Jove!" he
-cried, "that lets me out.  I didn't sleep all last night because
-I had discharged a good Socialist!"
-
-So, after that, Jurgis was known to his "boss" as "Comrade
-Jurgis," and in return he was expected to call him "Comrade
-Hinds." "Tommy" Hinds, as he was known to his intimates, was a
-squat little man, with broad shoulders and a florid face,
-decorated with gray side whiskers.  He was the kindest-hearted
-man that ever lived, and the liveliest--inexhaustible in his
-enthusiasm, and talking Socialism all day and all night.  He was
-a great fellow to jolly along a crowd, and would keep a meeting
-in an uproar; when once he got really waked up, the torrent of
-his eloquence could be compared with nothing save Niagara.
-
-Tommy Hinds had begun life as a blacksmith's helper, and had run
-away to join the Union army, where he had made his first
-acquaintance with "graft," in the shape of rotten muskets and
-shoddy blankets.  To a musket that broke in a crisis he always
-attributed the death of his only brother, and upon worthless
-blankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old age.  Whenever
-it rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he
-would screw up his face and mutter: "Capitalism, my boy,
-capitalism!  'Ecrasez l'infame!'"  He had one unfailing remedy
-for all the evils of this world, and he preached it to every one;
-no matter whether the person's trouble was failure in business,
-or dyspepsia, or a quarrelsome mother-in-law, a twinkle would
-come into his eyes and he would say, "You know what to do about
-it--vote the Socialist ticket!"
-
-Tommy Hinds had set out upon the trail of the Octopus as soon as
-the war was over.  He had gone into business, and found himself
-in competition with the fortunes of those who had been stealing
-while he had been fighting.  The city government was in their
-hands and the railroads were in league with them, and honest
-business was driven to the wall; and so Hinds had put all his
-savings into Chicago real estate, and set out singlehanded to dam
-the river of graft.  He had been a reform member of the city
-council, he had been a Greenbacker, a Labor Unionist, a Populist,
-a Bryanite--and after thirty years of fighting, the year 1896 had
-served to convince him that the power of concentrated wealth
-could never be controlled, but could only be destroyed.  He had
-published a pamphlet about it, and set out to organize a party of
-his own, when a stray Socialist leaflet had revealed to him that
-others had been ahead of him.  Now for eight years he had been
-fighting for the party, anywhere, everywhere--whether it was a
-G.A.R.  reunion, or a hotel-keepers' convention, or an
-Afro-American businessmen's banquet, or a Bible society picnic,
-Tommy Hinds would manage to get himself invited to explain the
-relations of Socialism to the subject in hand.  After that he
-would start off upon a tour of his own, ending at some place
-between New York and Oregon; and when he came back from there, he
-would go out to organize new locals for the state committee; and
-finally he would come home to rest--and talk Socialism in
-Chicago.  Hinds's hotel was a very hot-bed of the propaganda; all
-the employees were party men, and if they were not when they
-came, they were quite certain to be before they went away.  The
-proprietor would get into a discussion with some one in the
-lobby, and as the conversation grew animated, others would gather
-about to listen, until finally every one in the place would be
-crowded into a group, and a regular debate would be under way. 
-This went on every night--when Tommy Hinds was not there to do
-it, his clerk did it; and when his clerk was away campaigning,
-the assistant attended to it, while Mrs. Hinds sat behind the
-desk and did the work.  The clerk was an old crony of the
-proprietor's, an awkward, rawboned giant of a man, with a lean,
-sallow face, a broad mouth, and whiskers under his chin, the very
-type and body of a prairie farmer.  He had been that all his
-life--he had fought the railroads in Kansas for fifty years, 
-a Granger, a Farmers' Alliance man, a "middle-of-the-road"
-Populist.  Finally, Tommy Hinds had revealed to him the wonderful
-idea of using the trusts instead of destroying them, and he had
-sold his farm and come to Chicago.
-
-That was Amos Struver; and then there was Harry Adams, the
-assistant clerk, a pale, scholarly-looking man, who came from
-Massachusetts, of Pilgrim stock.  Adams had been a cotton
-operative in Fall River, and the continued depression in the
-industry had worn him and his family out, and he had emigrated to
-South Carolina.  In Massachusetts the percentage of white
-illiteracy is eight-tenths of one per cent, while in South
-Carolina it is thirteen and six-tenths per cent; also in South
-Carolina there is a property qualification for voters--and for
-these and other reasons child labor is the rule, and so the
-cotton mills were driving those of Massachusetts out of the
-business.  Adams did not know this, he only knew that the
-Southern mills were running; but when he got there he found that
-if he was to live, all his family would have to work, and from
-six o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning.  So he had
-set to work to organize the mill hands, after the fashion in
-Massachusetts, and had been discharged; but he had gotten other
-work, and stuck at it, and at last there had been a strike for
-shorter hours, and Harry Adams had attempted to address a street
-meeting, which was the end of him.  In the states of the far
-South the labor of convicts is leased to contractors, and when
-there are not convicts enough they have to be supplied.  Harry
-Adams was sent up by a judge who was a cousin of the mill owner
-with whose business he had interfered; and though the life had
-nearly killed him, he had been wise enough not to murmur, and at
-the end of his term he and his family had left the state of South
-Carolina--hell's back yard, as he called it.  He had no money for
-carfare, but it was harvesttime, and they walked one day and
-worked the next; and so Adams got at last to Chicago, and joined
-the Socialist party.  He was a studious man, reserved, and
-nothing of an orator; but he always had a pile of books under his
-desk in the hotel, and articles from his pen were beginning to
-attract attention in the party press.
-
-Contrary to what one would have expected, all this radicalism did
-not hurt the hotel business; the radicals flocked to it, and the
-commercial travelers all found it diverting.  Of late, also, the
-hotel had become a favorite stopping place for Western cattlemen. 
-Now that the Beef Trust had adopted the trick of raising prices
-to induce enormous shipments of cattle, and then dropping them
-again and scooping in all they needed, a stock raiser was very
-apt to find himself in Chicago without money enough to pay his
-freight bill; and so he had to go to a cheap hotel, and it was no
-drawback to him if there was an agitator talking in the lobby. 
-These Western fellows were just "meat" for Tommy Hinds--he would
-get a dozen of them around him and paint little pictures of "the
-System." Of course, it was not a week before he had heard
-Jurgis's story, and after that he would not have let his new
-porter go for the world.  "See here," he would say, in the middle
-of an argument, "I've got a fellow right here in my place who's
-worked there and seen every bit of it!" And then Jurgis would
-drop his work, whatever it was, and come, and the other would
-say, "Comrade Jurgis, just tell these gentlemen what you saw on
-the killing-beds." At first this request caused poor Jurgis the
-most acute agony, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to
-talk; but gradually he found out what was wanted, and in the end
-he learned to stand up and speak his piece with enthusiasm.  His
-employer would sit by and encourage him with exclamations and
-shakes of the head; when Jurgis would give the formula for
-"potted ham," or tell about the condemned hogs that were dropped
-into the "destructors" at the top and immediately taken out again
-at the bottom, to be shipped into another state and made into
-lard, Tommy Hinds would bang his knee and cry, "Do you think a
-man could make up a thing like that out of his head?"
-
-And then the hotel-keeper would go on to show how the Socialists
-had the only real remedy for such evils, how they alone "meant
-business" with the Beef Trust.  And when, in answer to this, the
-victim would say that the whole country was getting stirred up,
-that the newspapers were full of denunciations of it, and the
-government taking action against it, Tommy Hinds had a knock-out
-blow all ready.  "Yes," he would say, "all that is true--but what
-do you suppose is the reason for it?  Are you foolish enough to
-believe that it's done for the public?  There are other trusts in
-the country just as illegal and extortionate as the Beef Trust:
-there is the Coal Trust, that freezes the poor in winter--there
-is the Steel Trust, that doubles the price of every nail in your
-shoes--there is the Oil Trust, that keeps you from reading at
-night--and why do you suppose it is that all the fury of the
-press and the government is directed against the Beef Trust?" And
-when to this the victim would reply that there was clamor enough
-over the Oil Trust, the other would continue: "Ten years ago
-Henry D. Lloyd told all the truth about the Standard Oil Company
-in his Wealth versus Commonwealth; and the book was allowed to
-die, and you hardly ever hear of it.  And now, at last, two
-magazines have the courage to tackle 'Standard Oil' again, and
-what happens?  The newspapers ridicule the authors, the churches
-defend the criminals, and the government--does nothing.  And now,
-why is it all so different with the Beef Trust?"
-
-Here the other would generally admit that he was "stuck"; and
-Tommy Hinds would explain to him, and it was fun to see his eyes
-open.  "If you were a Socialist," the hotelkeeper would say, "you
-would understand that the power which really governs the United
-States today is the Railroad Trust.  It is the Railroad Trust
-that runs your state government, wherever you live, and that runs
-the United States Senate.  And all of the trusts that I have
-named are railroad trusts--save only the Beef Trust!  The Beef
-Trust has defied the railroads--it is plundering them day by day
-through the Private Car; and so the public is roused to fury, and
-the papers clamor for action, and the government goes on the war-
-path!  And you poor common people watch and applaud the job, and
-think it's all done for you, and never dream that it is really
-the grand climax of the century-long battle of commercial
-competition--the final death grapple between the chiefs of the
-Beef Trust and 'Standard Oil,' for the prize of the mastery and
-ownership of the United States of America!"
-
-
-Such was the new home in which Jurgis lived and worked, and in
-which his education was completed.  Perhaps you would imagine
-that he did not do much work there, but that would be a great
-mistake.  He would have cut off one hand for Tommy Hinds; and to
-keep Hinds's hotel a thing of beauty was his joy in life.  That
-he had a score of Socialist arguments chasing through his brain
-in the meantime did not interfere with this; on the contrary,
-Jurgis scrubbed the spittoons and polished the banisters all the
-more vehemently because at the same time he was wrestling
-inwardly with an imaginary recalcitrant.  It would be pleasant to
-record that he swore off drinking immediately, and all the rest
-of his bad habits with it; but that would hardly be exact.  These
-revolutionists were not angels; they were men, and men who had
-come up from the social pit, and with the mire of it smeared over
-them.  Some of them drank, and some of them swore, and some of
-them ate pie with their knives; there was only one difference
-between them and all the rest of the populace--that they were men
-with a hope, with a cause to fight for and suffer for.  There
-came times to Jurgis when the vision seemed far-off and pale, and
-a glass of beer loomed large in comparison; but if the glass led
-to another glass, and to too many glasses, he had something to
-spur him to remorse and resolution on the morrow.  It was so
-evidently a wicked thing to spend one's pennies for drink, when
-the working class was wandering in darkness, and waiting to be
-delivered; the price of a glass of beer would buy fifty copies of
-a leaflet, and one could hand these out to the unregenerate,
-and then get drunk upon the thought of the good that was being
-accomplished.  That was the way the movement had been made, and
-it was the only way it would progress; it availed nothing to know
-of it, without fighting for it--it was a thing for all, not for a
-few!  A corollary of this proposition of course was, that any one
-who refused to receive the new gospel was personally responsible
-for keeping Jurgis from his heart's desire; and this, alas, made
-him uncomfortable as an acquaintance.  He met some neighbors with
-whom Elzbieta had made friends in her neighborhood, and he set
-out to make Socialists of them by wholesale, and several times he
-all but got into a fight.
-
-It was all so painfully obvious to Jurgis!  It was so
-incomprehensible how a man could fail to see it!  Here were all
-the opportunities of the country, the land, and the buildings
-upon the land, the railroads, the mines, the factories, and the
-stores, all in the hands of a few private individuals, called
-capitalists, for whom the people were obliged to work for wages. 
-The whole balance of what the people produced went to heap up the
-fortunes of these capitalists, to heap, and heap again, and yet
-again--and that in spite of the fact that they, and every one
-about them, lived in unthinkable luxury!  And was it not plain
-that if the people cut off the share of those who merely "owned,"
-the share of those who worked would be much greater?  That was as
-plain as two and two makes four; and it was the whole of it,
-absolutely the whole of it; and yet there were people who could
-not see it, who would argue about everything else in the world. 
-They would tell you that governments could not manage things as
-economically as private individuals; they would repeat and repeat
-that, and think they were saying something!  They could not see
-that "economical" management by masters meant simply that they,
-the people, were worked harder and ground closer and paid less! 
-They were wage-earners and servants, at the mercy of exploiters
-whose one thought was to get as much out of them as possible; 
-and they were taking an interest in the process, were anxious lest
-it should not be done thoroughly enough!  Was it not honestly a
-trial to listen to an argument such as that?
-
-And yet there were things even worse.  You would begin talking to
-some poor devil who had worked in one shop for the last thirty
-years, and had never been able to save a penny; who left home
-every morning at six o'clock, to go and tend a machine, and come
-back at night too tired to take his clothes off; who had never
-had a week's vacation in his life, had never traveled, never had
-an adventure, never learned anything, never hoped anything--and
-when you started to tell him about Socialism he would sniff and
-say, "I'm not interested in that--I'm an individualist!" And then
-he would go on to tell you that Socialism was "paternalism," and
-that if it ever had its way the world would stop progressing.  It
-was enough to make a mule laugh, to hear arguments like that; and
-yet it was no laughing matter, as you found out--for how many
-millions of such poor deluded wretches there were, whose lives
-had been so stunted by capitalism that they no longer knew what
-freedom was!  And they really thought that it was "individualism"
-for tens of thousands of them to herd together and obey the
-orders of a steel magnate, and produce hundreds of millions of
-dollars of wealth for him, and then let him give them libraries;
-while for them to take the industry, and run it to suit
-themselves, and build their own libraries--that would have been
-"Paternalism"!
-
-Sometimes the agony of such things as this was almost more than
-Jurgis could bear; yet there was no way of escape from it, there
-was nothing to do but to dig away at the base of this mountain of
-ignorance and prejudice.  You must keep at the poor fellow; you
-must hold your temper, and argue with him, and watch for your
-chance to stick an idea or two into his head.  And the rest of
-the time you must sharpen up your weapons--you must think out new
-replies to his objections, and provide yourself with new facts to
-prove to him the folly of his ways.
-
-So Jurgis acquired the reading habit.  He would carry in his
-pocket a tract or a pamphlet which some one had loaned him, and
-whenever he had an idle moment during the day he would plod
-through a paragraph, and then think about it while he worked. 
-Also he read the newspapers, and asked questions about them.  One
-of the other porters at Hinds's was a sharp little Irishman, who
-knew everything that Jurgis wanted to know; and while they were
-busy he would explain to him the geography of America, and its
-history, its constitution and its laws; also he gave him an idea
-of the business system of the country, the great railroads and
-corporations, and who owned them, and the labor unions, and the
-big strikes, and the men who had led them.  Then at night, when
-he could get off, Jurgis would attend the Socialist meetings. 
-During the campaign one was not dependent upon the street corner
-affairs, where the weather and the quality of the orator were
-equally uncertain; there were hall meetings every night, and one
-could hear speakers of national prominence.  These discussed the
-political situation from every point of view, and all that
-troubled Jurgis was the impossibility of carrying off but a small
-part of the treasures they offered him.
-
-There was a man who was known in the party as the "Little Giant." 
-The Lord had used up so much material in the making of his head
-that there had not been enough to complete his legs; but he got
-about on the platform, and when he shook his raven whiskers the
-pillars of capitalism rocked.  He had written a veritable
-encyclopedia upon the subject, a book that was nearly as big as
-himself--And then there was a young author, who came from
-California, and had been a salmon fisher, an oyster-pirate, a
-longshoreman, a sailor; who had tramped the country and been sent
-to jail, had lived in the Whitechapel slums, and been to the
-Klondike in search of gold.  All these things he pictured in his
-books, and because he was a man of genius he forced the world to
-hear him.  Now he was famous, but wherever he went he still
-preached the gospel of the poor.  And then there was one who was
-known at the "millionaire Socialist." He had made a fortune in
-business, and spent nearly all of it in building up a magazine,
-which the post office department had tried to suppress, and had
-driven to Canada.  He was a quiet-mannered man, whom you would
-have taken for anything in the world but a Socialist agitator. 
-His speech was simple and informal--he could not understand why
-any one should get excited about these things.  It was a process
-of economic evolution, he said, and he exhibited its laws and
-methods.  Life was a struggle for existence, and the strong
-overcame the weak, and in turn were overcome by the strongest. 
-Those who lost in the struggle were generally exterminated; but
-now and then they had been known to save themselves by
-combination--which was a new and higher kind of strength.  It was
-so that the gregarious animals had overcome the predaceous; it
-was so, in human history, that the people had mastered the kings. 
-The workers were simply the citizens of industry, and the
-Socialist movement was the expression of their will to survive. 
-The inevitability of the revolution depended upon this fact, that
-they had no choice but to unite or be exterminated; this fact,
-grim and inexorable, depended upon no human will, it was the law
-of the economic process, of which the editor showed the details
-with the most marvelous precision.
-
-And later on came the evening of the great meeting of the
-campaign, when Jurgis heard the two standard-bearers of his
-party.  Ten years before there had been in Chicago a strike of a
-hundred and fifty thousand railroad employees, and thugs had been
-hired by the railroads to commit violence, and the President of
-the United States had sent in troops to break the strike, by
-flinging the officers of the union into jail without trial.  The
-president of the union came out of his cell a ruined man; but
-also he came out a Socialist; and now for just ten years he had
-been traveling up and down the country, standing face to face
-with the people, and pleading with them for justice.  He was a
-man of electric presence, tall and gaunt, with a face worn thin
-by struggle and suffering.  The fury of outraged manhood gleamed
-in it--and the tears of suffering little children pleaded in his
-voice.  When he spoke he paced the stage, lithe and eager, like a
-panther.  He leaned over, reaching out for his audience; he
-pointed into their souls with an insistent finger.  His voice was
-husky from much speaking, but the great auditorium was as still
-as death, and every one heard him.
-
-And then, as Jurgis came out from this meeting, some one handed
-him a paper which he carried home with him and read; and so he
-became acquainted with the "Appeal to Reason." About twelve years
-previously a Colorado real-estate speculator had made up his mind
-that it was wrong to gamble in the necessities of life of human
-beings: and so he had retired and begun the publication of a
-Socialist weekly.  There had come a time when he had to set his
-own type, but he had held on and won out, and now his publication
-was an institution.  It used a carload of paper every week, and
-the mail trains would be hours loading up at the depot of the
-little Kansas town.  It was a four-page weekly, which sold for
-less than half a cent a copy; its regular subscription list was a
-quarter of a million, and it went to every crossroads post office
-in America.
-
-The "Appeal" was a "propaganda" paper.  It had a manner all its
-own--it was full of ginger and spice, of Western slang and
-hustle: It collected news of the doings of the "plutes," and
-served it up for the benefit of the "American working-mule." 
-It would have columns of the deadly parallel--the million dollars'
-worth of diamonds, or the fancy pet-poodle establishment of a
-society dame, beside the fate of Mrs. Murphy of San Francisco,
-who had starved to death on the streets, or of John Robinson,
-just out of the hospital, who had hanged himself in New York
-because he could not find work.  It collected the stories of
-graft and misery from the daily press, and made a little pungent
-paragraphs out of them.  "Three banks of Bungtown, South Dakota,
-failed, and more savings of the workers swallowed up!" "The mayor
-of Sandy Creek, Oklahoma, has skipped with a hundred thousand
-dollars.  That's the kind of rulers the old partyites give you!"
-"The president of the Florida Flying Machine Company is in jail
-for bigamy.  He was a prominent opponent of Socialism, which he
-said would break up the home!" The "Appeal" had what it called
-its "Army," about thirty thousand of the faithful, who did things
-for it; and it was always exhorting the "Army" to keep its dander
-up, and occasionally encouraging it with a prize competition,
-for anything from a gold watch to a private yacht or an eighty-acre
-farm.  Its office helpers were all known to the "Army" by quaint
-titles--"Inky Ike," "the Bald-headed Man," "the Redheaded Girl,"
-"the Bulldog," "the Office Goat," and "the One Hoss."
-
-But sometimes, again, the "Appeal" would be desperately serious. 
-It sent a correspondent to Colorado, and printed pages describing
-the overthrow of American institutions in that state.  In a
-certain city of the country it had over forty of its "Army" in
-the headquarters of the Telegraph Trust, and no message of
-importance to Socialists ever went through that a copy of it did
-not go to the "Appeal." It would print great broadsides during
-the campaign; one copy that came to Jurgis was a manifesto
-addressed to striking workingmen, of which nearly a million
-copies had been distributed in the industrial centers, wherever
-the employers' associations had been carrying out their "open
-shop" program.  "You have lost the strike!" it was headed.  "And
-now what are you going to do about it?" It was what is called an
-"incendiary" appeal--it was written by a man into whose soul the
-iron had entered.  When this edition appeared, twenty thousand
-copies were sent to the stockyards district; and they were taken
-out and stowed away in the rear of a little cigar store, and
-every evening, and on Sundays, the members of the Packingtown
-locals would get armfuls and distribute them on the streets and
-in the houses.  The people of Packingtown had lost their strike,
-if ever a people had, and so they read these papers gladly, and
-twenty thousand were hardly enough to go round.  Jurgis had
-resolved not to go near his old home again, but when he heard of
-this it was too much for him, and every night for a week he would
-get on the car and ride out to the stockyards, and help to undo
-his work of the previous year, when he had sent Mike Scully's
-ten-pin setter to the city Board of Aldermen.
-
-It was quite marvelous to see what a difference twelve months had
-made in Packingtown--the eyes of the people were getting opened! 
-The Socialists were literally sweeping everything before them
-that election, and Scully and the Cook County machine were at
-their wits' end for an "issue." At the very close of the campaign
-they bethought themselves of the fact that the strike had been
-broken by Negroes, and so they sent for a South Carolina
-fire-eater, the "pitchfork senator," as he was called, a man who
-took off his coat when he talked to workingmen, and damned and
-swore like a Hessian.  This meeting they advertised extensively,
-and the Socialists advertised it too--with the result that about
-a thousand of them were on hand that evening.  The "pitchfork
-senator" stood their fusillade of questions for about an hour,
-and then went home in disgust, and the balance of the meeting was
-a strictly party affair.  Jurgis, who had insisted upon coming,
-had the time of his life that night; he danced about and waved
-his arms in his excitement--and at the very climax he broke loose
-from his friends, and got out into the aisle, and proceeded to
-make a speech himself!  The senator had been denying that the
-Democratic party was corrupt; it was always the Republicans who
-bought the votes, he said--and here was Jurgis shouting
-furiously, "It's a lie!  It's a lie!" After which he went on to
-tell them how he knew it--that he knew it because he had bought
-them himself!  And he would have told the "pitchfork senator" all
-his experiences, had not Harry Adams and a friend grabbed him
-about the neck and shoved him into a seat.
-
-
-Chapter 31
-
-
-One of the first things that Jurgis had done after he got a job
-was to go and see Marija.  She came down into the basement of the
-house to meet him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his
-hand, saying, "I've got work now, and so you can leave here."
-
-But Marija only shook her head.  There was nothing else for her
-to do, she said, and nobody to employ her.  She could not keep
-her past a secret--girls had tried it, and they were always found
-out.  There were thousands of men who came to this place, and
-sooner or later she would meet one of them.  "And besides,"
-Marija added, "I can't do anything.  I'm no good--I take dope. 
-What could you do with me?"
-
-"Can't you stop?" Jurgis cried.
-
-"No," she answered, "I'll never stop.  What's the use of talking
-about it--I'll stay here till I die, I guess.  It's all I'm fit
-for." And that was all that he could get her to say--there was no
-use trying.  When he told her he would not let Elzbieta take her
-money, she answered indifferently: "Then it'll be wasted
-here--that's all." Her eyelids looked heavy and her face was red
-and swollen; he saw that he was annoying her, that she only
-wanted him to go away.  So he went, disappointed and sad.
-
-Poor Jurgis was not very happy in his home-life.  Elzbieta was
-sick a good deal now, and the boys were wild and unruly, and very
-much the worse for their life upon the streets.  But he stuck by
-the family nevertheless, for they reminded him of his old
-happiness; and when things went wrong he could solace himself
-with a plunge into the Socialist movement.  Since his life had
-been caught up into the current of this great stream, things
-which had before been the whole of life to him came to seem of
-relatively slight importance; his interests were elsewhere, 
-in the world of ideas.  His outward life was commonplace and
-uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain
-one while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought,
-his life was a perpetual adventure.  There was so much to know--so
-many wonders to be discovered!  Never in all his life did Jurgis
-forget the day before election, when there came a telephone
-message from a friend of Harry Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis
-to see him that night; and Jurgis went, and met one of the minds
-of the movement.
-
-The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire
-who had given up his life to settlement work, and had a little
-home in the heart of the city's slums.  He did not belong to the
-party, but he was in sympathy with it; and he said that he was to
-have as his guest that night the editor of a big Eastern
-magazine, who wrote against Socialism, but really did not know
-what it was.  The millionaire suggested that Adams bring Jurgis
-along, and then start up the subject of "pure food," in which the
-editor was interested.
-
-Young Fisher's home was a little two-story brick house, dingy and
-weather-beaten outside, but attractive within.  The room that
-Jurgis saw was half lined with books, and upon the walls were
-many pictures, dimly visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a
-cold, rainy night, so a log fire was crackling in the open
-hearth.  Seven or eight people were gathered about it when Adams
-and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to his dismay that three
-of them were ladies.  He had never talked to people of this sort
-before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment.  He stood in
-the doorway clutching his hat tightly in his hands, and made a
-deep bow to each of the persons as he was introduced; then, when
-he was asked to have a seat, he took a chair in a dark corner,
-and sat down upon the edge of it, and wiped the perspiration off
-his forehead with his sleeve.  He was terrified lest they should
-expect him to talk.
-
-There was the host himself, a tall, athletic young man, clad in
-evening dress, as also was the editor, a dyspeptic-looking
-gentleman named Maynard.  There was the former's frail young
-wife, and also an elderly lady, who taught kindergarten in the
-settlement, and a young college student, a beautiful girl with an
-intense and earnest face.  She only spoke once or twice while
-Jurgis was there--the rest of the time she sat by the table in
-the center of the room, resting her chin in her hands and
-drinking in the conversation.  There were two other men, whom
-young Fisher had introduced to Jurgis as Mr. Lucas and Mr.
-Schliemann; he heard them address Adams as "Comrade," and so he
-knew that they were Socialists.
-
-The one called Lucas was a mild and meek-looking little gentleman
-of clerical aspect; he had been an itinerant evangelist, it
-transpired, and had seen the light and become a prophet of the
-new dispensation.  He traveled all over the country, living like
-the apostles of old, upon hospitality, and preaching upon street-
-corners when there was no hall.  The other man had been in the
-midst of a discussion with the editor when Adams and Jurgis came
-in; and at the suggestion of the host they resumed it after the
-interruption.  Jurgis was soon sitting spellbound, thinking that
-here was surely the strangest man that had ever lived in the
-world.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was a Swede, a tall, gaunt person, with hairy
-hands and bristling yellow beard; he was a university man, and
-had been a professor of philosophy--until, as he said, he had
-found that he was selling his character as well as his time. 
-Instead he had come to America, where he lived in a garret room
-in this slum district, and made volcanic energy take the place of
-fire.  He studied the composition of food-stuffs, and knew
-exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his body needed;
-and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the value 
-of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day.  About the first of
-July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when
-he struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars
-and a half a day, and come home when he had another year's
-supply--a hundred and twenty-five dollars.  That was the nearest
-approach to independence a man could make "under capitalism," he
-explained; he would never marry, for no sane man would allow
-himself to fall in love until after the revolution.
-
-He sat in a big arm-chair, with his legs crossed, and his head so
-far in the shadow that one saw only two glowing lights, reflected
-from the fire on the hearth.  He spoke simply, and utterly
-without emotion; with the manner of a teacher setting forth to a
-group of scholars an axiom in geometry, he would enunciate such
-propositions as made the hair of an ordinary person rise on end. 
-And when the auditor had asserted his non-comprehension, he would
-proceed to elucidate by some new proposition, yet more appalling. 
-To Jurgis the Herr Dr.  Schliemann assumed the proportions of a
-thunderstorm or an earthquake.  And yet, strange as it might
-seem, there was a subtle bond between them, and he could follow
-the argument nearly all the time.  He was carried over the
-difficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away
-in mad career--a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse
-Speculation.
-
-Nicholas Schliemann was familiar with all the universe, and with
-man as a small part of it.  He understood human institutions, and
-blew them about like soap bubbles.  It was surprising that so
-much destructiveness could be contained in one human mind.  Was
-it government?  The purpose of government was the guarding of
-property-rights, the perpetuation of ancient force and modern
-fraud.  Or was it marriage?  Marriage and prostitution were two
-sides of one shield, the predatory man's exploitation of the sex-
-pleasure.  The difference between them was a difference of class. 
-If a woman had money she might dictate her own terms: equality,
-a life contract, and the legitimacy--that is, the property-rights--
-of her children.  If she had no money, she was a proletarian, and
-sold herself for an existence.  And then the subject became
-Religion, which was the Archfiend's deadliest weapon.  Government
-oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his
-mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.  The
-working-man was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his
-pockets were picked in this one; he was brought up to frugality,
-humility, obedience--in short to all the pseudo-virtues of
-capitalism.  The destiny of civilization would be decided in one
-final death struggle between the Red International and the Black,
-between Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church; while here at
-home, "the stygian midnight of American evangelicalism--"
-
-And here the ex-preacher entered the field, and there was a
-lively tussle.  "Comrade" Lucas was not what is called an
-educated man; he knew only the Bible, but it was the Bible
-interpreted by real experience.  And what was the use, he asked,
-of confusing Religion with men's perversions of it?  That the
-church was in the hands of the merchants at the moment was
-obvious enough; but already there were signs of rebellion, and if
-Comrade Schliemann could come back a few years from now--
-
-"Ah, yes," said the other, "of course, I have no doubt that in a
-hundred years the Vatican will be denying that it ever opposed
-Socialism, just as at present it denies that it ever tortured
-Galileo."
-
-"I am not defending the Vatican," exclaimed Lucas, vehemently. 
-"I am defending the word of God--which is one long cry of the
-human spirit for deliverance from the sway of oppression.  Take
-the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Job, which I am
-accustomed to quote in my addresses as 'the Bible upon the Beef
-Trust'; or take the words of Isaiah--or of the Master himself! 
-Not the elegant prince of our debauched and vicious art, not the
-jeweled idol of our society churches--but the Jesus of the awful
-reality, the man of sorrow and pain, the outcast, despised of the
-world, who had nowhere to lay his head--"
-
-"I will grant you Jesus," interrupted the other.
-
-"Well, then," cried Lucas, "and why should Jesus have nothing to
-do with his church--why should his words and his life be of no
-authority among those who profess to adore him?  Here is a man
-who was the world's first revolutionist, the true founder of the
-Socialist movement; a man whose whole being was one flame of
-hatred for wealth, and all that wealth stands for,--for the pride
-of wealth, and the luxury of wealth, and the tyranny of wealth;
-who was himself a beggar and a tramp, a man of the people, an
-associate of saloon-keepers and women of the town; who again and
-again, in the most explicit language, denounced wealth and the
-holding of wealth: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
-earth!'--'Sell that ye have and give alms!'--'Blessed are ye
-poor, for yours is the kingdom of Heaven!'--'Woe unto you that
-are rich, for ye have received your consolation!'--'Verily, I say
-unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of
-Heaven!' Who denounced in unmeasured terms the exploiters of his
-own time: 'Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!'--
-'Woe unto you also, you lawyers!'--'Ye serpents, ye generation of
-vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' Who drove out
-the businessmen and brokers from the temple with a whip!  Who was
-crucified--think of it--for an incendiary and a disturber of the
-social order!  And this man they have made into the high priest
-of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the
-horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! 
-Jeweled images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense to
-him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung
-from the toil of helpless women and children, and build temples
-to him, and sit in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings
-expounded by doctors of dusty divinity--"
-
-"Bravo!" cried Schliemann, laughing.  But the other was in full
-career--he had talked this subject every day for five years, and
-had never yet let himself be stopped.  "This Jesus of Nazareth!"
-he cried.  "This class-conscious working-man!  This union
-carpenter!  This agitator, law-breaker, firebrand, anarchist! 
-He, the sovereign lord and master of a world which grinds the
-bodies and souls of human beings into dollars--if he could come
-into the world this day and see the things that men have made in
-his name, would it not blast his soul with horror?  Would he not
-go mad at the sight of it, he the Prince of Mercy and Love!  That
-dreadful night when he lay in the Garden of Gethsemane and
-writhed in agony until he sweat blood--do you think that he saw
-anything worse than he might see tonight upon the plains of
-Manchuria, where men march out with a jeweled image of him before
-them, to do wholesale murder for the benefit of foul monsters of
-sensuality and cruelty?  Do you not know that if he were in St. 
-Petersburg now, he would take the whip with which he drove out
-the bankers from his temple--"
-
-Here the speaker paused an instant for breath.  "No, comrade,"
-said the other, dryly, "for he was a practical man.  He would
-take pretty little imitation lemons, such as are now being
-shipped into Russia, handy for carrying in the pockets, and
-strong enough to blow a whole temple out of sight."
-
-Lucas waited until the company had stopped laughing over this;
-then he began again: "But look at it from the point of view of
-practical politics, comrade.  Here is an historical figure whom
-all men reverence and love, whom some regard as divine; and who
-was one of us--who lived our life, and taught our doctrine.  And
-now shall we leave him in the hands of his enemies--shall we
-allow them to stifle and stultify his example?  We have his
-words, which no one can deny; and shall we not quote them to the
-people, and prove to them what he was, and what he taught, and
-what he did?  No, no, a thousand times no!--we shall use his
-authority to turn out the knaves and sluggards from his ministry,
-and we shall yet rouse the people to action!--"
-
-Lucas halted again; and the other stretched out his hand to a
-paper on the table.  "Here, comrade," he said, with a laugh,
-"here is a place for you to begin.  A bishop whose wife has just
-been robbed of fifty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds!  And a
-most unctuous and oily of bishops!  An eminent and scholarly
-bishop!  A philanthropist and friend of labor bishop--a Civic
-Federation decoy duck for the chloroforming of the wage-working-
-man!"
-
-To this little passage of arms the rest of the company sat as
-spectators.  But now Mr. Maynard, the editor, took occasion to
-remark, somewhat naively, that he had always understood that
-Socialists had a cut-and-dried program for the future of
-civilization; whereas here were two active members of the party,
-who, from what he could make out, were agreed about nothing at
-all.  Would the two, for his enlightenment, try to ascertain just
-what they had in common, and why they belonged to the same party? 
-This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of two
-carefully worded propositions: First, that a Socialist believes
-in the common ownership and democratic management of the means of
-producing the necessities of life; and, second, that a Socialist
-believes that the means by which this is to be brought about is
-the class conscious political organization of the wage-earners. 
-Thus far they were at one; but no farther.  To Lucas, the
-religious zealot, the co-operative commonwealth was the New
-Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, which is "within you." To the
-other, Socialism was simply a necessary step toward a far-distant
-goal, a step to be tolerated with impatience.  Schliemann called
-himself a "philosophic anarchist"; and he explained that an
-anarchist was one who believed that the end of human existence
-was the free development of every personality, unrestricted by
-laws save those of its own being.  Since the same kind of match
-would light every one's fire and the same-shaped loaf of bread
-would fill every one's stomach, it would be perfectly feasible to
-submit industry to the control of a majority vote.  There was
-only one earth, and the quantity of material things was limited. 
-Of intellectual and moral things, on the other hand, there was no
-limit, and one could have more without another's having less;
-hence "Communism in material production, anarchism in
-intellectual," was the formula of modern proletarian thought. 
-As soon as the birth agony was over, and the wounds of society had
-been healed, there would be established a simple system whereby
-each man was credited with his labor and debited with his
-purchases; and after that the processes of production, exchange,
-and consumption would go on automatically, and without our being
-conscious of them, any more than a man is conscious of the
-beating of his heart.  And then, explained Schliemann, society
-would break up into independent, self-governing communities of
-mutually congenial persons; examples of which at present were
-clubs, churches, and political parties.  After the revolution,
-all the intellectual, artistic, and spiritual activities of men
-would be cared for by such "free associations"; romantic
-novelists would be supported by those who liked to read romantic
-novels, and impressionist painters would be supported by those
-who liked to look at impressionist pictures--and the same with
-preachers and scientists, editors and actors and musicians.  If
-any one wanted to work or paint or pray, and could find no one to
-maintain him, he could support himself by working part of the
-time.  That was the case at present, the only difference being
-that the competitive wage system compelled a man to work all the
-time to live, while, after the abolition of privilege and
-exploitation, any one would be able to support himself by an
-hour's work a day.  Also the artist's audience of the present was
-a small minority of people, all debased and vulgarized by the
-effort it had cost them to win in the commercial battle, of the
-intellectual and artistic activities which would result when the
-whole of mankind was set free from the nightmare of competition,
-we could at present form no conception whatever.
-
-And then the editor wanted to know upon what ground Dr. 
-Schliemann asserted that it might be possible for a society to
-exist upon an hour's toil by each of its members.  "Just what,"
-answered the other, "would be the productive capacity of society
-if the present resources of science were utilized, we have no
-means of ascertaining; but we may be sure it would exceed
-anything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to the
-ferocious barbarities of capitalism.  After the triumph of the
-international proletariat, war would of course be inconceivable;
-and who can figure the cost of war to humanity--not merely the
-value of the lives and the material that it destroys, not merely
-the cost of keeping millions of men in idleness, of arming and
-equipping them for battle and parade, but the drain upon the
-vital energies of society by the war attitude and the war terror,
-the brutality and ignorance, the drunkenness, prostitution, and
-crime it entails, the industrial impotence and the moral
-deadness?  Do you think that it would be too much to say that two
-hours of the working time of every efficient member of a
-community goes to feed the red fiend of war?"
-
-And then Schliemann went on to outline some of the wastes of
-competition: the losses of industrial warfare; the ceaseless
-worry and friction; the vices--such as drink, for instance, the
-use of which had nearly doubled in twenty years, as a consequence
-of the intensification of the economic struggle; the idle and
-unproductive members of the community, the frivolous rich and the
-pauperized poor; the law and the whole machinery of repression;
-the wastes of social ostentation, the milliners and tailors, the
-hairdressers, dancing masters, chefs and lackeys.  "You
-understand," he said, "that in a society dominated by the fact of
-commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess,
-and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.  So we have, at the
-present moment, a society with, say, thirty per cent of the
-population occupied in producing useless articles, and one per
-cent occupied in destroying them.  And this is not all; for the
-servants and panders of the parasites are also parasites, the
-milliners and the jewelers and the lackeys have also to be
-supported by the useful members of the community.  And bear in
-mind also that this monstrous disease affects not merely the
-idlers and their menials, its poison penetrates the whole social
-body.  Beneath the hundred thousand women of the elite are a
-million middle-class women, miserable because they are not of the
-elite, and trying to appear of it in public; and beneath them, 
-in turn, are five million farmers' wives reading 'fashion papers'
-and trimming bonnets, and shop-girls and serving-maids selling
-themselves into brothels for cheap jewelry and imitation seal-
-skin robes.  And then consider that, added to this competition in
-display, you have, like oil on the flames, a whole system of
-competition in selling!  You have manufacturers contriving tens
-of thousands of catchpenny devices, storekeepers displaying them,
-and newspapers and magazines filled up with advertisements of
-them!"
-
-"And don't forget the wastes of fraud," put in young Fisher.
-
-"When one comes to the ultra-modern profession of advertising,"
-responded Schliemann--"the science of persuading people to buy
-what they do not want--he is in the very center of the ghastly
-charnel house of capitalist destructiveness, and he scarcely
-knows which of a dozen horrors to point out first.  But consider
-the waste in time and energy incidental to making ten thousand
-varieties of a thing for purposes of ostentation and
-snobbishness, where one variety would do for use!  Consider all
-the waste incidental to the manufacture of cheap qualities of
-goods, of goods made to sell and deceive the ignorant; consider
-the wastes of adulteration,--the shoddy clothing, the cotton
-blankets, the unstable tenements, the ground-cork life-
-preservers, the adulterated milk, the aniline soda water, the
-potato-flour sausages--"
-
-"And consider the moral aspects of the thing," put in the
-ex-preacher.
-
-"Precisely," said Schliemann; "the low knavery and the ferocious
-cruelty incidental to them, the plotting and the lying and the
-bribing, the blustering and bragging, the screaming egotism, the
-hurrying and worrying.  Of course, imitation and adulteration are
-the essence of competition--they are but another form of the
-phrase 'to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.'
-A government official has stated that the nation suffers a loss of
-a billion and a quarter dollars a year through adulterated foods;
-which means, of course, not only materials wasted that might have
-been useful outside of the human stomach, but doctors and nurses
-for people who would otherwise have been well, and undertakers
-for the whole human race ten or twenty years before the proper
-time.  Then again, consider the waste of time and energy required
-to sell these things in a dozen stores, where one would do. 
-There are a million or two of business firms in the country,
-and five or ten times as many clerks; and consider the handling and
-rehandling, the accounting and reaccounting, the planning and
-worrying, the balancing of petty profit and loss.  Consider the
-whole machinery of the civil law made necessary by these
-processes; the libraries of ponderous tomes, the courts and
-juries to interpret them, the lawyers studying to circumvent
-them, the pettifogging and chicanery, the hatreds and lies! 
-Consider the wastes incidental to the blind and haphazard
-production of commodities--the factories closed, the workers
-idle, the goods spoiling in storage; consider the activities of
-the stock manipulator, the paralyzing of whole industries, the
-overstimulation of others, for speculative purposes; the
-assignments and bank failures, the crises and panics, the
-deserted towns and the starving populations!  Consider the
-energies wasted in the seeking of markets, the sterile trades,
-such as drummer, solicitor, bill-poster, advertising agent. 
-Consider the wastes incidental to the crowding into cities, made
-necessary by competition and by monopoly railroad rates; consider
-the slums, the bad air, the disease and the waste of vital
-energies; consider the office buildings, the waste of time and
-material in the piling of story upon story, and the burrowing
-underground!  Then take the whole business of insurance, the
-enormous mass of administrative and clerical labor it involves,
-and all utter waste--"
-
-"I do not follow that," said the editor.  "The Cooperative
-Commonwealth is a universal automatic insurance company and
-savings bank for all its members.  Capital being the property of
-all, injury to it is shared by all and made up by all.  The bank
-is the universal government credit-account, the ledger in which
-every individual's earnings and spendings ate balanced.  There is
-also a universal government bulletin, in which are listed and
-precisely described everything which the commonwealth has for
-sale.  As no one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longer
-any stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation; no
-cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery or
-'grafting.'"
-
-"How is the price of an article determined?"
-
-"The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and
-it is determined by the first principles of arithmetic.  The
-million workers in the nation's wheat fields have worked a
-hundred days each, and the total product of the labor is a
-billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is the tenth
-part of a farm labor-day.  If we employ an arbitrary symbol, and
-pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of a
-bushel of wheat is fifty cents."
-
-"You say 'for farm work,'" said Mr. Maynard.  "Then labor is not
-to be paid alike?"
-
-"Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we
-should have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners. 
-Of course the wages may be left the same, and the hours varied;
-one or the other will have to be varied continually, according as
-a greater or less number of workers is needed in any particular
-industry.  That is precisely what is done at present, except that
-the transfer of the workers is accomplished blindly and
-imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of instantly
-and completely, by a universal government bulletin."
-
-"How about those occupations in which time is difficult to
-calculate?  What is the labor cost of a book?"
-
-"Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and
-binding of it--about a fifth of its present cost."
-
-"And the author?"
-
-"I have already said that the state could not control
-intellectual production.  The state might say that it had taken a
-year to write the book, and the author might say it had taken
-thirty.  Goethe said that every bon mot of his had cost a purse
-of gold.  What I outline here is a national, or rather
-international, system for the providing of the material needs of
-men.  Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will work
-longer, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and in
-his own way.  I live on the same earth as the majority, I wear
-the same kind of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but I
-do not think the same kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay
-for such thinkers as the majority selects.  I wish such things to
-be left to free effort, as at present.  If people want to listen
-to a certain preacher, they get together and contribute what they
-please, and pay for a church and support the preacher, and then
-listen to him; I, who do not want to listen to him, stay away,
-and it costs me nothing.  In the same way there are magazines
-about Egyptian coins, and Catholic saints, and flying machines,
-and athletic records, and I know nothing about any of them.  On
-the other hand, if wage slavery were abolished, and I could earn
-some spare money without paying tribute to an exploiting
-capitalist, then there would be a magazine for the purpose of
-interpreting and popularizing the gospel of Friedrich Nietzsche,
-the prophet of Evolution, and also of Horace Fletcher, the
-inventor of the noble science of clean eating; and incidentally,
-perhaps, for the discouraging of long skirts, and the scientific
-breeding of men and women, and the establishing of divorce by
-mutual consent."
-
-Dr.  Schliemann paused for a moment.  "That was a lecture," he
-said with a laugh, "and yet I am only begun!"
-
-"What else is there?" asked Maynard.
-
-"I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,"
-answered the other.  "I have hardly mentioned the positive
-economies of co-operation.  Allowing five to a family, there are
-fifteen million families in this country; and at least ten
-million of these live separately, the domestic drudge being
-either the wife or a wage slave.  Now set aside the modern system
-of pneumatic house-cleaning, and the economies of co-operative
-cooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes. 
-Surely it is moderate to say that the dishwashing for a family of
-five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day's work, it
-takes, therefore, half a million able-bodied persons--mostly
-women to do the dishwashing of the country.  And note that this
-is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a
-cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of
-prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and
-degenerate children--for all of which things the community has
-naturally to pay.  And now consider that in each of my little
-free communities there would be a machine which would wash and
-dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch,
-but scientifically--sterilizing them--and do it at a saving of
-all the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time!  All of these
-things you may find in the books of Mrs. Gilman; and then take
-Kropotkin's Fields, Factories, and Workshops, and read about the
-new science of agriculture, which has been built up in the last
-ten years; by which, with made soils and intensive culture, a
-gardener can raise ten or twelve crops in a season, and two
-hundred tons of vegetables upon a single acre; by which the
-population of the whole globe could be supported on the soil now
-cultivated in the United States alone!  It is impossible to apply
-such methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of our
-scattered farming population; but imagine the problem of
-providing the food supply of our nation once taken in hand
-systematically and rationally, by scientists!  All the poor and
-rocky land set apart for a national timber reserve, in which our
-children play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell!  The
-most favorable climate and soil for each product selected; 
-the exact requirements of the community known, and the acreage
-figured accordingly; the most improved machinery employed, under
-the direction of expert agricultural chemists!  I was brought up
-on a farm, and I know the awful deadliness of farm work; and I
-like to picture it all as it will be after the revolution.  To
-picture the great potato-planting machine, drawn by four horses,
-or an electric motor, ploughing the furrow, cutting and dropping
-and covering the potatoes, and planting a score of acres a day! 
-To picture the great potato-digging machine, run by electricity,
-perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field, scooping up
-earth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks!  To every
-other kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way--apples
-and oranges picked by machinery, cows milked by
-electricity--things which are already done, as you may know.  To
-picture the harvest fields of the future, to which millions of
-happy men and women come for a summer holiday, brought by special
-trains, the exactly needful number to each place!  And to
-contrast all this with our present agonizing system of
-independent small farming,--a stunted, haggard, ignorant man,
-mated with a yellow, lean, and sad-eyed drudge, and toiling from
-four o'clock in the morning until nine at night, working the
-children as soon as they are able to walk, scratching the soil
-with its primitive tools, and shut out from all knowledge and
-hope, from all their benefits of science and invention, and all
-the joys of the spirit--held to a bare existence by competition
-in labor, and boasting of his freedom because he is too blind to
-see his chains!"
-
-Dr.  Schliemann paused a moment.  "And then," he continued,
-"place beside this fact of an unlimited food supply, the newest
-discovery of physiologists, that most of the ills of the human
-system are due to overfeeding!  And then again, it has been
-proven that meat is unnecessary as a food; and meat is obviously
-more difficult to produce than vegetable food, less pleasant to
-prepare and handle, and more likely to be unclean.  But what of
-that, so long as it tickles the palate more strongly?"
-
-"How would Socialism change that?" asked the girl-student,
-quickly.  It was the first time she had spoken.
-
-"So long as we have wage slavery," answered Schliemann, "it
-matters not in the least how debasing and repulsive a task may
-be, it is easy to find people to perform it.  But just as soon as
-labor is set free, then the price of such work will begin to
-rise.  So one by one the old, dingy, and unsanitary factories
-will come down--it will be cheaper to build new; and so the
-steamships will be provided with stoking machinery, and so the
-dangerous trades will be made safe, or substitutes will be found
-for their products.  In exactly the same way, as the citizens of
-our Industrial Republic become refined, year by year the cost of
-slaughterhouse products will increase; until eventually those who
-want to eat meat will have to do their own killing--and how long
-do you think the custom would survive then?--To go on to another
-item--one of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a
-democracy is political corruption; and one of the consequences of
-civic administration by ignorant and vicious politicians, is that
-preventable diseases kill off half our population.  And even if
-science were allowed to try, it could do little, because the
-majority of human beings are not yet human beings at all, but
-simply machines for the creating of wealth for others.  They are
-penned up in filthy houses and left to rot and stew in misery,
-and the conditions of their life make them ill faster than all
-the doctors in the world could heal them; and so, of course, 
-they remain as centers of contagion, poisoning the lives of all of us,
-and making happiness impossible for even the most selfish.  For
-this reason I would seriously maintain that all the medical and
-surgical discoveries that science can make in the future will be
-of less importance than the application of the knowledge we
-already possess, when the disinherited of the earth have
-established their right to a human existence."
-
-And here the Herr Doctor relapsed into silence again.  Jurgis had
-noticed that the beautiful young girl who sat by the center-table
-was listening with something of the same look that he himself had
-worn, the time when he had first discovered Socialism.  Jurgis
-would have liked to talk to her, he felt sure that she would have
-understood him.  Later on in the evening, when the group broke
-up, he heard Mrs. Fisher say to her, in a low voice, "I wonder if
-Mr. Maynard will still write the same things about Socialism"; to
-which she answered, "I don't know--but if he does we shall know
-that he is a knave!"
-
-
-And only a few hours after this came election day--when the long
-campaign was over, and the whole country seemed to stand still
-and hold its breath, awaiting the issue.  Jurgis and the rest of
-the staff of Hinds's Hotel could hardly stop to finish their
-dinner, before they hurried off to the big hall which the party
-had hired for that evening.
-
-But already there were people waiting, and already the telegraph
-instrument on the stage had begun clicking off the returns.  When
-the final accounts were made up, the Socialist vote proved to be
-over four hundred thousand--an increase of something like three
-hundred and fifty per cent in four years.  And that was doing
-well; but the party was dependent for its early returns upon
-messages from the locals, and naturally those locals which had
-been most successful were the ones which felt most like
-reporting; and so that night every one in the hall believed that
-the vote was going to be six, or seven, or even eight hundred
-thousand.  Just such an incredible increase had actually been
-made in Chicago, and in the state; the vote of the city had been
-6,700 in 1900, and now it was 47,000; that of Illinois had been
-9,600, and now it was 69,000!  So, as the evening waxed, and the
-crowd piled in, the meeting was a sight to be seen.  Bulletins
-would be read, and the people would shout themselves hoarse --
-and then some one would make a speech, and there would be more
-shouting; and then a brief silence, and more bulletins.  There
-would come messages from the secretaries of neighboring states,
-reporting their achievements; the vote of Indiana had gone from
-2,300 to 12,000, of Wisconsin from 7,000 to 28,000; of Ohio from
-4,800 to 36,000!  There were telegrams to the national office
-from enthusiastic individuals in little towns which had made
-amazing and unprecedented increases in a single year: Benedict,
-Kansas, from 26 to 260; Henderson, Kentucky, from 19 to 111;
-Holland, Michigan, from 14 to 208; Cleo, Oklahoma, from 0 to 104;
-Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many more of the same
-kind.  There were literally hundreds of such towns; there would
-be reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch of
-telegrams.  And the men who read the despatches off to the
-audience were old campaigners, who had been to the places and
-helped to make the vote, and could make appropriate comments:
-Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to 831--that was where the mayor had
-arrested a Socialist speaker!  Crawford County, Kansas, from 285
-to 1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal to Reason"!  Battle
-Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the answer of
-labor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!
-
-And then there were official returns from the various precincts
-and wards of the city itself!  Whether it was a factory district
-or one of the "silk-stocking" wards seemed to make no particular
-difference in the increase; but one of the things which surprised
-the party leaders most was the tremendous vote that came rolling
-in from the stockyards.  Packingtown comprised three wards of the
-city, and the vote in the spring of 1903 had been 500, and in the
-fall of the same year, 1,600.  Now, only one year later, it was
-over 6,300--and the Democratic vote only 8,800!  There were other
-wards in which the Democratic vote had been actually surpassed,
-and in two districts, members of the state legislature had been
-elected.  Thus Chicago now led the country; it had set a new
-standard for the party, it had shown the workingmen the way!
-
---So spoke an orator upon the platform; and two thousand pairs of
-eyes were fixed upon him, and two thousand voices were cheering
-his every sentence.  The orator had been the head of the city's
-relief bureau in the stockyards, until the sight of misery and
-corruption had made him sick.  He was young, hungry-looking, full
-of fire; and as he swung his long arms and beat up the crowd, to
-Jurgis he seemed the very spirit of the revolution.  "Organize! 
-Organize!  Organize!"--that was his cry.  He was afraid of this
-tremendous vote, which his party had not expected, and which it
-had not earned.  "These men are not Socialists!" he cried.  "This
-election will pass, and the excitement will die, and people will
-forget about it; and if you forget about it, too, if you sink
-back and rest upon your oars, we shall lose this vote that we
-have polled to-day, and our enemies will laugh us to scorn!  It
-rests with you to take your resolution--now, in the flush of
-victory, to find these men who have voted for us, and bring them
-to our meetings, and organize them and bind them to us!  We shall
-not find all our campaigns as easy as this one.  Everywhere in
-the country tonight the old party politicians are studying this
-vote, and setting their sails by it; and nowhere will they be
-quicker or more cunning than here in our own city.  Fifty
-thousand Socialist votes in Chicago means a municipal-ownership
-Democracy in the spring!  And then they will fool the voters once
-more, and all the powers of plunder and corruption will be swept
-into office again!  But whatever they may do when they get in,
-there is one thing they will not do, and that will be the thing
-for which they were elected!  They will not give the people of
-our city municipal ownership--they will not mean to do it, they
-will not try to do it; all that they will do is give our party in
-Chicago the greatest opportunity that has ever come to Socialism
-in America!  We shall have the sham reformers self-stultified and
-self-convicted; we shall have the radical Democracy left without
-a lie with which to cover its nakedness!  And then will begin the
-rush that will never be checked, the tide that will never turn
-till it has reached its flood--that will be irresistible,
-overwhelming--the rallying of the outraged workingmen of Chicago
-to our standard!  And we shall organize them, we shall drill
-them, we shall marshal them for the victory!  We shall bear down
-the opposition, we shall sweep if before us--and Chicago will be
-ours!  Chicago will be ours!  CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!" 
-
-
-End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Jungle
-
-
-
-
-
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