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. 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 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!