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!