Better luck than all this could hardly have been hoped for; there was
only one of them left to seek a place. Jurgis was determined that Teta
Elzbieta should stay at home to keep house, and that Ona should help
her. He would not have Ona working--he was not that sort of a man, he
said, and she was not that sort of a woman. It would be a strange thing
if a man like him could not support the family, with the help of
the board of Jonas and Marija. He would not even hear of letting the
children go to work--there were schools here in America for children,
Jurgis had heard, to which they could go for nothing. That the priest
would object to these schools was something of which he had as yet no
idea, and for the present his mind was made up that the children of Teta
Elzbieta should have as fair a chance as any other children. The oldest
of them, little Stanislovas, was but thirteen, and small for his age
at that; and while the oldest son of Szedvilas was only twelve, and had
worked for over a year at Jones's, Jurgis would have it that Stanislovas
should learn to speak English, and grow up to be a skilled man.

So there was only old Dede Antanas; Jurgis would have had him rest
too, but he was forced to acknowledge that this was not possible, and,
besides, the old man would not hear it spoken of--it was his whim to
insist that he was as lively as any boy. He had come to America as
full of hope as the best of them; and now he was the chief problem that
worried his son. For every one that Jurgis spoke to assured him that it
was a waste of time to seek employment for the old man in Packingtown.
Szedvilas told him that the packers did not even keep the men who had
grown old in their own service--to say nothing of taking on new ones.
And not only was it the rule here, it was the rule everywhere in
America, so far as he knew. To satisfy Jurgis he had asked the
policeman, and brought back the message that the thing was not to be
thought of. They had not told this to old Anthony, who had consequently
spent the two days wandering about from one part of the yards to
another, and had now come home to hear about the triumph of the others,
smiling bravely and saying that it would be his turn another day.

Their good luck, they felt, had given them the right to think about a
home; and sitting out on the doorstep that summer evening, they held
consultation about it, and Jurgis took occasion to broach a weighty
subject. Passing down the avenue to work that morning he had seen two
boys leaving an advertisement from house to house; and seeing that there
were pictures upon it, Jurgis had asked for one, and had rolled it up
and tucked it into his shirt. At noontime a man with whom he had been
talking had read it to him and told him a little about it, with the
result that Jurgis had conceived a wild idea.

He brought out the placard, which was quite a work of art. It was nearly
two feet long, printed on calendered paper, with a selection of colors
so bright that they shone even in the moonlight. The center of the
placard was occupied by a house, brilliantly painted, new, and dazzling.
The roof of it was of a purple hue, and trimmed with gold; the house
itself was silvery, and the doors and windows red. It was a two-story
building, with a porch in front, and a very fancy scrollwork around the
edges; it was complete in every tiniest detail, even the doorknob, and
there was a hammock on the porch and white lace curtains in the windows.
Underneath this, in one corner, was a picture of a husband and wife
in loving embrace; in the opposite corner was a cradle, with
fluffy curtains drawn over it, and a smiling cherub hovering upon
silver-colored wings. For fear that the significance of all this should
be lost, there was a label, in Polish, Lithuanian, and German--"Dom.
Namai. Heim." "Why pay rent?" the linguistic circular went on to demand.
"Why not own your own home? Do you know that you can buy one for less
than your rent? We have built thousands of homes which are now occupied
by happy families."--So it became eloquent, picturing the blissfulness
of married life in a house with nothing to pay. It even quoted "Home,
Sweet Home," and made bold to translate it into Polish--though for some
reason it omitted the Lithuanian of this. Perhaps the translator found
it a difficult matter to be sentimental in a language in which a sob is
known as a gukcziojimas and a smile as a nusiszypsojimas.

Over this document the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its
contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a
basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the
lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down,
the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These were
frightful sums, but then they were in America, where people talked about
such without fear. They had learned that they would have to pay a
rent of nine dollars a month for a flat, and there was no way of doing
better, unless the family of twelve was to exist in one or two rooms, as
at present. If they paid rent, of course, they might pay forever, and be
no better off; whereas, if they could only meet the extra expense in the
beginning, there would at last come a time when they would not have any
rent to pay for the rest of their lives.

They figured it up. There was a little left of the money belonging to
Teta Elzbieta, and there was a little left to Jurgis. Marija had about
fifty dollars pinned up somewhere in her stockings, and Grandfather
Anthony had part of the money he had gotten for his farm. If they all
combined, they would have enough to make the first payment; and if
they had employment, so that they could be sure of the future, it might
really prove the best plan. It was, of course, not a thing even to be
talked of lightly; it was a thing they would have to sift to the bottom.
And yet, on the other hand, if they were going to make the venture, the
sooner they did it the better, for were they not paying rent all the
time, and living in a most horrible way besides? Jurgis was used to
dirt--there was nothing could scare a man who had been with a railroad
gang, where one could gather up the fleas off the floor of the sleeping
room by the handful. But that sort of thing would not do for Ona. They
must have a better place of some sort soon--Jurgis said it with all the
assurance of a man who had just made a dollar and fifty-seven cents in
a single day. Jurgis was at a loss to understand why, with wages as they
were, so many of the people of this district should live the way they
did.

The next day Marija went to see her "forelady," and was told to report
the first of the week, and learn the business of can-painter. Marija
went home, singing out loud all the way, and was just in time to join
Ona and her stepmother as they were setting out to go and make inquiry
concerning the house. That evening the three made their report to the
men--the thing was altogether as represented in the circular, or at any
rate so the agent had said. The houses lay to the south, about a mile
and a half from the yards; they were wonderful bargains, the gentleman
had assured them--personally, and for their own good. He could do this,
so he explained to them, for the reason that he had himself no interest
in their sale--he was merely the agent for a company that had built
them. These were the last, and the company was going out of business, so
if any one wished to take advantage of this wonderful no-rent plan, he
would have to be very quick. As a matter of fact there was just a little
uncertainty as to whether there was a single house left; for the agent
had taken so many people to see them, and for all he knew the company
might have parted with the last. Seeing Teta Elzbieta's evident grief at
this news, he added, after some hesitation, that if they really intended
to make a purchase, he would send a telephone message at his own
expense, and have one of the houses kept. So it had finally been
arranged--and they were to go and make an inspection the following
Sunday morning.

That was Thursday; and all the rest of the week the killing gang
at Brown's worked at full pressure, and Jurgis cleared a dollar
seventy-five every day. That was at the rate of ten and one-half dollars
a week, or forty-five a month. Jurgis was not able to figure, except it
was a very simple sum, but Ona was like lightning at such things, and
she worked out the problem for the family. Marija and Jonas were each
to pay sixteen dollars a month board, and the old man insisted that he
could do the same as soon as he got a place--which might be any day now.
That would make ninety-three dollars. Then Marija and Jonas were between
them to take a third share in the house, which would leave only eight
dollars a month for Jurgis to contribute to the payment. So they would
have eighty-five dollars a month--or, supposing that Dede Antanas did
not get work at once, seventy dollars a month--which ought surely to be
sufficient for the support of a family of twelve.

An hour before the time on Sunday morning the entire party set out. They
had the address written on a piece of paper, which they showed to some
one now and then. It proved to be a long mile and a half, but they
walked it, and half an hour or so later the agent put in an appearance.
He was a smooth and florid personage, elegantly dressed, and he spoke
their language freely, which gave him a great advantage in dealing with
them. He escorted them to the house, which was one of a long row of the
typical frame dwellings of the neighborhood, where architecture is a
luxury that is dispensed with. Ona's heart sank, for the house was not
as it was shown in the picture; the color scheme was different, for
one thing, and then it did not seem quite so big. Still, it was freshly
painted, and made a considerable show. It was all brand-new, so the
agent told them, but he talked so incessantly that they were quite
confused, and did not have time to ask many questions. There were all
sorts of things they had made up their minds to inquire about, but when
the time came, they either forgot them or lacked the courage. The other
houses in the row did not seem to be new, and few of them seemed to be
occupied. When they ventured to hint at this, the agent's reply was that
the purchasers would be moving in shortly. To press the matter would
have seemed to be doubting his word, and never in their lives had any
one of them ever spoken to a person of the class called "gentleman"
except with deference and humility.

The house had a basement, about two feet below the street line, and a
single story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps. In
addition there was an attic, made by the peak of the roof, and having
one small window in each end. The street in front of the house was
unpaved and unlighted, and the view from it consisted of a few exactly
similar houses, scattered here and there upon lots grown up with dingy
brown weeds. The house inside contained four rooms, plastered white; the
basement was but a frame, the walls being unplastered and the floor not
laid. The agent explained that the houses were built that way, as the
purchasers generally preferred to finish the basements to suit their own
taste. The attic was also unfinished--the family had been figuring that
in case of an emergency they could rent this attic, but they found that
there was not even a floor, nothing but joists, and beneath them the
lath and plaster of the ceiling below. All of this, however, did not
chill their ardor as much as might have been expected, because of the
volubility of the agent. There was no end to the advantages of the
house, as he set them forth, and he was not silent for an instant; he
showed them everything, down to the locks on the doors and the catches
on the windows, and how to work them. He showed them the sink in the
kitchen, with running water and a faucet, something which Teta Elzbieta
had never in her wildest dreams hoped to possess. After a discovery such
as that it would have seemed ungrateful to find any fault, and so they
tried to shut their eyes to other defects.

Still, they were peasant people, and they hung on to their money by
instinct; it was quite in vain that the agent hinted at promptness--they
would see, they would see, they told him, they could not decide until
they had had more time. And so they went home again, and all day and
evening there was figuring and debating. It was an agony to them to have
to make up their minds in a matter such as this. They never could agree
all together; there were so many arguments upon each side, and one would
be obstinate, and no sooner would the rest have convinced him than it
would transpire that his arguments had caused another to waver. Once, in
the evening, when they were all in harmony, and the house was as good as
bought, Szedvilas came in and upset them again. Szedvilas had no use for
property owning. He told them cruel stories of people who had been done
to death in this "buying a home" swindle. They would be almost sure to
get into a tight place and lose all their money; and there was no end
of expense that one could never foresee; and the house might be
good-for-nothing from top to bottom--how was a poor man to know? Then,
too, they would swindle you with the contract--and how was a poor man
to understand anything about a contract? It was all nothing but robbery,
and there was no safety but in keeping out of it. And pay rent? asked
Jurgis. Ah, yes, to be sure, the other answered, that too was robbery.
It was all robbery, for a poor man. After half an hour of such
depressing conversation, they had their minds quite made up that they
had been saved at the brink of a precipice; but then Szedvilas went
away, and Jonas, who was a sharp little man, reminded them that the
delicatessen business was a failure, according to its proprietor, and
that this might account for his pessimistic views. Which, of course,
reopened the subject!

The controlling factor was that they could not stay where they
were--they had to go somewhere. And when they gave up the house plan and
decided to rent, the prospect of paying out nine dollars a month forever
they found just as hard to face. All day and all night for nearly a
whole week they wrestled with the problem, and then in the end Jurgis
took the responsibility. Brother Jonas had gotten his job, and was
pushing a truck in Durham's; and the killing gang at Brown's continued
to work early and late, so that Jurgis grew more confident every hour,
more certain of his mastership. It was the kind of thing the man of the
family had to decide and carry through, he told himself. Others might
have failed at it, but he was not the failing kind--he would show them
how to do it. He would work all day, and all night, too, if need be; he
would never rest until the house was paid for and his people had a home.
So he told them, and so in the end the decision was made.

They had talked about looking at more houses before they made the
purchase; but then they did not know where any more were, and they did
not know any way of finding out. The one they had seen held the sway in
their thoughts; whenever they thought of themselves in a house, it was
this house that they thought of. And so they went and told the agent
that they were ready to make the agreement. They knew, as an abstract
proposition, that in matters of business all men are to be accounted
liars; but they could not but have been influenced by all they had heard
from the eloquent agent, and were quite persuaded that the house was
something they had run a risk of losing by their delay. They drew a deep
breath when he told them that they were still in time.

They were to come on the morrow, and he would have the papers all drawn
up. This matter of papers was one in which Jurgis understood to the full
the need of caution; yet he could not go himself--every one told him
that he could not get a holiday, and that he might lose his job by
asking. So there was nothing to be done but to trust it to the women,
with Szedvilas, who promised to go with them. Jurgis spent a whole
evening impressing upon them the seriousness of the occasion--and then
finally, out of innumerable hiding places about their persons and in
their baggage, came forth the precious wads of money, to be done up
tightly in a little bag and sewed fast in the lining of Teta Elzbieta's
dress.

Early in the morning they sallied forth. Jurgis had given them so many
instructions and warned them against so many perils, that the women were
quite pale with fright, and even the imperturbable delicatessen vender,
who prided himself upon being a businessman, was ill at ease. The agent
had the deed all ready, and invited them to sit down and read it; this
Szedvilas proceeded to do--a painful and laborious process, during which
the agent drummed upon the desk. Teta Elzbieta was so embarrassed that
the perspiration came out upon her forehead in beads; for was not this
reading as much as to say plainly to the gentleman's face that they
doubted his honesty? Yet Jokubas Szedvilas read on and on; and presently
there developed that he had good reason for doing so. For a horrible
suspicion had begun dawning in his mind; he knitted his brows more and
more as he read. This was not a deed of sale at all, so far as he could
see--it provided only for the renting of the property! It was hard
to tell, with all this strange legal jargon, words he had never heard
before; but was not this plain--"the party of the first part hereby
covenants and agrees to rent to the said party of the second part!" And
then again--"a monthly rental of twelve dollars, for a period of eight
years and four months!" Then Szedvilas took off his spectacles, and
looked at the agent, and stammered a question.

The agent was most polite, and explained that that was the usual
formula; that it was always arranged that the property should be merely
rented. He kept trying to show them something in the next paragraph; but
Szedvilas could not get by the word "rental"--and when he translated it
to Teta Elzbieta, she too was thrown into a fright. They would not own
the home at all, then, for nearly nine years! The agent, with infinite
patience, began to explain again; but no explanation would do now.
Elzbieta had firmly fixed in her mind the last solemn warning of Jurgis:
"If there is anything wrong, do not give him the money, but go out and
get a lawyer." It was an agonizing moment, but she sat in the chair, her
hands clenched like death, and made a fearful effort, summoning all her
powers, and gasped out her purpose.

Jokubas translated her words. She expected the agent to fly into a
passion, but he was, to her bewilderment, as ever imperturbable; he even
offered to go and get a lawyer for her, but she declined this. They went
a long way, on purpose to find a man who would not be a confederate.
Then let any one imagine their dismay, when, after half an hour, they
came in with a lawyer, and heard him greet the agent by his first name!
They felt that all was lost; they sat like prisoners summoned to hear
the reading of their death warrant. There was nothing more that they
could do--they were trapped! The lawyer read over the deed, and when
he had read it he informed Szedvilas that it was all perfectly regular,
that the deed was a blank deed such as was often used in these sales.
And was the price as agreed? the old man asked--three hundred dollars
down, and the balance at twelve dollars a month, till the total of
fifteen hundred dollars had been paid? Yes, that was correct. And it was
for the sale of such and such a house--the house and lot and everything?
Yes,--and the lawyer showed him where that was all written. And it was
all perfectly regular--there were no tricks about it of any sort? They
were poor people, and this was all they had in the world, and if there
was anything wrong they would be ruined. And so Szedvilas went on,
asking one trembling question after another, while the eyes of the women
folks were fixed upon him in mute agony. They could not understand what
he was saying, but they knew that upon it their fate depended. And when
at last he had questioned until there was no more questioning to be
done, and the time came for them to make up their minds, and either
close the bargain or reject it, it was all that poor Teta Elzbieta could
do to keep from bursting into tears. Jokubas had asked her if she wished
to sign; he had asked her twice--and what could she say? How did she
know if this lawyer were telling the truth--that he was not in the
conspiracy? And yet, how could she say so--what excuse could she give?
The eyes of every one in the room were upon her, awaiting her decision;
and at last, half blind with her tears, she began fumbling in her
jacket, where she had pinned the precious money. And she brought it out
and unwrapped it before the men. All of this Ona sat watching, from a
corner of the room, twisting her hands together, meantime, in a fever of
fright. Ona longed to cry out and tell her stepmother to stop, that it
was all a trap; but there seemed to be something clutching her by the
throat, and she could not make a sound. And so Teta Elzbieta laid the
money on the table, and the agent picked it up and counted it, and then
wrote them a receipt for it and passed them the deed. Then he gave a
sigh of satisfaction, and rose and shook hands with them all, still as
smooth and polite as at the beginning. Ona had a dim recollection of the
lawyer telling Szedvilas that his charge was a dollar, which occasioned
some debate, and more agony; and then, after they had paid that, too,
they went out into the street, her stepmother clutching the deed in her
hand. They were so weak from fright that they could not walk, but had to
sit down on the way.

So they went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that
evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end.
Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he
tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill the
agent that very night. In the end he seized the paper and rushed out
of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street. He
dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together they rushed to
consult another lawyer. When they entered his office the lawyer
sprang up, for Jurgis looked like a crazy person, with flying hair and
bloodshot eyes. His companion explained the situation, and the lawyer
took the paper and began to read it, while Jurgis stood clutching the
desk with knotted hands, trembling in every nerve.

Once or twice the lawyer looked up and asked a question of Szedvilas;
the other did not know a word that he was saying, but his eyes were
fixed upon the lawyer's face, striving in an agony of dread to read his
mind. He saw the lawyer look up and laugh, and he gave a gasp; the man
said something to Szedvilas, and Jurgis turned upon his friend, his
heart almost stopping.

"Well?" he panted.

"He says it is all right," said Szedvilas.

"All right!"

"Yes, he says it is just as it should be." And Jurgis, in his relief,
sank down into a chair.

"Are you sure of it?" he gasped, and made Szedvilas translate question
after question. He could not hear it often enough; he could not ask
with enough variations. Yes, they had bought the house, they had really
bought it. It belonged to them, they had only to pay the money and it
would be all right. Then Jurgis covered his face with his hands, for
there were tears in his eyes, and he felt like a fool. But he had had
such a horrible fright; strong man as he was, it left him almost too
weak to stand up.

The lawyer explained that the rental was a form--the property was said
to be merely rented until the last payment had been made, the purpose
being to make it easier to turn the party out if he did not make the
payments. So long as they paid, however, they had nothing to fear, the
house was all theirs.

Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked
without winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to the
family. He found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the whole
house in an uproar--for it had been believed by all that he had gone to
murder the agent. It was hours before the excitement could be calmed;
and all through that cruel night Jurgis would wake up now and then
and hear Ona and her stepmother in the next room, sobbing softly to
themselves.



Chapter 5


They had bought their home. It was hard for them to realize that the
wonderful house was theirs to move into whenever they chose. They spent
all their time thinking about it, and what they were going to put into
it. As their week with Aniele was up in three days, they lost no time
in getting ready. They had to make some shift to furnish it, and every
instant of their leisure was given to discussing this.

A person who had such a task before him would not need to look very far
in Packingtown--he had only to walk up the avenue and read the signs,
or get into a streetcar, to obtain full information as to pretty much
everything a human creature could need. It was quite touching, the zeal
of people to see that his health and happiness were provided for. Did
the person wish to smoke? There was a little discourse about cigars,
showing him exactly why the Thomas Jefferson Five-cent Perfecto was the
only cigar worthy of the name. Had he, on the other hand, smoked too
much? Here was a remedy for the smoking habit, twenty-five doses for a
quarter, and a cure absolutely guaranteed in ten doses. In innumerable
ways such as this, the traveler found that somebody had been busied to
make smooth his paths through the world, and to let him know what had
been done for him. In Packingtown the advertisements had a style all
of their own, adapted to the peculiar population. One would be tenderly
solicitous. "Is your wife pale?" it would inquire. "Is she discouraged,
does she drag herself about the house and find fault with everything?
Why do you not tell her to try Dr. Lanahan's Life Preservers?" Another
would be jocular in tone, slapping you on the back, so to speak. "Don't
be a chump!" it would exclaim. "Go and get the Goliath Bunion Cure."
"Get a move on you!" would chime in another. "It's easy, if you wear the
Eureka Two-fifty Shoe."

Among these importunate signs was one that had caught the attention
of the family by its pictures. It showed two very pretty little birds
building themselves a home; and Marija had asked an acquaintance to read
it to her, and told them that it related to the furnishing of a house.
"Feather your nest," it ran--and went on to say that it could furnish
all the necessary feathers for a four-room nest for the ludicrously
small sum of seventy-five dollars. The particularly important thing
about this offer was that only a small part of the money need be had at
once--the rest one might pay a few dollars every month. Our friends had
to have some furniture, there was no getting away from that; but their
little fund of money had sunk so low that they could hardly get to sleep
at night, and so they fled to this as their deliverance. There was more
agony and another paper for Elzbieta to sign, and then one night when
Jurgis came home, he was told the breathless tidings that the furniture
had arrived and was safely stowed in the house: a parlor set of four
pieces, a bedroom set of three pieces, a dining room table and four
chairs, a toilet set with beautiful pink roses painted all over it,
an assortment of crockery, also with pink roses--and so on. One of the
plates in the set had been found broken when they unpacked it, and
Ona was going to the store the first thing in the morning to make them
change it; also they had promised three saucepans, and there had only
two come, and did Jurgis think that they were trying to cheat them?

The next day they went to the house; and when the men came from work
they ate a few hurried mouthfuls at Aniele's, and then set to work at
the task of carrying their belongings to their new home. The distance
was in reality over two miles, but Jurgis made two trips that night,
each time with a huge pile of mattresses and bedding on his head, with
bundles of clothing and bags and things tied up inside. Anywhere else
in Chicago he would have stood a good chance of being arrested; but the
policemen in Packingtown were apparently used to these informal movings,
and contented themselves with a cursory examination now and then. It was
quite wonderful to see how fine the house looked, with all the things in
it, even by the dim light of a lamp: it was really home, and almost as
exciting as the placard had described it. Ona was fairly dancing, and
she and Cousin Marija took Jurgis by the arm and escorted him from room
to room, sitting in each chair by turns, and then insisting that he
should do the same. One chair squeaked with his great weight, and they
screamed with fright, and woke the baby and brought everybody running.
Altogether it was a great day; and tired as they were, Jurgis and Ona
sat up late, contented simply to hold each other and gaze in rapture
about the room. They were going to be married as soon as they could get
everything settled, and a little spare money put by; and this was to be
their home--that little room yonder would be theirs!

It was in truth a never-ending delight, the fixing up of this house.
They had no money to spend for the pleasure of spending, but there
were a few absolutely necessary things, and the buying of these was a
perpetual adventure for Ona. It must always be done at night, so that
Jurgis could go along; and even if it were only a pepper cruet, or half
a dozen glasses for ten cents, that was enough for an expedition. On
Saturday night they came home with a great basketful of things, and
spread them out on the table, while every one stood round, and the
children climbed up on the chairs, or howled to be lifted up to see.
There were sugar and salt and tea and crackers, and a can of lard and
a milk pail, and a scrubbing brush, and a pair of shoes for the second
oldest boy, and a can of oil, and a tack hammer, and a pound of nails.
These last were to be driven into the walls of the kitchen and the
bedrooms, to hang things on; and there was a family discussion as to the
place where each one was to be driven. Then Jurgis would try to hammer,
and hit his fingers because the hammer was too small, and get mad
because Ona had refused to let him pay fifteen cents more and get a
bigger hammer; and Ona would be invited to try it herself, and hurt
her thumb, and cry out, which necessitated the thumb's being kissed
by Jurgis. Finally, after every one had had a try, the nails would be
driven, and something hung up. Jurgis had come home with a big packing
box on his head, and he sent Jonas to get another that he had bought. He
meant to take one side out of these tomorrow, and put shelves in them,
and make them into bureaus and places to keep things for the bedrooms.
The nest which had been advertised had not included feathers for quite
so many birds as there were in this family.

They had, of course, put their dining table in the kitchen, and the
dining room was used as the bedroom of Teta Elzbieta and five of her
children. She and the two youngest slept in the only bed, and the other
three had a mattress on the floor. Ona and her cousin dragged a mattress
into the parlor and slept at night, and the three men and the oldest boy
slept in the other room, having nothing but the very level floor to
rest on for the present. Even so, however, they slept soundly--it was
necessary for Teta Elzbieta to pound more than once on the at a quarter
past five every morning. She would have ready a great pot full of
steaming black coffee, and oatmeal and bread and smoked sausages; and
then she would fix them their dinner pails with more thick slices of
bread with lard between them--they could not afford butter--and some
onions and a piece of cheese, and so they would tramp away to work.

This was the first time in his life that he had ever really worked, it
seemed to Jurgis; it was the first time that he had ever had anything
to do which took all he had in him. Jurgis had stood with the rest up in
the gallery and watched the men on the killing beds, marveling at their
speed and power as if they had been wonderful machines; it somehow never
occurred to one to think of the flesh-and-blood side of it--that is, not
until he actually got down into the pit and took off his coat. Then he
saw things in a different light, he got at the inside of them. The pace
they set here, it was one that called for every faculty of a man--from
the instant the first steer fell till the sounding of the noon whistle,
and again from half-past twelve till heaven only knew what hour in the
late afternoon or evening, there was never one instant's rest for a man,
for his hand or his eye or his brain. Jurgis saw how they managed it;
there were portions of the work which determined the pace of the rest,
and for these they had picked men whom they paid high wages, and whom
they changed frequently. You might easily pick out these pacemakers,
for they worked under the eye of the bosses, and they worked like men
possessed. This was called "speeding up the gang," and if any man could
not keep up with the pace, there were hundreds outside begging to try.

Yet Jurgis did not mind it; he rather enjoyed it. It saved him the
necessity of flinging his arms about and fidgeting as he did in most
work. He would laugh to himself as he ran down the line, darting a
glance now and then at the man ahead of him. It was not the pleasantest
work one could think of, but it was necessary work; and what more had
a man the right to ask than a chance to do something useful, and to get
good pay for doing it?

So Jurgis thought, and so he spoke, in his bold, free way; very much to
his surprise, he found that it had a tendency to get him into trouble.
For most of the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing.
He was quite dismayed when he first began to find it out--that most of
the men hated their work. It seemed strange, it was even terrible,
when you came to find out the universality of the sentiment; but it was
certainly the fact--they hated their work. They hated the bosses
and they hated the owners; they hated the whole place, the whole
neighborhood--even the whole city, with an all-inclusive hatred, bitter
and fierce. Women and little children would fall to cursing about it; it
was rotten, rotten as hell--everything was rotten. When Jurgis would ask
them what they meant, they would begin to get suspicious, and content
themselves with saying, "Never mind, you stay here and see for
yourself."

One of the first problems that Jurgis ran upon was that of the unions.
He had had no experience with unions, and he had to have it explained
to him that the men were banded together for the purpose of fighting
for their rights. Jurgis asked them what they meant by their rights, a
question in which he was quite sincere, for he had not any idea of any
rights that he had, except the right to hunt for a job, and do as he was
told when he got it. Generally, however, this harmless question would
only make his fellow workingmen lose their tempers and call him a fool.
There was a delegate of the butcher-helpers' union who came to see
Jurgis to enroll him; and when Jurgis found that this meant that he
would have to part with some of his money, he froze up directly, and the
delegate, who was an Irishman and only knew a few words of Lithuanian,
lost his temper and began to threaten him. In the end Jurgis got into a
fine rage, and made it sufficiently plain that it would take more than
one Irishman to scare him into a union. Little by little he gathered
that the main thing the men wanted was to put a stop to the habit of
"speeding-up"; they were trying their best to force a lessening of the
pace, for there were some, they said, who could not keep up with it,
whom it was killing. But Jurgis had no sympathy with such ideas as
this--he could do the work himself, and so could the rest of them, he
declared, if they were good for anything. If they couldn't do it, let
them go somewhere else. Jurgis had not studied the books, and he would
not have known how to pronounce "laissez faire"; but he had been round
the world enough to know that a man has to shift for himself in it,
and that if he gets the worst of it, there is nobody to listen to him
holler.

Yet there have been known to be philosophers and plain men who swore
by Malthus in the books, and would, nevertheless, subscribe to a relief
fund in time of a famine. It was the same with Jurgis, who consigned the
unfit to destruction, while going about all day sick at heart because
of his poor old father, who was wandering somewhere in the yards begging
for a chance to earn his bread. Old Antanas had been a worker ever since
he was a child; he had run away from home when he was twelve, because
his father beat him for trying to learn to read. And he was a faithful
man, too; he was a man you might leave alone for a month, if only you
had made him understand what you wanted him to do in the meantime. And
now here he was, worn out in soul and body, and with no more place in
the world than a sick dog. He had his home, as it happened, and some one
who would care for him it he never got a job; but his son could not help
thinking, suppose this had not been the case. Antanas Rudkus had been
into every building in Packingtown by this time, and into nearly every
room; he had stood mornings among the crowd of applicants till the very
policemen had come to know his face and to tell him to go home and give
it up. He had been likewise to all the stores and saloons for a mile
about, begging for some little thing to do; and everywhere they had
ordered him out, sometimes with curses, and not once even stopping to
ask him a question.

So, after all, there was a crack in the fine structure of Jurgis' faith
in things as they are. The crack was wide while Dede Antanas was hunting
a job--and it was yet wider when he finally got it. For one evening the
old man came home in a great state of excitement, with the tale that he
had been approached by a man in one of the corridors of the pickle rooms
of Durham's, and asked what he would pay to get a job. He had not
known what to make of this at first; but the man had gone on with
matter-of-fact frankness to say that he could get him a job, provided
that he were willing to pay one-third of his wages for it. Was he a
boss? Antanas had asked; to which the man had replied that that was
nobody's business, but that he could do what he said.

Jurgis had made some friends by this time, and he sought one of them and
asked what this meant. The friend, who was named Tamoszius Kuszleika,
was a sharp little man who folded hides on the killing beds, and he
listened to what Jurgis had to say without seeming at all surprised.
They were common enough, he said, such cases of petty graft. It was
simply some boss who proposed to add a little to his income. After
Jurgis had been there awhile he would know that the plants were simply
honeycombed with rottenness of that sort--the bosses grafted off the
men, and they grafted off each other; and some day the superintendent
would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss.
Warming to the subject, Tamoszius went on to explain the situation. Here
was Durham's, for instance, owned by a man who was trying to make as
much money out of it as he could, and did not care in the least how he
did it; and underneath him, ranged in ranks and grades like an army,
were managers and superintendents and foremen, each one driving the
man next below him and trying to squeeze out of him as much work as
possible. And all the men of the same rank were pitted against each
other; the accounts of each were kept separately, and every man lived
in terror of losing his job, if another made a better record than he. So
from top to bottom the place was simply a seething caldron of jealousies
and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there
was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar.
And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty.
The reason for that? Who could say? It must have been old Durham in the
beginning; it was a heritage which the self-made merchant had left to
his son, along with his millions.

Jurgis would find out these things for himself, if he stayed there long
enough; it was the men who had to do all the dirty jobs, and so there
was no deceiving them; and they caught the spirit of the place, and did
like all the rest. Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to
make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would
soon find out his error--for nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good
work. You could lay that down for a rule--if you met a man who was
rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to
Jurgis' father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales
and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own
business and did his work--why, they would "speed him up" till they had
worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter.

Jurgis went home with his head buzzing. Yet he could not bring himself
to believe such things--no, it could not be so. Tamoszius was simply
another of the grumblers. He was a man who spent all his time fiddling;
and he would go to parties at night and not get home till sunrise, and
so of course he did not feel like work. Then, too, he was a puny little
chap; and so he had been left behind in the race, and that was why he
was sore. And yet so many strange things kept coming to Jurgis' notice
every day!

He tried to persuade his father to have nothing to do with the offer.
But old Antanas had begged until he was worn out, and all his courage
was gone; he wanted a job, any sort of a job. So the next day he went
and found the man who had spoken to him, and promised to bring him a
third of all he earned; and that same day he was put to work in Durham's
cellars. It was a "pickle room," where there was never a dry spot to
stand upon, and so he had to take nearly the whole of his first week's
earnings to buy him a pair of heavy-soled boots. He was a "squeedgie"
man; his job was to go about all day with a long-handled mop, swabbing
up the floor. Except that it was damp and dark, it was not an unpleasant
job, in summer.

Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and
so Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said,
that his father had been at work only two days before he came home as
bitter as any of them, and cursing Durham's with all the power of his
soul. For they had set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family
sat round and listened in wonder while he told them what that meant. It
seemed that he was working in the room where the men prepared the beef
for canning, and the beef had lain in vats full of chemicals, and men
with great forks speared it out and dumped it into trucks, to be taken
to the cooking room. When they had speared out all they could reach,
they emptied the vat on the floor, and then with shovels scraped up the
balance and dumped it into the truck. This floor was filthy, yet
they set Antanas with his mop slopping the "pickle" into a hole that
connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever;
and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the
scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few
days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their
contents into one of the trucks with the rest of the meat!

This was the experience of Antanas; and then there came also Jonas and
Marija with tales to tell. Marija was working for one of the independent
packers, and was quite beside herself and outrageous with triumph over
the sums of money she was making as a painter of cans. But one day she
walked home with a pale-faced little woman who worked opposite to her,
Jadvyga Marcinkus by name, and Jadvyga told her how she, Marija, had
chanced to get her job. She had taken the place of an Irishwoman who had
been working in that factory ever since any one could remember. For over
fifteen years, so she declared. Mary Dennis was her name, and a long
time ago she had been seduced, and had a little boy; he was a cripple,
and an epileptic, but still he was all that she had in the world to
love, and they had lived in a little room alone somewhere back of
Halsted Street, where the Irish were. Mary had had consumption, and all
day long you might hear her coughing as she worked; of late she had been
going all to pieces, and when Marija came, the "forelady" had suddenly
decided to turn her off. The forelady had to come up to a certain
standard herself, and could not stop for sick people, Jadvyga explained.
The fact that Mary had been there so long had not made any difference
to her--it was doubtful if she even knew that, for both the forelady and
the superintendent were new people, having only been there two or three
years themselves. Jadvyga did not know what had become of the poor
creature; she would have gone to see her, but had been sick herself. She
had pains in her back all the time, Jadvyga explained, and feared
that she had womb trouble. It was not fit work for a woman, handling
fourteen-pound cans all day.

It was a striking circumstance that Jonas, too, had gotten his job by
the misfortune of some other person. Jonas pushed a truck loaded with
hams from the smoke rooms on to an elevator, and thence to the packing
rooms. The trucks were all of iron, and heavy, and they put about
threescore hams on each of them, a load of more than a quarter of a
ton. On the uneven floor it was a task for a man to start one of these
trucks, unless he was a giant; and when it was once started he naturally
tried his best to keep it going. There was always the boss prowling
about, and if there was a second's delay he would fall to cursing;
Lithuanians and Slovaks and such, who could not understand what was said
to them, the bosses were wont to kick about the place like so many
dogs. Therefore these trucks went for the most part on the run; and the
predecessor of Jonas had been jammed against the wall by one and crushed
in a horrible and nameless manner.

All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to
what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long. One curious thing he
had noticed, the very first day, in his profession of shoveler of guts;
which was the sharp trick of the floor bosses whenever there chanced to
come a "slunk" calf. Any man who knows anything about butchering knows
that the flesh of a cow that is about to calve, or has just calved, is
not fit for food. A good many of these came every day to the packing
houses--and, of course, if they had chosen, it would have been an easy
matter for the packers to keep them till they were fit for food. But
for the saving of time and fodder, it was the law that cows of that sort
came along with the others, and whoever noticed it would tell the
boss, and the boss would start up a conversation with the government
inspector, and the two would stroll away. So in a trice the carcass of
the cow would be cleaned out, and entrails would have vanished; it was
Jurgis' task to slide them into the trap, calves and all, and on the
floor below they took out these "slunk" calves, and butchered them for
meat, and used even the skins of them.

One day a man slipped and hurt his leg; and that afternoon, when the
last of the cattle had been disposed of, and the men were leaving,
Jurgis was ordered to remain and do some special work which this injured
man had usually done. It was late, almost dark, and the government
inspectors had all gone, and there were only a dozen or two of men on
the floor. That day they had killed about four thousand cattle, and
these cattle had come in freight trains from far states, and some of
them had got hurt. There were some with broken legs, and some with gored
sides; there were some that had died, from what cause no one could
say; and they were all to be disposed of, here in darkness and silence.
"Downers," the men called them; and the packing house had a special
elevator upon which they were raised to the killing beds, where the gang
proceeded to handle them, with an air of businesslike nonchalance which
said plainer than any words that it was a matter of everyday routine. It
took a couple of hours to get them out of the way, and in the end Jurgis
saw them go into the chilling rooms with the rest of the meat, being
carefully scattered here and there so that they could not be identified.
When he came home that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun
to see at last how those might be right who had laughed at him for his
faith in America.



Chapter 6


Jurgis and Ona were very much in love; they had waited a long time--it
was now well into the second year, and Jurgis judged everything by the
criterion of its helping or hindering their union. All his thoughts were
there; he accepted the family because it was a part of Ona. And he was
interested in the house because it was to be Ona's home. Even the tricks
and cruelties he saw at Durham's had little meaning for him just then,
save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.

The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but
this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast,
and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the old
people. To Teta Elzbieta especially the very suggestion was an
affliction. What! she would cry. To be married on the roadside like a
parcel of beggars! No! No!--Elzbieta had some traditions behind her;
she had been a person of importance in her girlhood--had lived on a big
estate and had servants, and might have married well and been a lady,
but for the fact that there had been nine daughters and no sons in the
family. Even so, however, she knew what was decent, and clung to her
traditions with desperation. They were not going to lose all caste, even
if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown; and that Ona
had even talked of omitting a Yeselija was enough to keep her stepmother
lying awake all night. It was in vain for them to say that they had
so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and then the
friends would talk about it. They must not give up what was right for a
little money--if they did, the money would never do them any good, they
could depend upon that. And Elzbieta would call upon Dede Antanas to
support her; there was a fear in the souls of these two, lest this
journey to a new country might somehow undermine the old home virtues of
their children. The very first Sunday they had all been taken to mass;
and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to invest a little
of her resources in a representation of the babe of Bethlehem, made
in plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though it was only a foot
high, there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and the Virgin
standing with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and
wise men bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta
had a feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too
closely, it would come back in hidden ways. The piece was beautiful on
the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home without some sort of
ornament.