 CHAPTER XX But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three dollars. That was Sunday morning, and Monday night Yorgos came home sober and sick, realizing that he had spent every cent the family owned, and had not bought a single instance forgetfulness with it. Ono was not yet buried, but the police had been notified, and on the morrow they would put the body in a pine coffin and take it to the potter's field. Elzbeta was out begging now, a few pennies from each of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass for her, and the children were upstairs starving to death, while he good for nothing rascal had been spending their money on drink. So spoke Anile scornfully, and when he started toward the fire she added the information that her kitchen was no longer for him to fill with his phosphate stinks. She had crowded all her borders into one room on Ono's account, but now he could go up in the garret where he belonged, and not there much longer either if he did not pay her some rent. This went without a word, and stepping over half a dozen sleeping-borders in the next room ascended the ladder. It was dark up above. They could not afford any light. Also it was nearly as cold as outdoors. In a corner as far away from the corpse as possible sat Maria, holding little Antonas in her one good arm, and trying to soothe him to sleep. In another corner crouched poor little Yosapas, wailing because he had nothing to eat all day. Maria said not a word to Yorgos. He crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by the body. Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children and upon his own baseness, but he thought only of Ono. He gave himself up again to the luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a sound. He sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never dreamed how much he loved Ono, until now that she was gone, until now that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away, and that he would never lay eyes upon her again, never all the days of his life. His old love which had been starved to death, beaten to death, awoke in him again. The floodgates of memory were lifted. He saw all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird. He saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her heart of wonder. The very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in his ears, the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long, cruel battle with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not changed her. She had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and tenderness. When she had suffered, so cruelly she had suffered such agonies, such infamies, ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne. What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness he had been. Every angry word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife. Every selfish act that he had done, with what torments he paid for them now. In such devotion and awe, as welled up in his soul, now that it could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too late. His bosom was choking with it, bursting with it. He crouched here in the darkness beside her, stretching out his arms to her, and she was gone forever. She was dead. He could have screamed aloud with the horror and despair of it. A sweat of agony beat at his forehead, yet he dared not make a sound. He scarcely dared to breathe, because of his shame and loathing of himself. Late at night came Elzbeta, having gotten the money for a mass and paid for it in advance, lest she should be tempted too sorely at home. She brought also a bit of stale rye bread that someone had given her, and with that they quieted the children and got them to sleep. Then she came over to Yurgis and sat down beside him. She said not a word of reproach. She and Maria had chosen that course before. She would only plead with him, here by the corpse of his dead wife. Already Elzbeta had choked down her tears, grief being crowded out of her soul by fear. She had to bury one of her children, but then she had done that three times before, and each time risen up and gone back to take up the battle for the rest. Elzbeta was one of the primitive creatures, like the angleworm which goes on living though cut in half. Like a hen which, deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the last that has left her. She did this because it was her nature. She asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the worth-wildness of life in which destruction and death ran riot. And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Yurgis, pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others were left, and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children. She and Maria could care for them somehow. But there was Antonos, his own son. Ona had given Antonos to him. The little fellow was the only remembrance of her that he had. He must treasure it, and protect it. He must show himself a man. He knew what Ona would have had him do, what she would ask of him at this moment if she could speak to him. It was a terrible thing that she should have died as she had, but the life had been too hard for her, and she had to go. It was terrible that they were not able to bury her, and he could not even have a day to mourn for her. But so it was. Their fate was pressing. They had not a cent, and the children would perish. Some money must be had. Could he not be a man for Ona's sake and pull himself together? In a little while they would be out of danger, now that they had given up the house they could live more cheaply, and with all the children working they could get along if only he would not go to pieces. So Elspita went on with feverish intensity. It was a struggle for life with her. She was not afraid that Jurgis would go on drinking, for he had no money for that, but she was wild with dread at the thought that he might desert them, might take to the road as Jonas had done. But with Ona's dead body beneath his eyes, Jurgis could not well think of treason to his child. Yes, he said, he would try, for the sake of Antonas. He would give the little fellow his chance, would get to work at once, yes, tomorrow, without even waiting for Ona to be buried. They might trust him, he would keep his word, come what might. And so he was out before daylight the next morning, headache, heartache, and all. He went straight to Graham's fertilizer mill to see if he could get back his job. But the boss shook his head when he saw him. No, his place had been filled long ago, and there was no room for him. Do you think there will be? Jurgis asked. I may have to wait. No, said the other. It will not be worth your while to wait. There will be nothing for you here. Jurgis stood gazing at him in perplexity. What is the matter, he asked? Didn't I do my work? The other met his look with one of cold indifference and answered, There will be nothing for you here, I said. Jurgis had his suspicions as to the dreadful meaning of that incident, and he went away with a sinking at the heart. He went and took his stand with the mob of hungry wretches who were standing about in the snow before the time station. Here he stayed breakfast-less for two hours until the throng was driven away by the clubs of the police. There was no work for him that day. Jurgis had made a good many acquaintances in his long services at the yards. There were saloon-keepers who would trust him for a drink and a sandwich, and members of his old union that would lend him a dime at a pinch. It was not a question of life or death for him, therefore. He might hunt all day and come again on the morrow and try hanging on thus per weeks like hundreds and thousands of others. Meantime Teta Esbeta would go and beg over in the Hyde Park District, and the children would bring home enough to pacify Anile and keep them all alive. It was at the end of a week of this sort of waiting, roaming about in the bitter winds or loafing in saloons, that Jurgis stumbled on a chance in one of the cellars of Jones' big packing-plant. He saw a foreman passing the open doorway and hailed him for a job. Push a truck, inquired the man, and Jurgis answered, Yes, sir, before the words were well out of his mouth. What's your name? demanded the other. Jurgis Rudkis. Wiped in the yards before? Yes. Whereabouts? Two places, Brown's Killing Fields and Durham's Fertilizer Mill. Why did you leave there? The first time I had an accident, and the last time I was signed up for a month. I see. Well, I'll give you a trial. Come early tomorrow and ask for Mr. Thomas. So Jurgis rushed home with the wild tidings that he had a job, that the terrible siege was over. The remnants of the family had quite a celebration that night, and in the morning Jurgis was at the place half an hour before the time of opening. The foreman came in shortly afterward, and when he saw Jurgis he frowned. Oh, he said, I promised you a job, didn't I? Yes, sir, said Jurgis. Well, I'm sorry, but I made a mistake. I can't use you. Jurgis stared, dumbfounded. What's the matter? He gasped. Nothing, said the man, only I can't use you. There was the same cold, hostile stare that he had had from the boss of the fertilizer mill. He knew that there was no use in saying a word, and he turned and went away. Or in the saloons the men could tell him about the meaning of it. They gazed at him with pitying eyes. Poor devil, he was blacklisted. What had he done, they asked, knocked down his boss? Good heavens that he might have known why he stood as much chance of getting a job in Packingtown as of being chosen mayor of Chicago. Why had he wasted his time hunting? They had him on a secret list in every office, big and little in the place. They had his name by this time in St. Louis and New York, in Omaha and Boston, in Kansas City and St. Joseph. He was condemned and sentenced without trial and without appeal. He could never work for the Packers again. He could not even clean cattle pens or drive a truck in any place where they controlled. He might try it if he chose as hundreds had tried it, and found out for themselves. He would never be told anything about it. He would never get any more satisfaction than he had gotten just now. But he would always find when the time came that he was not needed. It would not do for him to give any other name either. They had company spotters for just that purpose, and he wouldn't keep a job in Packingtown three days. It was worth a fortune to the Packers to keep their blacklist effective, as a warning to the men, and a means of keeping down union agitation and political discontent. Yurgis went home carrying these new tidings to the family council. It was the most cruel thing. Here in this district was his home, such as it was, the place he was used to and the friends he knew. And now every possibility of employment in it was close to him. There was nothing in Packingtown but packinghouses, and so it was the same thing as evicting him from his home. He and the two women spent all day and half the night discussing it. It would be convenient downtown to the children's place of work, but then Maria was on the road to recovery and had hopes of getting a job in the yards, and though she did not see her old-time lover once a month because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up her mind to go away and give him up forever. Then too Elsbeta had heard something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham's offices and was waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide after he got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow there, and he dared not beg for fear of being arrested, it was arranged that every day he should meet one of the children and be given fifteen cents of their earnings upon which he could keep going. Then all day he was to pace the streets with hundreds and thousands of other homeless wretches inquiring at stores, warehouses, and factories for a chance, and at night he was to crawl into some doorway or underneath a truck and hide there until midnight when he might get into one of the station houses and spread a newspaper upon the floor and lie down in the midst of a throng of bums and beggars reeking with alcohol and tobacco and filthy with vermin and disease. So for two weeks more Jurgis fought with the demon of despair. Once he got a chance to load a truck for half a day, and again he carried an old woman's valise and was given a quarter. This led him into a lodging house on several nights when he might otherwise have frozen to death, and it also gave him a chance now and then to buy a newspaper in the morning and hunt up jobs while his rivals were watching and waiting for a paper to be thrown away. This however was really not the advantage it seemed, for the newspaper advertisements were a cause of much loss of precious time and of many weary journeys. A full half of these were fakes, put in by the endless variety of establishments which preyed upon the helpless ignorance of the unemployed. If Jurgis lost only his time it was because he had nothing else to lose. Whenever a smooth-tongued agent would tell him of the wonderful positions he had on hand he could only shake his head sarfally and say that he had not the necessary dollar to deposit. When it was explained to him what big money he and all his family could make by colouring photographs he could only promise to come in again when he had two dollars to invest in the outfit. In the end Jurgis got a chance through an accidental meeting with an old time acquaintance of his union days. He met this man on his way to work in the giant factories of the harvester trust, and his friend told him to come along and he would speak a good word for him to his boss whom he knew well. So Jurgis trudged four or five miles and passed through a waiting throng of unemployed at the gate under the escort of his friend. His knees nearly gave way beneath him when the foreman, after looking him over and questioning him, told him that he could find an opening for him. How much this accident meant to Jurgis he realized only by stages, for he found that the harvester works were the sort of place to which philanthropists and reformers pointed with pride. It had some thought for its employees, its workshops were big and roomy, it provided a restaurant where the workmen could buy good food at cost, it had even a reading room and decent places where its girl hands could rest. Also the work was free from many of the elements of filth and repulsiveness that prevailed at the stockyards. Day after day Jurgis discovered these things, things never expected nor dreamed of by him, until this new place came to seem a kind of heaven to him. It was an enormous establishment covering 160 acres of ground employing 5,000 people and turning out over 300,000 machines every year, a good part of all the harvesting and mowing machines used in the country. Jurgis saw very little of it, of course. It was all specialized work, the same as at the stockyards. Each one of the hundreds of parts of a mowing machine was made separately and sometimes handled by hundreds of men. Where Jurgis worked there was a machine which cut and stamped a certain piece of steel about two square inches in size. The pieces came tumbling out upon a tray and all that human hands had to do was to pile them in regular rows and change the trays at intervals. This was done by a single boy who stood with eyes and thought centered upon it and fingers flying so fast that the sounds of the bits of steel striking upon each other was like the music of an express train as one hears it in a sleeping car at night. This was piecework, of course, and besides it was made certain that the boy did not idle by setting the machine to match the highest possible speed of human hands. Thirty thousand of these pieces he handled every day, nine or ten million every year, how many in a lifetime it rested with the gods to say. Nearby him men sat bending over whirling grindstones, putting the finishing touches to the steel knives of the reaper, picking them out of a basket with the right hand, pressing first one side and then the other against the stone and finally dropping them with the left hand into another basket. One of these men told Jurgis that he had sharpened three thousand pieces of steel a day for thirteen years. In the next room were wonderful machines that ate up long steel rods by slow stages, cutting them off, seizing the pieces, stamping heads upon them, grinding them and polishing them, threading them, and finally dropping them into a basket all ready to bolt the harvesters together. From yet another machine came tens of thousands of steel burrs to fit upon these bolts. In other places all these various parts were dipped in the truss of paint and hung up to dry, and then slid along on trolleys to a room where men streaked them with red and yellow so that they might look cheerful in the harvest fields. Jurgis' friend worked upstairs in the casting rooms, and his task was to make the bolts of a certain part. He shoveled black sand into an iron receptacle and pounded it tight and set it aside to harden. Then it would be taken out and molten iron poured into it. This man, too, was paid by the mold, or rather, for perfect castings, nearly half his work going for naught. You might see him along with dozens of others toiling like one possessed by a whole community of demons, his arms working like the driving rods of an engine, his long black hair flying wild, his eyes starting out, the sweat rolling in rivers down his face. When he had shoveled the mold full of sand and reached for the pounder to pound it with, it was after the manner of a canoeist running rabbits and seizing a pole at sight of a submerged rock. All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty-three instead of twenty-two and a half cents an hour. And then his product would be reckoned up by the census-taker, and jubilant captains of the industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shown upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage earners to this pitch of frenzy, though there are a few other things that are great among us including our drink bill, which is a billion and a quarter of a dollar a year, and doubling itself every decade. There was a machine which stamped out the iron plates, and then another which, with a mighty thud, mashed them to the shape of the sitting down portion of the American farmer. Then they were piled upon a truck, and it was Yorga's task to wheel them to the room where the machines were assembled. This was child's play for him, and he got a dollar and seventy-five cents a day for it. On Saturday he paid Anelay the seventy-five cents a week he owed her for the use of her garret, and also redeemed his overcoat, which Elspita had put in pawn when he was in jail. This last was a great blessing. A man cannot go about in midwinter in Chicago with no overcoat and not pay for it, and Yorgas had to walk four-ride, five or six miles back and forth to his work. It so happened that half of this was in one direction and half in another, necessitating a change of cars. The law required that transfers be given at all intersecting points, but the railway corporation had gotten round this by arranging a pretense at separate ownership. So whenever he wished to ride, he had to pay ten cents each way, or over ten percent of his income to this power, which had gotten its franchises long ago by buying up the city council in the face of popular clamor amounting almost to a rebellion. Tired as he fell that night, and dark and bitter cold as it was in the morning, Yorgas generally chose to walk. At the hour's other workmen were traveling the streetcar monopoly saw fit to put on so few cars that there would be men hanging to every foot of the backs of them and often crouching upon the snow-covered roof. Of course the doors could never be closed, and so the cars were as cold as outdoors. Yorgas, like many others, found it better to spend his fare for a drink and a free lunch to give him strength to walk. These however were all slight matters to a man who had escaped from Durham's fertilizer mill. Yorgas began to pick up heart again and to make plans. He had lost his house, but then the awful load of the rent and interest were off his shoulders, and when Muriel was well again they could start over and save. In the shop where he worked was a man, a Lithuanian like himself, whom the others spoke of in admiring whispers because of the mighty feats he was performing. All day he sat at a machine turning bolts, and then in the evening he went to the public school to study English and learn to read. In addition, because he had a family of eight children to support and his earnings were not enough, on Saturdays and Sundays he served as a watchman. He was required to press two buttons at opposite ends of a building every five minutes, and as the walk only took him two minutes he had three minutes to study between each trip. Yorgas felt jealous of this fellow, for that was the sort of thing he himself had dreamed of two or three years ago. He might do it even yet if he had a fair chance. He might attract attention and become a skilled man or a boss as some had done in this place. Suppose that Maria could get a job in the Big Mill where they made binder twine, then they would move into this neighborhood and he would really have a chance. With a hope like that there was some use in living. To find a place where you were treated like a human being, by God he would show them how he could appreciate it. He laughed to himself as he thought how he would hang on to this job. And then one afternoon the night of his work in the place when he went to get his overcoat he saw a group of men crowded before a placard on the door, and when he went over and asked what it was they told him that beginning with the morrow his department of the harvester works would be closed until further notice. CHAPTER XXI That was the way they did it. There was not half an hour's warning. The works were closed. It had happened that way before, said the men, and it would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting machines that the world needed and now they had to wait till some wore out. It was nobody's fault that was the way of it, and thousands of men and women were turned out in the dead of winter to live upon their savings if they had any and otherwise to die. So many tens of thousands already in the city homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand more added to them. Yurgis walked home with his pit and sub-pay in his pocket, heartbroken, overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more pitfall was revealed to him, of what help was kindness and decency on the part of employers when they could not keep a job for him when there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy. What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man should slave to make harvesting machines for the country only to be turned out to star for doing his duty too well. It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment. He did not drink anything because Asbita got his money for safekeeping and knew him too well to be in the least frightened by his angry demands. He stayed up in the garret, however, and sulked. What was the use of a man's hunting a job when it was taken from him before he had time to learn the work? But then their money was going again, and little Antonas was hungry and crying with the bitter cold of the garret. Also Madame Haup, the midwife, was after him for some money. So he went out once more. For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city, sick and hungry begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices, in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards, in warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that went to every corner of the world. There were often one or two chances, but there were always a hundred men for every chance, and his turn would not come. That night he crept into sheds and cellars and doorways, until there came a spell of belated winter weather with a raging gale and a thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and falling all night. Then Yorga's fought like a wild beast to get into the big Harrison Street police station and slept down in a corridor crowded with two other men upon a single step. He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found, for instance, that the business of carrying satchels for railroad passengers was a preempted one. Whenever he assayed it, eight or ten men and boys would fall upon him and force him to run for his life. They always had the policeman squared, so there was no use in expecting protection. That Yorga's did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the cold was almost more than the children could bear, and then they too were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law was against them too. Little Vilamas, who was really eleven but did not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in spectacles who told him that he was too young to be working, and that if he did not stop selling papers she would send a truant officer after him. Also one night a strange man caught little Katrina by the arm and tried to persuade her into a dark cellarway, an experience which filled her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at work. At last on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Yorga's went home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting for him for three days. There was a chance of a job for him. It was quite a story. Little Yosapas, who was near crazy with hunger these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Yosapas had only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child, but he had got himself a broomstick which he put under his arm for a crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to Mike's Scully's dump which lay three or four blocks away. To this place there came every day many hundreds of wagon loads of garbage and trash from the lakefront where the rich people lived, and in the heaps the children raked for food. There were hunks of bread and potato peelings and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite unspoiled. Little Yosapas gorged himself and came home with a newspaper full which he was feeding to Antonas when his mother came in. El's vita was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it, and Yosapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had called him. A real fine lady, the little boy explained, a beautiful lady, and she wanted to know all about him and whether he got the garbage for chickens and why he walked with a broomstick and why Ona had died and how Yurgis had come to go to jail and what was the matter with Maria and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived and said that she was coming to see him and bring him a new crutch to walk with. She had on a hat with a bird on it, Yosapas added, and a long fur snake around her neck. She really came the very next morning and climbed the ladder to the garret and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of the bloodstains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a settlement worker, she explained to El's vita. She lived around on Ashland Avenue. El's vita knew the place over a feed store, somebody had wanted her to go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came to live there to find out about the poor people, but what good they expected it would do them to know one could not imagine. So spoke El's vita naively, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss for an answer. She stood and gazed about her and thought of a cynical remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature. El's vita was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their woes, what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their home, and Maria's accident, and how Ona had died, and how Yurgis could get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady's eyes filled with tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hit her face on El's vita's shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on a dirty old wrapper, and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor El's vita was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of it was that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a letter that Yurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelwork in South Chicago. He will get Yurgis something to do, the young lady had said, and add it smiling through her tears. If he doesn't he will never marry me. The steelworks were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering chimneys, for it was pitch dark when Yurgis arrived. The vast works, a city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade, and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on. Soon after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of men appeared, streaming from saloons and boarding houses across the way, leaping from trolley cars that passed. It seemed as if they rose out of the ground in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in through the gate, and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were only a few late ones running, and the watchmen pacing up and down, and the hungry strangers stamping and shivering. Yurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly and put him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he had taken the precaution to seal his letter there was nothing for the gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was addressed. A messenger came back to say that Yurgis should wait, and so he came inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less fortunate watching him with very greedy eyes. The great mills were getting under way. One could hear a vast stirring, a rolling, and rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain, towering black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot, and oceans of billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers came to load. Yurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before he was summoned. He went into the office building where a company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he said, but he, the timekeeper, would try to find Yurgis a job. He had never worked in a steel mill before, but he was ready for anything. Well, then they would go and see. So they began a tour among sites that made Yurgis stare amazed. He wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like this, where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked warnings on all sides of him at once, where miniature steam engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white hot masses of metal stead past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with soot, and hollow eyed and gaunt. They worked with fierce intensity, rushing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from their task. Yurgis clung to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled. He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of steel, a dome-like building the size of a big theater. This stood where the balcony of the theater would have been. And opposite by the stage he saw three giant cauldrons, big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it. One had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap from these cauldrons and scatter like bombs below, and men were working there, seemingly careless, so that Yurgis caught his breath with fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the receptacles. And then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and another train would back up, and suddenly, without an instance warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple, bringing out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Yurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an accident. There fell a pillar of white flame dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in the forest. A torn of sparks swept all the way across the building, overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight. And then Yurgis looked through the fingers of his hands and saw pouring out of the cauldron a cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth, scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue, red, and golden lights played about it. But the stream itself was white, ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life. And the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and resistless, back into far-off lands where beauty and terror dwell. Then the great cauldron tilted back again, empty, and Yurgis saw to his relief that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide out into the sunlight. They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around and above giant machine arms were flying. Giant wheels were turning, giant hammers crashing. Travelling cranes creaked and groaned overhead, reaching down iron hands and seizing iron prey. It was like standing in the center of the earth where the machinery of time was revolving. My and by they came to the place where steel rails were made, and Yurgis heard a toot behind him and jumped out of the way of a car with a white-hot ingot upon it the size of a man's body. There was a sudden crash, and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon a moving platform where steel fingers and arms seized hold of it, punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip of huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other side, and there were more crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped like a pancake on a gridiron and seized again and rushed back at you through another squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing. It did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate. It was tumbled on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By and by it was long and thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory, and then as it slid through the rollers you would have sworn that it was alive. It writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shutters passed out through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. There was no rest for it until it was cold and black, and then it needed only to be cut and straightened to be ready for a railroad. It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgus got his chance. They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use another man, so he took off his coat and set to work on the spot. It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a dollar and twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with him, and one of his fellow working men introduced him to a Polish lodging-house where he might have the privilege of sleeping upon the floor for ten cents a night. He got his meals at free lunch counters, and every Saturday night he went home, bedding and all, and took the greater part of his money to the family. Elzbeta was sorry for this arrangement, for she feared that it would get him into the habit of living without them, and once a week was not very often for him to see his baby. But there was no other way of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the steelworks, and Maria was now ready for work again, and lured on from day to day by the hope of finding it at the yards. In a week Jurgus got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment in the railmill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the miracles and terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling and the crashing. In blind fear he went to the other extreme. He became reckless and indifferent, like all the rest of the men, who took but little thought of themselves in the ardor of their work. It was wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these men should have taken an interest in the work they did. They had no share in it. They were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested. Also, they knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten, and still they would hurry to their task by dangerous shortcuts, would use methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact that they were also risky. On his fourth day at his work Jurgus saw a man stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces shining white through every crack with the molten steel inside. Some of these were bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses when they opened and shut the doors. One morning, as Jurgus was passing, a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire. As they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgus rushed to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the inside of one of his hands. The company doctor vanished it up, but he got no other thanks from anyone, and was laid up for eight working days without any pay. Most fortunately at this juncture Elspita got the long-awaited chance to go at five o'clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of one of the packers. Jurgus came home and covered himself with blankets to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and playing with little Antonas. Yosapas was away raking in the dump a good part of the time, and Elspita and Maria were hunting for more work. Antonas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking machine. He learned so fast that every week when Jurgus came home it seemed to him as if he had a new child. He would sit down and listen and stare at him and give vent to delighted exclamations, Pollock, Mumma, to Manasherdele. The little fellow was now really the one delight that Jurgus had in the world, his one hope, his one victory. Thank God Antonas was a boy, and he was as tough as a pine nut, and with the appetite of a wolf. Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him. He had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed, only shriller voiced and more determined in his grip upon life. He was a terrible child to manage, was Antonas. But his father did not mind that. He would watch him and smile to himself with satisfaction. The more of a fighter he was, the better. He would need to fight before he got through. Jurgus had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the money. A most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole armful, and with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines that Jurgus could spell out slowly with the children to help him at the long words. There was battle and murder and sudden death. It was marvelous how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings. The stories must all be true, for surely no man could have made such things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as good as a spree. Certainly a most wonderful treat for a working man who was tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education, and whose work was one doll sorted grind day after day and year after year, with never a sight of a green field nor an hour's entertainment, nor anything but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other things these papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy in life to little Antonos. He treasured them up and would drag them out and make his father tell him about them. There were all sorts of animals among them, and Antonos could tell the names of all of them lying upon the floor for hours and pointing them out with his chubby little fingers. Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgus to make out, Antonos would have it repeated to him, and then he would remember it, prattling, funny little sentences and mixing it up with other stories in an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation of words was such a delight, and the phrases he would pick up and remember the most outlandish and impossible things. The first time that the little rascal burst out with, goddamn, his father nearly rolled off the chair with glee, but in the end he was sorry for this, for Antonos was soon goddamning everything and everybody. And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgus took his bedding again and went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April, and the snow had given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in front of Anile's house was turned into a canal. Jurgus would have to wade through it to get home, and if it was late he might easily get stuck to his waist in the mire. But he did not mind this much. It was a promise that summer was coming. Moria had now gotten a place as beef trimmer in one of the smaller packing plants, and he told himself that he had learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more accidents, so that at last there was prospect of an end to their long agony. They could save money again, and when another winter came they would have a comfortable place, and the children would be off the streets and in school again, and they might set to work to nurse back into life their habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgus began to make plans and dream dreams. Then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home, with the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had been pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a rainbow in the sky and another in his breast, for he had thirty-six hours' rest before him and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly he came inside of the house and noticed that there was a crowd before the door. He ran up the steps and pushed his way in and saw Anilay's kitchen crowded with excited women. It reminded him so vividly of the time when he had come home from jail and found Ona dying that his heart almost stood still. What's the matter, he cried? A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that everyone was staring at him. What's the matter, he exclaimed again. Then up in the garret he heard sounds of wailing in Maria's voice. He started for the latter, and Anilay seized him by the arm. No, no, she exclaimed, don't go up there. What is it? he shouted, and the old woman answered him weakly. It's Antonas. He's dead. He was drowned out in the street. End of chapter twenty-one. Recording by Tom Weiss. Chapter twenty-two of the Jungle. Gorgas took the news in a peculiar way. He turned deadly pale, but he caught himself, and for half a minute stood in the middle of the room, clenching his hands tightly and setting his teeth. Then he pushed Anilay aside, and strode into the next room and climbed the ladder. In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it. And beside it lay Elzbite, whether crying or in a faint, Gorgas could not tell. Maria was pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He clenched his hands tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke. How did it happen? He asked. Maria scarcely heard him in her agony. He repeated the question, louder and more harshly. He fell off the sidewalk, she wailed. The sidewalk in front of the house was a platform made of half-rotten boards, about five feet above the level of the sunken street. How did he come to be there, he demanded. He went out to play, Maria sobbed, her voice choking her. We couldn't make him stay in. He must have got caught in the mud. Are you sure that he is dead? He demanded. Aye, aye, she wailed, yes, we had the doctor. Then Gorgas stood a few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it, and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence fell once more in the room as he entered. He went straight to the door, passed out, and started down the street. When his wife had died, Gorgas made for the nearest saloon, but he did not do that now, though he had his week's wages in his pocket. He walked and walked, seeing nothing, splashing through mud and water. Later on he sat down upon a step and hid his face in his hands, and for half an hour or so he did not move. Now and then he would whisper to himself, dead, dead. Finally he got up and walked on again. It was about sunset, and he went on and on until it was dark, when he was stopped by a railroad crossing. The gates were down and a long train of freight cars was thundering by. He stood and watched it, and all at once a wild impulse seized him, a thought that had been lurking within him, unspoken, unrecognized, leaped into sudden light. He started down the track, and when he was past the gatekeeper's shanty, he sprang forward and swung himself onto one of the cars. Fly and buy the train stopped again, and Yurga sprang down and ran under the car and hid himself upon the truck. Here he sat, and when the train started again he fought a battle with his soul. He gripped his hands and set his teeth together. He had not wept, and he would not. Not a tear. It was past and over, and he was done with it. He would fling it off his shoulders, be free of it, the whole business, that night. It should go like a black, hateful nightmare, and in the morning he would be a new man. And every time that a thought of it assailed him, a tender memory, a trace of a tear, he rose up, cursing with rage, and pounded it down. He was fighting for his life. He gnashed his teeth together in his desperation. He had been a fool, a fool. He had wasted his life. He had wrecked himself with his accursed weakness, and now he was done with it. He would tear it out of him, root and branch. There should be no more tears and no more tenderness. He had had enough of them. They had sold him into slavery. Now he was going to be free, to tear off his shackles, to rise up and fight. He was glad that the end had come. It had to come some time, and it was just as well now. This was no world for women and children, and the sooner they got out of it the better for them. Whatever Antonos might suffer where he was, he could suffer no more than he would have had he stayed upon earth. And meantime his father had thought the last thought about him that he meant to. He was going to think of himself. He was going to fight for himself against the world that had baffled him and tortured him. So he went on tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul and setting his heel upon them. The train thundered deafeningly, and a storm of dust blew in his face. But though it stopped now and then through the night, he clung where he was. He would cling there until he was driven off for every mile that he got from Packingtown meant another load from his mind. Whenever the car stopped a warm breeze blew upon him, a breeze laden with the perfume of fresh fields, a honeysuckle and clover. He snuffed it, and it made his heart beat wildly. He was out in the country again. He was going to live in the country. When the dawn came, he was peering out with hungry eyes, getting glimpses of meadows and woods and rivers. At last he could stand it no longer, and when the train stopped again, he crawled out. Upon the top of the car was a breakman who shook his fist and swore. Yurgis waved his hand derisively and started across the country. Only think that he had been a countryman all his life, and for three long years he had never seen a country sight nor heard a country sound. Being for that one walk when he left jail, when he was too much worried to notice anything, and for a few times that he had rested in the city parts in the winter time when he was out of work, he had literally never seen a tree. Now he felt like a bird lifted up and borne away upon a gale. He stopped and stared at each new sight of wonder, at a herd of cows and a meadow full of daisies, and hedge-rows set thick with dune roses at little birds singing in the trees. Then he came to a farmhouse, and after getting himself a stick for protection, he approached it. The farmer was greasing the wagon in front of the barn, and Yurgis went to him. I would like to get some breakfast, please, he said. Do you want to work? Said the farmer. No, said Yurgis, I don't. And you can't get anything here, snapped the other. I meant to pay for it, said Yurgis. Oh! said the farmer, then at it sarcastically. We don't serve breakfast after seven a.m. I am very hungry, said Yurgis gravely. I would like to buy some food. Asked the woman, said the farmer, nodding over his shoulder. The woman was more tractable, and for a dime Yurgis secured two thick sandwiches and a piece of pie and two apples. He walked off eating the pie as the least convenient thing to carry. In a few minutes he came to a stream, and he climbed a fence and walked down the bank along a woodland path. By and by he found a comfortable spot, and there he devoured his meal, slaking his thirst at the stream. Then he lay for hours, just gazing and drinking in joy. While at last he felt sleepy and lay down in the shade of a bush. When he awoke the sun was shining hot in his face. He sat up and stretched his arms, and then gazed at the water sliding by. There was a deep pool, sheltered and silent below him, and a sudden, wonderful idea rushed upon him. He might have a bath. The water was free, and he might get into it, all the way into it. It would be the first time that he had been all the way into the water since he left Lithuania. When Yurgis had first come to the stockyards, he had been as clean as any working man could well be. But later on, what with sickness and cold and hunger and discouragement, and the filthiness of his work, and the vermin in his home, he had given up washing in winter and in summer only as much of him as would go into a basin. He had had a shower bath in jail, but nothing since, and now he would have a swim. The water was warm, and he splashed about like a very boy in his glee. Afterward he sat down in the water near the bank and proceeded to scrub himself, soberly and methodically, scarring every inch of him with sand. While he was doing it he would do it thoroughly and see how it felt to be clean. He even scrubbed his head with sand and combed what the men called crumbs out of his long black hair, holding his head underwater as long as he could to see if he could not kill them all. Then seeing that the sun was still hot, he took his clothes from the bank and proceeded to wash them piece by piece. As the dirt and grease went floating off downstream, he grunted with satisfaction and soused the clothes again, venturing even to dream that he might get rid of the fertilizer. He hung them all up and while they were drying he lay down in the sun and had another long sleep. They were hot and stiff as boards on top and a little damp on the underside when he awakened, but being hungry he put them on and set out again. He had no night, but with some labor he broke himself a good stout club and armed with this he marched down the road again. Before long he came to a big farmhouse and turned up the lane that led to it. It was just supper time and the farmer was washing his hands at the kitchen door. Please, sir, said Yurgis, can I have something to eat? I can pay. To which the farmer responded promptly. We don't feed tramps here, get out. Yurgis went without a word, but as he passed round the barn he came to a freshly plowed and harrowed field in which the farmer had set out some young peach trees, and as he walked he jerked up a row of them by the roots, more than a hundred trees in all, before he reached the end of the field. That was his answer, and it showed his mood. From now on he was fighting, and the man who hit him would get all that he gave every time. Beyond the orchard Yurgis struck through a patch of woods and then a field of winter grain and came at last to another road. Before long he saw another farmhouse, and as it was beginning to cloud over a little he asked here for shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eyeing him dubiously he added, I'll be glad to sleep in the barn. Well, I don't know, said the other. Do you smoke? Sometimes, said Yurgis, but I'll do it out of doors. When the man have ascended he inquired, how much will it cost me? I haven't very much money. I reckon about twenty cents for supper, replied the farmer. I won't charge ye for the barn. So Yurgis went in and sat down at the table with the farmer's wife and half a dozen children. It was a bountiful meal. There were baked beans and mashed potatoes, an asparagus chopped and stewed, and a dish of strawberries and great thick slices of bread and a pitcher of milk. Yurgis had not had such a feast since his wedding day, and he made a mighty effort to put in his twenty cents worth. They were all of them too hungry to talk, but afterward they sat upon the steps and smoked, and the farmer questioned his guest. Then Yurgis had explained that he was a working man from Chicago and that he did not know just whither he was bound. The other said, Why don't you stay here and work for me? I'm not looking for work just now, Yurgis answered. I'll pay ye good, said the other, eyeing his big form, a dollar a day and board ye, helps terrible scarce round here. Is that winter as well as summer? Yurgis demanded quickly. No, said the farmer, I couldn't keep ye after November. I ain't got a big enough place for that. I see, said the other, that's what I thought. When you get through working your horses this fall, will you turn them out in the snow? Yurgis was beginning to think for himself nowadays. It ain't quite the same, the farmer answered, seeing the point. There ought to be work a strong fellow like you can find to do in the cities, or some place in the wintertime. Yes, said Yurgis, that's what they all think, and so they crowd into the cities, and when they have to beg or steal to live, then people ask them why they don't go into the country where help is scarce. Farmer meditated a while. How about when your money's gone, he inquired finally. You'll have to then, won't you? Wait till she's gone, said Yurgis, then I'll see. He had a long sleep in the barn, and then a big breakfast of coffee and bread and oatmeal and stewed cherries, for which the man charged him only fifteen cents, perhaps having been influenced by his arguments. Then Yurgis bade farewell and went on his way. Such was the beginning of his life as a tramp. It was seldom he got as fair treatment as from this last farmer, and so as time went on he learned to shun the houses and to prefer sleeping in the fields. When it rained he would find a deserted building if he could, and if not he would wait until after dark and then, with his stick ready, begin a stealthy approach upon a barn. Generally he could get in before the dog got sent of him, and then he would hide in the hay and be safe until morning. If not, and the dog attacked him, he would rise up and make a retreat in battle order. Yurgis was not the mighty man he had once been, but his arms were still good, and there were few farm dogs he needed to hit more than once. Before long there came raspberries and then blackberries to help him save his money, and there were apples in the orchards and potatoes in the ground. He learned to note the places and fill his pockets after dark. Twice he even managed to capture a chicken and had a feast once in a deserted barn and the other time in a lonely spot alongside of a stream. When all of these things failed him he used his money carefully but without worry, or he saw that he could earn more whenever he chose. Half an hour's chopping wood in his lively fashion was enough to bring him a meal, and when the farmer had seen him working he would sometimes try to bribe him to stay. But Yurgis was not staying. He was a free man now, a buccaneer. The old wanderlust had got into his blood the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping, without limit. There were mishaps and discomforts, but at least there was always something new, and only think what it meant to a man who for years had been penned up in one place, seeing nothing but one dreary prospect of shanties and factories to be suddenly set loose beneath the open sky, to behold new landscapes, new places, and new people every hour. To a man whose whole life had consisted of doing one certain thing all day, until he was so exhausted that he could only lie down and sleep until the next day, and to be now his own master, working as he pleased and when he pleased, and facing a new adventure every hour. Then too his health came back to him, all his lost youthful vigor, his joy and power that he had mourned and forgotten. He came with a sudden rush bewildering him, startling him. It was as if his dead childhood had come back to him, laughing and calling. What with plenty to eat and fresh air and exercise that was taken as it pleased him, he would waken from his sleep and start off not knowing what to do with his energy, stretching his arms, laughing, singing old songs of home that came back to him. Now and then, of course, he could not help but think of little Antonos, whom he should never see again, whose little voice he should never hear, and then he would have to battle with himself. Sometimes at night he would waken dreaming of Onah and stretch out his arms to her and wet the ground with his tears, but in the morning he would get up and shake himself and stride away again to battle with the world. He never asked where he was nor where he was going. The country was big enough he knew, and there was no danger of his coming to the end of it. And of course he could always have company for the asking. Everywhere he went there were men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcome to join. He was a stranger at the business, but they were not clannish, and they taught him all their tricks. What towns and villages it was best to keep away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and when to beg, and when to steal, and just how to do both. They laughed at his ideas of paying for anything with money or with work, for they got all they wanted without either. Now and then Yurgis camped out with a gang of them in some woodland haunt, and foraged with them in the neighborhood at night, and then among them someone would take a shine to him, and they would go off together and travel for a week, exchanging reminiscences. Of these professional tramps a great many have, of course, been shiftless and vicious all their lives, but the vast majority of them had been working men, had fought the long battle as Yurgis had, and found that it was a losing fight, and given up. Later on he encountered yet another sort of men, those from whose ranks the tramps were recruited, men who were homeless and wondering, but still seeking work, seeking it in the harvest fields. Of these there was an army, the huge surplus labor army of society, called into being under the stern system of nature to do the casual work of the world, the tasks which were transient and irregular, and yet which had to be done. They did not know that they were such, of course, they only knew that they sought the job, and that the job was fleeting. In the early summer they would be in Texas, and as the crops were ready they would follow north with the season, ending with the fall in Manitoba. Then they would seek out the big lumber camps where there was winter work, or failing in this would drift to the cities and live upon what they had managed to save with the help of such transient work as was there the loading and unloading of steamships and drays, the digging of ditches and the shoveling of snow. If there were more of them on hand than chance to be needed, the weaker ones died off of cold and hunger, again according to the stern system of nature. It was in the latter part of July when Jurgis was in Missouri that he came upon the harvest work. Here were crops that men had worked for three or four months to prepare, and of which they would lose nearly all unless they could find others to help them for a week or two. So all over the land there was a cry for labor. Agencies were set up, and all the cities were drained of men, even college boys were brought by the carload, and hordes of frantic farmers would hold up trains and carry off wagonloads of men by main force. Not that they did not pay them well. Any man could get two dollars a day and his board, and the best men could get two dollars and a half or three. The harvest fever was in the very air, and no man with any spirit in him could be in that region and not catch it. Jurgis joined a gang and worked from dawn till dark, eighteen hours a day, for two weeks without a break. Then he had a sum of money that would have been a fortune to him in the old days of misery, but what could he do with it now? To be sure he might have put it in a bank and, if he were fortunate, get it back again when he wanted it. But Jurgis was now a homeless man, wandering over a continent, and what did he know about banking and drafts and letters of credit? If he carried the money about with him he would surely be robbed in the end, and so what was there for him to do but enjoy it while he could? On a Saturday night he drifted into a town with his fellows, and because it was raining and there was no other place provided for him, he went to a saloon. And there were some who treated him and whom he had to treat, and there was laughter and singing and good cheer. And then out of the rear part of the saloon a girl's face, and sheaked and merry, smiled at Jurgis, and his heart thumped suddenly in his throat. He nodded to her, and she came and sat by him, and they had more drink, and then he went upstairs into a room with her, and the wild beast rose up within him and screamed as it has screamed in the jungle from the dawn of time. And then because of his memories and his shame he was glad when others joined in, and women, and they had more drink and spent the night in wild rioting and debauchery. In the van of the surplus labor army there followed another, an army of women, they also struggling for life under the stern system of nature. Because there were rich men who sought pleasure there had been ease and plenty for them so long as they were young and beautiful, and later on when they were crowded out by others younger and more beautiful they went out to follow upon the trail of the working men. Sometimes they came of themselves and the saloon keepers shared with them, and sometimes they were handled by agencies the same as the labor army. They were in the towns in harvest time, near the lumber camps in the winter, in the cities when the men came there. If a regiment were encamped or a railroad or canal being made, or a great exposition getting ready the crowd of women were on hand, living in shanties or saloons or tenement rooms, sometimes eight or ten of them together. In the morning Yurgis had not a scent, and he went out upon the road again. He was sick and disgusted, but after the new plan of his life he crushed his feelings down. He had made a fool of himself, but he could not help it now. All he could do was to see that it did not happen again. So he tramped on until exercise and fresh air banished his headache, and his strength and joy returned. This happened to him every time, for Yurgis was still a creature of impulse, and his pleasures had not yet become business. It would be a long time before he could be like the majority of these men of the road, who roamed until the hunger for drink and for women mastered them, and then went to work with a purpose in mind, and stopped when they had the price of a spree. On the contrary, trying as he would, Yurgis could not help being made miserable by his conscience. It was the ghost that would not down. It would come to him in the most unexpected places. Sometimes it fairly drove him to drink. One night he was caught by a thunderstorm, and he sought shelter in a little house just outside of a town. It was a working man's home, and the owner was a Slav like himself, a new immigrant from White Russia. He bade Yurgis welcome in his home language and told him to come into the kitchen fire and dry himself. He had no bed for him, but there was straw in the garret, and he could make out. The man's wife was cooking the supper, and their children were playing about on the floor. Yurgis sat and exchanged thoughts with him about the old country, and the places where they had been, and the work they had done. Then they ate, and afterward sat and smoked, and talked more about America, and how they found it. In the middle of a sentence, however, Yurgis stopped, seeing that the woman had brought a big basin of water, and was proceeding to undress her youngest baby. The rest had crawled into the closet where they slept, but the baby was to have a bath, the working man explained. The nights had begun to be chilly, and his mother, ignorant as to the climate in America, had sewed him up for the winter. Then it had turned warm again, and some kind of rash had broken out on the child. The docker had said she must bathe him every night, and she, foolish woman, believed him. Yurgis scarcely heard the explanation. He was watching the baby. He was about a year old, and a sturdy little fellow, with soft, fat legs, and a round ball of a stomach, and eyes as black as coals. His pimples did not seem to bother him much, and he was wild with glee over the bath, picking and squirming and chuckling with delight, pulling at his mother's face and then at his own little toes. When she put him into the basin, he sat in the midst of it and grin, splashing the water over himself and squealing like a little pig. He spoke in Russian, of which Yurgis knew some. He spoke it with the quaintest of baby accents, and every word of it brought back to Yurgis some word of his own dead little one, and stabbed him like a knife. He sat perfectly motionless, silent, but gripping his hands tightly while a storm gathered in his bosom, and a flood heaped itself up behind his eyes. And in the end he could bear it no more, but buried his face in his hands and burst into tears through the alarm and amazement of his hosts. In the shame of this and his woe, Yurgis could not stand it, and got up and rushed out into the rain. He went on and on down the road, finally coming to a black woods, where he hid and wept as if his heart would break. Ah, what agony was that what despair when the tomb of memory was rent open and the ghosts of his old life came forth to scourge him. What terror to see what he had been. And now could never be, to see Onah and his child and his own dead self stretching out their arms to him, calling to him across a bottomless abyss, and to know that they were gone from him forever, and he writhing and suffocating in the mire of his own vileness. CHAPTER XXIII Early in the fall Yurgis set out for Chicago again. All the joy went out of tramping as soon as a man could not keep warm in the hay, and like many thousands of others he diluted himself with the hope that by coming early he could avoid the rush. He brought fifteen dollars with him hidden away in one of his shoes, a sum which had been saved from the saloon keepers not so much by his conscience as by the fear which filled him at the thought of being out of work in the city in the winter time. He traveled upon the railroad with several other men, hiding in freight cars at night, and liable to be thrown off at any time regardless of the speed of the train. When he reached the city he left the rest, for he had money and they did not, and he meant to save himself in this fight. He would bring to it all the skill that practice had brought him, and he would stand whoever fell. On fair nights he would sleep in the park or on a truck or an empty barrel or box, and when it was rainy or cold he would stow himself upon a shelf in a ten-cent lodging house or pay three cents for the privileges of a squatter in a tenement hallway. He would eat at free lunches five cents a meal and never a cent more, so he might keep alive for two months or more, and in that time he would surely find a job. He would have to bid farewell to his summer cleanliness, of course, or he would come out of the first night's lodging with his clothes alive with vermin. There was no place in the city where he could wash even his face, unless he went down to the lakefront, and there it would soon be all ice. First he went to the steel mill and the harvester works, and found that his places there had been filled long ago. He was careful to keep away from the stockyards. He was a single man now, he told himself, and he meant to stay one, to have his wages for his own when he got a job. He began the long, weary round of factories and warehouses, tramping all day from one end of the city to the other, finding everywhere from ten to a hundred men ahead of him. He watched the newspapers, too, but no longer was he to be taken in by smooth-spoken agents. He had been told of all those tricks while on the road. In the end it was through a newspaper that he got a job, after nearly a month of seeking. It was a call for a hundred laborers, and though he thought it was a fake, he went because the place was nearby. He found a line of men a block long, but as a wagon chanced to come out on an alley and break the line, he saw his chance and sprang to seize a place. Men threatened him and tried to throw him out, but he cursed and made a disturbance to attract a policeman upon which they subsided, knowing that if the latter interfered, it would be to fire them all. An hour or two later he entered a room and confronted a big Irishman behind a desk. Ever worked in Chicago before? The man inquired, and whether it was a good angel that put it into Yurgis' mind or an intuition of his sharpened wits. He was moved to answer, No, sir. Where did you come from? Kansas City, sir. Any references? No, sir. I'm just an unskilled man. I've got good arms. I want men for hard work. It's all underground, digging tunnels for telephones. Maybe it won't suit you. I'm willing, sir, anything for me. What's the pay? Fifteen cents an hour. I'm willing, sir. All right, go back there and give your name. So within half an hour he was at work, far underneath the streets of the city. The tunnel was a peculiar one for telephone wires. It was about eight feet high and with a level floor nearly as wide. It had innumerable branches, a perfect spider web beneath the city. Yurgis walked over half a mile with his gang to the place where they were to work. Stranger yet, the tunnel was lighted by electricity and upon it was laid a double-tracked narrow gauge railroad. But Yurgis was not there to ask questions, and he did not give the matter a thought. It was nearly a year afterward that he finally learned the meaning of this whole affair. The city council had passed a quiet and innocent little bill allowing a company to construct telephone conduits under the city streets, and upon the strength of this a great corporation had proceeded to tunnel all Chicago with a system of railway freight subways. In the city there was a combination of employers representing hundreds of millions of capital and formed for the purpose of crushing the labor unions. The chief union which troubled it was the teamsters, and when these freight tunnels were completed, connecting all the big factories and stores with the railroad depots, they would have the teamsters' union by the throat. Now and then there were rumors and murmurs in the board of aldermen, and once there was a committee to investigate, but each time another small fortune was paid over and the rumors died away. Until at last the city woke up with a start to find the work completed. There was a tremendous scandal, of course. It was found that the city records had been falsified and other crimes committed, and some of Chicago's big capitalists got into jail, figuratively speaking. The aldermen declared that they had had no idea of it all, in spite of the fact that the main entrance to the work had been in the rear of the saloon of one of them. It was in a newly opened cut that Yorgos worked, and so he knew that he had an all-winter job. He was so rejoiced that he treated himself to a spree that night, and with the balance of his money he hired himself a place in a tenement room, where he slept upon a big homemade straw mattress, along with four other working men. This was one dollar a week, and for four more he got his food in a boarding-house near his work. This would leave him four dollars extra each week, an unthinkable sum for him. At the outset he had to pay for his digging tools, and also to buy a pair of heavy boots, since his shoes were falling to pieces, and a flannel shirt, since the one he had worn all summer was in shreds. He spent a week meditating whether or not he should also buy an overcoat. There was one belonging to a Hebrew-collar button peddler who had died in the room next to him, and which the landlady was holding for her rent. In the end, however, Yurgis decided to do without it, as he was to be underground by day and in bed at night. This was an unfortunate decision, however, for it drove him more quickly than ever into the saloons. From now on Yurgis worked from seven o'clock until half past five, with half an hour for dinner, which meant that he never saw the sunlight on weekdays. In the evenings there was no place for him to go except a bar room, no place where there was light and warmth where he could hear a little music or sit with a companion and talk. He had now no home to go to, he had no affection left in his life, only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice. On Sundays the churches were open, but where was there a church in which an ill-smelling workman with vermin crawling upon his neck could sit without seeing people edge away and look annoyed? He had, of course, his corner in a close though unheated room, with the window opening upon a blank wall two feet away, and also he had the bare streets with the winter gales sweeping through them. Besides this he had only the saloons, and, of course, he had to drink to stay in them. He drank now and then he was free to make himself at home, to gamble with dice or a pack of greasy cards, to play at a dingy pool table for money, or to look at a beer-stained pink sporting paper with pictures of murderers and half-naked women. It was for such pleasures as these that he spent his money, and such was his life during the six weeks and a half that he toiled for the merchants of Chicago to enable them to break the grip of their teamsters' union. In a work thus carried out not much thought was given to the welfare of the laborers. On an average the tunneling cost a life a day and several manglings. It was seldom, however, that more than a dozen or two men heard of any one accident. The work was all done by the new boring machine, with as little blasting as possible. But there would be falling rocks and crushed supports and premature explosions, and in addition all the dangers of rail-roading. So it was that one night, as Yurgis was on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car gashed round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him upon the shoulder, hurling him against a concrete wall and knocking him senseless. When he opened his eyes again it was to the clanging of the bell of an ambulance. He was lying in it covered by a blanket, and it was threading its way slowly through the holiday-shopping crowds. They took him to the county hospital where a young surgeon set his arm. Then he was washed and laid upon a bed in a ward with a score or two more of maimed and mangled men. Yurgis spent his Christmas in this hospital, and it was the pleasantest Christmas he had had in America. Every year there were scandals and investigations in this institution, the newspapers charging that doctors were allowed to try fantastic experiments upon the patients. But Yurgis knew nothing of this. His only complaint was that they used to feed him upon tinned meat, which no man who had ever worked in Packingtown would feed to his dog. Yurgis had often wondered just who ate the canned corned beef and roast beef of the stockyards. Now he began to understand that it was what you might call graft meat put up to be sold to public officials and contractors and eaten by soldiers and sailors, prisoners and inmates of institutions, shanty men, and gangs of railroad laborers. Yurgis was ready to leave the hospital at the end of two weeks. This did not mean that his arm was strong and that he was able to go back to work, but simply that he could get along without further intention, and that his place was needed for someone worse off than he, that he was utterly helpless and had no means of keeping himself alive in the meantime was something which did not concern the hospital authorities nor anyone else in the city. As it chanced he had been hurt on a Monday and had just paid for his last week's board and his room rent and spent nearly all the balance of his Saturdays pay. He had less than seventy-five cents in his pockets and a dollar and a half do him for the day's work he had done before he was hurt. He might possibly have sued the company and got some damages for his injuries, but he did not know this and it was not the company's business to tell him. He went and got his pay and his tools which he left in a pawn shop for fifty cents. Then he went to his landlady who had rented his place and had no other place for him, and then to his boarding housekeeper who looked him over and questioned him. As he must certainly be helpless for a couple of months and had boarded there only six weeks, she decided very quickly that it would not be worth the risk to keep him on trust. So Durgis went out into the streets in a most dreadful plight. It was bitterly cold and a heavy snow was falling, beating into his face. He had no overcoat, had no place to go, and two dollars and sixty-five cents in his pocket with the certainty that he could not earn another cent for months. The snow meant no chance to him now. He must walk along and see others shoveling, vigorous and active, and he with his left arm bound to his side. He could not hope to tide himself over by odd jobs of loading trucks. He could not even sell newspapers or carry satchels because he was now at the mercy of any rival. Words could not paint the terror that came over him as he realized all this. He was like a wounded animal in the forest. He was forced to compete with his enemies upon unequal terms. There would be no consideration for him because of his weakness. It was no one's business to help him in such distress, to make the fight the least bit easier for him. And if he took to begging, he would be at a disadvantage for reasons which he was to discover in good time. In the beginning he could not think of anything except getting out of the awful cold. He went into one of the saloons he had been want to frequent and bought a drink, and then stood by the fire, shivering and waiting to be ordered out. According to an unwritten law, the buying a drink included the privilege of loafing for just so long. Then one had to buy another drink or move on. That Yorgos was an old customer entitled him to a somewhat longer stop. But then he had been away two weeks, and was evidently on the bum. He might plead and tell his hard luck story, but that would not help him much. A saloon-keeper who was to be moved by such means would soon have his place jammed to the doors with hobos on a day like this. So Yorgos went out into another place, and paid another nickel. He was so hungry this time that he could not resist the hot beef stew, an indulgence which cut short his stay by a considerable time. When he was again told to move on, he made his way to a tough place in the Levy district, where now and then he had gone with a certain rat-eyed bohemian workman of his acquaintance seeking a woman. It was Yorgos vain hope that here the proprietor would let him remain as a sitter. In low-class places in the dead of winter saloon-keepers would often allow one or two forlorn-looking bums who came in covered with snow or soaked with rain to sit by the fire and look miserable to attract customers. A working man would come in feeling cheerful after his day's work was over, and it would trouble him to have to take his glass with such a slight under his nose, and so he would call out, Hello, bub, what's the matter? You look as if you've been up against it. And then the other would begin to pour out some tale of misery, and the man would say, Come have a glass, and maybe that'll brace you up. And so they would drink together, and if the tramp was sufficiently wretched-looking or good enough at the gab, they might have two. And if they were to discover that they were from the same country, or had lived in the same city, or worked at the same trade, they might sit down at a table and spend an hour or two in talk. And before they got through, the saloon-keeper would have taken in a dollar. All of this might seem diabolical. But the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, someone else will. And the saloon-keeper, unless he is also an alderman, is apt to be in debt to big brewers and on the verge of being sold out. The market for sitters was glutted that afternoon, however, and there was no place for Yurgis. In all, he had to spend six nickels in keeping a shelter over him, at frightful day, and then it was just dark, and the station houses would not open until midnight. At the last place, however, there was a bartender who knew him and liked him, and let him doze at one of the tables until the boss came back. And also, as he was going out, the man gave him a tip. On the next block there was a religious revival of some sort, with preaching and singing, and hundreds of hobos would go there for the shelter and warmth. Yurgis went straight away and saw a sign hung out, saying that the door would open at 7.30. Then he walked or half ran a block and hid a while in a doorway, and then ran again, and so on until the hour. At the end he was all but frozen, and fought his way in with the rest of the throng, at the risk of having his arm broken again, and got close to the big stone. By eight o'clock the place was so crowded that the speakers ought to have been flattered, the aisles were filled half way up, and at the door men were packed tight enough to walk upon. There were three elderly gentlemen in black upon the platform, and a young lady who played the piano in front. First they sang a hymn, and then one of the three, a tall, smooth-shaven man, very thin, and wearing black spectacles, began an address. Yurgis heard smatterings of it for the reason that terror kept him awake. He knew that he snored abominably, and to have been put out just then would have been like a sentence of death to him. The evangelist was preaching sin and redemption, the infinite grace of God and his pardon for human frailty. He was very much in earnest, and he meant well, but Yurgis, as he listened, found his soul filled with hatred. What did he know about sin and suffering, with his smooth black coat, and his neatly starched collar, his body warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket, and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold. This, of course, was unfair, but Yurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the light they discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems. Nay, they themselves were part of the problem. They were part of the order established that was crushing men down and feeding them. They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors. They had a haul, and a plier, and food, and clothing, and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen. They were trying to save their souls, and who but a pool could fail to see, that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies. At eleven the meeting closed, and the desolate audience filed out into the snow, muttering curses upon the few traders who had got repentance and gone up on the platform. It was yet an hour before the station house would open, and Yurgis had no overcoat, and was weak from a long illness. During that hour he nearly perished. He was obliged to run hard to keep his blood moving at all, and then he came back to the station house and found a crowd blocking the street before the door. This was in the month of January 1904, when the country was on the verge of hard times, and the newspapers were reporting the shutting down of factories every day. It was estimated that a million and a half men were thrown out of work before the spring, so all the hiding places of the city were crowded, and before that station house a door men fought and tore each other like savage beasts. When at last the place was jammed and they shut the doors, half the crowd was still outside, and Yurgis with his helpless arm was among them. There was no choice then but to go to a lodging house and spend another dime. It really broke his heart to do this at half past twelve o'clock, after he had wasted the night at the meeting and on the street. He would be turned out of the lodging house promptly at seven. They had the shells which served as bunks so contrived that they could be dropped, and any man who was slow about obeying orders could be tumbled to the floor. This was one day, and the cold spell lasted for fourteen of them. At the end of six days every cent of Yurgis' money was gone, and then he went out on the streets to beg for his life. He would begin as soon as the business of the city was moving. He would sally forth from a saloon, and after making sure there was no policeman in sight would approach every likely-looking person who passed him, telling his woeful story and pleading for a nickel or a dime. Then when he got one he would dart round the corner and return to his base to get warm, and his victim, seeing him do this, would go away, vowing that he would never give a cent to a beggar again. The victim never paused to ask where else Yurgis could have gone under the circumstances, where he, the victim, would have gone. At the saloon Yurgis could not only get more food and better food than he could buy in any restaurant for the same money, but a drink in the bargain to warm him up. Also he could find a comfortable seat by a fire, and could chat with the companion until he was as warm as toast. At the saloon too he felt at home. Part of the saloon-keeper s business was to offer a home and refreshments to beggars in exchange for the proceeds of their forageings. And was there anyone else in the city who would do this? Would the victim have done it himself? Poor Yurgis might have been expected to make a successful beggar. He was just out of the hospital and desperately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm. Also he had no overcoat and shivered pityfully. But at last it was again the case of the honest merchant who finds that the genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit. Yurgis as a beggar was simply a blundering amateur in competition with well-organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out of the hospital, but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling, and it was a device a regular beggar's little boy would have scorned. He was pale and shivering, but they were made up with cosmetics and had studied the art of chattering their teeth. As to his being without an overcoat, among them you would meet men you could swear had on nothing but a ragged linen duster and a pair of cotton trousers, so cleverly had they concealed the several suits of all wool underwear beneath. Many of these professional mendicants had comfortable homes and families and thousands of dollars in the bank. Some of them had retired upon their earnings and gone into the business of fitting out and doctoring others or working children at the trade. There were some who had both their arms bound tightly to their sides and had it stumps in their sleeves and a sick child hired to carry a cup for them. There were some who had no legs and pushed themselves upon a wheeled platform. Some who had been favored with blindness or were led by pretty little dogs. Some less fortunate had mutilated themselves or burned themselves or had brought horrible sores upon themselves with chemicals. You might suddenly encounter upon the street a man holding out to you a finger rotting and discolored with gangrene, or one with livid scarlet wounds half escaped from their filthy bandages. These desperate ones were the dregs of the city's cesspools, wretches who hid at night in the rain-soaked cellars of old ramshackle tenements, in stale beer dives and opium joints, with abandoned women in the last stages of the harlot's progress, women who had been kept by Chinamen and turned away at last to die. Every day the police net would drag hundreds of them off the streets, and in the detention hospital you might see them, herded together in a miniature inferno with hideous beastly faces, bloated and leprous with disease, laughing, shouting, screaming in all stages of drunkenness, barking like dogs, gibbering like apes, raving and tearing themselves in delirium.